Ann Voskamp's Blog, page 124
April 2, 2018
Why the Church Can’t Keep Turning Away From Our Race Issues: Why We Can’t Put the Past Behind Us — Because It’s Buried In Us
This woman speaks stories. And for author Katie Ganshert, this story she’s written in her latest pages was the most challenging novel she’s ever written. She wrote a story out of her heart — a story about three women with different experiences and backgrounds — a story that could start a profoundly needed and healing conversation. Through her own experiences, Katie has learned that while conversation and empathy don’t fix problems, they’re both a really great place to start. A place to see people who are different from us, to see people the way Jesus does. Her hope is that the story enfolded in her latest novel would be the beginning of rising wave of individual journeys that together, can make an impact. It’s a grace to welcome Katie to the farm’s front porch today…
When my husband and I decided to adopt, and thus become a trans-racial family, we had no idea what we were undertaking.
I believed the lie that we lived in a post-racial America.
And why wouldn’t I? Racism didn’t touch me as a white woman.
It didn’t affect my every day life. Sure, I might run up against the occasional racist comment or joke, but those were rarities. Those were due to a few “bad apples”. Those didn’t represent the current state of race in our country.
Then Michael Brown happened.
The more I listened, the more the scales fell—scales I didn’t even know were there.
My husband and I were living in the already-but-not yet that marks every international adoption.
We were already parents to a beautiful little girl, but she was not yet with us in our home.
Roughly a year into that peculiar stage, Michael Brown was shot and killed in Ferguson. Protests and riots broke out in St. Louis. A string of people with the same color skin as my daughter turned into hash tags. A collective outcry arose from the black community, a lament impossible to ignore.
And yet, many people with the same color skin as me seemed to be ignoring it.
The dissonance was disturbing.
In an attempt to better understand the outcry, I began tuning into black voices.
I followed individuals on Twitter—pastors and counselors, historians and artists and community leaders.
I read memoirs and articles. I listened to podcasts and sermons.
The more I listened, the more the scales fell—scales I didn’t even know were there.
Slowly I started to see what I couldn’t before—a pervasive injustice all around.
“The world is wrong. You can’t put the past behind you. It’s buried in you.” – Claudia Rankine
Slavery. Convict leasing. Over 4,000 lynchings. Jim Crow segregation. White flight and red-lining.
All of it is buried in us. All of it points to an appallingly racist past that has left a racist legacy that manifests itself in policies and systems that disadvantage and oppress specific people groups.
Like our education system, where black and brown students find themselves more segregated than they were in 1968—stuck in schools that are understaffed and under-resourced.
Or a criminal justice system that frisks 85% of blacks and Latinos stopped by police, but only 8% of whites. Those are just two examples of many—the tippity-top of a giant racial iceberg. Statistics I didn’t know until I started to listen.
I had no idea that Sunday remains the most segregated hour in America. I saw a handful of black people inside my church as proof that we were fine. I had no idea that many black evangelicals in predominately white churches report feeling unseen and unheard.
That wasn’t something I learned until I leaned closer.
But now I see.
I see it in the person who posts Galatians 3:28 on Facebook, then goes on a rant about how much they can’t stand Colin Kaepernick.
I see it in the way people love the pictures I post of my daughter, but get really quiet when I start talking about the issues that will directly impact her as a black woman in this country.
We want Martin Luther King’s I Have a Dream Speech, not his letter from a Birmingham jail, where he calls out the white moderate, “who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice.”
Comfort has become our golden calf, but we wrap it up and call it unity.
We fail to recognize that when Paul says we are all one in Christ—that there is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free—he was not doing this in order to silence the marginalized. But to lift them up in a society hell bent on stomping them down.
Let us not be the dysfunctional family—ignoring our problems, dismissing abuse—as if our goal should be getting through a holiday without raising our voices.
Christ did not come for that.
He came to reconcile us to Himself, to reconcile us to one another.
This is unity, and the path leading to it was never meant to be a comfortable one.
Let us be the family who doesn’t leave loved ones in the trenches, but steps down into those trenches and locks arms with the ones we claim to love.
Let us do as Moses did and burn our golden calf in the fire. Let’s ground it to powder.
Let’s get uncomfortable for the sake of love.
Again I find myself living in the already-but-not yet, only this is one that marks every Christian life. Christ has already removed the dividing wall of hostility, but it’s not yet our reality in this broken, sin-soaked world.
How then, shall we pray?
Christ gives us the answer.
Your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.
What then, shall we do?
He has told you, O man, what is good; and what does the Lord require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God. – Micah 6:8
We can’t do justice until we see injustice.
And we can’t see until we are willing to confess the scales that keep us blind—defensiveness, comfort, pride.
We can’t see until we’re willing to humbly listen.
Is not this the fast that I choose: to loose the bonds of wickedness, to undo the straps of the yoke, to let the oppressed go free. Isaiah 58:6
Katie Ganshert is an award-winning author of several novels and works of short fiction, including Carol Award-winner, The Art of Losing Yourself and Life After.
No One Ever Asked is Katie Ganshert’s most powerful novel yet. Challenging perceptions of discrimination and prejudice, this emotionally resonant drama for readers of Lisa Wingate and Jodi Picoult explores three different women navigating challenges in a changing school district–and in their lives.
[ Our humble thanks to Waterbrook and Multnomah for their partnership in today’s devotion ]
April 1, 2018
How Easter Resurrection Morning Calls the Resurrection Women to Rise Up
It may have looked like a fool’s day, but the Risen Wisdom of the World, the Hope of Humanity, the Saviour of the Suffering, and the Messiah of the Masses, He buys back the busted,
and takes back the abandoned,
and all the walking dead comeback to new life,
because the old world and ways have died in the night, and it is now —
Resurrection Morning.
Now is a new creation.
On Resurrection Morning, the Practice of Resurrection is begun first by the Resurrection Women who are the first witnesses to the risen Lord, the first evangelists, the first to be given the Good News of the Best News the world has ever wakened to: Death is forever dead and Jesus is always alive!
And we are the new creations, and His cruciform sacrifice forms a new heaven and a new earth and new ways, and in the form of a Gardener, He returns again to walk in the garden, not in the cool of the evening, but in the rising warmth of the dawn, and on Resurrection Morning, the Practice of Resurrection is begun first by the Resurrection Women.
It’s the Resurrection Women who have witnessed brokenness and brutality but are the first at the tomb, first at His side, to see the breaking dawn of a new way of being, of believing, of how to be be living, women who are the first witnesses to the risen Lord, the first evangelists, the first to be given the Good News of the Best News the world has ever wakened to: Death is forever dead and Jesus is always alive!
It’s the women who are appointed to be God’s first spokesperson.
It’s the women God first ignites with new hope.
It’s the women God first calls, first commissions, first claims as bearers of the new beginning.
Women may not have been seen by culture as credible witnesses, but Jesus saw them as His choice witnesses.
Men would have been the religious leaders first choice — but women were God’s divine choice.
Though Peter and John show up in the garden that morning, the angel first shows up to the women with a message for the world that is still being proclaimed to this very day.
Though men were available to receive Jesus’ commission, Jesus found it desirable that women receive recognition as the couriers of the resurrection and the tellers of His mission.
Though they may debate about the role of women, it cannot be denied that Jesus determined that every woman’s role is being intimately close to Him, being fully seen by Him, deeply known by Him, personally named by Him, & powerfully entrusted with a word from Him.
On the first day of the new world: The women weren’t just given the privilege of being the first silent witnesses —- they were given a Gospel Word to sweepingly proclaim till the end of time.
On Resurrection Morning, Jesus chose that The Apostle to the Apostles — the apostle who told the apostles about the rising Good News of the Gospel — would be a woman.
And on Resurrection Morning and every morning till time gives way to forever, it is the Resurrection Women
who know their incredible worth to Christ,
who know their immense calling in Christ,
who know their irrevocable gift through Christ,
and everywhere in this new world of new ways, they too will bring the Presence of Resurrection,
will relentlessly Practice Resurrection,
and will always embody the rising Power of the Resurrection.
It is Resurrection Morning and the Resurrection Women cannot help but rise up to be the truthtellers about His remaking of all the world!
Practice Resurrection.
Be the Presence of Resurrection.
Abundantly live the Power of the Resurrection.
In sixty vulnerably stories, the tender invitation of The Way of Abundance moves you into the rising abundant life.
Start Your New & Deeply Meaning Journey into the Way of Abundance
March 31, 2018
Only the Good Stuff: Multivitamins for Your Weekend [03.31.18]
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:
Redd Angelo
Ornella Binni
Karl Frederickson
the earth is truly full of His glory everywhere: take the time to ponder it…
huge smile
and the hardest colleges to get accepted into in the US? Here’s a list of the top 30…
they’re living off the grid on a homemade island – anyone else wanna visit?
konwentphoto.com
konwentphoto.com
konwentphoto.com
maybe hold on?!? this extreme sports photographer? jumps right into the action, capturing the best skydivers all around the world
you’ve gotta come see these instruments he’s made – 400 of them, with the parts collected from the garbage
really — beauty can be made from anything, anywhere
a beautiful story defying many odds…
just so good: For God So Loved His Worth — The Temptation to Make Holy Week About Me
unbelievably inspiring: thousands of ordinary people are writing letters to strangers who need encouragement. #BeTheGift #TheBrokenWay
you’ve got to meet Doris Jones: a 90 year old armchair archaeologist unearthing history
what a story here: ‘On a Mission’ shows kids world outside their neighborhoods
As part a Los Angeles-area mentoring program, Lt. Robbie Williams will take 21 students to Beijing on a trip of a lifetime.
free ticket to glory, glory, glory right here and you know your soul kinda needs this exhale
Jani Ylinampa Photography
this beautiful island in Finland? come see how a photographer captured it in all 4 seasons
for everyone: The Story of Easter
it would be my joy to meet you here at this important conference on April 14
learn more about how we can respond to the current refugee crisis
the kid no one would pick? Is now everyone’s hero
he struggled with severe ADHD: come see what completely changed his life
undone: After 23 years in prison as an innocent man, former groundskeeper returns to his old job
“Even in the midst of our darkest, deepest times, when we’re in the trenches, God is still good and He’s still faithful — even when it’s really dark.”
tears: father meets daughter’s heart recipient who wanted to thank him
LOVE this …the wonder of a heart is full of compassion #BeTheGift #TheBrokenWay
As Jesus Christ lies in the tomb, tomorrow is coming!
… a woman turned to me in a car and asked me what I didn’t see coming in the least…and I sat there, fixed and yet a kind of jarred, broken, staring out the windshield, heart unshielded.
Yeah, maybe a bit exposed:
Go Right Ahead during Holy Week: Why You Can Give Up on the Goal of a Beautiful Life
I Will Rise:
“We were therefore buried with Him through baptism into death in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, we too may live a new life.” Romans 6:4 (NIV)
When You’re Kinda Sick of Family & Community & People in the Middle of Holy Week
Wear His Armor…thank you, Priscilla Shirer… we all need this
How Jesus Died & Why It’s Everything to Every Broken Heart
Amanda Cortez / Grace Photography
He is Risen! He is Risen indeed
on repeat this week: Reckless Love
… on the night that He went to the Upper Room,
He was ready to go to the lowest
to reach every single one of the bruised & battered.
On the night He wrung sweaty, bloody prayers out of His soul in the garden,
He wanted the heart of us broken and the will of the Father
more than He could stand being without any one of us.
” ‘And on the night He was BETRAYED…
He broke bread & lifted it up & GAVE THANKS.’ (1Cor.11:23)
And, I’m telling you — If Jesus can give thanks IN THAT?
Then, even in this busted & hurting world, we can look to Him
& give thanks in EVERYTHING.
[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.
March 30, 2018
How Jesus Died & Why It’s Everything to Every Broken Heart
“Jesus died crying. Jesus died of a broken heart.
Those words were still warm on His cracked lips: “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”
The movement of a life of faith is always toward answering that singular question.
Read the headlines. Read the obituaries. Read people’s eyes. Isn’t the essence of the Christian life to answer that one, nail-sharp question: “God, why in this busted-up world have You abandoned me?”
I can see that question hanging over our farm table, up in the gable, from that framed canvas of a thousand little broken squares of color.
In the semiabstract painting, there’s no tidy pattern, just light and dark bleeding into this subtle suggestion of Jesus hanging on the cross.
He’s hoarse with the begging, for Himself, for us: “God, why have You abandoned me?”
And He surfaces in the patches of color, the broken brushstrokes, the silhouette of Him visible in the chaos—Christ entering all this chaos.
The wound in His side proves that Jesus is always on the side of the suffering, the wounded, the busted, the broken.
And, by God, we’re the hurting beggars begging in all this chaos: ‘Be close to the brokenhearted. Save the crushed in spirit. Somehow make suffering turn this evil against itself, so that a greater life rises from the dark. God, somehow.’
Because Jesus, with His pierced side, is always on the side of the broken.
The wound in His side proves that Jesus is always on the side of the suffering, the wounded, the busted, the broken.
Jesus always moves into places moved with grief. Jesus always seeks out where the suffering is, and that’s where Jesus stays.
And — there’s brokenness that makes a canvas for God’s light to be lavishly splashed across all the darkness.
Because Jesus gets it — Jesus gets it all.
Jesus died crying.”
~excerpt from The Way of Abundance: A 60 Day Journey into a Deeply Meaningful Life
March 29, 2018
When You’re Kinda Sick of Family & Community & People in the Middle of Holy Week
When the kind doctor looked around the circle and said, “Healing happens in community, in circles, around tables,” — I kinda guffawed and rolled my eyes.
I mean, it’s Holy Week and who hasn’t been crucified by Christians?
Who hasn’t mustered up courage to unwrap a bit of their bare heart — only to feel knifed?
Who hasn’t felt ousted by community, felt the community turn into a mob, turn into the judge and jury, felt the community turn into the crowd that pushes you out?
Sometimes the honest feel more intimately acquainted with loneliness than with anyone else.
All our efforts to know more — are really about being known more. What the head knows matters, but how the heart feels known matters more. Who tells you that?
I looked around the women around the circle. Who doesn’t want to be more deeply seen and truly found — and who isn’t deeply afraid of being found out and seen as less than? The thing we want most — to be seen — is the thing we are most afraid of — to be seen and rejected.
It’s Holy Week — ask Jesus.
I sit with that. And let His Truth speak to my deep:
The risk of knowing love — means you have to take the risk of being known — and not loved.
“What if —“ the words kinda burn a bit in my throat, burn a bit like shame, like vulnerability, but I speak them, hoping they can burn down a painful past, burn a way forward. I had turned toward the kind doctor, asked him quietly:
“What if — you don’t feel wanted at the table you’re sitting at?”
You have to name your fears to tame your fears. I don’t blink anything back, just let it come.
And the doctor whispers it quietly, “There is always a table that wants you — if you have enough courage to want to build that table.”
I nodded slowly.
Tables aren’t by chance. Tables are built on purpose.
Community isn’t found. Community is forged.
The woman beside me reaches out and finds my arm and I nod.
You must keep forging community — so that you can keep find healing. Forge community. Find healing.
It is how He made the centre of being:
The healing the soul seeks is found through The Body —- the given body of Christ, and the givenness of the Body of Christ.
****
I light the ring of candles on Maundy Thursday, maundatam Thursday, Thursday of the new mandate, and it burns in all the dark places, that command that Jesus gives of the Last supper:
“A new command I give you: Love one another…
By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.” (John 13:34–35)
There is no being known has a disciple if you aren’t known for your love. I can feel the heat from the ring of flames. They call it that too: Covenant Thursday. Before there can be any real resurrection, there is the call to a covenant of Love — to love the broken, like Christ loves our brokenness. How in God’s holy name does anyone keep the covenant to keep on loving?
In the rising heat of the flames, there’s that wooden silhouette of the hunched Christ dragging that carved cross closer to the agony of Calvary.
And I can’t help but lower myself into a chair at the end of the table, because there He is:
He is Love and He is Beauty, just like this.
Beauty is vulnerability. Beauty risks its heart for love.
Christ bent with that cross, He looks like a bruised reed, a smoldering wick, made strong in the givenness of love.
That little cross-bearing figurine, our Cross-bearing Christ, He is irresistible in the flame and — Beauty is irresistible and He is Beauty and there is the irresistibility of vulnerability.
They say that that the Romans lined the roads with crucifixions as a means to intimidate the masses into submission, that in actual fact, crosses were slammed into the ground and the crucified only hung 6 inches to a foot off the ground, so no traveller could avoid facing the sacrificed and exposed.
Stripped entirely naked, Jesus hung on a cross at almost eye level, unprotected, uncovered, unmasked.
Who can look at Him and not feel the burning ache of incomparable beauty? Beauty is love exposed and vulnerable and surrendered and given and cruciform.
And in that moment — I feel fully seen and known. Jesus knows the terror of a bare heart. Jesus knows that healing only happens in community, by giving our wounds to the wounded and meeting the Wounded Healer in the Body of Christ.
And in that moment, I see and fully know:
Beauty is deformed when it’s formed like invulnerability, like superiority.
Beauty is deformed when it isn’t cruciform.
The most attractive form is cruciform. The best form to build a table is cruciform. The best way you forge community is to form your life cruciform.
How in God’s holy name does anyone keep the covenant to keep on loving?
Lay your heart down. Lay your bare broken heart down on the table.
Fragility and vulnerability are beauty.
Lay your heart down. Lay your bare heart down on the table.
Your vulnerable God stretches His arms out and begs you to live the beauty of vulnerability.
It’s Maundy Thursday and Holy Week and there will be fragile circles and shaky tables and flickering candles and bruised gatherings and broken family and wounded communities.
The way to keep the commandment to love one another is to keep being vulnerable with one another. Love lives given — and the way to keep loving one another is to keep giving our vulnerable hearts to one another.
I try to keep telling myself: Risk being fully known — because it’s the only way to be fully loved.
Accept others’ risk of being fully known —- because this is the only way to fully love.
It’s Holy Week and anyone who’s been crucified by Christians gets to look in the eye of their crucified Lord. The naked God-Man with the nails through His hands knows — He knows the risk of love — and He knows the returns.
The Vulnerable God vulnerably gives Himself — so there’s a returning to our first love.
On Maundy Thursday, Covenant Thursday, I sit with candles and the Cross-bearing Christ and I don’t blink it back.
Jesus sees the most broken parts of our hearts that we are most terrified of being seen — and He keeps His covenant to see us fully— and never leave us, ever.
Because the Vulnerable God was forsaken on the cross — we get to be fully seen with our crosses — and never left, never abandoned, never forsaken. This is the covenant we can know and we can give — so we are known as His.
‘I fully see you — and I will never leave you.’ The broken can covenant this to each other and practice resurrection.
Candles burn —- and there’s a ring of healing light that never leaves but covenants to flame on and on and on, rising higher.
How do you live the beauty of vulnerability?
How do you live seen & known?
How do you live a deeply meaningful and beautiful life?
In sixty vulnerably stories, the tender invitation of The Way of Abundance moves you through your unspoken broken — into the abundant life.
Pick up your own Way to Abundance & start your journey to the abundant life
March 27, 2018
Go Right Ahead during Holy Week: Why You Can Give Up on the Goal of a Beautiful Life
“I wanna buy something.”
That’s what the woman tells me. You can see that look in her eyes, looking for something lovely.
Something new and shiny and lovely, that catches the light in it’s own way.
Sometimes we want to possess lovely things — because we don’t know what love is.
“Something —- beautiful. I want something really beautiful.”
Maybe, you know — like a nicer house?
The kind of house to come home to, that looks like the amazing that is Joanna and Chip whipped it up, the kind that gets pinned as the pinnacle of Pinterest, that has soaring windows and climbing roses.
Or a thatched roof and hobbit doors and a clawfoot tub.
Or how about buying a silky new blouse? Slimming. Shimmering — just a bit.
Draping across the shoulders to make her look like a rising, like an unexpected super nova that stops the unsuspecting dead in their slack-jawed tracks. Just a bit.
She could click through a dozen rabbit-hole sites, she could order a bit here, a bit there, and go ahead and fill a closet full of all the beautiful things. Of lovely things.
Folded stacked quilts and old, wide windowsills full of clay pots of blooming geraniums reaching for spring sun, and fireplaces full of a choir of wavering, dripping candles, and white duvets turned back and always waiting.
When you know love is about self-giving — then maybe the loveliest things are not about self-having?
“Somedays — I just want all the beautiful things. The Instagram white walls and the filtered warm light.” She’d turned, caught light of her own.
“Sometimes —- I wonder if we want a curated stream of beauty to make sense of our chaotic stream of consciousness?”
And I nodded. And then a woman turned to me in a car last week and asked me what I didn’t see coming in the least.
“So what do you want your life to really be about?”
Your life is only a blink long —and then you wake up to the forever that your life chose.
We’d pulled up. She opened the car door. And I sat there, fixed and yet a kind of jarred, broken, staring out the windshield, heart unshielded. Exposed.
What do I really want? What do I want my one life to really be about?
What you most want — is what you most love.
And what you love — is what you’ll ultimately have for all eternity.
And I’m thinking:
Doubtful that you’re thinking of pretty Instagram streams when you’re standing at the river of Life flowing like a torrent of glory from the throne room of God.
Doubtful that you’re stilling hankering for a house remodel when you’re witnessing rag-tattered kids from the slums running into the open arms of the King of Kings standing there at heaven’s gates.
Doubtful that you’re standing at the feet of Jesus, thinking you wanted more threads in your closet when you could have been about more souls in the Kingdom.
But there is no doubt:
Beautiful things can genuinely be made into meaningful things, beautiful can definitely be made into faithful things, and certainly, thank God Almighty, there is no definitive black and white line in the sand between beautiful and meaningful— but there are times when instead of trying to forcefully see the monied-beautiful as ministry-meaningful… we may be better to simply seek out the most meaningful — and see that as the most beautiful.
The most fulfilling lives seek out the meaningful — more than the beautiful. Meaningful over beautiful.
The most fulfilling lives actually see the meaningful — as the most beautiful.
Any craving for the beautiful — is really a craving for Jesus. And Jesus may be found in impressive houses, but He’s powerfully found with the kids pressed into rotting garbage piles, digging for a handful of food.
A tragic life is a life driven by social media likes instead of Christ-motivated loves.
Let all all the house of cards come crashing down so there can be resurrection to greater things.
Because honestly —
It would be a travesty to have a life about collecting pretty things — instead of recollecting that we were made for greater things.
You’re meant for more than collecting sea-shells.
When I light the candles on the lenten wreath, the flames waver.
Let this Holy Week dismantle everything that isn’t about eternal things.
You were meant for greatness — and greatness is about serving greatly.
Jesus carries a cross around the wreath, around the world, around time and the cosmos and at the heart of the universe is a servant bending low, giving away His heart, never doubt this.
The candles are disappearing, melting lower, giving themselves into light.
God doesn’t call you to a convenient life — He calls you to an important life.
A life of importance isn’t found in a life of convenience.
A life of importance sees the importance of giving your life away — to the hidden and the unpopular and the children and the forgotten and knowing this will be remembered by God.
Flames flicker brave, flicker on against the dark.
The most beautiful lives — live for the most meaningful.
You weren’t meant for self-gratification. You were meant for soul greatness.
Never settle for immediate gratification – because you are called to eternal greatness.
I met a woman once who said she wanted to buy what was beautiful.
But then her soul turned around and decided to pay attention to all the broken and beautiful ways to live what is meaningful.
Her people said that she had no idea how she became, over time, more and more like light.
Like all the meaningfulness of light.
What do you do when you wake up and feel like you’re not enough for your life? Or when you look out the kitchen window as dusk falls and wonder how do you live when life keeps breaking your heart?
In sixty vulnerably soulful stories, the highly anticipated The Way of Abundance moves from self-weary brokenness to Christ-focused givenness.
Pick up your own Way to Abundance now & start your journey to the abundant life
March 26, 2018
How to Be Enough, When It Feels Like All Eyes Are on You
One of Sharon Jaynes’s greatest joys is watching God change the lives of women. And oh, how many lives she has seen transformed in 25 years of ministry. With the vulnerability of a friend and the heart of a teacher, Sharon gently encourages and equips women to live fully and without abandon in pursuit of God’s purpose. In her latest book, Enough, Sharon strips away the lies that tell us we aren’t good enough and reminds us we are exactly who the Creator made us to be. Come, take a seat on the farm’s front porch, and join me in welcoming Sharon…
One evening, while on getaway with my husband, Steve and I splurged at a fancy restaurant, complete with a four-man band playing music from the ’40s and ’50s.
We had taken a few ballroom dance lessons, and Steve was itching to see if we could remember the foxtrot.
“Come on, Sharon,” he urged. “Let’s take a spin on the dance floor.”
God isn’t looking for perfect people with perfect children, perfect marriages, and perfect lives.
“No way,” I said. “Nobody else is dancing.
I’m not going to be the only one out there with everyone staring at me. And suppose we mess up? I’d be embarrassed.
It’s been a long time since we’ve practiced, and I don’t remember all the steps. Let’s wait until some other people are out there so we won’t be so conspicuous.”
After a few moments, the first couple took their place on the parquet. They squared their shoulders, pointed their toes, and framed their arms. In one fluid motion they graced the dance floor with perfect dips, sways, turns, and twirls. They looked good, and they knew it.
Nope. I was not going to embarrass myself. I hunkered down in my seat with renewed resolve. I was stuck there. I refused to budge.
Then couple number two joined couple number one. Their steps weren’t quite so perfect, but they looked pretty good too.
“Okay, I’ll go,” I said. “But let’s get in the back corner behind that big ficus tree so nobody can see us.”
Off we went to try to remember the slow-slow-quick-quick of the foxtrot. The whole time I was hoping all eyes were still mesmerized on the polished artistry of couple number one.
As I dared look at the crowd, I noticed they weren’t looking at couple number one, number two, or even wobbly kneed number three.
All eyes were fixed on a fourth couple approaching the dance floor. The husband was in a wheelchair.
He was a middle-aged, slightly balding, large-framed man with a neatly trimmed salt-and-pepper beard.
His dapper attire included a crisp white shirt, a snappy bow tie, and a stylish tuxedo. On his left hand he wore a white glove—I guessed to cover a skin disease.
Men and women who know they are not good enough in their own strength but are incredibly powerful in God’s strength, slay the giants of this world.
With a smiling wife by his side, the couple approached the dance floor with a graceful confidence and fashionable flair.
Suddenly everyone else faded away, and they seemed to be the only two people in the room.
As the band churned out a peppy tune, the blithesome wife held her love’s healthy right hand and danced. He never rose from the wheelchair that had become his legs, but they didn’t seem to care.
They came together and separated like expert dancers. He spun her around as she stooped low to conform to her husband’s seated position.
Lovingly, like a little fairy child, she danced around his chair while her laughter became the fifth instrument in the musical ensemble. Even though his feet never left their metal resting place, his shoulders swayed in perfect time and his eyes danced with hers.
My heart was so moved by this love story unfolding before my eyes that I had to turn my head and bury my face on Steve’s chest so no one would see the tears streaming down my cheeks. As I did, I saw person after person dabbing linen napkins to dewy eyes.
This portrait of love and devotion transfixed even the band members, now misty-eyed as well.
Finally, the music slowed to a romantic melody. The wife pulled up a chair beside her husband’s wheelchair, but facing in the opposite direction. They held each other in a dancer’s embrace, closed their eyes, and swayed back and forth, cheek to cheek.
Surprisingly, I no longer worried about whether anyone was watching me.
I didn’t care if my steps weren’t perfect. I wasn’t even concerned about being compared to and falling short of perfect couple number one.
The Lord spoke to my heart in a powerful way. Sharon, I want you to notice who moved this crowd to tears, He seemed to say. Was it couple number one, with their perfect steps? Or was it the last couple that had no steps at all? No, My child, it was the display of love, not perfection, that moved the crowd. If you obey Me, if you do what I have called you to do, then I will do for you what that man’s wife did for him.
God isn’t looking for perfect people with perfect children, perfect marriages, and perfect lives.
He is not searching for men and women with perfect steps to do great things for Him.
He is looking for courageous believers who will rely on His power to work in and through them to accomplish all He has planned for them to do.
He is scouting for followers who will obey Him regardless of their present fears or past failures.
He is looking for men and women who know they are good enough because of His power working in them and through them.
Simply put, God had sent me a lame man to teach me how to dance.
God chooses to do extraordinary work through ordinary people who will bring glory to His name.
Men and women who know they are not good enough in their own strength but are incredibly powerful in God’s strength, slay the giants of this world.
Sharon Jaynes is an inspirational speaker and Bible teacher. The author of 20 books, her passion is to encourage and empower women to walk in confidence as they grasp their true identity as children of God and co-heirs with Christ. She served for ten years as Vice President of Proverbs 31 Ministries, and is the co-founder of Girlfriends in God, Inc.
Do the voices in your head say you’re not good enough, smart enough, pretty enough…or just not enough, period? It’s time to stop listening to the lies and embrace the truth of who God says you are. Enough will help expose the lies that keep you bogged in shame, insecurity, and inadequacy, and replace those lies with the truth. Increase your confidence and grow your faith when you trade self-defeating thoughts for God’s truth. Today is the day to embrace your incredible worth as a woman who is uniquely fashioned and spiritually empowered—and discover you are Enough.
[ Our humble thanks to Harvest House for their partnership in today’s devotion ]
March 24, 2018
Only the Good Stuff: Multivitamins for Your Weekend [03.24.18]
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:
Austin Prock
Leio McLaren
Davide Cantelli
the earth is truly full of His glory everywhere & it’s worth taking the time to ponder it…
‘Um…. who would have thought that after 14 years, you’d find your lost cat?’
okay, dare you not to smile…or dance along with her? Your weekend kinda needs it…
When It Seems Your Life Is Going Nowhere
oh… so who knew?
Team work for the win this weekend #Inspiring
thank you, Matt Chandler — I cannot stop thinking about this one:
Everyone You Meet Will Live Forever: Evangelism in an Age of Unbelief
you’ve got to meet him: Jory Flemming
profound: Stop asking children these seven questions (and ask these instead)
60 second mini vacation just for you
#BeTheGIFT
The BEST: a restaurant of beautiful people helping beautiful people #BeTheGift #TheWayOfAbundance
“The message is getting passed around, so people will hear it and they’ll take notice of it. My age doesn’t matter in this, it’s the message I’m trying to get across.” #TheWayOfAbundance
Kathie Lee Gifford shares with I Am Second
Esther Havens in Antarctica
Esther Havens in Antarctica
Esther Havens in Antarctica
can you even?!? I went to her wedding — & then she went on a honeymoon that kinda blows my mind
tears at this one: an amazing story of sportsmanship — and character
Post of the week from these parts here
How many hurting, unanswered questions you got banging around in that brave old heart of yours? Yeah, me too.
And then this blazing epiphany of sorts comes along & kinda unlocks a whole lot of those big question marks:
The Seven Questions Your Soul Is Really Asking Even if You Don’t know It —
& how To Surprisingly Find The Real Answers
honestly, we should look up more often #1000Gifts
a short story about music and the human heart
absolutely breathtaking — I only watched more times than I want to confess
Too good to not pass along? TOMORROW ONLY: one amazing sale right here
“What if you really want to live abundantly before it’s too late? What do you do if you really want to know abundant wholeness? This is the one begging question that’s behind every single aspect of our lives—and one that The Broken Way rises up to explore in the most unexpected ways. You could be one of them, one who believes freedom can be found not only beyond the fear and pain, but actually within it.”
The Broken Way Kindle edition only $2.99 tomorrow on Amazon
What do you do when you wake up and feel like you’re not enough for your life? Or when you look out the kitchen window as dusk falls and wonder how do you live when life keeps breaking your heart?
In sixty vulnerably soulful stories, the highly anticipated The Way of Abundance moves from self-weary brokenness to Christ-focused givenness.
Christ Himself broke like bread, giving Himself to us so we might have a lifelong communion with Him. Could it be that our brokenness is also a gift to the world? These tender devotionals dare us to embrace any and all brokenness as a gift that moves us closer to the heart of God.
This gentle book does nothing less than take you on an intimate journey of the soul.
Order Your Way to Abundance Here
believe it: Death is No Loss
on repeat this week: Never Too Far Gone
…sometimes the thing you never would choose for your life, chooses you for a reason. And the thing that you’d never pick? Picks you to become brave.
And sometimes…you get what you need — by walking through what you never wanted – and the thing you never wanted, may turn out to be be the thing you need most.
I hadn’t known but now believe: the thing that may make you fall a bit apart, may be part of what one day holds you a bit together.
And I’m finding that the only way to the abundant life is to accept discomfort in your life. The way to what we want — is often through what we don’t want. Painfully hard things are part of the price of admission to a purposeful, holy life.
But always believe it: Grace can strike when you are in great pain and light you with the greatest hope.
So hang in there! “…we’re not giving up. How could we! Even though on the outside it often looks like things are falling apart on us, on the inside, where God is making new life, *not a day goes by without His unfolding grace.*” 2Cor4MSG
[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.
March 23, 2018
1 of the Very Best & Easiest Family Decisions You Can Ever Make
When Sarah Mackenzie began reading aloud to her children, she could not have known the tremendous gift such a simple act would turn out to be. She’s been reading aloud to her six kids (preschool to high school) ever since, and has spent the last few years chatting with experts, authors, parents, and leaders, discovering how a simple choice to pull a book off a shelf and share it with a child is one of the very best decisions a parent can make. What began as a simple act has turned into a full-blown revolution, as tens of thousands of families all over the world now tune in to Sarah’s weekly Read-Aloud Revival podcast, a show dedicated to helping parents make meaningful and lasting connections with their kids through books. It’s a grace to welcome Sarah to the farm’s front porch today…
When Rebekah Gonzalez was elementary-school-age, her mother, Toni, read aloud Johnny Tremain by Esther Forbes.
Set in Boston during the events leading up to the Revolutionary War, the book tells the story of a fourteen-year-old apprentice silversmith. After Johnny’s hand is disfigured and disabled, he ends up working as a horse-riding messenger for the Sons of Liberty.
As her mother read the book aloud, Rebekah fell fast for Johnny, thoroughly enjoying his adventurous story of loyalty and courage.
The next summer, Rebekah attended VBS and came home each night to talk incessantly about her new best friend, Billy.
Every night, she told her mother about the funny things he had said, how smart he was at Bible memory, his cool T-shirt and stylish hair, his award for Camper of the Day.
Toni wasn’t able to meet Billy until the final day of VBS. When Rebekah called Billy over to introduce him to her mother, Toni received a surprise.
Billy made his way over to Rebekah and Toni, leaning heavily on his walker.
It was only then that Toni realized something: Billy had cerebral palsy. During all of those conversations about her new best friend, Rebekah had never once mentioned it.
That day, Toni noticed that most of Rebekah’s VBS classmates were uncomfortable in Billy’s presence.
When she asked her daughter about the new friendship, Rebekah credited her fictional friend Johnny Tremain, who had taught her what it might feel like to be disabled and therefore different from everyone else.
When we finish the final chapter of a book that has touched us on a deep level and we slip back into our own shoes, we are never quite the same. We’re changed.
We start the book in one place and leave it in quite another—more merciful, more understanding, maybe a little more compassionate than we were before.
Had Rebekah’s mother not read the fictional story of Johnny Tremain to her daughter, that VBS experience might have been rather different—different for Rebekah, and surely different for Billy as well.
What better education can we offer our children than the shaping of their hearts to love others as we have been loved by God ourselves?
Charlotte Mason, a nineteenth-century educator, said as much when she taught that it’s not how much children know that matters—it’s how much they care.
It’s tempting to idolize certain aspects of education. We value good grades, high test scores, elite college degrees, and lucrative careers.
But our obsession keeps us from remembering what education is for.
Education is for love.
Is the main reason we want an excellent education for our children so they can outperform their peers? So they can rank higher, get promoted faster, become more financially successful than their colleagues and friends?
Or do we want our children to become educated so they can follow the two greatest commandments: love God and love one another?
What better education can we offer our children than the shaping of their hearts to love others as we have been loved by God ourselves?
“Above all,” we read in 1 Peter 4:8, “love each other deeply, because love covers over a multitude of sins.”
As Christians, we know our prime task is to love. Jesus Christ made that abundantly clear when he said that the greatest commandment is, “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind,” and then followed it up with a second commandment: “Love your neighbor as yourself.”
Education is at its best when we use it to help our children feel another person’s pain or joy. A good education teaches us—and our children—to love fully and to love well.
It includes the practice of listening—for we must truly listen to others in order to understand them. And it is only by understanding others that we can love them the way we are called to love them.
And so we read Out of the Dust by Karen Hesse and wonder, for the first time, what it must have been like to survive Oklahoma’s Dust Bowl in the 1930’s. We consider life with dirt in every bit of food, settling under our eyelids, lining our beds.
Or we board a ship with Hà, the main character in Thanhha Lai’s Inside Out and Back Again. We become her companion after the Fall of Saigon and see America for the first time through the eyes of a frightened refugee.
We sleep under a bridge on the River Seine with Suzy, Paul, and Evelyne in Natalie Savage Carlson’s The Family Under the Bridge. We learn what it means to be homeless, hungry, and in need.
We experience the Danish resistance through the eyes of ten-year-old Annemarie in Number the Stars. We tremble with fear at the horror of the Nazi occupation and swell with compassion for those who were forced to hide or flee.
We go to school with August Pullman in Wonder by R. J. Palacio, and we find out what it feels like to be disfigured and dismissed by peers. To be shunned.
Education is for love.
Empathy, of course, is only the beginning. We must put legs on that empathy in order for it to become compassion.
We must turn our grief and sadness into love in action.
But stories help us take that first step with our kids.
We read with our children because it gives both them and us an education of the heart and mind. Of intellect and empathy.
We read together because stories teach us how to love.
On the immensely popular Read-Aloud Revival podcast, Sarah Mackenzie helps families all over the world make meaningful and lasting connections with their kids through books. She lives in the Northwest with her husband, Andrew, and their six kids, where she loves to make sure they are well-stocked in the best books she can find.
Sarah’s new book, The Read-Aloud Family: Making Meaningful and Lasting Connections with Your Kids, inspires parents to connect deeply with their children and transform the lives of their kids through the power of story. From a toddler’s wonder to a teenager’s resistance, you’ll discover practical strategies to make reading aloud a meaningful family ritual in your home.
[ Our humble thanks to Zondervan for their partnership in today’s devotion ]
March 21, 2018
The Seven Questions Your Soul Is Really Asking Even if You Don’t know It — & how To Surprisingly Find The Real Answers
It came kinda out of the blue.
Came kinda because I felt blue?
Because I felt old? Felt old and wrinkled and worn and wearing out?
Without any words, everyone everywhere is asking if you love them, without any conditions.
Maybe those words, that question, actually came right then because I was feeling how the children he and I had made together, with the kind hand of the Divine, they were moulting out of their childhoods all around us.
All four of our boys now stand taller than their fine dad. Not one of the men-child I’ve carried and birthed and carried again are less than a strapping 6 feet tall now. Turns out? Parenting children you literally have to look up to– keep you parenting from the best posture of all.
The first two boys I taught how to count and engineer block towers? Are now counting down terms to university graduation and building a dream as a computer engineer.
That third boy with shoulders broader than his dad’s, he’s out seeing the world through a lens and giving me fresh eyes that enlarge this old beat-up heart, and the last boy, the grinning one gunning to be the tallest, he made us dinner last night and the night before that and there’s hardly a day goes by that he doesn’t hug me half a dozen times, kissing me squarely on the top of my head.
Who ever expected living to mean so much joy and so much heart ache? Love and pain are the two chambers of the same heart that pump courage through the aching veins.
They have made me brave, and they have kept me humble, and they have made me white-knuckle cling to the cross because my very sanity and life flat out depended upon it, and the children we have made are always part of our own remaking. Parenting makes you real God-dependent and real honest and velveteen real.
Love and pain are the two chambers of the same heart that pump courage through the aching veins.
And I guess I can just say it — how I have been made velveteen by the years that have been. Our oldest girl’s applying to university medical programs and her love heals a thousand broken places. And our middle girl can do 50 pushups with her sister on her back, and can I just ask all the questions: Where did all the mirage of time go?
Our youngest daughter wrote a row of F’s and E’s on her own yesterday and smirked like she was the cat who’d swallowed a canary — and taken wing.
And it’s my heart that keeps falling as these fledgelings begin to fly. Anyone know? Where did all this glorious time go?
Parenting is about swallowing hard and staying soft — and mastering the art of letting go and holding on and letting come what comes.
I have stumbled hard but I vow I have tried to live it:
Life isn’t about slowing down how fast time goes — it’s about taking the time to slow down your life to enjoy whatever comes.
And I think that’s what I was thinking — about kids and the fleeting brevity of time and all my growing crow’s feet and these wrinkling hands and watching the way the light fell across the fields and how I could feel my aching soul burning right there like an ember in my throat.
That’s when, somewhere between the waiting woods and home, that I turned to him behind the wheel of his Dodge Ram and tried to find the words to even ask:
When all the years make you velveteen, how will your soul be seen?
I just need to know?
I don’t even know how to ask him —
When the years wear me down till I’m only my tender soul, will you still look at me as your one and only?
And maybe I don’t even have to open my mouth and ask the question? Maybe I am always asking the question with my life? Maybe….. without even knowing, we’re asking questions, whose answers we’re feeling without even knowing.
Maybe — everywhere we go, we’re asking these questions silently, and they are silently being answered everywhere we go.
And just before we find ourselves already home, I almost dared to say, what I’m only starting to see:
There are these seven questions a soul is always asking:
Am I looked for?
Am I looked out for?
Am I looked over?
Am I looked down on?
Am I looked at as enough as I am?
Am I looked into because what is in me is priceless to you?
Am I looking up to the way of Abundance — looking up for more grace, more love, more joy, more Jesus?
I turn to him, and realize I didn’t want to ask one question: my whole life has been asking these seven questions.
What we all really are looking for — is someone really looking for us.
I catch my reflection in the truck mirror — and isn’t that it? However we see ourselves being seen, becomes the mirror by which we see the world.
If we see ourselves as seen as not enough — we see everything through a fog of scarcity.
If we see ourselves as seen as more than enough — we see everything with the clarity of abundant security.
How we see ourselves being seen — changes how we see everything. And every single person you meet is looking to see — how you see them.
Am I looked for?
Am I looked out for?
Am I looked over?
Am I looked down on?
Time is short — look into eyes long. I look down at hands looking like my grandmother’s. Look over at him, turning up into our farm laneway.
There is only so much time here. Be all here.
Without any words, everyone everywhere is asking if you love them, without any conditions.
I read his eyes, how all our eyes all asking the same seven questions all the time:
Am I looked at as enough as I am?
Am I looked into because what is in me is priceless to you?
Am I looking up to the way of Abundance — looking up for more grace, more love, more joy, more Jesus?
How we look at each other — is how we love each other. How we look into eyes is how we love each other’s hearts.
Every heart loves deeper — when their eyes linger longer.
And I grab his hand. His smile finds mine — makes mine. We find each other’s eyes.
The hands of the clock can move on — but our eyes don’t ever have to move on.
Our eyes will find each other and remind each other, and by the outrageous grace of God, there is abundantly enough time to make our lives whisper the answer to every single person’s question:
You are looked for,
and you are looked out for,
And you are never looked over,
and you are never looked down on,
and you are always looked at as enough just as you are,
When the years wear you down till you’re only your tender soul, you will still only be beautiful to behold.
and you are looked into because who you are is priceless to me,
and together we will keep looking up to the way of Abundance —
looking up for more grace, more love, more joy, more Jesus.
And a soul can know —
When the years wear you down till you’re only your tender soul, you will still only be beautiful to behold.
After he and I walk up the back walk to the farmhouse kinda rocking and swaying with our nearly grown tribe, his worn hand warms mine, and we linger a bit to watch the blue edges of the sky bleeding into a twilight gold, and for a holy moment the world softens and there is time to look and see.
The abundant way of us all becoming velveteen.
What do you do when you wake up and feel like you’re not enough for your life? Or when you look out the kitchen window as dusk falls and wonder how do you live when life keeps breaking your heart?
In sixty vulnerably soulful stories, the highly anticipated The Way of Abundance moves from self-weary brokenness to Christ-focused givenness.
Pick up your own Way to Abundance now & start your journey to the abundant life
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