Ann Voskamp's Blog, page 126

How to Disciple Passionate – Not Perfect! – Jesus Followers

When Phil and Diane Comer held their firstborn infant in their arms, the truth pressed on their shoulders like the weight of the world: This is a person, a human—we hold the potential to hurt him, to damage him, to turn him away from God. What should we do? How should we do it? What if we make a mistake and this child we love with such ferociousness grows up and decides not to follow Jesus? Now, thirty-seven years later, having raised four children who love and follow Jesus, they realize their job has changed: they are doing all they can to bring hope and practical help to parents whose desire is to raise up the next generation of passionate Jesus followers. It’s a grace to welcome Phil and Diane to the farm’s front porch today…

guest post by Phil and Diane Comer

Our daughter Rebekah was one of those children who really, actually wanted to please.

Like many people-pleasing children, she would sometimes lie in order to avoid getting into trouble.

When she was about ten or so, I caught her in a long, ongoing lie.

Unbeknownst to me, she’d been cheating on her math homework—not because she couldn’t get it, but because she wanted to get it over with and head to the barn behind our house, where she boarded her horse.

Just before we caught the lie, Phil and I had been praying for wisdom, trying to figure out why our happy little girl had suddenly become unhappy and cranky.

That’s what hidden sin does to us, doesn’t it? It makes us miserable!

When I discovered Rebekah cheating, she was devastated, genuinely repentant—even relieved to get it out in the open.

It was one of those rare teachable moments—we get just a few of them when we’re raising our kids.

Rebekah’s heart in that moment was wide open and vulnerable. Tears flowed down her cheeks. We sat on the front porch and spent a good long time talking about failure.

About Paul saying in Romans 7:18-19: “For I know that good itself does not dwell in me, that is, in my sinful nature. For I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out. For I do not do the good I want to do, but the evil I do not want to do—this I keep on doing.”

I didn’t punish her.

Instead I just held my little girl as she cried.

I told her all about God’s astounding grace—that God covers her sin. That freedom is just one step of repentance away. That He welcomes her with open arms, failure and all.

And that: The way of grace is not about following the rules perfectly, but about coming back to Jesus over and over again and saying, Without You I can do nothing. I can’t even be honest.

I watched Rebekah’s faith become real that day on our front porch. I watched her fall in love with her Savior. I saw her sweet, Sunday-school faith progress to a real, vibrant, going-after-God kind of faith that would hold her close to Him in the years ahead.

Don’t be afraid of your people’s failures!

Just like Paul and Peter and Jacob and David, mistakes can be the very realities that bring them into an authentic faith of their own.

It was Albert Einstein who observed that, “In the middle of every difficulty lies an opportunity.”

Of course we want to guide our people around the quicksand of habitual sin, but, even more, we need to introduce them to a Redeemer who can take the worst about us and turn us into people who are all about Him.

Be alert to those moments of vulnerable brokenness, and show your people the way of God’s amazing grace.

Teach them the beautiful truth of Romans 8:1: “Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.”

No condemnation! No more shame!

Remind your children of what they may not yet understand, while you tell them what John Lawrence discovered:  “Greatness does not consist of not making mistakes, but in what we do with them.” 

You’re not trying to disciple perfect people, you are trying to raise godly people— people who love God with all their hearts and who are following hard after Jesus.

But, you might protest, shouldn’t godly people be especially well behaved with stellar attitudes and high standards?

What is a passionate Jesus follower anyway?

Rather than a one-size-fits-all-definition, let’s continue the Rebekah’s story. Fast forward about six years. Rebekah was seventeen by then, with a summer job at a coffee shop.

I woke up at four-thirty in the morning and noticed a light on down the hall. I thought maybe one of the kids was sick, so I hurried out of my own warm bed to investigate.

There sat Bekah, propped up in bed, reading her Bible.

When I asked her what in the world she was doing up when she didn’t need to be at work for another hour, she said: “I just can’t go in there without this time with the Lord. It’s harder than you know, Mom. I need this.”

She was delving into God’s Word because she personally felt the need.

My girl wanted Jesus.

It was all I could do not to dance my way back to my bedroom!

 

Phil and Diane Comer founded Westside: A Jesus Church, a church filled with young families in Portland, Oregon. They went on to launch Intentional: Raising Passionate Jesus Followers conferences. Phil and Diane have been married for nearly forty years and have four grown children and a growing cadre of grandchildren.

Raising Passionate Jesus Followers is a manual full of practical, biblically based guidelines that parents will be able to turn to again and again through each stage of their children’s development. Starting at birth, into grade school, through the daunting teenage years, to launching them into college, and finally letting go, this book contains the why’s and the how’s parents need. This book will serve as an invaluable resource for any parent whose greatest longing is to shepherd their children into a vibrant faith in God.

[ Our humble thanks to Zondervan for their partnership in today’s devotion ]

Tired of a Hard Place? When You’re Caught Between God & a Hard Place [Brutally Honest Psalm #5]

Don’t go telling us that storms are the only blasted things that get stuck in place.

Don’t think for a moment that there aren’t every day places that feel like God-forsaken places.

Don’t blithely speak from your easy place to all us between God and a brutally hard place.

And for God’s sake and the sake of all things holy and hurting: Don’t go around slapping saccharine cliches on the sting of things, denying the gale force winds that the exhausted just have to keep facing.

You ever got sick and tired of life bruising and banging you up when everyone else is just moving up?

You ever got sick and tired of of wanting more, only to be left just wanting?

You ever woke up alone again? Ever walked through the door to a chilled emptiness again? Ever numbingly exhausted with putting one foot in front of the other and acting like everything’s fine?

You ever been desperate for some Voice in the universe to just say bloody Yes to you for once?

Levi Voskamp
Levi Voskamp
Levi Voskamp
Levi Voskamp
Levi Voskamp

Dreams and hopes and plans and relationships can get furiously stuck and the constant winds of things can beat you down into a cynical hopelessness and you don’t have to pretend for a minute otherwise.

Sometimes the place you find yourself is the place where you want someone to come find you — because you feel bitterly lost and forgotten and searching and wishing someone was searching for you.

It’s the God honest, truth that all the honest will tell you: Brokenness affronts us no matter what’s in front of us, pain accompanies us at every turn, suffering stalks us like all the praying are prey. Whatever place we’re in, we’re in a hard place.

It’s a tenderly raw truth: Suffering was promised to us in the Garden of Eden and suffering was experienced with and for us in the Garden of Gethsemane — never doubt that Christ is ultimately the most courageous — and the definition of existence is suffering because existence is love.

Love and Life and Living is suffering, and the sooner we embrace this, the sooner we feel God’s embrace.

Don’t think we don’t need to know the answers:

Where do you find peace of mind — to face the place you’re in?

Where do you find the courage to face the place you’re in?

Where in the world do you not have to be brave? What place let’s you place your courage aside?

You can find yourself in a place that feels like you’re clinging exposed and unprotected to the sheer insanity of life and how do you be brave enough to be?

“Courage is not simply one of the virtues, but the form of every virtue at the testing point, which means, at the point of highest reality. A chastity or honesty or mercy which yields to danger — will be chaste or honest or merciful only on conditions. Pilate was merciful — until it became risky,” writes C.S. Lewis.

Courage births all virtue. Courage mothers everything good in the world. Without courage, everything good, in us and in the world, stillbirths.

Brave is more than a good feeling. Brave is the place where there is good. You’re in a good place the moment you’re being good and brave.

Courage, Braveheart, courage.

Don’t doubt that this is hard when it hurts, and it hurts because it is hard, and don’t let that change the brave burning in your bones.

Do you dare believe that the place you’re in — is a place where God’s moved in? You never have to be brave alone.

Because the truth is:

Find a place that you don’t need to be brave, and you’ve found a place that doesn’t need God.

Needing courage is another way of saying Christ is needed.

This lets you breathe:

When you’re in Christ, it doesn’t matter what place you’re in. Christ is a table for your days and a home for your soul, He is open arms and open door for your weary ways and He is a roof for your hounding storms and when you don’t feel shielded in a cruel world, Christ is your every- place embrace and your always safe place.

When you’re between God and a hard place, it’s God’s presence that transforms every hard place. Presence transforms place.

When you’re between God and a hard place — turning toward His face changes the place. Place turns to grace when turned toward His face.

When you’re between God and a hard place — press closer into Him and let the warmth of His beating heart keep yours soft.

Wherever God has you — you can have as much of God as you ever wanted.

Wherever God has you, you can have God.

This is always the greatest saving grace.

Whatever place you’re in is a place of God. And when you’re in a place of God, you cannot displace your courage. Christ is for you, with you, in you!

You can’t be courageous unless you first have courage — and Christ is all your courage.

Courage is found in places where there is more in joy in the presence of Christ — than discouragement is found in the present moment. Dare you find enough joy in the presence of Christ, to be courageous in the present moment?

You’ve got this — because Grace has you and Courage is in you and Christ is with you, so a tender and brazen joy could be even in this place.

And a hard place returns to a place of courage. This is how we lodge in His heart and breathe.

 

 

Related:

How to Really Not Lose Hope in Hard Times Instead of Just Faking Hope (Brutally Honest Psalm #4)

If Your Faith Struggles Waiting For God to Make All Things New

Jesus came to earth and, through His cross and His grave, set everything right. But He left many things unfixed for the moment, things we cannot expect to change. Christine Hoover has lived practically her entire life trying to avoid or fix what Jesus left unfixed, figuring if she tried just a little bit harder, took firmer control, prayed harder, or willed up just a bit more faith, she’d finally wrestle her life into order. Perhaps, she thought, by doing so, she could bypass pain. But to bypass pain is to bypass the beauty of redemption; it’s to bypass God, something she learned soon enough. In her new book, Searching For Spring: How God Makes All Things Beautiful in Time, Christine reminds us that we aren’t meant to be completely fulfilled on this earth. We are instead meant to be wait-ers in this perpetual winter, waiting to see with our eyes how God is turning all things beautiful. It’s a grace to welcome Christine back to the farm’s front porch today…

guest post by Christine Hoover

In the middle of January, the days are short; pitch-black darkness descends before I’ve even finished preparing dinner.

The heater kicks on often, and on the days when I can’t escape the chill, I stand over the floor grates and feel the warm air pushing up through my wool socks.

The excitement over rediscovering the new scarf I tucked away the previous winter has long waned, the overcast days and bare trees fill me with hunger for the sun and for color.

In early March, I will stand at the kitchen window, feet on the floor grate, searching for signs of spring.

Our souls know this life, a hand-me-down from Adam and Eve, as a type of winter, as a searching and even groaning for spring. We long for release from barrenness; we long for growth and renewal when all we see around us is death.

Last fall, with winter coming on the horizon, I collapsed in tears in my closet.

One moment I’d been putting away clean laundry and the next I was on my knees, crying for reasons I couldn’t understand.

My body felt heavy, my tears uncontrollable, because I was weary, the kind of weariness you feel in your bones.

My life, in perpetual motion, came to a crashing halt—against a wall it felt—and my heart cracked on impact.

Spilling out through its cracks were thought patterns and beliefs I hadn’t known were there—thoughts and beliefs that had taken me on travels so far from peace and rest I’d forgotten my true home.

Echoes of Adam and Eve’s uttered words had passed from my own lips: Perhaps I am my own god. Perhaps I know better what is beautiful and good.

Suddenly, in pieces on the ground, I could see it all for what it was. A type of spiritual death had come, and I’d made the wreckage myself.

I’d believed I was a messiah, a savior.

I’d believed keeping people happy was primary; I’d fashioned them into my created gods.

I’d believed I needed to be strong at all times and without physical limits, as only God Himself is.

At the realization that my life had become joyless, I sobbed tears onto the closet floor.

I’d lost sight of beauty.

Levi Voskamp

Levi Voskamp

For the days following, I couldn’t seem to find it. Something dramatic had occurred but I couldn’t yet see what it was. In that darkness, I felt despair over the state of my soul. I felt deserted by God, for no truth comforted.

I wondered if I was going crazy.

I am not alone in my winter.

All of us, at some point in our lives, come to a place where the reality of our existence is so stark, so dark, we wonder if we’ll ever know joy again.

Must this be the depth to which Adam and Eve fell after knowing perfect contentment? The ground under them must have groaned as sin infected all of creation. We, too, as products of that infestation, live with similar groaning.

Though we are wretched in our sin and creation groans under the burden, the residual beauty speaks just as it did at the dawn of time.

All of it still speaks about God—He exists, He is powerful, He is active, and He is beautiful. Even the decay of our groaning world communicates about Him.

Fall turning to winter: death comes for each of us.

Winter itself: a large portion of life is waiting by faith.

Winter turning to spring: there is a very real hope for new life after death.

There is a time for death, but there is also a time for birth. Our hearts, though heavy, need not despair.

We, too, are residual beauty from the beginning. The design of our physical bodies—just our skin alone, without seam or hem and able to renew itself in time—tells of our first parents.

Our hearts, though sickened and shriveled by sin, are locked in a time when creation was not yet marred— we are beauty seekers and beauty creators as Adam and Eve were.

We still carry in ourselves the image of God, and our creativity and search for unseen realities still compel us forward.

Creation, in other words, began the persistent drumbeat that continues to this day. We must bend our ears to hear what it speaks of God, especially as we endure this long, cold winter.

The lizard with severed tail able to grow a new one, a sea star with severed arm able to regenerate what was lost, a forest taken out by fire able to start anew, a body that has lost blood able to restore its supply.

What do these natural occurrences say to each of us who come with bended ear?

God is still creating beauty.

In fact, He is creating now a beauty that didn’t exist at the earth’s birth but that only began after Adam and Eve’s devastating decision.

It is the beauty of redemption, and because God is still creating, He is at this very moment weaving this beauty in us.

What a thought. God is currently revealing His greatest artistic accomplishment, and we ourselves are the medium.

Are we seeking?

All may seem lost, but, in fact, the past tells us there is unfolding beauty to behold in the present, beauty that will send us to our knees with arms raised like the apple trees: if there is a time to die, there will be a time of rebirth as well.

I discovered this myself after a few days of unexplainable tears, of giving myself to physical rest and crying out to God in repentance and sorrow over where I’d traveled.

I recognized that the wall I’d run into had been put there by God Himself. He hadn’t deserted me at all; He loved me enough to carefully restore my joy.

He also wanted me to know His beauty once again and how much he wanted to create new beauty in me.

To get there, I would need to engage the process—the painful, wringing process of repentance and change. From death to new life.

I clung to the belief that God can bring beauty from the ashes, that my faith and obedience could be the soil from which He would one day produce pleasant fruit.

Mostly, I clung to the belief that God is the Artist-Creator, writing the beauty of redemption in my life.

All my other hopes had shattered, but this one remained.

 

Christine Hoover is a pastor’s wife, mom, speaker, and the author of From Good to Grace, Messy Beautiful Friendship, and The Church Planting Wife. She has written for The Gospel Coalition, Desiring God, and Christianity Today. 

In Searching for Spring, Christine Hoover takes you on a treasure hunt for beauty in both familiar and unexpected places. She tells us what God’s spoken to her in her own pain: His loving eye is right now on the broken-down, the ones who know beyond all knowing how spiritually poverty-stricken they are. If that is you, He has so much to say, and it all begins with, “Blessed are you.” Because the beauty of His grace and truth can richly fill the emptiness in your poverty. He only asks you to shift your eyes from tangible pain to an invisible hope. If you are in the midst of suffering, if you find your faith withering, if you are questioning whether God is at work–or even present–as you wait for something in your life to become beautiful, this book will be a welcome reminder that God never stops his redemptive work . . . and that there is a time for everything under heaven.

[ Our humble thanks to Baker for their partnership in today’s devotion ]

Only the Good Stuff: Multivitamins for Your Weekend [03.03.18]

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:  

Jeremy Bishop 
Pablo Acevedo
Nitish Meena

come and exhale? the whole earth is full of His glory….

15+ Creative Online Classes to Spark Your Imagination

we gathered ’round this one: made entirely with Legos

The Nester

You’re invited! We’re doing it again, a seasonal virtual open house!

Show up and share your home with a community of imperfectionists, spring-celebrators and pretty-layer-lovers. To join in, simply visit here for more info. #MyCozySpringHome

it would be my joy to have you come next month!

she’s learning that you don’t always have to fit in – love her heart here

how studying maps helped this boy with autism in the most unbelievable way

thinking this one may bring a smile? and maybe a tear too…

Praying this Lent over these tenderly piercing words from Scott Sauls. Move us all, Lord:  

love, love, love: Beauty out of brokenness right here

Pastor gives congregant new life with kidney donation: “This is what love looks like” 

come & see what happens every day in the work of the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association

once homeless? he’s now a doctor: “my motivation was my dream” 

this young man understands how time is short – more than most

beautiful in so many ways: this brave 11-year-old with cancer, inspires Stanford’s basketball players

you are never too far gone – you are deeply loved. maybe share this one with a friend? powerful story here…

When this school realized many kids wouldn’t have anyone to attend a breakfast with dad event, a local pastor stepped in to help. He never imagined how many men would show up after his plea for help. 

The Organizing Secret No One Tells You — That Can Change Any Life

THIS: such beautiful message from Ann Graham Lotz at her father’s funeral on Friday

Esther Havens for Africa New Life

Post of the week from these parts here

… I kinda sat up a bit straighter and leaned in when he said it:

how to get the best seats in the house every time– and why it’s okay to want the best seats: Lent Week 2

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 but exquisitely profound book does nothing less than take you on an intimate journey of the soul.  Pre-Order Your Way to Abundance Here

Free for you
 The 40-Day Perpetual Beatitude Lenten Calendar &  The Keep Company with Christ Church Calendar are free for you

Just let us know right here, about your pre-Order of The Abundant Way, a 60-Day Journey into a Deeply Meaningful Life — and we will slip these 2 unique calendars, (and the bonuse 12 Month Intentional Acts of Givenness “Be The GIFT” calendar) into your inbox for your own journey into a deeply meaningful life.

102-year-old Ida Keeling experienced much of America’s history through her running career. Watch her testimony and be encouraged by her enduring faith

beautiful hearts, beautiful story: “to these kids, this feels out of this world to have a family”



perspective: never, ever give up

Break free with the tender beauty of The Broken Way & Be The Gift …   Want the gift of light breaking into all the broken places, all the places that feel kinda abandoned?

These pages are for you. It’s possible — abundant joy is always possible, especially for you.

And if you grab a copy of Be The Gift?  We will immediately email you a link to a FREE gift of THE WHOLE 12 MONTH *Intentional* Acts of Givenness #BeTheGIFT Calendar to download and print from home or at your local print shop!  Just let us know that you ordered Be The Gift  over here.

You only get one life to love well.

Pick up Be The Gift & live the life you’ve longed to

on repeat this week: Come to the Table

[ Print’s FREE here: ]

…in the wait, whatever you lose, don’t lose heart — you never lose what lasts forever. You’ve got to believe it: whatever is being lost momentarily, more is being gained eternally.

In the wait, if you shift the way you see — and see that the wait could make you into the person you’ve been waiting to become.

If you’re waiting on God — do what waiters do: serve.

Break free of your comfort zone and do something, touch someone, give something, help someone, pray for someone, serve someone, #betheGIFT for someone. You can’t be a world changer until you *serve.* In serving, you are served a feast of what you’re longing for. Because the One who loves you steadfastly, stood fast at the cross for you, so now stand fast for Him.

“Each of you should use whatever gift he has received to serve others, faithfully administering God’s grace in its various forms… Be generous with the different things God gave you, passing them around so all get in on it: if words, let it be God’s words; if help, let it be God’s hearty help.” 1Peter4:10 NIV, MSG.

[excerpted from our little Facebook family … come join us each day?]

‪ Dare to fully live!

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. 

how to get the best seats in the house every time– and why it’s okay to want the best seats: Lent Week 2

W

hen you hear how the old lady tried to jockey those boys of hers to get the cushy seats right next to the Man — it’s hard not to roll your eyes.

I mean — who just flat out says it, and to none other than the Holiest Himself:  “Give your word that these two sons of mine will be awarded the highest places of honor in your kingdom, one at your right hand, one at your left hand.”

Who’s the bullying she-bear audacious enough to go demanding the highest honour award for her old mama-boys?

In the early morning dark, the black coffee in my hand is a fare bit easier to swallow down right then, than the Words audibly coming from the cranked speaker on my phone. This frozen old world’s thawing slow, sap running in the woods, and Lent could liquefy stony, hard places.

I set the mug at the edge of the counter and listen like it’s this banged up old ticker’s  being tapped.

But before I wrap my hand back around the steaming mug, it’s rising like this incense of truth that turns around everything I’ve ever thought of this scene from the Old Book:

Is our longing to move up in the world, really about wanting to be moved closer to Jesus?

Is all our striving to climb higher up status ladders really about wanting to sit closer to Jesus?

We all just long to belong next to Him.

Resource: Lent Wreath available here
Levi Voskamp
Hyatt Moore

Resource: Lent wreath available here
Levi Voskamp

And the next Words resonate kind of tinny from the phone, kind of hauntingly in the inner chambers. The God-Man’s eying up all His rabble riled up over the chutzpah of these two Zebedee brothers and their brassy mama and He says it to soothe us all:

“Whoever wishes to be great among you must be your servant and whoever wishes to be first among you must be slave.’’

The struggle to get our life together is how the enemy of our soul guarantees we struggle to give our life away.

I move the cup to my lips and drink this, the coffee, down, and hardened depths can kinda dissolve into a torrent of clarity:

Wanting to be first makes you a slave to the tyranny of the crowd forever.

But serving the ways of Christ makes you first forever.

Greatness is a function of givenness.

And I turn, there at the kitchen counter, strewn with crumbs from last night.

The struggle to get our life together is how the enemy of our soul guarantees we struggle to give our life away.

Smack dab in the very centre of our barn beam farm table, is the grainy Lenten wreath, with that wooden likeness of the God-Man dragging the Cross.

Something jockeys abruptly in this old lady’s soul:

The call is never to follow the way of the bigger and better to the finer and greater.

The call is solely to Follow Him — and it’s a Cross that always follows anyone who truly follows Him.

More of your own soul dies if you think that the call is anything less than to come pick up a cross and die into the freedom living given.

The coffee cup in my hand’s been poured right out.

*******

These beat up, dog-eared cards lay at the edge of the counter, my Lenten signposts for the next handful of weeks, for this go around the calendar.

Because, yeah, there ain’t one of us who is honest who wouldn’t say:

Every day, we have to find our way, and every way has to find its road, and every road has to find its signs.

These Beatitudes are my signs, a kind of guideposts for embattled and bruised days, a true north when the landscape keeps changing under my feet.

I unashamedly finger them in my pocket a thousand times a day.

Levi Voskamp
Hyatt Moore
Resource: Lent Wreath available here
Esther Havens for Africa New Life
Hyatt Moore
Levi Voskamp
Esther Havens for Africa New Life
Resource: Lent Wreath available here
Esther Havens for Africa New Life

Do not ask what is wrong with this world.

Ask where are those living out the Beatitudes in this world.

I carry those cards around, wearing the ink off, like maybe the ultimate in osmosis could be a reality, right there in the pocket of these ripped jeans:

“Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted.”

“Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth. Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be satisfied.”

What had that fine old preacher man from across the great pond said?

“He came… that you and I might live the Sermon on the Mount…

If only all of us were living the Sermon on the Mount, [the world] would know that there is dynamic in the Christian gospel;

They would know that this is a live thing;

They would not go looking for anything else.

We are all meant to exemplify everything that is contained here in these Beatitudes…

We are all of us meant to conform to its pattern and to rise to its standard.” ~ Martyn Lloyd-Jones

The wooden figurine of Jesus hauling that cross on His back, it’s back lit in the early morning candlelight. He answers the call not with cheap words, but with the literal cruciform shape of His given life.

Rise to this: The only way any of us should ever conform is to conform to being cruciform.

And what did the Cruciform one say but, Lucky are the poor, and those who mourn, lucky are the meek and the right-hungerers. “When Jesus says, “Blessed are the poor,” — what He’s doing is summarizing at least 200 very direct (in some cases very extensive) places in the Old Testament where the poor are discussed. Two hundred, at least,” Tim Keller posits.

The morning candles flicker and this busted up heart of mine, it just keeps slow thawing and there it is, across times and trials, the reverberating question:

“Where have we any command in the Bible, laid down in stronger terms, and in a more peremptory urgent manner, than the command of giving to the poor?” The timeless theologian Jonathan Edwards rings across ages.

And the dawn clearly keeps coming up through the dark, Edwards’ one question bringing clarity:

Nothing is clearer in Scripture than you get to come closer to Christ by coming closer to the poor.

Nothing is more clearly noted in Scripture than notably giving to the poor. Nothing’s more incapable of refusing, than a Christian refusing to help the poor.

Caring for the poor is absolutely not optional for the Christian — caring for the poor is absolutely elemental for the Christian.

The ink from the Beatitudes could rub off on even the likes of me, becoming the form and shape of what runs through the veins.

******

I met him first more than four years ago,  a man under the African sun, a man who was born to refugees, a Rwandan exiled to Uganda. A refugee of violence, Charles told me in this rich baritone, how prayed for purpose, and he persevered into spiritual headwinds, and he planted a church that grew to more than 2,000 and the refugee from Rwanda soon found himself invited to seminary at Multnomah University in Portland, Oregon.

Though flung far across this tilted and spun world, studying the serving ways of Jesus — Charles brims when he gets to this part in the story — he carried in his heart the faces of the orphaned, widowed and homeless of the Rwandan genocide, and he and his wife, Florence, scrounged and squirrelled every penny to begin sponsoring vulnerable children to attend school in Rwanda.

Levi Voskamp
Esther Havens for Africa New Life
Resource: Lent Wreath available here
Esther Havens for Africa New Life
Hyatt Moore
Esther Havens for Africa New Life
Levi Voskamp
Esther Havens for Africa New Life
Resource: Lent Wreath available here

The man knew:

How you are, is not where you are — and how you could become is not where you might be now.

Caring for the poor is absolutely not optional for the Christian — caring for the poor is absolutely elemental for the Christian.

A handful of weeks ago, I had stood again with Pastor Charles, who now has his doctorate through Gordon Conwell Seminary, stood with this anointed refugee on that red Rwandan soil, stood in the centre of the ministry that birthed from his heart, Africa New Life, and witnessed the now almost 10,000 marginalized and oppressed children sponsored and on track towards a high school graduation, vocational training, and university graduation.

On a Sunday morning, I sat in a pew of the church Pastor Charles planted at Africa New Life, and this anointed man of God, this refugee who was welcomed Home, he preached it like a man tapping the very centre of Being and what he said has gathered and collected me for weeks:

“Giving is God’s provision for you.”

Giving is God’s provision for you — because when you give lavishly to those in need — you lavishly get more of Christ whom you need.

And I had sat up a bit straighter and leaned in when he said it, because only when you genuinely listen do you get to genuinely live. Pastor Charles just straight-up read the Word:

“Remember: A stingy planter gets a stingy crop; a lavish planter gets a lavish crop.” The Bible, 2 Corinthians 9:6-9

And now, how many weeks later and ten thousand kilometres across the world, in the dawning dark of the second week of Lent, the seeds that Pastor Charles faithfully sowed on a humid Sunday morning, grows into divine yield within and the source of everything can flow free:

Giving is God’s provision for you — because when you give lavishly to those in need — you lavishly get more of Christ whom you need.

Giving is God’s provision for you — to free you from fake best things and give you the actual best seats closer to Him and His heart.

Giving is God’s provision for you — to give you more of the giving heart of God.

And I nod slowly, agreeing and aligning with His ways of abundance, and there are chairs around that barn-beam table that need pushing in and we can all find our place:

It’s the servants who are served the closest seats.

It’s the Gifters who get the best seats in the house — the seats closest to people, to God, to joy.

It’s the Givers who get the seats closest to Christ, closest to kind people, closest to the kind of people they themselves want to become.

Blessed are the Givers for they’re get the blessing of His presence — the gift every brave soul wants most.

And mid-way through the second week of Lent, this old lady takes her seat before Him who makes room at the table, and there are prays for ways to take what is given and break it pass it down to those waiting for His grace —

– and her eyes and life settle on the givenness of God.

 

 

130 million girls right now — are being denied an education. And every one of those girls counts. You could be one of the blessed & lucky ones who get to put one of these girls into school.

You could be one of the blessed & lucky ones who get to stand with the girls of Africa and help them dream. When we refuse to be part of helping girl’s dream — how do we refuse to be like Christ?

This is our chance: When we help a girl dream — we live woken.

How to know the Friendship & Love of God Even in Our Darkness

For the first half of Jack Deere’s Christian life, he thought loving God meant obeying God. He did not consider that it is possible to obey someone without loving that person. Then when he was 38, he heard a pastor give a sermon on “passion for God.” Jack had never heard that phrase. The pastor used no notes for his sermon, only an open Bible. He did not proclaim a doctrine he had studied. He revealed the power of a truth that lived in his heart. And for the first time in his life, Jack wanted the spiritual life he saw in another pastor. That night, Jack began the consuming quest of becoming a friend of Jesus. It’s a grace to welcome Jack to the farm’s front porch today…

guest post by Jack Deere

I didn’t know it would feel this good to be a grandfather.

On Memorial Day 2012, I listened to my son Stephen read my granddaughter Rachel a bedtime story. She was two months old.

My wife, Leesa, stretched out on the floor of their loft. Stephen opened the book so Rachel could see the pictures.

He read the words using different accents. He had to fight off his own laughter. Rachel giggled and touched the pictures.

I remembered Leesa at twenty-two as she held her infant son Stephen, sang to him, and prayed over him.

She was enraptured with love for her baby boy, confident that at last she walked in the purposes for which she had been created, and thankful to the God who made her what she always and only ever wanted to be—a wife and a mother.

I saw that young mother read stories to her infant son, not out of obligation, but because it made her happy to read to her baby boy.

While I built my kingdom, Leesa built a home in Stephen’s heart for God.

Now Rachel will grow up loved, delighted in, feeling beautiful and smart, with her dignity and defenses intact.

Levi Voskamp

Levi Voskamp

In East of Eden, John Steinbeck wrote that we all have one story, and it is the same story: the contest of good and evil within us. Any honest person knows that they are losing this contest.

As a child, I could lie to others, but hadn’t yet developed the sophistication to lie to myself.

I knew my bad deeds would always push down the scale.

So I chose to enjoy my darkness rather than feel guilty about it.

Then I discovered that Christ had already borne the weight of my sin, and that once I accepted His gift, He would never leave.

Yet Saint Peter’s scales lingered. In church I was told that as a Christian, my good deeds eventually would outweigh the bad. Then I preached versions of the same message.

But the evidence always contradicted the promise.

My life stayed messy. I never stopped needing God’s mercy.

At the end of his life, the apostle Paul claimed that he was the chief of sinners (1 Timothy 1:15). He didn’t write, “I was the chief of sinners,” but “I am the chief of sinners.”

The closer Paul drew to the Light of the world, the more evil he saw in his life.

I am no great believer. But I can confess with Paul, “In my flesh dwelleth no good thing” (Romans 7:18 KJV). I am more aware of the enormity of evil in me than I’ve ever been. This is one way I can tell that the light within me is expanding.

* * *

For years, I have besieged heaven with thousands of prayers that seemed to go unanswered. I can sometimes sense the Spirit of God hovering.

When I lusted after material wealth, He turned my gaze toward eternity.

When I sought large crowds, He brought me humility.

When I tried to change my wife, He taught me how to love and understand her.

What I really needed all along, more than anything, was to see myself through His eyes.

* * *

It is Saturday, June 11, 2012. The flicker of dawn creeps into my study.

I want to see God’s beauty. But I’m also trying to find something to say.

My Sunday stage waits for me. As usual, my motives are mixed.

I open my Bible to Psalm 27:4.

One thing I ask from the Lord,

this only do I seek:

that I may dwell in the house of the Lord

all the days of my life,

to gaze on the beauty of the Lord

and to seek him in his temple.

These six lines are the essence of all of King David’s psalms.

So on this morning, I tell God I want to gaze on His beauty.

But I’m not sure how to go about it. I’m not sure I know how to define His beauty.

I survey some of Aquinas’s modern disciples and cobble together this definition: beauty is a mysterious harmony that dazzles us.

But after a couple of hours, I am not dazzled. I have searched in all the usual places: Bibles, lexicons, concordances, and commentaries.

But this morning, God has not hidden His beauty in books.

I walk out of my study and lie down on the guest bed. I vow to stay prostrate until God dazzles me.

Maybe my persistence will impress Him.

For more than an hour, I rummage through my history with God.

I recall acts of His mercy, goodness, and forgiveness, but I am left undazzled.

My smartphone pings with an email. I pull the phone out of my pocket.

There is a video. I forget my vow. The video is eighteen seconds long. I watch it over and over. Every time I push Play, I think: This is the last time I will watch the video. I need to get back to God.

Then I push Play again.

On the screen, Rachel lies on her back and giggles. Her mother, Lindsay, and Lindsay’s mother, Melanie, are both off camera, saying, “Say gou, Rachel. Say gou.”

Rachel wiggles about and lifts her hands high in the air. She smiles and says, “Gou,” her first syllable at two months old.

It is one moment among millions that will make up her existence, and yet I want to remain in this moment for as long as possible.

I keep watching and watching. I laugh at myself. In my laughter is the gentle whisper.

This is how I feel about you, it says.

I shake. I reach for the keyboard.

My chest heaves with joy.

He has taken an angry ten-year-old boy and turned him into an old man awash in gratitude for a child’s gibberish.

When at last I can speak, I say, “Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.”

 

 

Jack Deere is a teacher, writer, and lecturer who speaks on friendship with God and on the gifts of the Holy Spirit. The author of several bestselling books, his new memoir is entitled Even in Our Darkness: A Story of Beauty in a Broken Life. 

Every once in a while, a gripping book comes along that is profoundly unmasked, unsettling, and unforgettable. I couldn’t stop reading Even in Our Darkness. It is one devastating, thought-provoking, and needful read that will change the landscape of your soul. An authentic story of the Christian life, Even in Our Darkness will serve as your own guide in overcoming life’s disappointments and learning to hear God speak in unbelievable ways.

[ Our humble thanks to Zondervan for their partnership in today’s devotion ]

The Organizing Secret No One Tells You — That Can Change Any Life

Just after midnight, I’m standing there in the kitchen swigging back a bit of a bottle.

The house that looks like a stampede of wild horses had rode through mad sometime after dinner.

I have no idea why there are several splayed dolls, tangled balls of yarn and the innards of some mechanical car remains strewn across the living room floor  — with a gentle dusting of allen wrenches everywhere.

I’m not saying that the whole thing wouldn’t drive a woman to drink whatever she found in the fridge.

I’m just saying that a swig or two (okay, it was more like four or five) from that slender necked bottle of pure maple syrup was sweet relief there in the dark.

I’ll deal with the mess in the morning.

Levi Voskamp

Levi Voskamp

The clock ticks likes a huffy tsk, tsk, get to bed.

Malakai couldn’t find batteries for it today. He’d shrugged and said we should just hang it back up on the wall anyway. “It doesn’t care that it doesn’t tell time.”

“It doesn’t matter…. it doesn’t matter,” the flukey grammar teacher in me had slammed the emphasis down on the word— “It doesn’t matter — and it does matter.” I feel a bit crazy.

When Jesus is ultimately beautiful to me, it’s my heart that is moved – and this begins to change the world.

“Look — can you find some new batteries?” I’d taken the clock out of his hands. “You could hang the clock as art. It would be beautiful.” And I believe it: What is beautiful in our lives is what actually becomes the most useful in our lives.

And there is this— if you let the clock do what it is meant to do? It will be beautiful and make your life beautiful. I don’t think the 11-year-old kid with tousled hair got it.

“It looks nice enough to just hang.” He’d half grinned. “I don’t know where any batteries are.”

Uh huh.

On the splattered old chalkboard by the kitchen table, I’d taped it up with white bandage tape (because we’re classy like that, yes ma’am):

“In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and the Word was God….” A verse scrolled on paper to highlight the essence of its internal beauty…

Is Jesus merely useful to you — or is He ultimately beautiful to you?

When Jesus is merely useful to me, I want Him to move my world.

When Jesus is ultimately beautiful to me, it’s my heart that is moved – and this begins to change the world.

In the beginning was the Word —

When the beginning began — the Word was already there. The Word was never created, never had a beginning, the Word has always been. If you’re looking for one, if you need one, there is a Rock for any of your storms.

Everything that has ever had a beginning —  had its beginning in Him.

And I swallow hard in a dark house: The beginning of any change in me begins with Him being my beginning.

The beginning of my everyday, my every thought, my every plan, my every conversation, my every step forward. If, in the beginning of anything, there is something different than the Word, the ending will be different than you hoped.

Beautiful — He is beautiful to me. I wipe off a sticky counter. He is all my beautiful beginnings. I inhale that.

In the beginning was the Word — the Logos.

And there was that guy who lived beside me in dorm at university —

That had this mullet cut, drove an old Ford yellow pick up with these orange flames burning up the fenders, who wanted to be a truck driver like his dad, just right after he got his 4 year degree in Latin and Greek philosophy.

He gave me long stem red roses and told me that he was a better pick for me than that Farmer-Boy I had waiting for me back home – but all that is another story for another time.

The part of that story that is this story in a messy house at midnight with a loud clock ticking on the wall is what the Greek philosophy books said on that guy’s shelf: That more than half a century before the Gospel of John was ever written, more than 500 years before God pulled on flesh and stretched out on straw, Heraclitus was the first Greek philosopher who used that word: Logos.

Heraclitus was this Greek philosopher who looked at the world, at the skies, at nature, and said that there had to be some unity, some governing principle, some harmonious order to the cosmos…and Heraclitus concluded that what gives the world all coherent structure — is a principle he called Logos.

Heraclitus said that the coherent structure of everything, the order behind the world, the order of all things — was Logos.

Heraclitus said that the principle of all cosmic organization — was Logos.

And for 500 years after Heraclitus, the Greeks lived by Logos. They lived their life by Logos, the principle of meaning and balance and profound order in the universe.

A slave was meant to serve, a cup was meant to contain, a horse was meant to haul. This was logic. This was Logos. This is why, Son, the clock needs to have batteries – it’s Logos is meant to tell time.

A slave didn’t contain wine, a cup didn’t haul bags, a horse didn’t serve dinner. Life had a Logos, a logic of being, a reason for existence, and you aligned yourself with the Logos.

Align yourself with the Logos and your life was rightly organized.

And then 500 years after Heraclitus — John picks up picks up a pen, chooses his words carefully, purposefully, divinely, and his ink blows the top right off the whole down and out world:

In the beginning was the Logos, and the Logos was with God — and the Logos was God. The first lines of John’s book reorients the cosmos:

The Logos isn’t an organizing Principle — It’s an organizing Person.

The Absolute behind the universe is absolutely Jesus.

The order behind the World — is Jesus in the World.

The organizing structure of the world isn’t a philosophy — the organizing structure of the world is the Word — the Word of God. The words of Jesus.

All cosmic organization is not around one principle – but around One Person.

There is a slide of banana peels across the counter. My mind felt scrambled with a mess of worries all morning. No one can find the toilet bowl cleaner. Malakai did find batteries. The clock ticks on the wall, beating out a steady grace at the day’s weary close. It’s found it’s beautiful Logos.

There are the sticky notes of verses, Romans, at my sink, on my mirror, on my phone.

There is The Word that’s getting underlined, a Bible in a year, that teeters atop a stack of lesser books by my bed.

There’s the chimes on my phone that call like church bells at nine, at noon, at night, calling me to stop and pray stop and pray in the midst of the chaos and the undone – calling me to hard stops —  because God wants knees more than work.

You can always choose a hard stop to keep you from crashing.

I run my hand along a sticky counter. The Person of Jesus is the world’s only real organizing principle.

The Words of Jesus are the only real logic. Jesus is the only real logic. Jesus is my only real logic.

Align a life with Logos, with the Word, with Jesus, and your life’s rightly organized.

What is beautiful in our lives is what actually becomes the most useful in our lives. The clock up there on the wall is making art; it’s doing what it’s meant to do. It’s living out its Logos. 

When my life is organized around Jesus, who is Beautiful, my messy life is organized beautifully.

I pick up a trail of dirty balled socks, sprawled books, the clock still ticking, being the beautiful it’s meant to be, and I organize around the beautiful like I’m meant to and murmur it into the dark: In the beginning was the Word, Logos — and the Logos was God…

And right there  —

the lighting beauty of Him organizes the messes within.

 

 

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 but exquisitely profound book does nothing less than take you on an intimate journey of the soul.

Pre-Order Your Way to Abundance Here

(and let us get the download of the free Perpetual Lenten Calendar of the Beatitudes and the free “Keep Company with Christ” Church Calendar and the free #BeTheGift Calendar all to you immediately.)

What Kind of Story Will You Let Your Life Tell?

It’s often the wounded who have the most to teach us about ourselves and God. That’s true of Dr. Toni Ginés-Rivera, whose amazing story of survival reminds us that Jesus is not merely interested in bringing us to heaven one day. He wants to transform us while we are still here on earth. Her story of emotional healing reveals a God who is able to use the very worst things in our lives to bring about the very best things for our future. I’m happy to welcome this honest, brave, and hope-filled story to the pages of the farm’s front porch today…

guest post by Jim Cymbala with Ann Spangler as told to them by  Dr. Toni Ginés-Rivera

I am lying in my hospital bed after giving birth. The social worker seems kind and gentle, like you would hope your mother would be.

She doesn’t pressure me by saying “Who’s the father, Toni?” or “If you want help, you’ve got to tell us what happened.”

My mother asks these questions all the time, but I stonewall. “I don’t know,” I say.

No matter who questions me, the answer is always the same: I don’t know . . .

But now the social worker is asking me something else. “What would you like to name him, Toni?”

For the last several months I have been so focused on surviving that I haven’t even thought about naming my baby.                    Suddenly I hear an announcement over the intercom: “Dr. Ruben, please come to conference room four in the east wing.”

Turning to the social worker, I say, “What a beautiful name! Am I allowed to give my son that name?”

Assuring me that I can name my baby whatever I want, she writes his name on a piece of paper, spelling it out for me, R-u-b-e-n.

With my son cradled in my arms, I say it aloud several times. “Ruben, my little Ruben.” And the name on my lips tastes like love.

Levi Voskamp

Though I was fifteen when Ruben came into the world, the chaos started long before that.

When my dad’s half brother (we called him Tió), moved in with us, I was only five.

Unlike my dad, my uncle wasn’t drunk all the time, which was enough to make him look like a knight in shining armor to my mom.

It didn’t take long for them to begin an affair.

After we moved to Brooklyn, my dad drifted away and Tió became a stand-in husband and father.

When I was ten, he began hugging me and telling me how much he loved me. “You’re like my daughter,” he would say. “I would never hurt you.”

Some part of me needed to hear what he was saying: that I was cherished, that I was important, that I was loved.

Then, when I was ten and he was forty-five, he began to molest me.

A few years later, shortly after my fourteenth birthday, his attitude suddenly shifted. He began beating me, threatening to throw me down the stairs, forcing me to wear a tight corset, and making me ingest various pills and concoctions.

I didn’t realize he was trying to kill the baby, because I didn’t even know I was pregnant.

On February 14, when I was seven months pregnant, Tió shoved a Valentine card into my hands and ordered me to write this note:

Dear Mom, I’m letting you know I don’t love you, and I’m running away. You’re not a good mother. Don’t look for me, because you’re not going to find me. It was all a big lie.

Then he abducted me, packing me into his car and dropping me off at a stranger’s apartment. When I finally opened up about what was happening, the people who lived there reached out to my mother.

Soon she was on the phone, crying hysterically.

I’d already been missing for two months. “Toni, where are you? Why did you run away?”

Finally she hit on it. “You’re pregnant, aren’t you? Don’t worry. We’ll work through this.”

As soon as I got home the interrogations began. “Who is the father?”

I don’t know.

“Where did you go with him?”

I don’t know.

How could I tell her the truth when my uncle was always there, listening to every word?

By then I was nine months pregnant and in shock about everything that was happening to me.

At least one thing was clear. As soon as I realized I was pregnant, I decided to love my child. Somehow the thought that I was going to have a baby strengthened my desire to live.

About a year after Ruben’s birth, Tió and I got into an argument. Dragging me into the house, he threw me to the floor and began pummeling me with clenched fists like I was another man.

Assuming we were alone in the house that day, Tió must have been shocked when my mother came running. “What’s going on?” she yelled.

“This girl is gonna learn some respect!” he roared.

But it was too late, and the truth finally came out.

That night, weighed down by everything that had happened to me, my mother surrendered her life to Christ.

The years that followed were both wonderful and difficult.

I began to go to church. I married, gave birth to two more children, and then fell apart because of trying to hide my difficult past.

But Christ came in and rescued me in the deepest way possible.

My healing has meant facing the pain and ugliness of my past head-on.

But incredibly, I no longer harbor hatred for Tió. And I have so much joy and freedom.

As I consider the future, I’ve come to realize that no life is easy.

I understand that there are two plans for every life.

There’s God’s plan and Satan’s plan.

But if you stretch out your small hand and take hold of God’s big hand, the plan He’s had for you since the beginning of time will gradually unfold.

No matter how painful your story or how much shame you may feel, God is strong and loving enough to deal with it.

If you let Him, He will turn your life into a story that you will cherish and that will help others.

The only question you have to answer right now is this:

Who will you trust with the life you’ve been given?

What kind of story will you let your life tell?

No matter how much hurt is still buried in your heart, it’s not too late to ask for help.

As you let Jesus come closer, He will draw it out, exchanging it for the peace that only He can give.

 

Seven People, Seven Amazing Stories

A Wall Street broker, a party girl, a student, a homeless man, an addict, a teenage mom, a drug enforcer—all of them spiraling out of control. Each has a reason to despair and a wound that won’t heal. Until something unexpected happens—something that will change their lives forever.

It is perhaps no accident, given her remarkable story, that Toni Ginés-Rivera has dedicated her life to serving other wounded people. She now serves as director of the Alliance Graduate School of Counseling at Nyack College in New York City. Her healing journey advanced when she and her family began attending The Brooklyn Tabernacle, the church Jim Cymbala pastors. To help tell her story, Jim, enlisted his long time friend, author Ann Spangler. 

Jim Cymbala has been the pastor of the Brooklyn Tabernacle for more than thirty-five years. The bestselling author of Fresh Wind, Fresh Fire, he lives in New York City with his wife, Carol Cymbala, who directs the Grammy Award-winning Brooklyn Tabernacle Choir. Ann Spangler is an award-winning writer and the author of many bestselling books, including Women of the Bible. Ann’s fascination with and love of Scripture have resulted in books that have opened the Bible to a wide range of readers.

The Rescue tells powerful, true stories about God’s ability to help us when we need Him most. This inspirational book will not only buoy your spirits. It will also make a great gift for friends and family members who haven’t yet committed their lives to Christ. 

[ Our humble thanks to Zondervan for their partnership in today’s devotion ]

Only the Good Stuff: Multivitamins for Your Weekend [02.24.18]

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:  

Eric Ward @littlecoal
Eric Ward @littlecoal
Eric Ward @littlecoal 

maybe pause to take all of this extraordinary in right here?!?

 

maybe the best days start like this?

Confession: The Problem with My Kids’ Bookshelves

they’ve got it right: love really is the best treatment 

“Lord, Set Me Free from Fear” thank you for this, Jon Bloom

because we all need a friend

breathtaking story: he tweeted to ask for 10 volunteers to help shovel for those in need? come see how many showed up

“My mindset is always, ‘What’s something simple that I can do that’ll have a positive impact on my block and my neighborhood’?

wait for it

in awe: One of America’s oldest servers hasn’t slowed down yet. This is quite the story – don’t miss this one

for every parent: you’re gonna fly

VamosART 
VamosART 
VamosART 

so how amazing is this art right here? 



so many reasons to be thankful each day

glory, glory, glory

so the results are in for the happiest & healthiest states in the US – did your state make the list?

Derek used lacrosse to build relationships with students like Zac and invited them to hear the gospel. Because of this, Zac’s life was transformed, and he realized Lent wasn’t about fasting for the sake of fasting—it was fasting to get more of Christ.

THIS, this, this: this is how we should be loving —

“…we were strangers, gathering to solve something. It occurred to me that a circle of women, with a mission, can save the world. I will never forget that moment.” #BeTheGift #TheBrokenWay

sometimes innocent questions are the very best

Fire victims get generous donation from local woman touched by story:

“We have to all learn to just give back, even if it’s at this little local level and I couldn’t sleep at night if I didn’t do something…” #BeTheGift #TheBrokenWay

he’s onto something here

“I know the malignancy of the soul. And He has a name — and His name is Jesus.” Kathie Lee Gifford boldly & beautifully sharing the Gospel, as she thanks Billy Graham for bringing her whole family to salvation in Christ.

Immigrants? What to think? When women like @BethMooreLPM and @KayWarren1 and @JoniandFriends & so many wise sisters open their Bibles with a word about those who are vulnerable — it’s worth listening:

How to Make Your Question Marks & Unknowns & Life Feeling a Bit Up in the Air — Into the Best Kind of Life

a vulnerable share about depression: “Our Heavenly Father loves us so much that He is not afraid of the depths to come get us. Maybe this water is not something that God is trying to teach me how to tread or to escape, but maybe this water is somewhere where He is trying to create something brand new in me… and so He is taking His time to teach me that as a new creation, He is all the air that I need.”

mom is fighting for acceptance for her son: “It’s his right to live in this world. I’m going to stand up for him.”

Post of the week from these parts here:

…feel like you’re too much? Not enough? What if: No more apologizing for being you. Just breathe:

Told You’re “Too Much”? Or Feel Like You’re “Too Much”? Dear Me: Lifelines to the Person I Long to Be

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 but exquisitely profound book does nothing less than take you on an intimate journey of the soul.  Pre-Order Your Way to Abundance Here

Free for you
 The 40-Day Perpetual Beatitude Lenten Calendar &  The Keep Company with Christ Church Calendar are free for you

Just let us know right here, about your pre-Order of The Abundant Way, a 60-Day Journey into a Deeply Meaningful Life — and we will slip these 2 unique calendars, (and the bonuse 12 Month Intentional Acts of Givenness “Be The GIFT” calendar) into your inbox for your own journey into a deeply meaningful life.

he shares some good words here

we really do need each other

on repeat this week: Walking on Water

[ Print’s FREE here: ]

deep breath & smile — and the happy, relief of the whole shebang is? No one gets to joy by trying to make everything perfect.

One only arrives at joy by seeing in every imperfection all that is joy. 

In the midst of all that’s been imperfect this week, there’s the perfect mercy of Jesus & when you can count on Him to be with you, to carry you, to hold you?

Yeah, you can just go face your weekend with JOY — No more saying sorry for being you, and more gratitude for being — just as you are, imperfect, in process, in Him.

[excerpted from our little Facebook family … come join us each day?]

‪ Dare to fully live!

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. 

When You Doubt If Your Dreams Are Too Small (OR Too Big) For God

How does your dreaming heart and your walk with God fit together? In her debut book, Dreaming with God, former professional ballerina, wife, and mama – Sarah Beth Marr – invites us to step into the beautiful dance of letting God lead our dreams, desires, and our very lives. What if you discovered anew the beauty of letting God lead your dreaming heart? You’ll find a deeper intimacy with God as you dance hand and hand with Him. Let God take your hand, and He will lead you into the dreams He had in mind for you when He created you. It’s a grace to welcome Sarah Beth Marr to the farm’s front porch today…

guest post by Sarah Beth Marr

I think we all struggle at times to know whether listening to the desires of our hearts is a good or a bad thing.

My sweet mom has been the person in my life who has taught me to dream with God by tuning in to Him through the desires of my heart.

Here is one of my favorite Bible verses she introduced to me back when I was a young lady on the edge of adulthood: “Take delight in the Lord, and He will give you the desires of your heart” (Ps. 37:4).

God gives us the desires of our heart — when His desires have become our heart. 

I love this verse because it gives us permission to listen to the desires of our hearts, but there is a little twist to the verse:

“Take delight in the Lord.”

Delighting in God and Him giving us the desires of our hearts can sometimes feel like two different things.

Mom taught me that when we delight in God first and foremost—in a sense, make our dreaming about knowing Him—He shapes our desires. And that’s when we can listen to the desires of our hearts because they are in tune with God’s heart.

When we are tuned in to God’s heart regarding the dreams He has for us — tuned in through His Word, tuned in through long meditation on Scripture, tuned in through daily prayers in His presence — He delights to give the desires of our hearts to us.

God gives us the desires of our heart — when His desires have become our heart. 

Desires will ebb and flow throughout our dreaming journeys.

We can put every desire in God’s arms, and He will guide us to the dreams He alone has perfectly preplanned for us.

Levi Voskamp 
Levi Voskamp

Levi Voskamp
Levi Voskamp
Levi Voskamp

Levi Voskamp

God is the Dream-Planter. He loves to plant seeds of dreams in our hearts that He will use to lead us through life, give us great joy, guide us in living out the gifts He has put in us, and help us make an impact on the world around us.

When we take delight in God — the desires of our heart will delight Him. 

As I look back over my own dreaming dance, sometimes I laugh at how a little desire would seem to pop up out of nowhere and shift something in my dreaming path.

Once, I showed up late to a MOPS (Mothers of Preschoolers) meeting, and it was the first one of the year, and I really didn’t know anybody.

As I rushed through the door, this lady, who I later found out was the speaker coordinator, came running up to me and with excitement and enthusiasm hugged me and nearly shouted, “Are you our speaker for today?”

The speaker for that day was also late and also had long, brown hair. Eyes wide, I assured her I was not the speaker for the day, and somewhere deep inside this little conversation with myself took place: I could never, ever do that. Please don’t make me! How scary. What would I even have to say? But that does sound kind of fun. But who am I? I could never, ever do that.

The speaker finally did show up, and I went home that day and scribbled those little thoughts to God in one of my journals.

I gave Him that teeny, tiny desire even though I didn’t know whether it was from Him.

A couple years later, I began speaking to MOPS groups. Now speaking to groups of women has become a little dream that makes my heart dance.

God took a small desire and used it to steer me in the direction of His plans for me. I think it’s incredibly beautiful how He does that.

This dreaming dance requires us to constantly check in with God to see if our little desires or big passions are something He wants us to pay attention to.

Sometimes our desires and God’s desires don’t match up, and we must be willing to allow God to shift our desires if He sees fit.

That is part of dreaming with Him. He will keep our hearts on course. We just need to take to God the desires, dreams, and ideas that sprout up in our hearts.

Typically, they will feel like crazy ideas. Some may never even come to fruition.

The desire that comes over me to be a country music singer is a great desire, but y’all, singing is not one of my strengths. Deciding if that desire in particular is one God wants me to pursue or not is very clear to me because I do not have the vocals to match the desire.

But other desires can be trickier to decipher. Sometimes I bring a desire of my heart to God, and I cannot tell how He feels about it. That’s when I wish He would send me an email!

I have brought other desires to God as well, and it’s almost as if the moment I bring them to Him and say them out loud or scribble them into a journal, I’m suddenly very aware that they’re not something I should pursue.

But when we give ourselves permission to express a desire out loud to God, to bring it to Him, He takes it and clarifies His purposes for us.

God’s heart for all of us is that we would see that dreams come in all shapes and sizes and His heart for us is to dream in all kinds of ways.

He wants us to dream big . . . and small and in all kinds of shapes and sizes.

The life we long for isn’t hiding in simply following the desires of our heart, but in following Christ — and Him giving us the heart we desire.

God wants us to dream with Him so that our hearts dance with joy and purpose, so that we get to know Him in deeper ways and point others to Him.

Remember this: He divinely designed your heart, mind, and soul to fit specific callings.

And He uses the twists and turns of your heart shape to draw you into all He created you to be.

Oh, how He wants you to be all He designed you to be.

He does not want you to miss out on the dreams He has planned for you.

 

Sarah Beth Marr danced professionally for over fifteen years as a ballerina and now encourages women in the dance of life and faith through her writing. Sarah also speaks at women’s events and MOPS events in Texas. She is a contributing writer for Crosswalk.com, Christianparenting.org, and Lifeway’s Journey Magazine. 

The world tells us that the way to make all our dreams come true is to set our own course and strive every day. But when it’s all on us, we end up feeling exhausted, frustrated, and, disappointed when things don’t turn out as we’d hoped. Have you ever wondered if there was a better way? Weaving together her unique perspective as a professional ballerina with profound truths drawn from Scripture and a life of faith, in, Sarah Beth Marr reminds us in Dreaming with God that we are not dreaming alone. We can surrender our plans to God, stay in tempo with His Spirit, and step into a deeper relationship with Christ.

[ Our humble thanks to Baker for their partnership in today’s devotion ]