Lara Sadowski

@HeidiHmoretti I cannot wait to purchase this as well as your book on gut health, Heidi! So glad I found you on here. 👍👍👏👏📚📚

In 26 years of clinical practice I have never once had a patient tell me their doctor talked to them about cortisol nutritionally. Not the one losing their hair. Not the one awake at 3am for three years. Not the one gaining weight while eating less than ever. Not the one who had seen seven specialists. That's why I wrote this book. The Cortisol Fix is live today on Amazon — paperback and Kindle and Barnes & Noble: bit.ly/3R7sOdj amzn.to/494XMJ5 #cortisol #adrenalfatigue #womenshealth #functionalmedicine #cortisolfix #chronicfatigue #hormonehealth #registereddieti tian

Say what you want about The Masters... But there is nowhere else on planet earth where you will see a photo of humans like this where not a single one of them is looking at a phone. Truly one of the most beautiful things.

The Tomb Could Not Hold Him There’s a sound you never forget. The groan of a house splitting at its seams in a storm. The silence after a door slams for the last time. The stillness in a hospital room where no one breathes anymore. Some call it trauma. The Bible calls it trouble. Psalm 46 was written for the rubble, for the funeral, for the moment after your world implodes and you are still standing, barely. It is not a song for good days and a song for the day everything seems to end. And that is why it belongs at Easter. Because Easter did not begin with lilies and brass and bright clothes. It began with trouble. It began with darkness at noon, with the earth shaking under the weight of divine judgment, with a crucified Christ hanging dead before a watching world. A sealed tomb and the awful silence that follows when hope appears to have been buried. Psalm 46 was written for that kind of morning. --Selah: Stop Here and Feel the Weight-- Three times this Psalm says Selah...it is the tightening of the chest. God pressing your shoulders down and saying, Do not move too fast. Let this hit you. The Psalm opens with an earthquake: “God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble. Therefore we will not fear though the earth gives way...” (Psalm 46:1-2) The image is violent. Mountains sliding into the sea. Waters roaring. The earth trembling under your feet. It is what grief feels like. It is what it feels like when the bottom drops out and you realize you cannot hold your world together. This is also what Good Friday felt like. The sky went dark as the ground shook. The Son of God was pierced. The One who opened blind eyes and raised the dead was Himself laid in a grave. If there was ever a moment when it looked like the earth had given way, it was there at the cross. But Psalm 46 says, “Therefore we will not fear.” How can sinners stand still when the earth shakes? Only if God Himself is our refuge. --The Trouble Beneath All Other Trouble-- I was 42 years old when God brought me to Himself. One night I prayed alone. No preacher in the room and no one calling me forward. I had heard the gospel before...enough to nod in the right places. But that night the fear of God fell heavy. Not the fear of getting caught, but the fear of being known fully, utterly, and justly. I had sinned against Him. Not once or just in general. But all the way down. Every day. In every breath. I did not have to walk an aisle. I begged for mercy. And I found Him. Or better yet, He was not lost. I was. That is the deepest trouble Psalm 46 speaks to. Not merely outward trouble, but the inward ruin of a man who has sinned against a holy God. The great quake is not only around us. It is in us. We are the problem. We are the guilty. And this is where Easter becomes more than a holiday, because the God I feared is the very God who gave His Son for sinners like me. --Where Do You Run When You Are the Problem?-- It’s a strange twist that the God I feared is the only place I could run. That is still true and maybe even more true at Easter than anywhere else. The Judge I tried to ignore is the only One who could save me. “God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble.” (Psalm 46:1) There is no ladder to climb and absolutely no distance to cross by your own strength. He is very present. And Easter tells us how He made Himself present. He took on flesh. He stepped into our trouble. Entered our sorrow and He bore our sin. He did not save us from a distance. He came near enough to be betrayed, beaten, nailed, buried, and raised. Jesus Christ is not merely the messenger of refuge. He is the refuge Himself! The cross shows us that our sin is worse than we imagined. The resurrection shows us that His power to save is greater than we dared to hope. --A City Under Siege, and a Stone Rolled Away-- Verses 4 through 7 shift the image. “There is a river whose streams make glad the city of God...” (Psalm 46:4) That line should not exist in a city under siege. Besieged cities do not have fresh water. They get cut off. Starved out. Choked down to nothing. And yet here is a river. That is what Easter is like. A sealed tomb should stay sealed. Dead men should stay dead. Hope, once buried, should stay buried. And yet here comes life. There is a river whose streams make glad the city of God because Christ did not remain in the grave. The tomb could not hold Him. Death could not master Him. The stone was not rolled away so Jesus could get out as though He were trapped. It was rolled away so the world could see that the grave had already lost. The river still flows. Quiet. Steady. Life-giving. It flows through the church of Jesus Christ. Through every sermon faithfully preached while every trembling saint who still clings to the Word. It flows through every sinner who falls at Christ’s feet and rises forgiven. Through every funeral where believers bury their dead in hope. Because Christ lives, the river has not dried up. Because Christ lives, the city of God shall not be moved. --The Real Enemy Was Never Rome-- Let's be clear. The deepest enemy on Easter morning was not Rome or Pilate. Behind all of it stood the serpent. The ancient deceiver. The accuser. The murderer from the beginning. The cross looked, for one dreadful moment, like his victory. The Son of God dead and the Shepherd struck. The disciples scattered, women weeping, or the tomb sealed. But that was not Satan’s triumph. That was his doom. At the cross Christ bore the curse. In the resurrection Christ broke the back of death. The serpent struck His heel, but Christ crushed his head. That is why the church survives. Not because she is clever or fashionable. She survives because her Head is alive. “God is in the midst of her; she shall not be moved.” (Psalm 46:5) The risen Christ is in the midst of His church. That is why hell cannot swallow her. --Fire That Will Not Go Out-- I remember reading Pilgrim’s Progress in seminary. Christian saw a fire burning against a wall while a man kept throwing water on it, trying to put it out. But the flame would not die. Behind the wall, unseen, another hand kept pouring oil on the fire. That is the church and also is every true believer. That is Easter power. The world throws on its water. Persecution. Mockery. Temptation. Weariness. Fear. False teaching. Even death itself. And still the fire burns. Why? Because behind the wall stands a living Christ. We do not hold on to Him by the strength of our own fingers. He holds on to us with nail-scarred hands that death itself could not pry open. And yet the church lives. There is a river. There is a risen Christ. The End of All Wars Began at the Empty Tomb Then Psalm 46 shifts again: “Come, behold the works of the Lord... He makes wars cease... He breaks the bow, shatters the spear, burns the chariots with fire.” (Psalm 46:8-9) This is about final victory! Easter is not the whole end of the war, but it is the decisive turning point. The resurrection is the public declaration that Christ has won. Sin has been answered. Death has been broken. Satan has been judged. The King has stepped onto the field, and the outcome is no longer in doubt. The weapons will burn and The lies will end. The accuser will be cast down and the graveyards of the saints will one day be emptied. Because Jesus walked out of His tomb, every promise of final victory stands on solid ground. And then comes the stillness. “Be still, and know that I am God.” (Psalm 46:10) This is the command of the conquering God. Be silent. The battle and victory belongs to Him. The glory belongs to Him. At Easter, heaven says to a frantic world, Enough. The tomb is empty. The Son is risen. Be still and know. The God of Jacob Still Takes in Men Like Us Three times the Psalm returns to this line: “The Lord of hosts is with us; the God of Jacob is our refuge.” Not the God of polished men. This is the God of Jacob. Jacob the schemer and the liar. This is Jacob the man who limped because God had to break him before blessing him. That Jacob. That is the kind of God who raises the dead and receives sinners. A God who would look on a guilty man, buried in his sin, and say, Live. God...who gave His Son to die for the ungodly and raised Him again for our justification. Easter is for Jacobs. For broken men and guilty women. Weary saints. Failing disciples. Fearful hearts. People who have no case to make and no strength to stand on. The Lord of hosts is with us. The God of Jacob is our refuge. Selah. Stop there. Feel the weight of it. Because the earth will shake. The trouble will come, but the grave will open for every one of us unless Christ returns first. For those who belong to Jesus Christ, the refuge still stands. The river still flows. The tomb is still empty. And the God of Jacob still shows up. Selah. Selah. Selah. Let the song end as the stillness settle. And let your knees hit the ground.

Understand this: The movies and shows about the crucifixion have been tame when compared to what He actually went through. Even The Passion Of The Christ was forced to hold back a little in order to avoid an X rating. Crucifixion was, and still is, arguably the most excruciating death someone can experience. The night before in Gethsemane, He was sweating blood. This is known as hematidrosis. This would have caused His skin to become extremely sensitive, thus making the beatings to come even worse. The fear He felt was the beginning of His feeling the weight of our iniquities being laid on Him. Yet - in this moment, He didn’t demand that the Father take it from Him. He only asked for the cup to pass Him over if it was within the Father’s will. Up next came the Cat of Nine Tails, or a Roman Flagrum. This was a weapon with long leather “tails”, each embedded with sharp bones and metal. He was flogged 39 times as Jewish law mandated “40 minus one”, because 40 was said to kill a man. This flogging wasn’t like being punished by your father’s leather belt. Every strike tore flesh, every strike exposed muscle. Every strike exposed nerve endings. Every strike tore flesh to the bone. This would be like getting struck with razor blades over and over again, leading to hypovolemic shock from blood loss. Oh, and the crown of thorns? These weren’t rose thorns. These were thorns which were 2-3 inches long. Beaten into his skull. These thorns would have pierced his skull, tripping the trigeminal nerve, thus causing unimaginable pain and even more blood loss from the dozens of head wounds. At this point, extreme nausea and dizziness would begin to set in. What came next? Carrying the cross. Which weighed around 300lbs. This would be like carrying two full kegs on your back. Splinters and wood grating against the open flesh on His back. And He had to carry it 650 yards, or close to a half mile. Imagine carrying a log on your back after being skinned alive. Up next? He was nailed to the cross with spikes 5-7in in length. Piercing His wrists - this no doubt pierced the median nerve, causing extreme burning sensations up and down His arms. A spike was driven through his ankles - severing nerves and tendons. This would have felt like standing on broken glass every time He pushed Himself up in order to breathe. He suffered for 6 hours. His chest muscles collapsing, making every single breath a fight for life. His shoulders were dislocated, His arms stretching unnaturally long. His heart was struggling to pump blood. He was extremely dehydrated, His lips cracking. His heart more than likely literally ruptured from the stress. And on top of all of that, He had to feel a separation with the Father for a period of time in order to REALLY bear the weight of our sin. He took up this burden for ALL sin before Him, and ALL sin which came after Him. HE DID IT ALL FOR US. To free us. To defeat sin. To give us a pathway to the Kingdom. Every sin we commit is exactly why He had to do it. And the real kicker? He knew what was coming when He rode into Jerusalem … and He didn’t turn around. He kept going. For us.

Hello Senator Thune, At 3 AM on Friday, March 27th, in a near-empty chamber, you passed a bill by voice vote that excludes all funding for ICE and CBP. Let me repeat that: voice vote. No roll call. No record of who was there. No accountability. Just you, Barrasso, and a handful of senators shuffling paper in the dead of night while America slept. You could have demanded a recorded vote. You chose not to. You could have held the line for five more days until the House returned. You chose not to. You could have used the same procedural tools Democrats have used against you for 40 days. You chose not to. Instead, you gave Chuck Schumer exactly what he asked for, DHS funding minus immigration enforcement, and called it a win. Then you walked to the cameras and blamed the Democrats. Let's be precise about what you did: 1. You caved to a demand Democrats made on Day 1 of this shutdown. Forty-one days of supposed hardball negotiation, and you settled for their opening offer. 2. You handed them a template. The next time Democrats want to defund any agency — ICE, CBP, or anything else — they now know: just shut down DHS and wait. John Thune will fold at 3 AM. 3. You punted to reconciliation. "Good possibility," you said. Not "we will." Not "guaranteed." Just maybe. Meanwhile, ICE operates on fumes from last year's bill with no certainty of future funding. The precedent you set: You have argued for months that the filibuster is sacrosanct. That the 60-vote threshold protects minority rights. That we cannot bend Senate rules for policy wins. But at 3 AM on Friday, you bent every norm that actually mattered: • Voice vote to avoid accountability • Empty chamber to avoid debate • Midnight deal to avoid scrutiny • Immediate recess to avoid questions You'll bend the rules to avoid a fight. You just won't bend them to win one. What you've actually accomplished: Democrats demanded ICE restrictions. They got ICE defunded. Not reformed. Not restrained. Defunded. And you're out here tweeting about how Democrats are the "Defund the Police" party while you just voted to defund border enforcement at 3 in the morning. The question you should answer: Why did this deal have to happen at 3 AM? Why couldn't it happen at 3 PM, with cameras rolling and every senator on record? You know why. Because you didn't want your voters to see what surrender looks like. Here's my message: We saw it anyway. Stop hiding behind "Democrat obstruction." You're the Majority Leader. You set the schedule. You control the floor. You chose this outcome. Own it.

@Renatta Yes! I see your response, Renatta! 🤗🤗

Testing… can anyone see this?

@Renatta Renatta, thank you for your ministry of encouragement. I so love reading your posts! May God continue to bless you, friend! 🙏🙏🙏

I have been thinking about everything I have overcome and one thing is certain: I could not have done it without God. There have been times in my life where I have been anxious, overwhelmed, or scared. But God kept me and guided me. He brought me through my struggles. He has been my anchor. If you’re struggling in the middle of a storm right now, I am living proof that the middle is not the end. God will meet you where you are and guide you through your storm to safety. If you’re struggling today, I pray for God’s peace and calmness over you. God bless you all. I love you all.

@JDVance If we can’t even get our own party to pass Voter ID then Congress should just be abolished. They serve no purpose but to facilitate money laundering. It’s a racket

@Renatta Praying for you, Renatta! 🙏🙏🙏

Today is Rare Disease Day. Rare Disease Day is observed on the last day of February every year. It is dedicated to raising awareness about rare diseases. About 300 million people worldwide are living with a rare disease. I have neurofibromatosis type 1 (NF1), which affects about 1 in 3,000 people worldwide. It is a genetic condition that can cause benign tumors to grow on the nerves. It is the cause of my epilepsy. I have struggled at times, but Jesus is bigger than my disease, and He will always get me through. I can ameays count on Him To anyone with NF1 or any rare disease - I see you. You are not alone. I am praying for you. Stay strong. You are a fighter. God bless you all.

@Renatta So glad to read your posts, Renatta! You are a blessing!

My life hasn’t been easy, and I’ve had my share of struggles, but I refuse to give up my faith. God made me the way that I am, and I wouldn’t change it for anything. I could have given up long ago, but i didn’t because i know God loves me too much to give up on me I am still standing I am still breathing, and it is all thanks to Him. I give HIM all the glory and all the praise.

@monicaonairtalk @elonmusk Happy Birthday, Monica!! 🎉🎂🥳🎈🎊🎁

Woke up this morning looking forward to my floating Birthday Balloons. But they’re no longer a feature. Wow @elonmusk what a way to tell your customers they don’t matter. The one small but cool feature of this platform that made people feel celebrated on their day. Thanks for preparing us for the humanoid communist society. Oh, and Happy Birthday To Me 🎈I’ll add my own.

Holy Spirit, stir up my hunger for God's Word.

@Franklin_Graham 🙏🙏🙏

So good. 🔥🩷

@EWErickson Amen! ✝️✝️🙏🙏

O come, O come, Emmanuel, And ransom captive Israel; That mourns in lonely exile here, Until the Son of God appear. Rejoice! Rejoice! Emmanuel Shall come to thee, O Israel.

Sing to the Lord a new song, for He has done marvelous things. Psalm 98:1

Muhammad has a grave. Buddha has relics. Darwin has a tomb. Jesus has none. The grave couldn’t hold Him.

Truths that steady the heart: God’s throne is unshaken. Christ’s blood still speaks. The Spirit still comforts. The Word still stands. Prayer still works. Grace still amazes. Heaven still waits.

@w_bitterman Pastor, thank you so much for this post! I cannot say Amen enough.🙏🙏🙏

The SNAP Crisis Is Here. Will the Church Step In? The card reader chirped and froze. A red light blinked on the grocery checkout screen. The woman standing there didn’t flinch. She had half expected it. Her daughter beside her was too young to read the words on the monitor, but she could read faces. She stared at her mother’s mouth, tight and trembling, and knew something had gone wrong. They had bread. Peanut butter. Cereal. Milk. Nothing fancy. Just groceries to get them through the week. But the SNAP benefits had run out. Washington is gridlocked. Bills are stacked like sandbags in the Capitol while forty two million stand in grocery aisles waiting for a beep that may not come. The girl’s small hand clutched the corner of her mother’s coat as the cashier tried the card again. Red light. No funds. A man in line behind them coughed. Someone shifted their cart. A silence spread like a spilled drink across the room. The woman left the cart where it stood. She picked up her daughter, pressed her cheek into the girl’s hair, and walked out. When the Plate Hits the Floor That scene is not distant. It will repeat itself in towns like mine and yours, in cities and rural crossroads across America. This is not about statistics anymore. It is about faces. It is about the little girl who will go to bed tonight with a half-empty stomach and a head full of questions about where God is. This is the hour when the Church must remember what it was made for. Two thousand years ago, in a bustling seaport called Corinth, another crisis was unfolding. Not a government shutdown, but something older. The temptation for believers to talk more than they give. The Apostle Paul writes into that cooling heart with a letter that feels like it was written for us today. The Church That Grew Quiet Corinth was a wealthy city. A place of trade, art, and industry. A city where believers had once been eager to help their brothers and sisters suffering in Jerusalem. Paul had organized a great collection. A lifeline for impoverished Jewish Christians. At first, Corinth was all in. Coins clinked into jars every Sunday. But over time, their passion ebbed away. Up north, the Macedonian believers were giving beyond their means. They scraped coins out of empty pockets and rejoiced that they could be part of the gift. Down in Corinth, where wealth flowed like wine, the jars sat untouched. The people who could give the most were giving the least. Paul writes into this moment with piercing clarity. Before the Macedonians gave their money, they gave themselves. Their generosity did not spring from surplus but from surrender. Like a boy standing barefoot in a church aisle with nothing to give, stepping into the offering plate because all he has is himself. This is the kind of giving that shakes heaven. What the American Church Forgot Somewhere along the way, we outsourced mercy. We built programs, then watched the government build bigger ones. SNAP, food stamps, welfare. We gave thanks when people were fed and quietly stepped back from the front lines. We told ourselves it was efficient. We told ourselves we would focus on spiritual matters. We handed the bread basket to the state and got back to singing. And now the basket is empty. The SNAP crisis is not just a headline. It is a revealer. It is laying bare a Church that has grown accustomed to standing on the sidelines while someone else feeds the hungry. But no agency was ever commissioned to do what the Church was born to do. Paul’s words to Corinth land on us like a shout in a sleeping house. This is your family. This is your moment. The God Who Became Poor Paul turns their eyes upward. You know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ. Though He was rich, for your sake He became poor, so that you by His poverty might become rich. Before Bethlehem, Christ wore glory. He ruled. He lacked nothing. Then, in a single act of eternal mercy, He set it all aside. Picture the Son of God stepping into a world He made. His first breath drawn in a barn. His first bed a feeding trough. His life marked by scarcity and sacrifice. And at the end, on that hill, the last thing He owned, the clothes on His back, were gambled away beneath His pierced feet. Christ gave not out of comfort, but out of costly love. He did not delegate mercy. He became it. And now His Church carries His name. Strong Doctrine, Weak Hands Paul reminds Corinth of their strengths. Strong faith. Strong speech. Strong knowledge. Strong diligence. Strong love. But their giving was weak. They had everything the modern American Church prides itself on. Good doctrine. Good programs. Good talk. But when it came to opening their hands, their lips were louder than their lives. The test of love was not on their tongues. It was on their tables. Moments are born in the collision of belief and hunger. If we are to be a Church that lives the gospel, we must stop congratulating ourselves for believing what we refuse to practice. The Weight of Willingness God does not weigh coins. He weighs willingness. The Macedonians gave like people who had tasted grace. They begged to be included. Their hearts leaned forward. They carried generosity like fire. Paul is not demanding the Corinthians match the amount. He is asking them to match the heartbeat. To make their hands match their creed. The same call hovers over every congregation in America as the SNAP funding cliff looms. We do not need a government bailout to obey Christ. We need a Church whose plates are full of bread and hearts already standing in it. Handling God’s Money in God’s Way Paul was wise. He did not touch the money himself. He appointed Titus and other men to handle it with integrity. He made sure no whisper could stain the offering. We provide honorable things, he wrote, not only in the sight of the Lord but in the sight of men. If the Church rises to this crisis, it must rise clean. The world has seen too many scandals and too few saints with transparent hands. It is time for generosity to be as pure as the gospel it proclaims. How the Church Must Respond This moment does not need another conference. It needs a table. It needs pastors and farmers and bankers and mechanics and mothers and widows to decide that this time, the Church will not sit out mercy. 1. Give Yourself First Step into the plate. Surrender the self before the checkbook. 2. Rebuild the Table Meals are not just calories. They are covenant. A pot of soup steaming in a church kitchen preaches louder than most pulpits. 3. Open the Storehouse If God has blessed you, that blessing is meant to flow. The Macedonians gave what they could not spare. 4. Protect the Gift Let every act of giving be handled with integrity, accountability, and light. 5. Remember the Cross The Son of God did not hold onto His glory. He stepped into poverty so the poor could inherit heaven. Every loaf handed to the hungry whispers of Calvary. The Night the Church Stands Up Imagine that same grocery store. The card reader chirps again. The woman braces for the red light. But behind her stands someone from a little country church down a winding Ozarks road. She is not holding a protest sign. She is holding a bag of groceries. And behind her is a team of believers who decided the crisis would not pass them by this time. The cashier does not know their theology. The mother does not know their denomination. But she will remember their hands. This is what the Church was built to do. This is how the gospel walks. A Final Word The world will not be moved by another statement. It will be moved by a people who, like Christ, step into poverty to make others rich. This SNAP crisis will be written about in history. The question is whether the Church will be a footnote or a headline. Now is the time to stand in the plate. A Prayer Lord, Give us hearts that lean forward. Let us not pass the hungry to someone else. Teach us to rebuild the table. Teach us to give as You gave, out of costly love and not spare change. May the Church be what You made it to be…bread in a starving land. In Jesus’ name, Amen.

This isn’t wishful thinking! According to recent reporting from Christian Headlines and Lifeway Research, Bible sales have climbed 41.6%, Spiritual app downloads have surged 79.5% Christian music streams have soared 50% Revival often begins in the quiet corners of ordinary life...before sunrise, before the house wakes, before the news cycle spins. It begins when people seek the kingdom first. When hands reach for the Word before the phone. When prayer becomes the first sound of the morning. Psalm 27:14 whispers, “Wait on the Lord, be of good courage, and he shall strengthen your heart.” Faith is gathering like a summer storm on the horizon. This is the steady work of God in living rooms and lunch breaks and late-night walks. Open your Bible. Speak to Him. Lift your heart where you stand. Revival isn’t coming. It’s already here, quietly writing a new story in lives across the country. God is good.