About the Author
Cathy Boyd Byrd invites others to join her in considering topics of interest to those on the Christian spiritual journey…..discipleship, spirituality, mental health, Christian growth, and Bible study. Cathy enjoys working with others as they transition from emotional emergency and brokenness to spiritual emergence and abundant living! Many of the topics about which Cathy writes are interrelated as experienced in her own life and in the lives of those with whom she works in counseling, teaching, and case management, and in friendships. She believes that sharing our journey of Christian growth and spirituality helps us know God and ourselves better and connects us with others!
Cathy is a Christian Educator and Life Recovery Counselor, and an ordained deacon through Christian Leaders Institute. She serves as Community Outreach MInister at Lynn Haven United Methodist Church. She is a student (disciple) of the Holy Spirit and shares with her students (disciples) the things the Lord teaches her through Bible study and contemplation, incorporating experiences interpreted through the Word, cherished traditions of her faith, and reasoning that comes from seeking the mind of Christ in accountable community. She was widowed in August 2020 after 48 years of marriage to Bill Byrd, is mother of 2 and grandmother of 5. Her journey of faith has been lifelong and continues to be an adventure with the trailblazer and guide, Jesus Christ!
Cathy is the founder and program manager for a Christian women’s residential life recovery program, Titus 2 Partnership, Inc.(www.titus2.life) in Panama City, Florida.
Divergent Views: Joseph and Judah
Excerpted from: Grace and Lies: A Mars Hill Story Clifford Smith on January 26, 2023 (Published at Juicy Ecumenism Website) ......Mark Driscoll had had a stormy and controversial history. This author's story struck me a bit shockingly. This is an interesting perspective to ponder on Joseph versus Judah...... CBByrd 2/1/23 "Then we got to the story of Joseph. His coat of many colors. Being sold into slavery by his brothers. Interpreting Pharaoh’s dreams. Becoming the second most powerful and wealthy man in Egypt, etc. The famine that led Joseph’s brothers to go to Egypt for food was...
Transformation = Change
Modifying William Bridges Diagram of Transitions to relate it to the process our women experience has given them a visual way to think about where they are...…. at the beginning of the end of their chaotic life of the past or at the end of the beginning of their new recovered life in Christ! Or still stuck in the "no man's land" in between, waiting for the vision of their personal life recovery to materialize. Interestingly, we heard through a family member of one woman, one of the family member's prayer partner friends who knows little about our program, that the friend had received a word...
Closer To The Heart Of God
Jesus fed 5000 but only 500 followed him after lunch. He had 12 disciples but only 3 went further in the garden, and only 1 stood with him at the cross. The closer you get to the cross the smaller the crowd becomes. (T F Tenney ) As Gina Christian adds: "But only the Holy Spirit went to the desert with Him. Because there are just some places you will go that no one will be with you but the Spirit of God."
Love’s Compassion
My pastor preached Sunday on Christ's direction to his followers to care in fuller, more compassionate ways than the culture. The text was on the Good Samaritan. A key word in the text was the way the Samaritan had compassion for the Jewish man, attacked and lying half dead on the roadside. The distinction was made between sympathy, empathy, and compassion. His words got me searching the many times and ways "compassion" is used in the Bible. As I searched the whole Bible for the word in the NASB translation, a quick review of the references to compassion revealed 4 primary uses as I read...
God Flips The Script
From 2016: God often "flips the script".....As Jacob's son Joseph told his jealous and deceitful brothers many years after their betrayal of him, "You intended to harm me, but God intended it for good" Genesis 50:20a. No matter that one may find himself sold out, sidelined, ignored, forgotten, embattled or falsely accused, God has a plan and is allowing it for a purpose.... God's purpose may be larger than you and you may never know the fullness of it. You can trust God's goodness, God's sovereignty, and God's personal care and provision for you. Wait for the fulfillment of God's plan!...
God’s Questions
There was a series of devotionals on God's questions to some individuals in Scripture......to Adam and Eve, to Elijah, I think. But God posed questions to many in Scripture. Abraham, Sarah, Moses, Job, and others. My experience has been that God's questions are not a request for one's report of the obvious. Instead they are a challenge to look within ourselves, into the unexploredu private space of one's soul where He desires to live..... It will always signal housecleaning time. God will not live among the squalor of a hoarder's house. Our decades-old baggage needs to be cleared out,...
Facing Fears
The matter of suffering and our desire to somehow avoid it in life has been very present lately as my awareness has been heightened by my own and others' experiences.... I talked to someone who told me she'd had a dream in which her abuser, no longer in her life, had chased her. She ran in her dream, trying to hide, again and again. As he drew closer and closer, Jesus spoke to her and said, "Turn and face him." She turned and her abuser stopped on his tracks and could come no further. She said to me, "The Lord told me to face all of this." I told her there was a time in your life your...
Google’s Pay To Play Scam
I had a GREAT BIG "aha" moment today!!!! I have been receiving spam/phishing phone calls from Google for weeks regarding my "business listing" with Google needing an update to my "business listing.". I have not responded to them. Today I happened to answer a call and it was them again wanting to update my business listing. I asked, "What business listing?". Him; "Titus 2 Partnership, Inc. Is this Titus 2?" I told him who and what Titus 2 is. "Great," he says, "can we update your listing?" "Why?" I asked. Him: "So people who search Google can find you," he said. "Is updating my business...
Family, Church, Community, God and State
"Out of the mouth of babies and infants, you have established strength because of your foes, to still the enemy and the avenger." To what is the Psalmist directing our attention in Psalm 8:2? Anyone with the capacity for compassion and interest in the preservation of families and interest in the future of humankind is moved by the cry of an infant or young child. A call from a helpless and defenseless child stirs an alarm in the bosom of one with a Parent's heart that brings her immediately to address the need of her child..... to feed, change, bathe, cradle in her arms, soothe his cry,...
Preparing For Lent In My Home Church
Pastor Craig Carter in his sermon on Sunday used a word I have also come to use in referring to our church campus and all church campuses...."outpost." As a new year has begun, it and the circumstances of recent weeks have aided in a review of our Titus 2 ministry, goals, and activities. Our current transitions with the ministry of Living Waters Bridge Ranch began almost a year ago as Laura Bosco and I undertook specific plans for partnership and began a new path for us and others. But actually, for both of us it was just a bend in the road we were both walking that opened new vistas on the...