Hi, and welcome to the Five Word Prayers Daily, a five-day-a-week daily devotional where we share the word, prayers, in our heart.

I'm Lisa Whittle, and I welcome you to just five minutes with me, which I trust and pray will be five minutes well spent.

Every month, when I sit down to calendar out this show and ask God to show me what to talk about, I'm amazed at how he gives me the things he wants me to share. This month was no

different, but I have to admit I was a little surprised at how he wanted me to go way back to a place

I honestly haven't thought about for quite a long time. My very first book was written 12 years ago

in 2006, and I co-authored it with my mother, which was very special. It's called The Seven

Hardest Things God Asked a Woman to Do, and it's kind of like the first of anything, not as polished

or refined as my later books. I've certainly grown in every way a lot since, but it's a book that has

some of the richest principles in it that to this day have been some of the

most important to my Christian faith, so much so that we're going to look at them all month.

Yes, you heard me right.

All month, we're going to look at the principles in this book.

And by the way, we're not just for women, even though that's in the title.

They're for men, too.

Maybe you've been wondering in this day and time what

kind of leader to follow. We're going to get into that. Maybe you've been struggling with what

to let go of and what to hold on to or if you should wait on something or if you should move

forward. These and other things, many other things I'll tell you about when we come right back.

It's hard to do hard things.

I might be stating the obvious, but really it is, isn't it?

It's easy to live a life of faith, I think, when all of our bills are paid, and we have

the spouse we've always dreamed of, and the marriage is at its very best, and we just

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