Ann Voskamp's Blog, page 110
December 22, 2018
The Christmas Edition: Only the Good Stuff: Multivitamins for Your Weekend [12.22.18]
Happy, happy, happy weekend!
Some real, down in the bones JOY to celebrate today! Links & stories this week 100% guaranteed to make you smile a mile wide & believe like crazy in a Good God redeeming everything — and that there’s love everywhere & for ((you))!
Serving up only the Good Stuff for you right here:
theycallhersmith
theycallhersmith
theycallhersmith
the beauty and wonder of the season right here
tears: a beautiful story of friendship
how this man stepped up to give back to his school in a big, big way?
“Twenty-eight months ago I was given a second chance at life when I decided to become sober. I decided the only way to pay back the chance I was given was to start doing the right thing, and the right thing is helping those in need, and if my story of sobriety can help someone else or inspire someone then it’s worth it…”
#BeTheGift #TheBrokenWay
so grateful for the tireless effort of Seed Company:
There are still over 1 Billion people without the complete Bible in the language they understand best. It is Seed Company’s mission to translate the Bible into every language of every people group, to the ends of the earth.
have you heard what this bus driver spontaneously did for his 50 students? we’re cheering loudly here
“I’m driven by faith and Christ.”
a business man and a human experiment: the people with the least often give the most
“Kindness is a bridge between all people. If you’re ever down and you want to lift yourself up? Go do something kind for somebody”
What Grieving People Wish You Knew at Christmas
The Little Drummer Boy
It’s not too late! Want to preach Gospel to yourself in the days remaining until Christmas?
25 Free Stress-Free Holiday Sticky Notes for Your Soul, right here:For mirrors and sinks and dashboards, for pockets and walls and office cubicles. For this Christmas.
Each card is an affirmation, a prayer…
Quotes from The Greatest Gift and Unwrapping the Greatest Gift, rewritten to be words that you can pray,
to keep the focus…to celebrate Christ!
Where Are You, Christmas?
This man donated 200,000 miles to strangers so they can go home for the holidays #BeTheGift #TheBrokenWay
Maybe the best kind of gift to give? Choose a gift and change a life. Thank you, Compassion International
4 Reasons to Believe in the Christmas Miracle
Why the supernatural events of this season are both credible and incredible
Only God: Shoeboxes Lead to Church Planting in Mongolia
Never forget: He Held the Stars in Place
Undone: however long the path may seem… let’s do this for Christmas
7 Reasons to Worship on Christmas
Esther Havens (in Iceland)
Esther Havens (in Iceland)
Esther Havens (in Iceland)
can you even?!! she captures our world in extraordinarily breathtaking ways
a Christmas never to ever forget — when it’s shared with a friend
Don’t miss this one! maybe the best thing you’ve seen & heard this year?!?
Thank you for this, Rend Collective! We listen to Campfire Christmas every year!
yes, yes, yes: Messiah
Post of the week from these parts here
so maybe things are reeling a bit today in your world — much ache & grief & sadness & brokenness.
Then the unlikely wow of an every day miracle like this happens —
& all of us can pass some healing hope around:
The Miracle Story All Your Hopes & Fears Need: The Miracle of the Mop Lady in Bethlehem
What Child Is This: this one never, ever gets old
24 Candle Advent Wreath & Manger with Star: Joywares.ca
Grace Crafted Home
24 Candle Advent Wreath & Manger with Star: Joywares.ca
! Come Join Us for a Giveaway on Instagram !
So, we kinda don’t want a Christmas that we have to produce or perform or perfect — we want a Christmas that holds us — that revives us, remakes us. We want a Christmas that whispers Jesus.
A Christmas that whispers: No matter what feels beyond fixing, One came from beyond the walls of this world because His heart is fixed on you, smitten with you, completely for you, & you are loved far beyond your wildest hopes & deepest needs, & His arms will carry you far beyond the arms that any of your problems can reach.
A Christmas that whispers to all your unspoken broken: Don’t give up — because He came down.
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(GIVEAWAY: Search for this giveaway post on my Instagram — Tag a friend whose heart needs to hear that they get that kind of Christmas because Jesus, & we’ll enter you & them to win one of FIVE Messiah Mangers from @joywares (made by our oldest son, Caleb) and one $250 gift card to @gracecraftedhome (our Fair Trade store where 100% of proceeds support @MercyHouseGlobal ). Just follow your Ann-girl here, & @joywares & @gracecraftedhome & tag your friends in the comments below to enter. And we’ll celebrate Him with you& announce a winner Sunday 12/23! )
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You get the Christmas you’ve always wanted & dreamed of — because you get Jesus — & He wants you & loves you more than you could ever dream.
Celebrate Advent by retelling the greatest love story every told
WOW: This holiday season, discover how giving brings people together, no matter how far apart they may be
On repeat this week: When Hope Came Down
yeah… just a little invite? to come experience a Christmas like never before?
Come experience a Christmas like you’ve always dreamed of…
So come Christmas morning — you’ve unwrapped the greatest gift you yearn for — more of Him.
Gather around the Greatest Story this year for the whole family with all 3?
“The Greatest Gift” (adult edition),
“Unwrapping the Greatest Gift” (family read aloud edition),
and “The Wonder of the Greatest Gift” (pop-up edition with your own 14 inch tree, 25 days of readings, 25 day advent flap calendar, hiding all 25 Biblically inspired ornaments! For any age)
So you don’t miss out on Jesus this year & the The Greatest Christmas.
never a Christmas without this one… absolutely exquisite
So we’re just going to go ahead & say it out loud here right now, Lord — that it’s easy for our hearts to snag on things & to be torn & for us to lose our hope.
It’s easy for us to have a hole in our heart & all our hope leak right out….
So we think that our crazy family can’t change,
that there’s no hope left for our hard things,
that the person looking back in the mirror at us hasn’t got a hope in a dark night of changing.
And You hold our hearts today & whisper:
“Wait with hope. Hope now; hope always!” Ps.131:3
Christ is coming! Christmas is coming!
*And if Christ is coming — can anything overcome Him?*
Light is always stronger than darkness!
When you really believe in Christmas —
you believe there is really Hope for everyone, for everything —
for every moment, even us.
And our hearts kindle again into flame, Lord —
cupped in Your safely-carrying hands.
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[excerpted from our little Facebook family … come join us each day?]
That’s all for this weekend, friends.
Go slow. Be God-struck. Grant grace. Live Truth.
Give Thanks. Love well. Re – joy, re- joy, ‘re- joys’ again
Share Whatever Is Good.
December 21, 2018
The Miracle Story All Your Hopes & Fears Need: The Miracle of the Mop Lady in Bethlehem
I stood in Bethlehem once.
There were stars unblinking in their brave hope, right there over that little town of Bethlehem.
I’d stood there, my neck craning, for a long time, right outside the Church of the Nativity, looking up with a holy imagination and prayers that deeply know that He’s the realest reality.
No matter what any outcome… Hope always still comes.
And then I’d finally turned and bent low to walk into the Church of the Nativity — because there is no finding Hope until you humble yourself to believe.
Our guide said the door is impossibly low so that pilgrims couldn’t ride their steeds, their camels, their donkeys, straight into the Church of His Nativity.
No one gets to meet God unless they get off their high horse, get down off of whatever other hopes and laurels they’re riding high on, counting on.
The doorway to God is made only for those who make themselves small and choose God as all in all.
I’d stood silently with that for a long time by the carved inner door and something settles into me:
Any problem shrinks low whenever we exalt Christ high.
O yeah, little town of Bethlehem… the hopes and fears of all our years are held in the mind-blowing unconceivable that happened right here…
When you bend low through that door and you come close to the place in Bethlehem and kneel down and touch the place where the Maker of the Heavens delivered Himself into earth, where the Creator of the Cosmos birthed Himself as a creature… where God came to this sod?
You’re crushed by unfathomable grace.
God is with us. God was one of us.
God let His divinity fill a container of skin and filled His lungs with all our atmosphere of ache.
We aren’t alone in this mess. We aren’t alone in any hopelessness.
Hope resuscitates what you can’t afford to let die.
Us on this pale blue dot of a planet in the vast blackness of the cosmos — we are “the visited planet.” He came. He sees. He knows. We are not alone. God is with us.
Kneeling there in Bethlehem, wrecked by the incomprehensibility of the Master of the Universe pulling on flimsy flesh, climbing over the walls of this world, slipping into time through the back door of the universe that is Bethlehem — all I can think was the the Holy Other curls His newborn fist in the cradle of a barn feed trough — and we are saved from ourselves.
We are saved from our hopelessness— because God came with infant fists and opened wide His hand to take the nail sharp edge of our sins.
Emmanuel, God is with us in our ache and He gave us more than explanations for all our messy brokenness —
God gave us an actual experience of Himself, because God knows explanations can be cold & Christ’s arms are warm.
When you kneel exactly where they say the Star-Maker first came and grazed earth, where the Hope-Bringer first inhaled all our dark into His holy lungs — you kinda exhale at how we’ve all been swept into the Light of the Land of the Living.
When you let your fingertips trace the stars they’ve engraved right into the floor of the Church of the Nativity, when you run your hands across those stars, over and over again, you can see how One came through all the cosmic dark like a star — and you can see all His starry light embracing your own naked broken, aching heart.
There is brokenness and failing and hurting and falling and grieving and heartache and there are times you don’t know how to breathe —but there is always, always, always Hope.
Hope is contagious, blazing, risky thing — and it can light a thousand more nights with countless stars.
Stories may not have gone as we hoped — but Hope is not gone. Hope comes. Hope comes down and Hope never stops coming.
No matter what any outcome… Hope always still comes.
We can’t ever afford to lose Hope — or we lose our future, our faith, our fight, our fortitude.
The Star-Maker, the Wisdom-Carrier, the Hope-Holder — He took on skin and come with lung and lips and warm breath because this is the gift that all the heart bruised need: Hope resuscitates what you can’t afford to let die.
Let your broken heart prepare Hope room.
If you don’t let your heart prepare Hope room — it’s your own house that comes crashing down.
Prepare Hope room and room for the prodigal to come home, and the hard-hearted to change, and the hurting to not hurt, and the wounders to heal and the impossible to find a possible way, and let nothing stop you from following the star this Christmas.
And there’s no performing Christmas, producing Christmas, or perfecting Christmas. There is only Christmas finding us — grace finding even us. Hope finding even us. God with us.
Because Christmas is coming right now for your grief.
Christmas is coming right now for the sadness you can’t speak out loud, for the unspoken broken that you fear might break you, the Hope-Holder is coming — and Christmas is coming right now to crush all fears and despair and dark.
Because Christmas is about how, Jesus came like a star through the dark, shut out the darkness by moving into our space, moving right in front of all our darkness — and eclipsing all heartbreak with His Light.
My heart burns within…
And when I’d ascend the back stairs from the basement of the Church of the Nativity with it’s starry floor…. I stand at the back of the Church of the Nativity for awhile, looking up at the lit stained glass brokenness of His birth, rising there above the altar. Stand there — waiting. Waiting for God knows what.
Waiting for God.
He’s come. Here. He’s literally come right here.
O yeah, little town of Bethlehem… the hopes and fears of all our years…
And that’s the moment when I’d heard the slosh of water, heard a spilling of water, up near the altar.
And then a woman, bent and small, she’s stepped out of the shadows — with her mop.
I watched as she’d began this slow choreography of grace across the floor — with her mop.
She’s mopping up the birthplace of God.
She’s mopping up the mess down here — a bit like God came down here to mop up our mess. Our mess of hopelessness and fears and brokenness.
But I can hear music? Music echoing — ?
Where in the world is the music coming from? Haunting notes, high and lovely. From the dark? From behind the altar?
Her shoulders, her shoulders, are moving with the notes.
The music’s coming from her.
The music’s coming from within her.
She turns with her mop and the whole thing feels like I’ve walked in on the heavenly host welcoming Him, anointing Him and I kneel low — like shepherds who have to bow in worship too — and something in me brims…. and spills.
O little town of Bethlehem…the hopes and fears of all our years…
We aren’t abandoned in all this — we get to let it all go and abandon ourselves to God. We get to let go — and be small and let God do it all, be our all, make a way through it all. We get to let go — and let God near.
We aren’t abandoned in all this — we get to let it all go and abandon ourselves to God.
We get to let go — and be small and let God do it all, be our all, make a way through it all.
We get to let go — and let God near.
And here is this exquisite woman with her bent back and humble mop letting her heart pour out to God, in the place where God first touched this sod, first let his loud cry mingle with humanity.
And I’m a kneeled mess and can’t stop weeping, my shoulders moving with the breaking of my heart over the beauty and rightness of her lowly offering right where He Himself came low and offered Himself.
The woman leans her mop up against a pew.
She steps in close toward me. And she cups my face in her wrinkled, warm hands.
And then she gently kisses my one wet cheek — and then kisses my other wet cheek.
There’s hope in our hells when we become like Jesus to each other.
A stranger — an angel? — kisses all my unspoken broken in the Church of the Nativity — and it’s like an angelic whispering to a heartbroken world: “Do not be afraid — for you have found favor with God.”
Find favor with God — and fear has no way to find you.
O yeah, little town of Bethlehem… the hopes and fears of all our years…
This woman who washes the floor of the Church of the Nativity, she stands beside me, touches my streaming tears with her fingertips, wipes my cheek — and who knew that the most accurate rendering of that verse about favor makes it clear: Favor isn’t found merely with God — favor is found beside God. God bestows grace on those who stay beside Him. On those who let God stay the closest beside them.
We never have to be beside ourselves with fears — when God is beside us with favor.
Ask Mary.
Favor with God doesn’t mean receiving more grace than others — but receiving enough grace to live sacrificially for others. Favor with God doesn’t mean getting to take a road of ease, but being called to a road that will take your whole heart.
Ask Mary.
Favor isn’t grace for an easy trajectory — but enough grace for a hard task.
Favor with God means: Jesus didn’t come to give us comfortable lives. He came to give us meaningful lives.
Finding favour with God — means there will be kiss of sorrow and a kiss of joy — but we will be held always.
And it deeply calms and I exhale —- Mary is spoken of as the first in the New Testament to find favor, to find grace with God —- much like Noah is the first to find favor with God in the Old Testament. Both Mary and Noah were chosen by God’s grace to birth the world into a new beginning.
Finding favor with God — is about being part of bringing new beginnings & new mercies, fresh starts & fresh hope, into the world.
Finding grace in the eyes of God — means others find grace in our eyes — and our words, and our life. Favor with God means others find favor with us .
The woman’s eyes search me and my eyes search hers — and it’s this holy moment in the Church of the Nativity. This is a meeting. Our eyes meet. and rest in each other — with each other. God with us.
And she nods and smiles and I try to smile brave through tears.
When we find grace with God — we always pass that grace on. Grace is the best Christmas gift we always get to give. We get grace this Christmas — and we get to give Grace this Christmas.
When we find grace with God — we always pass that grace on.
Grace is the best Christmas gift we always get to give.
We get grace this Christmas — and we get to give Grace this Christmas.
And that we get to get grace and give grace? This is finding the Christmas we not only always dreamed of finding — it’s the Christmas we deeply need.
And there’s no performing Christmas, producing Christmas, or perfecting Christmas.
There is only Christmas finding us — grace finding even us. Hope finding even us. God with us.
I don’t understand the thickness of the foreign words she murmurs over me, but I know how this communion makes me feel — how His favor destroy our fears, how His holding close gives us hope — and the woman who washes the floors of the Church of His birth, she holds me up with a tender grace as all my unspoken broken breaks right open — and births new life…
O yeah, little town of Bethlehem… the hopes and fears of all our years…
Are met in Him who kisses us with grace and holds us with hope.
Grace and Hope always comes to meet us.
Especially now.
Like a Star coming through any dark.
This Advent, Stay in the Story that your year, your family, desperately needs.
Stay in the Story that awakens you again to hope, to grace, to wonder.
Just a little invite? Come experience a Christmas like you’ve always dreamed?
So come Christmas morning, you haven’t missed Him?
Gather around the Greatest Story this year for the whole family with all 3?
“The Greatest Gift” (adult edition),
“Unwrapping the Greatest Gift” (family read aloud edition),
and “The Wonder of the Greatest Gift” (pop-up edition with your own 14 inch tree, 25 days of readings, 25 day advent flap calendar, hiding 25 Biblically inspired ornaments! For any age)
So you don’t miss out on Jesus this year & the The Greatest Christmas.
December 20, 2018
When There’s No Happy Hallmark Ending: How to Face Pain
Have you ever looked into the eyes of another woman and known in your deepest soul that she understands pain and suffering unlike most? That’s Lindsey Wheeler — and I love her beyond words. Amid some of the hardest and darkest days of Lindsey’s life, there is an unyielding glimmer of hope. That’s why I asked her to share her story today—because I know many of you are walking a similar road. Her suffering is her own, but her message is for us all. Have a seat on the porch with Lindsey and I today. You’ll leave with a renewed hope…
Life is hard.
There. I’ve said it.
A small token of hope to remind you that you are not alone. There is purpose in your pain. God sees you, God loves you, and your story is not over.
I know this because I’ve lived much of the last decade in pain—debilitating physical pain caused by chronic illness, and the soul-crushing pain of having a precious child who is locked in a place of emotional trauma.
Perhaps the deepest hurt of all is knowing that I cannot free her.
I also know this because every day I receive emails and notes from people desperate for comfort, for some acknowledgment of their pain. They, like me, are longing for hope in the middle of the hard.
Hi, I’m Lindsey. Lovely to meet you. In 2014, I started Bottle of Tears, an online business that sends love gifts to those in dark places.
Each gift comes with a card that reads, “A small token of hope to remind you that you are not alone. There is purpose in your pain. God sees you, God loves you, and your story is not over.”
I am pretty sure we all need to hear that, so let’s talk. Let’s be real and honest. I’ll start with my story, and let me just say: it’s messy.
My story (spoiler alert) does not have a Hallmark-movie ending.
There is no neat red bow I can wrap around the pieces of my life that will make it all look okay.
I am not writing from the perspective of having been through suffering. I am writing from the middle of it.
And I suspect I’ll be in the middle of it until heaven.
Let me lay some groundwork for you. My husband and I adopted a baby girl ten years ago. While mine is not an infertility story, every woman who aches for the family she has birthed in her heart is near and dear to my soul.
Your pain is unique and valid and as devastating as my own.
But for Chris and me, adoption was our first choice and Guatemala stole our hearts.
So we brought home our precious baby knowing full well she had experienced serious trauma in her first sixteen months of life. We did not understand the extent of the trauma or the life-altering repercussions, but even if we had known, we would do it all over again. We would still choose our daughter.
Suffering has a way of giving birth to an isolation that feeds our every fear and anxiety, and tricks us into thinking we have to keep it all to ourselves.
Fast forward several years. We now understand that our girl has severe PTSD. We have utilized every spiritual, financial, medical, and educational resource we can get our hands on to help her thrive.
But I’ll be honest, many days we barely survive the complicated, permanent effects that early childhood trauma has left on our funny, intelligent, free-spirited daughter. We have made great strides, but she remains trapped by the consequences of choices other people made on her behalf when there was no one to advocate for her.
Did I mention I have Lyme disease? Because if functioning on two hours of sleep each night and managing the ups and downs of a child with PTSD isn’t enough, my body gave up on me in the middle of it all.
I frequently experience inexplicable pain, fatigue, and loneliness. I think the loneliness is the worst.
Suffering has a way of giving birth to an isolation that feeds our every fear and anxiety, and tricks us into thinking we have to keep it all to ourselves.
So here I was, lonely, hurting, and scared—asking God what fruit could possibly be produced from my suffering. And He gave me you, dear friends.
He clearly and without question gave me a vision for a business that would minister to people in their darkest places.
The ones people know about and the ones who suffer and grieve in secret.
This little journey we began, this love journey with other brokenhearted people, this calling to Bottle of Tears is about equipping people with meaningful gifts they can send to those who are hurting, but it is so much more. Bottle of Tears has opened a door for a whole community to share stories — a safe place to share our brokenness and know we are not alone.
There may not be healing on this earth but there will be fruit.
I read every letter, every email, every comment. And I pray for you as tears run my mascara and leave lines on my cheeks. I pray for healing, protection, miracles, and for purpose.
Yes friend, the Lord has purpose for you. There may not be healing on this earth but there will be fruit.
There is a deep longing in each to understand who we are and why we exist, and, for some of us, our suffering is the very vehicle to this understanding.
Your purpose will look different than mine, but it will absolutely impact other people because God created us first for Himself and then for each other.
So can we sit in the middle of the hard together?
Can we talk about when we’ve prayed, but not been healed?
Let’s face the pain of never getting to bring the baby home to the waiting crib.
Let’s not pretend it’s okay when the job offer doesn’t come, or the spouse walks out, or the depression is so heavy we can’t get out of bed.
Let’s not hide our tears.
Those things that leak out of our eyes when we’re happy, sad, angry, confused or overwhelmed are precious.
They are so precious to God that He saves them—all of them.
In the most breathtaking bottles.
This unspeakable gift of knowing we are seen and known and held and not one tear is wasted and every tear is gathered in bottles to grow far more meaningfulness than we could ever know.
Lindsey Wheeler, Founder and Chief Bottle Collector for Bottle of Tears, lives in Franklin, TN with her husband and their daughter. She loves vintage bottles and great stories. Those close to Lindsey will tell you that her laugh is loud and contagious and her joy for Jesus is infectious. She offers her customers curated gifts of hope for those who are hurting and she carries their stories of pain, suffering, fear, and hope with the utmost care and open hands.
Lindsey is in the terrifying process of writing her first book in which she offers an honest examination of suffering, its purpose, and where to grasp for joy and hope during the unthinkable and unexpected. Really, you must follow along with her here.
December 19, 2018
What Hanging Off the Edge of a Mountain Teaches Us About the Love of God
Years ago, Kendra Fletcher and I met as homeschooling bloggers. We both wrote about our homeschools, our faith, and our out-sized families. And we both soon found ourselves distracted by the many promises that legalism makes. Somehow, if we homeschooled this way and parented that way and did church this way, we would find that God was really pleased with our good works and might love us better for it. Since then, we can both say we’re deeply grateful for God’s faithful work to undo our own attempts to earn His love and favor. And since then, Kendra has had a burning passion to see others freed from legalistic communities, bad religion, to find wholeness and faith in Christ alone. It’s a grace to welcome Kendra to the farm’s front post today…
Royal Robbins was a remarkable man. If you’re into rock climbing, you undoubtedly know who he was. He’s a legend in the world of climbers.
But for the rest of us, here’s what you need to know: Royal Robbins was the first person to scale the faces of the monstrous rock formations of Yosemite National Park, such as El Capitan and Half Dome. That second one is the instantly recognizable half-dome so famously photographed by Ansel Adams and a million park visitors since.
When we take God at His word and believe how loved we are by Him, everything else in our lives is transformed correspondingly.
We live two hours from those famous rocks, and anytime a climber falls to his or her death, I gasp in disbelief and sorrow for them and their loved ones because it seems to me such a shocking way to die, plunging to your death from so many thousands of feet above the ground.
Any climber willing to make those ascents knows the dangers and possibilities before they set out to conquer the climb.
Royal was a good acquaintance of our family, and one evening he told us a story that occurred on a jutted ridge on the top of Half Dome.
If you do a photo search for that ridge, you’ll find pictures of it, usually with someone sitting with their legs dangling over the edge, hanging more than 4,737 feet above the valley floor.
Royal made the 400-foot ascent up the backside of Half Dome by way of cables one summer day, and there amongst the climbers enjoying the unparalleled views of Yosemite Valley, a small boy in a red baseball cap ventured out to that precipitous ledge and began to teeter.
His father turned to see the boy so close to a fatal fall, and rushed over, scooped him up, and carried him back to safety. From that moment on, for the rest of the time they were on the top of Half Dome, the little boy clung to his father. He never left his side.
Royal told us that witnessing the father saving his son was an illustration to him of the relationship a parent should have with their child — of trust and faith and security and loyalty.
If we can’t see it in the moment, we can observe His hand in history.
In the child’s understanding of what he was saved from and his newfound love and gratitude for what his father had done for him, the child desired nothing more than to stay glued to the father, to listen to his voice, and to obey him all the way back down the descent of Half Dome.
How like God the father in Royal’s story is. And how much more we see our God protecting, loving, and stepping in to save us.
If we can’t see it in the moment, we can observe His hand in history.
Someday that little boy may doubt his father’s love or wonder where he’s been, but he’ll be able to remember back to the day on Half Dome when his father saved his life and know that the character of his father was to love, protect, and carry his son.
But for some of us leaving legalistic communities, it can be difficult to emerge from years of spiritual abuse at the hands of people who should have loved us like Christ.
It can be impossible to look back and see where God was at work in our lives then and even more confusing to see where He might be at work in our lives now.
The truthful answer for many of us to the question, “Where do you see God at work in your life?” is often, “I don’t.”
So what do we do?
We rest in His finished work. We begin to, as that little boy did, live as loved children of the living God.
The little boy knew by the swift action of his father that he was valued and loved by him, and he felt safe and secure in his identity as the loved-boy-of-his-father.
That’s the whole point of God. He loves us. He loves us. Say it to yourself, out loud: He loves me.
Whisper it. Write it on your mirror. However you need to hear it, however often you need to be reminded, tell yourself this rock-solid truth: God loves me.
The God we put our hope in proclaimed as He hung on the cross carrying the wicked burden of all of our sin, “It is finished.” He bore our weight and all the risk when He stepped onto the precipitous ledge to save us from plunging to our deaths. He kept the law so that we don’t have to.
“For this reason the Father loves me, because I lay down my life that I may take it up again. No one takes it from me, but I lay it down of my own accord. I have authority to lay it down, and I have authority to take it up again. This charge I have received from my Father.” John 10:17-18
It wasn’t our sin that held Him there; it was His love. His love for the Father, His love for the world, His love for us. Simply because I am His child. You, too.
When we deeply and truly believe this, we can change our prayer from, “Help me do more and keep the law better so that you’ll forgive me and love me”, to, “Help me believe you more.” Help me love you more.
When we take God at His word and believe how loved we are by Him, everything else in our lives is transformed correspondingly.
Like the little boy on the precipitous edge, our response to God’s love for us is awe and gratitude, and that compels us to serve Him, follow Him, and love Him.
But our service, our following, and our love do not make Him love us any more than He already does.
Serving, following, and loving are by-products of what Jesus has already accomplished. He said, “It is finished.” There is nothing we add to that. Nothing.
Learning to live as loved and learning to love God resemble in their essence the whole seemingly celestial concept of abiding in Christ.
What does that even mean?
It means relationship. It is in the moments of that relationship and walking with and following that we learn to love and know God better, but there’s no one who can really impart to us how to do that, and the frustration of flying blind can be a deal-killer for those of us who are used to checklists and formulas. Just give me the list! Just tell me what I am supposed to do. I’d feel more productive.
Maybe you’ve been reading this whole post with that response, too. Maybe for you, the concept of abiding in Christ feels like a sickening freefall. That’s okay.
The thing about the love of God is that its depth and purity is so beyond our comprehension that it can be a lifelong process to get to a place where we understand that He loves us anyway.
I’m going to venture that most of us may never get to the place where we understand even a small fraction of what God’s love for us truly means.
He loves us even if we never understand it, even if we never get to that place where we can freefall without feeling as if we’re going to throw up. Even then.
So really, it’s about surrendering to Him, too.
Surrendering our understanding of who He is.
Surrendering our listless attempts at pleasing Him.
Even surrendering to the work that he is doing in our hearts, in spite of our brokenness and lack of understanding of who He is.
For those of us who love to live according to our lists, the concept of surrendering seems nebulous and intangible.
Maybe this is the first step in a walk of faith that doesn’t rely on a man-made measuring stick?
Ask God to help you lay down your work and striving and attempts to please Him.
Ask God to help you learn to live as loved .
David G. Benner wrote, “Only God deserves absolute surrender because only God can offer absolutely dependable love.”
If for no other reason than this, surrender to God because He so dependably loves you.
Kendra Fletcher is a mother of 8, speaker, author, and podcaster. She is the author of Lost and Found: Losing Religion, Finding Grace, and Leaving Legalism, and she regularly writes for Key Life Ministries. The Fletchers reside in California, where they play in the Pacific Ocean as often as possible.
From a decade lived deeply in the chokehold of a legalistic community, Kendra Fletcher emerged to find healing, grace for herself, and a renewed faith that stood apart from the religious confines of her previous life in a rigid church community.
Are you there, too, finding yourself leaving a legalistic or cult-like church and wondering what it all meant? Gasping for breath, hoping to find peace, looking to find your way after years of spiritual abuse and religion-driven shame? If it’s your time to find freedom and healing, Leaving Legalism will serve as a guide to help you learn not only to separate religious behavior from true faith in Christ, but to emerge confident in the knowledge that you’re already loved and accepted far beyond your wildest dreams.
Kendra wrote Leaving Legalism, Learning to Love God, Others, and Yourself Again as a lantern to light the way back to true faith in Jesus, and away from the soul-crushing work of attempting to do it all in our own strength.
December 17, 2018
The Lies We Believe and the Truths We Need
Susie Larson’s mentor describes her as having an up front ministry with a behind-the-scenes heart. Like me, Susie is an introvert, wired for solitude and reflection. I’ve joined her on her radio show numerous times and found in her a kindred spirit. Susie is also someone who’s battled fiercely for freedom, health, and wholeness. She contends for the things God has promised her and has come through with strength and conviction. Susie’s passion is to see women awakened to the height of their calling, the depth of God’s love, and the value of their soul. It’s a grace to welcome Susie to the farm’s front porch today…
I didn’t want to go to prison.
Yet the thought ran repeatedly through my mind.
Fear sprayed what felt like shards of glass into my soul. I felt prickly all over. The undertow of what ifs nearly pulled me under.
Where was this coming from?
Without realizing it, I’d put more weight on my ability to fall down than on God’s ability to hold me up.
I took inventory of my life and found no evidence that I’d be going to prison anytime soon. I followed the law. Paid my taxes. Loved my neighbor. Feared God. You get the idea.
Yet this irrational fear about strangled me.
Now granted, it showed up after an intense eighteen-month battle with my health. Battle weary and longing for a breakthrough, this thing hit me out of nowhere.
I fearfully imagined bringing utter shame to my family, friends, and coworkers. I second-guessed the speed limit. I feared sending an email too quickly to the wrong person. It’s crazy-making to think about it now.
But fear made me hypersensitive about messing up, tripping up, and falling down (which only exacerbated the opportunity to do more of the same).
Without realizing it, I’d put more weight on my ability to fall down than on God’s ability to hold me up.
Here’s where the fear first presented itself in my current-day story:
Over the course of a couple of months on my radio show, I’d interviewed several Christian men who’d gone to prison either because they were in the wrong place at the wrong time or because they’d committed a white-collar crime without realizing it.
With each interview I felt the prickles of anxiety and fear increasingly rise up within me but I couldn’t figure out why. I asked God to speak to my heart and show me what I could not see.
He seemed silent while my fears screamed loud. Peace felt like a wet water balloon. I’d have a hold on it, and the next moment—with the next fearful thought—it slipped out of my hands.
I’ve battled fear, on varying levels, my whole life. They say nerves that fire together, wire together.
God is one hundred percent committed, one hundred percent involved, and one hundred percent purposeful in everything He allows into our lives.
In other words, when we have certain traumatic experiences, we have thoughts and reactions to those experiences making them one in the same.
That’s why some of us are so easily triggered.
Traumatic Experience + Emotion = Perceived Reality and Fear Reaction. God has not given us a spirit of fear (2 Timothy 1:7). Fear is a spirit and it’s not from God. And fear can become an actual habit in our lives.
Knowing fear’s inflammatory impact on my already challenged health, I went after it with God’s help. I couldn’t afford to let fear win the day.
I wanted to be well. In everyway. I quoted scripture, prayed whole passages from the Bible, marched around my living room and reminded my soul that Christ lives in me. I enlisted my friends to pray, and worshipped like I’d never worshipped before.
One day God whispered to my heart, ‘The storms reveal the lies we believe and the truths we need.” What lies?
Over the next couple of weeks, a couple of traumatic memories surfaced that I had had stuffed down deep.
I’d forgotten about those memories. But my enemy remembered. And my soul was affected.
I learned that unresolved traumatic memories will always affect our health.
And, the enemy will use our traumas against us until we dare to sort through them in the light of God’s love.
At first it seemed as though God had done nothing to stop the enemy’s relentless threats against me, but I now know that He has a purpose for everything He does.
God is one hundred percent committed, one hundred percent involved, and one hundred percent purposeful in everything He allows into our lives.
He only allowed me to be stirred up because He had determined that it was finally time for me to be free.
In my distress I prayed to the Lord, and the Lord answered me and set me free. Psalm 118:5 NLT
Layer, by, layer, God walked me through the healing process. He faithfully unearthed and exposed old lies and helped me to replace them with life-giving truth because He’s committed to seeing me free.
The enemy’s only power in our lives is the lie. So when the lie goes, so goes his access to us.
And He’s just as committed to your freedom. Isn’t that just great news?
It’s easy for someone who’s not walked in your shoes to flippantly tell you not to fear. It sounds so easy coming from someone else. And many times throughout Scripture we’re charged not to fear. But it’s not so easy, is it?
The closer we get to exposing and identifying our fears, the more it threatens the enemy’s claimed territory in our lives. How does he respond? He turns up the heat on our fears; he threatens exposure and terror because he’s the one who’s terrified at the thought of being exposed.
The enemy’s only power in our lives is the lie. So when the lie goes, so goes his access to us.
Jesus understands the layers of your pain, hurt, and trauma, and knows exactly how to unearth them without destroying you.
He’s wonderfully careful with you. And He’s ruthless with your enemy.
Jesus wants to restore you. And make no mistake about it: He will also destroy the works of the enemy in your life.
Jesus wants to restore you.
And make no mistake about it: He will also destroy the works of the enemy in your life.
I’ve learned that when God allows a storm or a trial, it’s a great opportunity to identify your fears so you can grab hold of faith.
Once you’ve named your fears, you’re halfway there.
Fear hides in the dark. That’s why our storms are really so useful to us!
When we grasp God’s faithfulness, we’ll more bravely face the threats against us.
Let’s fight for our freedom so we can know the flourishing Jesus offers us.
When we flourish, others flourish as well. Our life, our freedom matters so very much in the greater kingdom story.
Don’t fear the storm. The storms reveal the lies we believe and the truths we need.
Hang in there. You can win this battle.
Susie Larson is a radio host, national speaker, and author of fifteen books. She’s been married to her dearest friend and husband, Kevin, for over thirty years. Together they have three grown sons, three precious daughters-in-law, one adorable grandson, and a cool pit bull named Memphis.
Susie’s new book, Fully Alive: Learning to Flourish Mind, Body, and Spirit explores God’s desire to restore us physically, emotionally, and spiritually. Susie invites readers on a journey of inner healing, wholeness, and freedom.
I cannot recommend Susie Larson or her words to you highly enough — this woman is a gift to the church. A life-changing treasure of a book to revisit again and again.
December 15, 2018
Only the Good Stuff: Multivitamins for Your Weekend [12.15.18]
Happy, happy, happy weekend!
Some real, down in the bones JOY to celebrate today! Links & stories this week 100% guaranteed to make you smile a mile wide & believe like crazy in a Good God redeeming everything — and that there’s love everywhere & for ((you))!
Serving up only the Good Stuff for you right here:
jpcvanheijst.com
jpcvanheijst.com
jpcvanheijst.com
…sit with the wonder of the skies above
Good morning, everyone!
don’t hide…share your gifts!
50 of The Most Incredible Photos of The National Geographic Photo Contest of 2018
you should come!?! for a winter wonderland drive!
some wisdom from John Piper: What Should I Tell My Kids About Santa?
really, you should really come!?! Shalom & I kinda couldn’t breathe through this one
How Not to Comfort Suffering People
she left her job in the city to love the outcasts 24/7 #betheGIFT
How To Make Your Church an Encouraging Place for Single Moms
loving each other — is kinda the best
Notorious gang leader now preaches Jesus: ‘I’m a radical soldier for God’
thank you, Samaritan’s Purse: every box is an opportunity to tell a child about God’s Son, Jesus Christ
good, good words: Remember, you’re never alone. Ever.
Want to preach Gospel to yourself every day through December?
Free Stress-Free Holiday Sticky Notes for Your Soul, right here:
No Stress Holiday ManifestoPrint this set of 25 Note Cards, one for each day in December.
For mirrors and sinks and dashboards, for pockets and walls and office cubicles. For this Christmas.
Each card is an affirmation, a prayer, for each day this month.
Quotes from The Greatest Gift and Unwrapping the Greatest Gift, rewritten to be words that you can pray every day,
to keep the focus…to celebrate Christ!
okay, this 6th grader stands up & says what needs to be said
The Difference a School Librarian Can Make, According to One Dad
THIS: in this season of giving, let’s give kindness
From Cave Divers to a Fearless Flier, Here are the Heroes of 2018 according to TIME
kinda undone: how she’s helping to love thousands of children with cancer? #BeTheGift #TheBrokenWay
because everyone needs a special friend
Roeland Park Police Dept
Police officers respond to shoplifting call, and help this young thief in an unbelievable way #BeTheGift #TheBrokenWay
this one’s for those grateful to be sharing the holidays with family and friends this year…
Nigerian Girls Coding Their Way to a Better Future: their background isn’t defining them
Wycliffe’s mission is to see a Bible translation program in progress in every language still needing one by 2025
Mercy House Global
Mercy House Global
The Best Last Minute Gift Because Time Is Running Out
Let there be peace, and let it start in me…
Post of the week from these parts here
How to Evict Worry, Anxiousness & Fears from Your Holidays (& Your Life)
on repeat this week: O Holy Night
because sometimes we do the unexpected
24 Candle Advent Wreath & Manger with Star: Joywares.ca
24 Candle Advent Wreath & Manger with Star: Joywares.ca
24 Candle Advent Wreath & Manger with Star: Joywares.ca
24 Candle Advent Wreath & Manger with Star: Joywares.ca
… that wonderful time of the year to pull out one of our most favourite family traditions:
Our 24 hole wooden Advent wreath, with Mary on a donkey, headed toward the manger and the coming of Emmanuel.
Celebrate Advent by retelling the greatest love story every told
WOW: This holiday season, discover how giving brings people together, no matter how far apart they may be
yeah… just a little invite? to come experience a Christmas like never before?
Come experience a Christmas like you’ve always dreamed of…
So come Christmas morning — you’ve unwrapped the greatest gift you yearn for — more of Him.
Gather around the Greatest Story this year for the whole family with all 3?
“The Greatest Gift” (adult edition),
“Unwrapping the Greatest Gift” (family read aloud edition),
and “The Wonder of the Greatest Gift” (pop-up edition with your own 14 inch tree, 25 days of readings, 25 day advent flap calendar, hiding all 25 Biblically inspired ornaments! For any age)
So you don’t miss out on Jesus this year & the The Greatest Christmas.
You are my JOY! Thank you, Rend Collective
…maybe right now? We just need to hear it like a whisper in the midst of all the noise: kick back the dark with one brilliant turn:
‘The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.’
The Wise not only still follow the Light, seek the Light — they become the Light.
His grace is always coming to meet us down every road — no matter how steep, no matter how long, no matter how impossible, no matter how divided — Grace is up ahead & Grace is coming up behind & no darkness can extinguish its light
& no hate can silence its love
& no heartache can drown out its healing song.
Some days we just need light in the dark that makes everything clear:
never give up, never give up pressing forward, never give up holding on.
[excerpted from our little Facebook family … come join us each day?]
That’s all for this weekend, friends.
Go slow. Be God-struck. Grant grace. Live Truth.
Give Thanks. Love well. Re – joy, re- joy, ‘re- joys’ again
Share Whatever Is Good.
December 13, 2018
How to Evict Worry, Anxiousness & Fears from Your Holidays (& Your Life)
Sure, you can go straight ahead & light the Peace candle, but it can end up being mighty hard some days to scrounge up much peace when you’re a liar, a thief, a cheat. When you’ve wrecked holy things of home and hearts, crushed your priceless people with expectations, been a hypocrite in more than a thousand wincing ways.
Ask me how I know.
It’d be kinda pious, if that was all humbly self-deprecating — instead of devastatingly honest. How many times have I dry wretched, but you can’t hurl yourself out of your wretched self?
The pieces of us that we try to keep burying — is what keeps burying our peace.
I don’t know who left out this devotional titled, “Still Point” but it beckons to me the second week of Advent, the Peace week.
I just happen to open it to this unexpected excerpt from the Scarlet Letter, with the shame-ridden Reverend Dimmesdale stumbling through the night streets to climb the town’s public scaffold — the Puritans’ own rendition of Calvary. The tortured, self-loathing pastor’s desperate to somehow publicly pay his pound of flesh for all that relentlessly haunts.
He’s wild for his own scarlet letter — and yet can’t bear the shame.
I close the book, lay it on the bedroom windowsill.
Who isn’t haunted by all kinds of inner thoughts — that you don’t want anyone to know? Who isn’t undone by all kinds of failures — that you’d never want on display?
25 Day Advent Candle: Joywares.ca
24 Candle Advent Wreath & Manger with Star: Joywares.caI watch the snow soundlessly fall, burying the fields, the woods, in white.
Hiding anything is an illusion — because can anything hide from God?
And maybe that’s the moment I start to dig out, start to find myself:
The pieces of us that we try to keep burying — is what keeps burying our peace.
When we hide pieces of ourselves — we never find peace.
I can feel gusts of December cold air leaking in around the edges of the window. I wonder if: What drives some of our anxiousness — is anxiousness to not be found out for all of who we are. Maybe if we were really known — we don’t know if anyone would really love us?
The glass pane feels frigid under my fingertips.
Maybe: There are things in our minds and hearts that we never want fully found out — because we’re terrified we’d find out that no one fully loves us.
When I see snow whipping around in the orchard, you can hear it at the same moment, the house, the back windows, crying a bit with this driving wind.
Maybe: Our ache to be taken and accepted as we are — is what drives us to take and hide parts of ourselves we believe are unacceptable.
A blast of wind blows a skiff of snow off the back step.
Maybe the secret to peace — is to have no secrets.
I press my forehead against the clear glass. And maybe — there is no maybe, no question at all:
Because God is with us — there is no room in any inn, any heart, any mind, any space, for worry.
God fully knows what you never want anyone to know — and He needs you to know, even now, that you are His Beloved.
What had my brother-in-law messaged last week?
“Hey — just following up on our conversation at church….” We’d all lingered long afterward the last prayer, kinda oblivious to the cold.
Stood there talking about how we are all called to carry each other’s brokenness — but we can’t do that if we’re all wearing masks of fake holiness.
“What if we really knew: There is nothing that has been said, done, or thought is so big that it requires it be paid for twice….He paid for it all….all the known and not known.”
That’s when his words started to swim a bit in a brimming grace. Yes:
If Christ didn’t pay for all the unspeakable things, the shameful things, the things only He knows — then our salvation isn’t the real thing.
If Christ doesn’t take all of us, in all of our judgement — then our salvation would actually be fraudulent.
What if — the judgement, the abandonment, the rejection you are anxious about in ways you try to ignore — doesn’t even exist.
What if — the peace you long for is yours right now because no matter what happens, ever — you always, miraculously, get to belong?
There is a peace that passes all understanding because there is One who stands in your painful places — and takes that pain.
What if there is no maybe about it, ever:
“Therefore is now no condemnation… “Those who enter into Christ’s being-here-for-us no longer have to live under a continuous, low-lying black cloud. A new power is in operation. The Spirit of life in Christ, like a strong wind, has magnificently cleared the air, freeing you…” Romans 8 MSG.
A gust blows snow off the edge of the eave, like burdens can lift.
As I turn from the window, I just happen to glance down at my wrist — and it jolts me.
There it is.
I’m wearing my own scarlet letter.
There, a small cross.
First inked on my wrist on a late summer afternoon, not far from the actual Calvary, on a hushed back street of Jerusalem itself.
Permanently inked by a man who introduced himself as Wassim Razzouk, whose family has been serving Christian pilgrims since the 1300s — more than 26 generations inking proof for pilgrims of their pilgrimage to the Holy Land. To the Cross.
I’d sat in front of Wassim in that stillness of a stone-walled Jerusalem shop and traced how small I wanted that cross, that one symbol, right there on my wrist, and he’d drawn it slow and I’d nodded.
That.
And there it is, etched right into me, my own Scarlet Letter, unashamedly right there under my fingertips, what pays the price for everything — and gives the greatest gift of peace through everything. A Cross that patently proclaims my brokenness — and yet piercingly renames me Beloved.
And that one Scarlet Letter?
That one Scarlet Letter Cross is
my penance,
my providence,
my path,
my protection,
my purpose,
my passion,
my peace —
my person.
Whatever you can’t stand about yourself — Jesus stands closest to kiss that place with grace, and you can feel it come over you — that peace that passes all understanding.
That Scarlet Letter Cross — is my alpha and omega, my beginning and my end, my everything. Like learning that one letter by heart could transform my heart, I find myself tracing and retracing that Cross countless times a day, right there like peace speaking under fingertips.
Whatever love, provision, hope, acceptance, grace, restoration you need — will not run out — because Your God will never run out on you.
Whatever you fear doesn’t exist — because your God exists.
Whatever you can’t stand about yourself — Jesus stands closest to kiss that place with grace, and you can feel it come over you — that peace that passes all understanding.
There is a peace that passes all understanding because there is One who stands in your painful places — and takes that pain.
24 Candle Advent Wreath & Manger with Star: Joywares.ca
Joywares.ca
Joywares.caWhen I light the Peace Candle — I can read it there in the middle of the Advent Wreath — etched in the side of the manger, the only gift we need: Emmanuel.
God with us.
Because God is with us — there is no room in any inn, any heart, any mind, any space for worry.
The Peace candle burns with a red hot love that brands even us as His — and all that doesn’t matter burns away.
Read the Full Love Story of Christmas and know the Greatest Gift:
Jesus comes from the kind of family tree —
that proves He comes for your kind of family tree.
For the hurting & busted & messed up, Jesus comes to whisper:
“PEACE. I am with you & I am ALL YOUR PEACE.”
Because God is with us —
there is no room in any inn, any heart, any mind, any space for worry.
Just a little invite? Come experience a Christmas like you’ve always dreamed?
So come Christmas morning — you’ve unwrapped the greatest gift you yearn for — more of Him and His peace that passes all understanding. The gift you want most.
Gather around the Greatest Story this year for the whole family with all 3?
“The Greatest Gift” (adult edition),
“Unwrapping the Greatest Gift” (family read aloud edition),
and “The Wonder of the Greatest Gift” (pop-up edition with your own 14 inch tree, 25 days of readings, 25 day advent flap calendar, hiding all 25 Biblically inspired ornaments! For any age)
Find the Peace you long for — & don’t miss out on Jesus & the The Greatest Christmas.
December 12, 2018
The Best Last Minute Gift Because Time Is Running Out
Kristen Welch and I are sorta, kinda, soul sisters? As I serve on the board of directors of the ministry Kristen founded, Mercy House Global, I get to see it first hand again and again, what we can all do together to change the world for women, if we say our brave yes. — and I am all in here with Kristen, with Mercy House Global, and togESTHER — we are the Esther Generation. Called for such a time as this, right where we are, to change the world for our sisters…. I absolutely love this woman with all my heart — a grace to welcome my soul sister, Kristen, to the farm’s front porch today…
I t’s the clock I noticed first. It was the only thing hanging on the bare wall of the home I was visiting.
It wasn’t ticking. The hands stood still as if it silently screamed for me to take notice… to see that time was running out.
It was my third home visit of the afternoon. My belly was full of chai tea, halal pizza and a spicy noodle dish I couldn’t name (the world wants to feed you) and if I’m honest, I’d lost all track of time.
They have lost everything.
I’d stepped over a littered yard, dodged mud holes, climbed stairs, and knocked on the doors of my refugee friends from Myanmar, Afghanistan and Nepal — all relocated to different pockets of my city of Houston.
I sat and sipped and savored the moments in each home with women who have lived such unspeakable horrors that the United Nations deemed them fit for refugee status.
It’s not a badge any of us would want to wear but don’t doubt for a second that it isn’t one of honor. In their countries, these families owned homes, drove cars, had careers and every bit of their lives changed over night when genocide knocked at their front doors.
They have lost everything.
Mercy House Global
Mercy House Global
Mercy House Global
Possessions have been burned, homes looted, husbands captured and killed. And now they are my neighbors and they are starting life over in a different country with a new language, different customs, and untold challenges.
It’s not a badge any of us would want to wear but don’t doubt for a second that it isn’t one of honor.
Simply put, it is overwhelming.
As I stared at the silent clock, it was a very present reminder that time is running out.
As we run around and scoop up last minute Christmas gifts, hunting for unique finds that will feel just right, for many in the world, the clock is ticking and nothing is right.
Women around the globe can count their remaining dollars on one hand, they can feed their children for a couple more nights, they are running out of food, clothes and money for rent.
They are running out of time.
When I started Mercy House Global nearly a decade ago, I just wanted to help pregnant teens in Kenya.
But I quickly learned that when you take a girl out of trafficking, you’ve also taken away her job, so creating dignified work moved up to the top of our list.
We create dignified jobs for those teen moms and their families in Kenya and we do so for thousands of over women in more than 30 countries through our monthly subscription clubs at Fair Trade Friday because business is the best way to end poverty.
With just a click of your mouse, you can join a club and send a gift subscription this Christmas at the very last minute — it will not only provide a lovely, trendy, unique gift; it will provide a dignified job just in time.
I handed over a bag of supplies to my friend and she bowed in deep thanks.
We both knew that bag would provide needed money just in time.
I glanced again at the clock on the wall and remembered it wasn’t working.
Today, would you find the time to help us provide work?
This Christmas, will you make your last minute gift of the season, the best gift of all for those who are out of time?
Fair Trade Friday:
A Fair Trade Subscription Box that empowers women around the world through dignified jobs
Fair Trade Friday exists as an avenue for women to empower women.
We are tackling poverty through dignified job opportunities in Jesus’ name. 100% of the proceeds from Fair Trade Friday support the artisans and their families – thousands of women, men, and children around the world. Fair Trade Friday is a ministry of Mercy House Global, a non-profit organization based in Magnolia, Texas.
And just for you – some special discounts to pass along:
Fair Trade Friday — code: SAVE10 — $10 off a 3+ month subscription, expires Jan 5th
Bracelet of the Month — code: SHINE20 — 20% off a 3+ month subscription, expires Dec 31
Earring of the Month — code: SHINE20 — 20% off a 3+ month subscription, expires Dec 31
Any last minute subscriptions that are gifted/bought by Dec. 20, will be shipped before Christmas. There is also a free printable gift certificate that can be given at any time (in a stocking or under the tree) at fairtradefriday.club
This Christmas, will you make your last minute gift of the season, the best gift of all for those who are out of time?
December 10, 2018
What You Need to Know About Hearing God’s Voice
If you met Jane Johnson on the street and shared the bare-bones basics of who you are, she would tell you she is a woman who is caught in a passionate love affair with the Word of God. She is a Scripture-digger with a heart for teaching women how to study the Bible. In her debut book Mercy Like Morning, Jane shares the things she learned the hard way. When life broke her heart, Jane turned to Scripture. Through her decade-long journey of infertility, Jane dug in. While grieving the loss of her best friend, Jane dug in. While asking and waiting on God for miracles, her quiet time became her haven where she discovered new mercies every morning. With the kindness of a trusted friend, she serves as an encourager and mentor to anyone longing to dig into Scripture on their own. It is a grace to welcome Jane to the farm’s front porch today…
I sat next to a girlfriend on a Maui beach in the heat of summer. The south swell was in full effect, creating a massive shore break of waves that locals call double-overhead high. Some were as high as 12 feet.
We sat a safe distance away, with an umbrella shielding us from the tropical sun, and we watched the dwarfed shadows of our husbands bodysurfing in the break.
“I floated out here last winter,” she told me. The winter-calm waves had been still, the sea glassy. “My ears were just below the surface of the water, and I listened to the whales singing so loud and so clear that everything inside of me vibrated.”
I never really stopped to think that you could just poke your head underwater to hear the whales sing.
But it turns out you can. Those whale songs can carry on under the water for miles.
Every single year, humpbacks leave the frigid Alaskan water to make their yearly winter migration through our warm tropical sea to have their babies—December to May, just like clockwork.
And they come singing their way through the winter.
I tried to hear them a couple of times, but I never could manage to catch the whales in their song. Many winter beach days would find me wading out, floating, and listening to silence.
Wade. Float. Listen.
Still nothing.
Wade. Float. Listen.
Over and over and over again. But still, no matter how many times I tried, I never heard them.
Until one day when my husband went out into the water with me. Only he went out a little bit deeper than I had been going. I had always stayed close to the shore, where toes could still touch and feet could still stand, safe and comfortable.
He went under the water and quickly came back up with a sparkle in his eye.
“You can hear them,” he said.
So I swam out to where he was and went underwater right where he did. And then I came back up, frustrated, shaking my head.
“Dive down all the way to the bottom,” he said. “Hover right above the surface of the sand, and listen. You’ll hear them.”
So I took a deeper breath than the last and dove down under the water and fought to stay down and strained my ears when, finally, I heard it.
It was faint. They were far, but I heard it. A faint whisper of a whale song.
I was fascinated that something far enough away to be entirely out of sight could still be heard under the water.
I read a National Geographic article one time that said those deep vibrations can even travel for thousands of underwater miles. If a whale song can make that kind of breadth, it can also travel to equal depth—reaching miles below where that whale swims.
All the way down into the most secret recesses of the sea.
Hearing that whispered song reminded me of Moses.
Moses was overwhelmed with the responsibility of shepherding an entire nation of stubborn people.
It was time to move them out of the temporary home they had settled into at the base of Mount Sinai and lead them into the Promised Land—a vast expanse of terrain that was already occupied by foreign people with large and powerful armies.
After begging for confirmation that God was, in fact, leading them into Operation Take the Land I Have for You, Moses asked for one more sign that God was with them:
“Show me Your glory,” he whispered toward the end of Exodus 33.
“Okay,” God replied. “I’ll show you My glory by making all of My goodness pass before you, and I will proclaim the name of the Lord before you” (vv. 18-19, my paraphrase).
Did you catch that last part? The part about God proclaiming His name over Moses as He passed His glory-goodness over?
It sat there, tucked into the middle of verse 19 all this time, and I had never noticed it before.
I knew how Moses felt.
I’d felt it before—wanting so badly to see God’s glory. But I never noticed that part of the glory-revelation is God proclaiming His name as He goes by.
After being safely hidden away in a dug-out hole inside a rock, God covered Moses with His hand. And only then, when he was hidden away in the darkness of that dug-out rock, under the shadow of God’s hand, did He pass by, proclaiming His name.
We can borrow Zephaniah’s words to help narrate the moment:
The Lord your God in your midst, the Mighty One, will save; He will rejoice over you with gladness, He will quiet you with His love, He will rejoice over you with singing. (Zephaniah 3:17)
And the word for God’s singing-voice? It also means “to proclaim.”
His song is the same in the dug-out rock as it is in the deepest parts of the sea .
You can dive down into the depths of His Word and dig down deep into the carved-out depths of His presence, and you can strain your ears to hear His still, small whisper-voice .
And eventually, you’ll hear Him.
Rejoicing over you with singing and proclaiming His name over you.
And that’s right about the time that you join in on the song and sing His name right back to Him, right there in the depths.
Jane Johnson
is a wife and mother who is filled with a passion to teach women of all ages how to study Scripture. By trade, she is an author, designer, and one of the leading family photographers on Maui. Jane lives on the island with her handsome husband and her two miracle babies.
Born in a season of waiting, Jane’s debut book shares the story of her journey through infertility and how she learned to turn to God’s Word in her daily quiet times and increase her faith in the wait. Mercy Like Morning: Discovering Truth in Seasons of Waitingis a treasure map for women longing to learn to dig into Scripture with intention. We don’t always know how to spend time with God by studying His Word—or how to be truly refreshed and changed by the experience.
[ Our humble thanks to Harvest House for their partnership in today’s devotion ]
December 8, 2018
Only the Good Stuff: Multivitamins for Your Weekend [12.08.18]
Happy, happy, happy weekend!
Some real, down in the bones JOY to celebrate today! Links & stories this week 100% guaranteed to make you smile a mile wide & believe like crazy in a Good God redeeming everything — and that there’s love everywhere & for ((you))!
Serving up only the Good Stuff for you right here:
Britt Marie Bye Photography / Facebook / Instagram
Britt Marie Bye Photography / Facebook / Instagram
Britt Marie Bye Photography / Facebook / Instagram
enjoy the quiet wonders of your weekend
The White Envelope: A most moving holiday tradition
just, never, ever underestimate the power of words
finding peace on the field: because everyone needs a friend
Dina Telhami
Dina Telhami
Dina Telhami
she captures the microscopic in extraordinary ways
AMEN: Break Every Chain … maybe like you’re never heard before?
a vending machine stocked with free books for kids? why yes, yes there is…
He didn’t know he was being recorded. yeah: “Character is doing the right thing when nobody’s looking.”
you’ve got to meet them: Five young people creating a better world
Saylor Family Adoption Story: “God never leaves our side”
Rediscovering Home… thank you, Annie F Downs
The John Hudson Story: John lives with epidermolysis bullosa, a condition that leaves his body covered with open sores. He has lost over half his skin and is constantly battling severe pain.
John still finds hope in serving as an example for others that it is possible to survive difficult times.
Want to preach Gospel to yourself every day through December?
Free Stress-Free Holiday Sticky Notes for Your Soul, right here: No Stress Holiday ManifestoPrint this set of 25 Note Cards, one for each day in December.
For mirrors and sinks and dashboards, for pockets and walls and office cubicles. For this Christmas.
Each card is an affirmation, a prayer, for each day this month.
They are quotes from The Greatest Gift and Unwrapping the Greatest Gift, rewritten to be words that you can pray every day,
to keep the focus…to celebrate Christ!
he’s using his hard story to help others in difficult situations
really beautiful words shared in this interview with Jenna and Barbara Bush
just so beautiful: Friends
The Key to Keep Hoping for Hard Things (& Keep Passing The Giving Light)
…what if we kinda quit with all the Fear Mongers — and became Hope Mongers?
So that’s kinda exactly what happened after we lit the first week of Advent’s Hope candle.
Thank you, thank you, Samaritan’s Purse – Operation Christmas Child
What a shoebox meant for one child. So. many. tears. here.
The Secret to Finding a Way Forward (Or: First Candle of Advent- Hope)
don’t miss: If you’re missing someone this Christmas this song’s dedicated to you
Post of the week from these parts here
… doesn’t matter much what story is trending these days–
The only Story that matters is the one that keeps repeating it: Do Not Be Afraid.
That’s the Story we’re staying in, the one I want our kids to stay in, the Story that crushes all discouragement & fear.
the story behind the song, The Thrill of Hope
on repeat this week: The Thrill of Hope
… that wonderful time of the year to pull out one of our most favourite family traditions:
Our 24 hole wooden Advent wreath, with Mary on a donkey, headed toward the manger and the coming of Emmanuel.
Celebrate Advent by retelling the greatest love story every told
yeah… just a little invite? to come experience a Christmas like never before?
Come experience a Christmas like you’ve always dreamed of…
So come Christmas morning — you’ve unwrapped the greatest gift you yearn for — more of Him.
Gather around the Greatest Story this year for the whole family with all 3?
“The Greatest Gift” (adult edition),
“Unwrapping the Greatest Gift” (family read aloud edition),
and “The Wonder of the Greatest Gift” (pop-up edition with your own 14 inch tree, 25 days of readings, 25 day advent flap calendar, hiding all 25 Biblically inspired ornaments! For any age)
So you don’t miss out on Jesus this year & the The Greatest Christmas.
…do not be afraid of what could fail when His arms are stronger than any failure & He cannot fail or let you fall.
And do not be afraid of any evil because greater is He who is in the depths of you and breathing the wild courage to love right into your bones.
Do not ever be afraid of suffering because suffering can birth a greater resurrection. When His love wins you over – no fears can pull you under.
We keep #UnWrappingTheGreatestGift and Staying in the Story because the truth is:
Advent is about the coming of God — and the end of fear.
[excerpted from our little Facebook family … come join us each day?]
That’s all for this weekend, friends.
Go slow. Be God-struck. Grant grace. Live Truth.
Give Thanks. Love well. Re – joy, re- joy, ‘re- joys’ again
Share Whatever Is Good.
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