I was a pencil-thin teen. The fact is that I didn’t care much for food back then. I didn’t hate it, it just wasn’t a priority to me–my social life was. Mom had dinner on the table every evening at 5 pm, but with volleyball, basketball, track and field, shopping… I’d often miss that 5 o’clock deadline and grab something to eat on-the-go. That is if I remembered to eat.

One afternoon, on my way home from school, I fell down the steps. Funny thing is, that wasn’t the first time it happened that day. I also fell down the stairs inside the school mid-afternoon, and just hours before that I tripped down the stairs in our house.

When I got home from school, I mentioned it to my mom, “I fell down the stairs three times today,” I said. “Isn’t that odd?”

“When was the last time you ate?” she asked.

I had to think about that for a minute because it wasn’t just hours–it had been a few days. I was running on empty, in desperate need of some fuel. My body knew it, but my attention had been somewhere else.

In the same way that our bodies need to be fed, so do our souls. We need food and we need water, which is why we need God. We need to be nourished both by His Spirit and by His Word. And if we’re not? We’re certain to fall.

Do you wait until a building falls before you shore up the foundation? Or do you build a strong foundation first to ensure that it won’t?

“Therefore everyone who hears these words of mine and puts them into practice is like a wise man who built his house on the rock. The rain came down, the streams rose, and the winds blew and beat against that house; yet it did not fall, because it had its foundation on the rock.” – Matthew 7:24-25, NIV

In the same way, don’t wait for your life to crumble. Don’t wait until you’re in the midst of a trial to pray your way out. The best strategy for spiritual warfare is to meditate on the Word, put it into practice, and start praying today. Strengthen the foundation before the house falls.



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Tilling the Soil

Make an effort to meditate on God’s Word this week. Consider the words that you read and continue to think about them throughout the day. As David said, “Blessed is He who meditates on God’s law day and night.”

Planting Hope

Therefore everyone who hears these words of mine and puts them into practice is like a wise man who built his house on the rock. (Matthew 7:24, NIV)


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Darlene Schacht and her husband Michael live in Manitoba Canada where the summers are beautiful and the winters are cold. Together they’ve come to learn that relationships aren’t always easy, but that marriage, the way God intended it to be, is a treasure worth fighting for.

She began her publishing journey about twelve years ago when she pioneered one of the first online magazines for Christian women, known at the time as “Christian Women Online Magazine.” After three years, Darlene left CWO to blog as a solo author at Time-Warp Wife Ministries.

It was also during this transition that she worked alongside actress Candace Cameron Bure to write the NYT Best-Selling book, Reshaping it All: Motivation for Spiritual and Physical FitnessReshaping it All was the winner of both the 2011 USA Best Book Awards and the 2012 Christian Reading Retailers Choice Awards.

Author of more than 15 books, Darlene continues to write and to minister to her readers through her blog at TimeWarpWife.com.

Connect with Darlene:

Facebook: @timewarpwife
Instagram: @timewarpwife
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Twitter: @timewarpwife

You are loved by an almighty God,

Darlene Schacht
The Time-Warp Wife