the Evermore Collective

07/03/2025

www.theEvermoreCollective.com/blog/let-freedom-ring

When I’m surrounded by American flags and the excitement of the Fourth of July celebrations, I struggle to match the energy others experience on this day of independence. The way others celebrate freedom in this specific context often leaves me feeling overwhelmed with grief. Unlike so many, our c...

03/20/2025

Www.theEvermoreCollective.com/blog/encompassing-the-shema

In the verses following the Shema, we are told to allow these commands are meant to infiltrate our entire lives. When we choose to love God with our hearts, souls, and minds, this will be evident in what we do and in how we love others. The way we participate in the day-to-day is an outward sign of

02/22/2025

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02/19/2025

"Only God knows our intentions and posture of why we give and receive love. At times, we even lie to ourselves about the condition of our souls. Our life can only reflects how much we know, love, and trust God. The way we behave is secondary. Obeying God out of obligation, fear, shame, or to earn God’s love are all in vain. A desire to know, love, and trust God is where we are transformed. By developing our connection with Him, our soul is nourished and restored.

If we actually love someone, we yearn for time and connection with them. When our soul cries out to be loved, God is the only salve that heals. Money, power, comfort, validation, control, s*x, and accomplishments cannot give us fulfillment. Our soul cries out to be loved, but we look for that love to be satisfied in all the wrong places. To crave love is the human condition; to look for it outside of God is a common experience; this is the result of our delusion that we can save ourselves.

Do you love yourself enough to give your soul what it truly desires?"

Only God knows our intentions and posture of why we give and receive love. At times, we even lie to ourselves about the condition of our souls. Our life can only reflects how much we know, love, and trust God. The way we behave is secondary. Obeying God out of obligation, fear, shame, or to earn God

02/04/2025

"God uses the phrase, 'Love the Lord your God with all your heart…' in the prayer called 'the Shema' in order to connect us to our core. While God wants us to love him with our whole selves, He knows we are a bit delusional in our capacity to love. (Just calling a spade a spade here.) We think we are capable of loving Him and loving anything else with our whole selves. This is simply untrue. The way we constantly reject His love and compassion for trivial matters would argue otherwise.

While we are very loving people, God knows that whenever we lose focus on our love for Him, the rest of our lives fall apart. He knows that the only way for our love to be able to reach out to many is to adopt His love. As our Creator, He understands our needs and core better than anyone else. He knows our desire is to show love and compassion to others, but over and over we fail when we use our own efforts... " - Jill Ng, "With All of Your Heart"

I remember explaining my love for my children to a friend who was expecting her second child. She was concerned she would not be able to love her second child exactly the way she loved her first child. I shared with her that she was absolutely right. Loving our children is a unique experience for ea

01/28/2025

“Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength.” (Deuteronomy 5)

Love God. Sounds easy, but boy, the word “love” is loaded. The word is so complicated that in Greek the word “love” has eight translations; One for familial love, one for obsessive love, one for s*xual love, one for self love, one for playful love, one for brotherly love, and even one for obligatory love. But the Greek word that stands above there rest is the word used for “love” when Jesus quotes Deuteronomy 4:5 in Matthew 22…

www.theEvermoreCollective.com/blog/love-god”

When I read these verses in preparation to discuss God’s love, I suddenly was out of breath. As my breath quickened, I felt my heart race, and it was like a series of gears inside my brain allowed pieces of love assemble into a beautiful mosaic of truth in the forefront of my mind. This moment lef...

01/20/2025

“The Lord our God, the Lord is one.”

Our God went to Moses, saw his value, and brought him back to Egypt to free His people. The God Moses is referring to in the Shema (Sh’ma) prayer is also the same God who brought Jesus into the world. He sacrificed so much for His people over time so that all my know His deep love. He is the same ...

01/13/2025

As we begin to look at the Shema (Sh'ma), one thing we need to discuss is who is "Israel" in this context? (Deuteronomy 6)

In this article, we will look at the names of God's people throughout the Bible, consider who the words of Moses are for, and then reflect on how we receive them as God's people today.

The names used for God’s people has changed over time. At first, we required no name, because we all were His creation. Over time, the family of Adam, after about 1000 years, lead to a man named Noah. After God brought a great flood that covered the whole earth, the three sons of Noah spread acros...

11/28/2024

Shout for joy to the Lord, all the earth. Worship the Lord with gladness; come before him with joyful songs. Know that the Lord is God. It is he who made us, and we are his; we are his people, the sheep of his pasture. Enter his gates with thanksgiving and his courts with praise; give thanks to him and praise his name. For the Lord is good and his love endures forever; his faithfulness continues through all generations.
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Psalms‬ ‭100‬

In this moment, at the final gathering, I was filled with a plethora of emotions. Sadness the week was over, relief the children would no longer be my sole responsibility, gratitude for what we had been through together, and anticipation of going back to normal life. As these flooded me and became t

11/03/2024

❤️

When He made us like Himself, God gave us complex emotions that help us navigate our relationship with Him so we could try to imagine the depth of our value to Him. Despite our incapability to comprehend the vastness of God’s love, we can try to feel what He feels and love in similar ways He loves...

10/29/2024

Day 28: Becoming One After God’s Heart

When He made us like Himself, God gave us complex emotions that help us navigate our relationship with Him so we could try to imagine the depth of our value to Him. Despite our incapability to comprehend the vastness of God’s love, we can try to feel what He feels and love in similar ways He loves. Only then can we rely on Him so He can cover our insecurities and failures.

Our God wants to sit with us in our fears, failures, joy, peace, excitement, and grief. He wants us to be so engaged with the world and with Him that we are aware that we were not made for this place of brokenness, sin, and distraction. We were created for another intention…

When He made us like Himself, God gave us complex emotions that help us navigate our relationship with Him so we could try to imagine the depth of our value to Him. Despite our incapability to comprehend the vastness of God’s love, we can try to feel what He feels and love in similar ways He loves...

10/26/2024

Day 27: It is Time to Embrace Anticipation and Hope

Even though David spent much of his life on the edge of despair as he grappled with sorrow, grief, anger, and empathizing with others, he experienced incredible hope of what God is capable of. David was not shy when it came to allowing his feelings to flow, but he anticipated that there is intention, purpose, and meaning behind God’s movements.

There was a calm confidence David had in God’s ability to do the impossible. David rarely seemed concerned at God’s choices, because he trusted God to his core. Even when things get messy, scary, and most people would abort mission, David saw God at work and stayed exactly where God placed him. His anticipation was based on his own experience and what he understood about God from the experience of the generations of Israel before him...

Even though David spent much of his life on the edge of despair as he grappled with sorrow, grief, anger, and empathizing with others, he experienced incredible hope of what God is capable of. David was not shy when it came to allowing his feelings to flow, but he anticipated that there is intention