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Boast in the Lord.

Words usually come so easily for me that I have a hard time stopping somewhere, but here I am in late-January struggling to find words to put on paper to Boast in the Lord. This past year, my father was diagnosed with a combination of vascular dementia and Alzheimer’s disease, and is already well into the moderate stages of his cognitive decline. His diagnosis came with a range of emotions, and it...

I went back and forth a million times trying to figure out the perfect thing to share to “boast” and glorify the name of the Lord. But the truth of the matter is, that everything single good thing about me and in my life, is because of the Lord, because He chose me, because He dug me out of the pit I was living in....

My boast is not bound by 2024 or any year. It dates back almost a decade now. While long past, the overwhelming joy surrounding the gift God gave me is very real today. I can’t speak it or think about it (or write about it…as I am finding out right this moment), without being emotionally overwhelmed....

My Boast is a partial continuation of last year's, where God gave us a new back deck, which ended up being a perfect backdrop for the pre-wedding photos for our son Christopher and Karen's wedding in October....

On November 3rd at 11:15pm I was in the back room and Cathy was asleep in the master bedroom on the first floor in the front of the house. Suddenly there was a large BOOM and the sound of the fire alarm going off. I jumped up and tried to open the door to the master bedroom, but there was debris all over the floor, which prevented me from fully opening it....

Jesus shared His last (& perhaps most important) words to His disciples before He ascended back into heaven after His resurrection from the dead. So… How do we faithfully obey His great commission to us today? What if we had a tool to aid us in these mandates that would change the hearts of people for good, in only 20 minutes a day? Would we use it? ...

While I cannot say 2024 was a bad year, it was not without its notable disappointments. After identifying an opportunity and two-plus years of nights and weekends working in my garage, I developed a product that I was ready and excited to bring to market. After two years of positive feedback and open and bilateral communications with a major customer (in which we regularly exchanged specification...

I’ve been pondering on the faithfulness of the Lord... And I’ve discovered that, shockingly, sometimes His faithfulness doesn’t look like what I think it should look like. Because I think that friend shouldn’t have cancer; she loves the Lord and we’ve all prayed for her repeatedly. Or that divorce shouldn’t have happened; after all, they’re both believers. Or that child shouldn’t have died; hi...

In it All – God is Faithful. I started thinking back over the years, about the important times in our lives that decisions were made by us, yet now I can see it was God directing our steps all along. This May, James and I will be married 34 years and have completed 15 years at Grace Chapel. It feels like yesterday, yet so much time has flown by. When I reflect back, all I can say is that I have ...

The Antidote for Fear is Trust... Christians often times take an interesting posture towards the current events in their lives, often unnecessarily. I am no exception. We are assured that our sins of the past are forgiven through the cross of Christ, therefore our future in eternity is assured. What’s left is the present, and that’s often where we struggle with the issue of fear....

I have been carrying the burden of shame for far too long. I am 59 years-old now, but when I was 19—in 1984—I had an abortion. For nearly 40 years, no one knew this except my husband, David and one dear friend, whom I only confided in a couple of months ago. Imagine carrying that shame for 40 years Please know, that even now, this is not easy to admit. For many years, I suffered through this and w...

As a teen and young adult, I remember holding onto these verses during various seasons. It was such a comfort to me knowing that know matter what I might face, suffering in big or small ways, that God Himself would make me whole again, strong, and able to stand firm. It was a relief to know it wasn’t all on me…but that Jesus would be everything I need. ...

I have an English accent - one of the many benefits of growing up in England It may then come as a surprise that my mother is a New Jersey native - born in Manhattan and raised in Maplewood. As a teenager, she attended Long Hill Chapel, the planting church of Grace Chapel. This I only discovered after my wife and I had attended Grace for a couple of years, and it came as a pleasant surprise...

As I was spending time thinking about what I was going to write, for a few moments I thought, “I don’t have much to boast about this year”. This year felt at times like an eternity. I had on and off health problems I was figuring out. I was helping run crisis intervention at my job which was rewarding but took a toll on my physical and emotional health. There were heartaches and broken relationshi...

The older I get, the more I realize I am hopeless and bereft without God and His Word. While that bit of self-reflection may initially seem so defeatist and depressing, the Spirit has worked on my heart and head to show me that the opposite is actually true....

New Year’s has been difficult for the past few years, as it marks the anniversary of some significant losses. Every year, I feel confident that I have moved further in my journey through grief, but when I approach the days immediately following Christmas, the heaviness of the traumatic memories always hit harder than I expect them to....

After listening to this past week’s message on depression, I felt compelled to share a bit of my battle regarding this issue. Although I was no stranger to mental illness, (being from a family that has many members that struggle with varying degrees of challenges relating to the mind), I personally had never really felt the burden of mental illness. I did not think it was a made-up thing, nor some...

The start of 2024 was, without a doubt, the lowest point of my life. Following a not-so-recent divorce, I felt utterly rejected by many people I thought I needed for guidance. On top of that, I faced relentless harassment that even targeted my children, a drastically slowing business, and an uncertain future. I didn’t know how I was going to pay my rent or support my daughters in the years to come...

I Can See God In My Rearview Mirror! I often tell people that if you want to see God working in your life, all you need to do is look in your rearview mirror....

At the beginning of 2024 the Lord put the word OBEDIENCE on my heart. I committed to spend the year in the Word truly seeking His face, and to step out in obedience when I felt the Spirit lead. No matter how difficult, no matter the sacrifice, no matter the cost. I committed to obey....

In my journey in the Christian life, I have found that there are spiritual seasons that come and go that are often analogous to the weather seasons of the year. First, there's the Summer season, which is warm and bright and exciting, full of activities and memories with loved ones that you reflect on as some of the best moments of your life. Spiritually, in this season, your faith is one that bur...

Some nights, as I lay awake, my mind races with the endless to-dos and the challenges of life. Like many, bedtime often becomes the moment when the weight of family, work, school, and other responsibilities feels most overwhelming. For me, caring for my one-year-old son, managing a home, meeting assignment deadlines for a class I am in, and fulfilling work duties can easily consume my thoughts thr...

When we have much, it is very easy to rely on our own stuff. Our clothes, our technology, our money, our things. It is much easier to see the hand of God at work when we lack. We learn so much more in the valley than on the mountaintop. When we are weak, we learn to rely so much more on God’s strength....

It has taken me weeks to find the words to boast in that which the Lord has done for me, revealed to me, and strengthened in me in this new year. Every time I sit down to write, words fail me. In the end, these are what remain...

Of all the wonderful ways the Lord has worked in my life, I drew a blank on what to write for the 2025 Boast in the Lord. I asked the Lord to reveal to me what to share with Grace Chapel that would glorify Him....

This year, I’ve come to a powerful realization: God is not finished writing my testimony. Sure, if someone asked me to share my testimony, I could offer one. Most of us could. But that would only be a snapshot — a glimpse of a moment in time. The truth is, God’s work in us is ongoing. Every lesson, every trial, and every triumph adds another chapter to our story....

Being a “higher mileage vehicle” has its benefits, but also its challenges. This last year, one Sunday morning, I noticed a few of the letters were missing from the text on the screen during worship. They were replaced by gray blotches. I said to myself it was my astigmatism, but it was something quite different. A tiny blood vessel had rubbed the wrong way and leaked into the back of my eye up ag...

When I think of “boasting in the Lord”, my mind searches for the good things that have come my way. 2024 started out with a wonderful blessing…our 7th grandchild was born. I rejoice everyday in the blessing of little Joshua in our lives. ...

Over this past year we have started attending church regularly. We started doing daily Bible plans on the Bible app every day to remind us of His faithfulness and to learn more about our God. We know our relationship will not always be easy but with God at the center we will get through....

I went from a girl who believed Christianity is an outdated system that keeps man in a “lower state of consciousness” to a girl who loves Jesus. I NEVER would have thought I’d adopt a Biblical worldview. I NEVER would have thought it possible I would denounce all my spiritual beliefs that I cherished so dearly from ten long years of studying eastern mysticism. BUT GOD!...

I have much to boast in the Lord about from the 2024 year. I am so thankful for what the Lord has done for me. This year has been a year of exceptional blessings....

I am exceedingly and abundantly blessed. I have a Savior who loves me, an amazing husband who adores and serves our family, three incredible children, a beautiful home, wonderful friends and family and a fulfilling career. How could I ever not be thankful? How could I ever not FEEL like boasting in the Lord?...

By the grace of God, I have been blessed with an incredible career over the past 30-plus years—far beyond anything I could have ever imagined, especially given my humble and challenging beginnings. At the age of 6, my family and I arrived in the U.S. as refugees. I faced poverty, a troubled youth, and the pain of a broken home...

We recently moved to New Jersey from Vermont. It was overwhelming because we had to start anew...

I want to begin this testimony by first acknowledging God IS in Grace Chapel. God brought me to Grace Chapel in June of 2023 and since then I have been blessed with so many firsts in my life- all thanks to His grace. I could never have imagined so many different blessings in one year at this stage of my life....

2024 was a roller coaster of events and emotions for me. It was definitely one of the hardest years, yet also one of the best years of my life so far. Eleven days into the new year, I was rushed into an emergency C-section since my baby’s heartbeat kept dropping with each contraction. This operation had me shaking and repeatedly crying out, “Be strong and courageous”....

Over the last few weeks, I’ve made a mental note of this year’s “Boast in the Lord” initiative. Pastor James has been encouraging the congregation to submit our entries, and though I’ve wanted to, I couldn’t land on what to share. You might look at my life and think, “you’ve got plenty to boast about...

I have been struggling for four years. I dreamed of being a teacher since I was five years old. Well into my forties, God miraculously orchestrated a chain of events that opened doors for me to receive my teaching certification and to have my own classroom. ...

I want to start by saying that what I am about to share with you is not something that I think is unique to me or more significant than anything experienced in the lives of those of you who are a reading this. We live in a broken world, and at some point, in every life, the truth of that reality is made painfully known to each of us....