Ann Voskamp's Blog, page 150

the key that all our hurting relationships need

Few pastors understand brokenness like my friend, Louie Giglio. Louie and his wise and wondrous wife, Shelley, we’ve shared a few meals together, shared a bit of our introverted hearts, and Louie and Shelley are people who dig down deep into Jesus, who’s hospitality and generous hearts are unforgettable, and as a family, we can testify, how well they’ve loved us all. And Louie can testify that that Jesus meets us more than half way, that we can live in the freedom of being children of the King, loving like He’s loved us. It’s a grace to welcome our friend Louie Giglio to the farm’s front porch today…

guest post by Louie Giglio

Relationships are tricky.

Are you the kind of person who’s able to have relationships that are meaningful and fulfilling and significant?

I want to put out a big idea: The degree to which we receive what God has given to us determines the degree to which we are going to have meaningful and fulfilling relationships.

Right now God is wanting to give amazing things into your life and there are two reasons why we don’t take what God is wanting to give us right now.

We don’t think we are worthy of God giving us amazing things in our lives.
We’ve been decieved into thinking what we have is better than what God wants us to give or receive.

The degree to which you and I receive what God has given us—which is everything, by the way—and what He currently wants to give us—which is the unfolding of everything—is going to be the number one shaper of your ability to have  meaningful and fulfilling relationships.

The love of God trumps whatever else we have experienced in life.

Therefore the fundamental idea is not what was your dad or mom like; it is how willing are you to receive what God is wanting to give you today?

That is going to be the number one shaper of your ability to have a meaningful and successful relationship with the people around you.

That is the heart of your marriage, the heart of how you’re getting along with your roommate, the heart of how you’re going to approach a relationship with a boyfriend or girlfriend, the heart of you reconciling relationships that have been busted apart where everybody is waiting on who is going to make the first move and help this thing be repaired.

It begins with our ability to receive what God has given us and wants to give us in life.

The number one flaw we experience in relationships is we expect more of other people than they can realistically provide.

Let me give you an example of that.

You’re a young, single person, you’re hoping to find a Mr. Perfect one day, and in your mind you have already figured it out.

Maybe you have some stuff that you haven’t dealt with, but that’s okay because this dude is going to arrive and he’s coming in on a magic carpet and when he sweeps into the room the temperature is going to change, the music is going to play, the lights are going to come on, and he is going to look me in my eyes and he is going to tell me I’m the greatest thing that ever happened and I mean right then and there everything I’ve wrestled with in life is going to resolve right in that moment in the hands of this wonderful man.

And that’s a great dream, except for the fact that he’s coming in a Toyota Corolla that is missing a hubcap on one tire.

He is only going to amplify your annoyance factor and your frustration factor about all the unresolved things in your life because he’s not going to be perfect.

But, thank God, Jesus is, and He’s already available.

No one is perfect except for Jesus, and He is currently available for us.

Ever have an argument with somebody? They come to you and say, “Look, I just need to let you know how I feel. And you’re really not this and that and the other and here’s the four things you’re not doing and here’s the one thing you need to change. Don’t do this or do this more.”

And, how do you respond to that? “Wow —  that is so true. Thank you for telling me that because I want to be a man or a woman whose life stands the test of time, built on the foundation of Jesus. You’re absolutely right. What should I start working on today?”

No. What normally happens?

“Well it’s funny that you’re saying that because let’s go back to Point B over there for a second. If there is anybody who is a grand master international champion of that, that would be you. Let me give you, oh, a hundred examples.”

You see, we have a way of always flipping it around to the other person and saying, “You are held to this standard, and I’m held to a different standard. And what I expect from you is certainly not what I necessarily want from God. I want him to give me way more slack than I’m going to give you right now.”

The way we blow all this up is by putting the gospel in the middle of our relationships.

How does Jesus relate to you?

Jesus does not give us what we deserve.

Psalm 103:8 says, “The Lord is compassionate and gracious, slow to anger, abounding in love. He will not always accuse nor will he harbor his anger forever for he does not treat us as our sins deserve or repay us according to our inequities.”

That’s how Jesus relates to you. You can count on Him to not treat you the way you deserve to be treated.

Jesus meets us more than half way.

He is merciful when we are wrong, He’s gracious when we are stubborn, He loved us before we were lovable, and He loved us before we were able to love Him. 

How does this impact how we relate to others?

In the same measure we receive, we give. In 1 John 4 we see the gospel coming in the middle of our relationships and it’s groundbreaking and revolutionary. It’s seismic for our relationships.

Verse 7 says, “Dear friends, let us love one another, for love comes from God. Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God and everyone who does not love does not know God because God is love.”

So if you’re not loving it’s not because of your dad.

It’s because you don’t know God.

If you’re not loving other people it’s not because of your ex-wife, it’s because you don’t know God.

If you’re not loving it’s not because you moved four times when you were in middle school, it’s because you don’t know God.

Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love.

“This is how God showed his love among us.” So let’s get specific about it, this is how he sent his one and only Son into the world that we might live through him. This is love. “Not that we loved God because we weren’t able to love but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins.”

To that same measure with which we are loved, we love.

That’s why the gospel has to be in the middle of our relationships.

When we come to know God, God dispenses grace and mercy with a shovel.

He says to us, “You need more today? Well, my mercies are new every single day so when you wake up just imagine tomorrow that there is an angel standing by the bed and he’s just shoveling mercy and pouring it on you before you even hit the snooze button tomorrow.

This is not yesterday’s mercy; this is new mercy today.”

 

Louie Giglio is the pastor of Passion City Church in Atlanta, Georgia, and founder of Passion Conferences—a global movement of college-aged people living for the fame of Jesus Christ. A dynamic and effective communicator, Louie holds a master of divinity degree from Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, and is the creator The Jesus Bible and author of numerous books and Bible studies, including The Comeback, Relat(able), and Waiting Here for You. He and his wife, Shelley, reside in Atlanta.

Relat(able) looks at relationships the way God intended them to be. Because He has gone to extraordinary lengths to relate to us, we have the potential to build incredible relationships with one another. Embracing God’s love and receiving His grace changes the way we relate to him, our family, our friends, and ourselves.

In this six-session video Bible study, Louie Giglio explores the fundamental question of what makes us relatable to others. He shows how God can change our perspective on relationships, give us greater purpose in dating and marriage, bring us peace in the midst of conflict, and help us restore relationships that seem broken beyond repair.

The Relat(able) Study Guide includes video discussion questions and Bible exploration to accompany the Relat(able) DVD Study — really, who doesn’t need to be relatable? Maybe right about now — we all need this in world-changing kinds of ways — one relationship at a time. 

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

Links for 2017-02-07 [del.icio.us]

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It’s Okay to be Damaged – All the Best People Are

Almost two years ago, I wrote that I fervently believe Scott Sauls’ first book should be in the hands of every single Christian without exception. Since then, Scott has become a trusted friend to my husband and I. When we have questions that are wrestling us down, when we need a prayer warrior in the middle of the night, a fellow pilgrim’s hand, a redeemed saint’s mind and a pastor’s heart, Scott is the friend we turn to. Scott has faithfully, time and time again, befriended us with deeply insightful wisdom, glasses-of-cold-water refreshment and encouragement, and an extraordinarily humble and vulnerable heart that beats like Jesus. Scott has written a second book, another must-read for the times we are in: Befriend: Create Belonging in an Age of Judgment, Isolation and Fear. The following words are a representation of this direly needed book. It gives us joy to welcome our friend, Scott Sauls, to the farm’s front porch today…

guest post by Scott Sauls

I love how Jesus related to damaged, condemned people. Don’t you?

A woman sins against God and is caught in the act of adultery. She wrecks a home. She brings shame upon herself and her community.

Then, pious men take her shame public. “Lawbreakers must not be tolerated,” they think. “She must be condemned for her behavior, cast out for her infidelities, shamed for her shameful act. She must be made into an example.”

This is what happens in a group of people who claim to have “sound theology” but are lacking in love.

A coliseum culture develops. Everyone rallies around a common enemy – the sinner. Robbers, evildoers, tax collectors, adulterers and adulteresses. And then the pouncing and the piling on. The shaming.

What’s wrong with the world? “Other people,” says the mob surrounding the adulteress. “What’s wrong with the world is other people…those who aren’t one of us.”

But not Jesus. Jesus, left alone with the adulterous woman, simply says to her two things:

I do not condemn you.

Now, leave your life of sin.



The order of these two sentences is everything.

Reverse the order of these two sentences and you’ll lose Christianity.

Reverse the order and you’ll lose Jesus.

With Jesus, preemptive declarations of grace and love and no-condemnation establish the environment for conversations about truth, morality, and ethics. It can be no other way.

After eighteen years of pastoral ministry, I have never met a person who fell in love with Jesus because a Christian scolded them about their morality or their ethics. Have you?

Once we were having a small prayer gathering with some friends. Before we started to pray, in came a husband and wife who had been invited by someone in the group. The man, who I will call Matthew, was very drunk, and his wife had this “been-through-war, can-somebody-please-help-me, I’m-dying-inside” look on her face.

As we prayed together, the intoxicated Matthew decided to chime in. His words were drunk words that formed an incoherent prayer that went on for over ten minutes. He petitioned for some of the strangest things:

God, protect us from the Klingons. God, I really want a Jolly Rancher right now, will you bring us some Jolly Ranchers? God, will you please move my bananas to the doghouse?

After the last person prayed and we all said “Amen,” everyone looked at me.

What will the pastor do?

Thankfully, I didn’t need to do anything because a woman from the group, full of grace and love and no-condemnation, offered Matthew a cookie.

As the woman was giving him a cookie and entertaining conversation about Klingons and such, others approached his wife, begging for insight on how they could help.

This little interaction, this way of responding with grace and love and no-condemnation first, became one of the most transformative experiences I have ever witnessed.

To make a long story short, the kindhearted offer of a cookie led to a tribe of people coming around the couple and their two young children, which led to a month of addiction rehab in Arizona – including flights and personal visits to and prayers and support offered at the rehab center by our little prayer group – which led to Matthew getting sober, which led to a restored home and marriage, which led to Matthew becoming a follower of Jesus, which led to him also becoming an elder in the church where I was pastor.

To this day, after eighteen years of pastoral ministry, Matthew may be the best and most impactful church elder I have ever worked alongside.

Anne Lamott tells it true: “It’s okay to realize that you’re crazy and very damaged. All the best people are.”

Grace and love must come before ethics.

No-condemnation must come before the morality discussion.

Because it is God’s kindness that leads to repentance, not our repentance that leads God to be kind.

Love – the broad embrace of the narrow path – will trigger some of the most life-giving experiences you’ll ever be part of.

In the end, the more conservative we are in our beliefs about the Bible – the more we truly believe every single word of it – the more liberal our loving will be.

Because the narrow path of Jesus? It always leads to a broad embrace.

How can we begin to live in such a way that Matthew stories become the norm versus the exception? How can we create environments in which this kind of love flourishes?

Here’s how:

We must first realize that LOVE is the environment that we ourselves are already living inside of.

Love has to be a Person to us before it can become a verb.

And the One who is Love Incarnate – Jesus – doesn’t just love us when we’re at our best. He also loves us when we are at our worst. 

When we are caught in the act. When we fall asleep on Him instead of watching and praying with Him. When we deny Him three times. When we become His prosecutors and His persecutors. When we enter His prayer meetings drunk – drunk on a self-medicating substance like Matthew was, or something more subtle but no less destructive.

Drunk on our ambition.

Drunk on our greed.

Drunk on our grudges.

Drunk on our reputations.

Drunk on our pornographic imaginations.

Drunk on our religion and our virtue and our self-righteousness.

All of us, the lot of us. Drunk.

In our drunken places, Jesus draws near and asks, “Do you like cookies? May I get you one? Will you sit with me? How about rehab…may I accompany you there? May I pay the fee? May I come alongside you toward sobriety, then a new life, then a seat at my Table, then a job in my Kingdom? I went to the battlefield, I loved from the battlefield, to launch this love trajectory for your life. Protection from the Klingons. Sweeter than Jolly Ranchers. All you need is nothing. All you need is need.”

These words from one of my favorite hymns says it all:

Come ye sinners, poor and needy

Weak and wounded, sick and sore.

Jesus, ready, stands to save you,

Full of pity, joined with power…

Let not conscience make you linger,

Nor of fitness fondly dream.

All the fitness he requires

Is to feel your need of him.

How do we love like Jesus?

It starts with resting and receiving. It starts by stopping.

Perhaps we should stop trying to love like Jesus and instead, first learn what it means to be with Him, yes?

Because the more we are with Jesus, the more we will become like Him.

Love is caught more than it is achieved.

Get close to LOVE, and love tends to rub off.

Let’s pursue this path, the grace and love and no-condemnation path…shall we?

Then, the stage will be set to talk about things like truth, morality, and ethics, too.

 

 

Scott Sauls is senior pastor of Christ Presbyterian Church in Nashville, Tennessee. Before CPC, Scott was a lead and preaching pastor alongside Tim Keller with New York City’s Redeemer Presbyterian Church. He lives in Nashville with his lovely wife, Patti, and daughters, Abigail and Ellie. He blogs regularly—seriously bookmark him—and can be found being humble light on Twitter.

According to Tim Keller, Befriend is a “well-grounded project that looks at the entirety of Christian life through the prism of friendship.” Elisabeth Hasselbeck says that Befriend “provides real rescue from loneliness” and that “there could not be a better time for a book such as this one.”

I deeply concur. Befriend is one phenomenal book, direly needed for these times. Sharp. Informed. Culturally savvy. Biblical. This book will deeply change lives and start a befriend revolution. It’s powerfully changed me, and I’m sitting here revived in desperately parched places-feeling a bit of a holy hush. These pages echo the heart of God. This is an absolute must-read that I cannot recommend highly enough.

Learning to Pray From a Place of Desire, Not Duty

Trent Sheppard and I have never met in person—but, oh, how I’d love to share a meal with his family in Boston, Massachusetts, listen to his stories from around the world (he’s traveled and taught in fifty nations!), and pick his brain about the person of Jesus. Trent has this unusual knack of making the Bible come alive. When you hear him teach or read his writing about Jesus, you get the feeling that you’re somehow actually there… as if you can almost hear the tone of Jesus’ voice in the gospel stories, and see the expression on his face. Husband to Bronwyn, and father to three precious kids, Trent understands, celebrates, and teaches the Incarnation—that is, the down-to-earth, in-your-face, flesh-and-blood humanity of Jesus—like few others. And today, on the farm’s front porch, Trent invites us to encounter “the wonder and welcome” of learning to pray from a place of desire instead of from a place of duty…

guest post by Trent Sheppard

I still remember the first time I found my wife praying, the impact it made on me.

Even now, some fifteen years later, I can still see the tears on her face.

It was before we were married, when Bronwyn and I were students at Wheaton College. I was twenty-six years old, immersed in graduate studies, and prone to take myself a bit too seriously.

Bronwyn was nineteen, midway through her second year of undergrad, and, at the time, she wore the most marvelous silver ring in her nose.

We met while I was taking an evening class about the life and times of Jesus. The class was being held in Blanchard Hall, just next door to the campus coffeehouse, aka the Stupe. Bronwyn worked at the Stupe part-time, and during a break in lecture, I strolled over to grab a quick snack before returning to Dr. Elwell’s class.

Bronwyn was serving behind the counter that night, and through a providential chain of events, particularly because she was a math minor at the time, she mistakenly shortchanged me five cents for a Peppermint Patty.

Counting the coins in my hand (I was a miserly grad student, what can I say?), I looked up to point out the discrepancy and it was then, at that moment, that I actually saw Bronwyn for the first time.

Three things hit me all at once.

Her long hair was henna-dyed to a deep violet-red. That silver ring in her nose, beautifully and fiercely feminine, looked like it was meant to be there. And finally, “Bronwyn,” written in cursive on her nametag—it sounded ageless to me.

Bronwyn quickly realized what had happened, laughed a little about shortchanging me, and then kindly handed over that oh-so-important five cents.

I stood in line for just a moment more, staring, and then, without saying a word, made my way back to Blanchard Hall.

But I wasn’t listening to Dr. Elwell’s lecture anymore.  And I certainly wasn’t thinking about Jesus.

It took me two more months of return trips to the Stupe and “randomly” running into Bronwyn on campus before I worked up the courage to ask her out on a proper date. Thankfully, she said yes.

A few months into our dating relationship I dropped by the Stupe to see her. One of Bronwyn’s coworkers told me she had left early that day and was probably in the little prayer chapel nearby.

I walked through the chapel doors and found Bronwyn on her knees, praying. She had no idea I was there.

When Bronwyn looked up at last, I could see tears streaming down her face.

But it wasn’t her tears that impacted me so profoundly.

It was the peace in her countenance, a deep well of God-trust in those tear-filled eyes.

I came to understand something very important about Bronwyn in that moment.

Regardless of where our relationship led, at best, I would always be second in her life.

*****

It is virtually impossible to separate Jesus from His prayer life.

Truly, it’s that core to who He is. Each of the gospel writers comments on it:

“After he had sent the crowds away, Jesus went up the mountain by himself to pray” (Matt. 14:23).


“Very early—in the middle of the night, actually—Jesus got up and went out, off to a lonely place, and prayed” (Mark 1:35).


“It happened around that time that Jesus went up into the mountain to pray, and he spent all night in prayer to God” (Luke 6:12).


“After Jesus had said this, he lifted up his eyes to heaven… ‘Father, I want the ones you’ve given me to be with me where I am’” (John 17:1,25).

When you read about Jesus’ prayer life, the intimate and on-going way in which He interacted with Abba Father, you don’t get the sense Jesus is operating from a place of religious obligation.

This isn’t someone praying because it’s the right thing to do.

No, this is someone praying because He wants to, because praying is an essential part of who He is.

Although each of the descriptions of Jesus’ all-nighters in prayer move me, it’s that curious passage from the gospel of John that really gets me: “Father, I want the ones you’ve given me to be with me where I am.”

Consider that strange request: “to be with me where I am.”

What on earth is Jesus talking about?

Seriously, think about it: the disciples are already there, aren’t they? They’re standing right beside Jesus when He makes this request of the Father.

Apparently, Jesus is getting at something much more profound, something much more mindblowing than mere location when He asks the Father for His disciples “to be with me where I am.”

What the gospel of John seems to be suggesting is that even though Jesus was present with His disciples in this moment, Jesus was somehow—through prayer—present with the Father too.

And that is what He wants His disciples to experience:

fellowship, friendship, and presence of the Father,

the exact sort of thing that Jesus experiences in prayer.

*****

For a long time, to be honest with you, I secretly wished that prayer were not so central to following Jesus, because I didn’t feel very good at it.

Prayer felt forced and obligatory. I would close my eyes tightly, do my very best to concentrate on God (and whatever I happened to be praying about that day), and then I would just think harder.

It was exhausting. It was annoying. It was maddening.

Far too many times, I must confess, I walked away from those moments more confused, frustrated, and upset than I was before.

Prayer became a burden. It was something I should do, not something I wanted to do.

But when I read about Jesus praying, and when I watched Bronwyn praying, it was different. I didn’t see religious obligation at work in Jesus and Bronwyn.

I saw fellowship, friendship, and presence, and that is what I wanted.

Even though I didn’t realize it at the time, I was desperate for it.

I was desperate for the power of relationship to overthrow the tyranny of religion in my life.

I was desperate to pray from a place of desire instead of from a place of duty.

I was desperate to find peace in prayer, to wildly abandon religious obligation and to replace it with innocent, childlike trust:

to know and experience what it means that God is close, that God is near, that God is Abba, Father.

 

 

Trent Sheppard’s brand new book, Jesus Journey, invites you to encounter Jesus again—as if for the first time—by experiencing His breathing, heart-beating, body-and-blood, crying-and-laughing humanity. Each chapter begins with a gospel passage, followed by a reflection, and then wraps up with a final “Ponder, Pray, Practice” section. Designed for daily reading and spread out over forty brief chapters, Jesus Journey shines new light on the vibrant humanity of the historical Jesus through an up-close look at Jesus’ relationships with Mary and Joseph, with the God he called Abba, with His closest friends and followers. Come encounter the human who radically transforms our view of God.

Trent helps to pastor an urban house church called Ekklesia, and oversees Alpha’s work with college and university students in New England. He lives in Boston, Massachusetts, with his doula/childbirth-educator wife, Bronwyn, and their three children. Before moving to Massachusetts, Trent lived and worked in the UK for eight years with Youth With A Mission. He is the author of God on Campus, his teaching and travels have taken him to fifty nations. 

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

Only the Good Stuff: Multivitamins for Your Weekend [02.04.17]

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 & your people right here:

Mary Anne Morgan
Mary Anne Morgan
Mary Anne Morgan

let’s go travel a bit?

dare you not to smile?

okay, book lovers, is this not kinda the best?

the rings of Saturn – like never seen before

well, now — The world is just full of the best little ideas, don’t you think?

have you thanked a teacher today?

“The Letter I had to Write to My Child’s Teacher” #betheGIFT

because…. sometimes, really, we all need to be rescued

magro_kr

perhaps one of the mostly beautifully bright & colorful villages anywhere? wanna go?

Nailed it:

it’s more important to understand who you are, rather than what you do

If you had no idea you had a temper till you had kids — you’re not alone.

If you want to get off that merry-go-round of frustration, yelling and blaming, check this out:
The Temper Toolkit
take control of your temper BEFORE you lose it.

500 students … singing at this hotel?

10+ kids who amazed the world & won The National Geographic’s Photography Contest For Kids

You Raise Me Up — just really beautiful

with no options for their adult son with autism this family decided to just do this

“We have learned to be more understanding of others who don’t have it as easy as we do. Autism has been humbling for us. That’s Jon’s gift to the world.”

the four seasons of Norway: absolutely breathtaking

what this principal did to defend his bullied student?

“We really do need one another. None of us can do this alone.” #TheBrokenWay

Need a way to live given today? Tell someone they are beautiful…& watch what happens #beTheGIFT

Courtney Westlake

they’re finding possibilities instead of limitation in daughter’s rare disorder

she shares good words here: “I wanted to be sure you knew these three things.

Or at least remind you, just in case you forgot.”

a eye-opening, almost unbelievable story of forgiveness & redemption. Only God.

this beautiful story stole the internet this week:

this teacher? a big heart and even bigger memory – he’s really like like no other

Post of the Week from these parts here:

you know how you’re tired trying to navigate through all the hard things these days? How you’re trying to hold on to love through a divided world…

Yeah, I’m quietly with you & reaching out:

“how to navigate & hold on to love through a divided world: of bundles & branches & bridges & the way of being love”

…and because you so want to love right now —

Download Your February G.I.F.T list & be part of the joy we all need? 

We could all together kinda start a little movement of Giving It Forward Today, choosing to #BeTheGIFT, living broken & given like bread out into a world down right hungry for love right now.

 

Take the Dare, Join the Revolution, Pick Up The Broken Way

If you got chains? He’s a chain breaker. Amen and Amen.

  [ Print’s FREE here: ]

 

This coming week? No matter the pressures, let’s just quietly exhale… and lean into Jesus. The thread of your life becomes a tapestry of abundant colors only if it ties itself to other lives. The only way to strengthen the fabric of society is to let threads of your life break away to let Christ, who is in us, weave around other threads.What if we gave up charity for solidarity?

What if we gave up giving from the top down and gave ourselves in reaching out, less the vertical and more like the horizontal beam of the cross? 

All on the same beam, all of us in need of the cross, all with our own crosses.

Let’s always keep in mind? A whole world of people will decide who Jesus is — by who we are. A whole world of hurting people will decide what they think about Jesus — by how we decide to respond to the hurting.

Every single person around you, everyone you meet, everyone you cross paths with, every single one is fighting their own hard fires — so what if all decided to just be real gentle with one another and share His love.

And it isn’t having that makes us rich; it’s giving. Give sacrificially, live richly.

Maybe all we really want is more of God. Abundance of Him. And when we turn our backs on the fleeing — we turn our backs on Christ.

[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.

Why Small Beginnings Matter in a Lifelong Marriage

I first met Michelle DeRusha a couple feet away from where Beth Moore was lifting Jesus high. We were two honest women who came to Deeper Still, who’ve grown into the deepness of the questions and found God present and as enveloping and as real as air. A phenomenal writer with blazing courage, Michelle is a Brave truth-teller and unwavering Christ-dweller who writes authentic, honest, robust, life-changing words with an ear always turned toward truth and grace and Him — When Michelle first began to write a book about Katharina and Martin Luther, she didn’t expect their 500-year-old story to teach her something about her own 21st-century marriage. Today she pulls up a chair on the farm’s front porch today to share a bit of her own real-life love story and to remind us that in marriage, it’s never too late for small beginnings. I could not be more honoured to fling open the farmhouse’s front door and welcome Michelle…

guest post by Michelle DeRusha

“I get it now,” she says, not meeting my gaze across the table. “I understand why people say marriage is hard.”

I nod, trying to catch her eyes, trying to let her know I get it too.

My friend and I are both parenting teenagers, shuttling them to soccer practice and band rehearsal, debate tournaments and confirmation class; wracking our scattered brains to help with algebra homework; navigating mood swings (theirs) and hot flashes (ours); mastering Snapchat (sort-of).

Parenting teenagers is hard.

My friend and I are both caring for aging parents long-distance.

She recently flew halfway across the country to be with her mother, who was diagnosed with a malignant brain tumor.

My husband’s father and mother have both died in the last five years, his dad just fifteen months after his mom.

Caring for aging parents is hard.

We are busy with work and family – meeting deadlines, teaching classes, answering email, scheduling appointments, emptying the dishwasher, dashing to Petco for dog food.

At night we fall into bed exhausted yet unable to sleep, unfinished items on our to-do lists pinballing around the inside of our heads.

We feel disconnected and distracted and bone weary.

It’s the season, we tell ourselves.

Marriage is hard because this season is hard. This is what I tell my friend as I sit across the table from her.

And yet I know, for me, this is not the whole truth. I know I cannot look to the current season as the only reason marriage feels hard some days. We are busy, yes. This season is demanding, yes.

But the truth is, marriage isn’t hard because of all I have to do. Marriage is hard because of what I don’t do.

“I don’t prioritize my husband,” I admit. Now I’m the one unwilling to meet my friend’s gaze across the table. “He comes last, after everyone else is taken care of, after everything else is done.”

I say it out loud before I even know I’m going to say it. I confess it before I even know it’s true. And I wonder, as I drive home in the dark that night… What kind of wife puts her husband last?

That declaration, the one I didn’t even see coming, the one I didn’t even know was true? It’s been my wake-up call.

I can’t blame my marital ennui entirely on circumstances or seasons.

I can’t keep putting my husband last and expect my marriage to thrive.

This will sound ridiculous – after all, I’ve been married to my husband for nearly 20 years – but when it comes right down to it, I don’t know how to prioritize him. Maybe I’ve forgotten? Maybe I never knew?

I don’t know how to make him feel special, how to let him know he is important, cherished, adored, loved. I don’t know where or how to begin.

When I walk through the front door late that night, the first thing I notice is the box of Peppermint Joe Joe’s on the kitchen counter. My husband has made the weekly Trader Joe’s run hours earlier while I am out to dinner with my friend. He’s picked up my favorite treat, knowing how much I like one (or two…or three…) with my late-afternoon cup of tea.

I smile in the dark when I spot the slender box, lit by the warm glow from the light over the kitchen sink.

A few minutes later I slip into our dark bedroom. The sheets and comforter are turned down on my side of the bed. The fan whirs in the corner. The window is cracked open an inch. My husband knows I need the white noise to sleep; he knows I like the bedroom cool. I slide under the covers, my cheek on the smooth pillow, my husband’s breathing slow and quiet next to me.

And maybe this is the way…in the small things?

I’m not saying marriage isn’t sometimes hard because of seasons or circumstances. Some seasons are more trying than others. Raising children is hard; caring for aging parents is hard; doing both at the same time can cause cortisol levels to rise and tempers to flare.

What I am saying, though, is that even during hard seasons and challenging circumstances, prioritizing my husband is key. If I desire a rich, fulfilling, thriving marriage, I can’t keep putting my husband last.

My marriage can’t be an afterthought.

“Marriage does not always run smoothly, it is a chancy thing,” Martin Luther said. “One has to commit oneself to it.”

A good marriage requires commitment, and commitment is strengthened through intentionality. But here’s the thing: consistent intentionality can begin in the smallest of ways – in small acts of kindness, small gestures of love, small words of encouragement. A soft touch, a steady gaze, a kiss when he walks through the front door – these can be the small beginnings.

“Not all of us can do great things,” Mother Theresa once said. “But we can all do small things with great love.” The greatness isn’t in the thing itself, but in the love behind it.

He stands behind me, massaging the stubborn knot beneath my left shoulder blade while I rinse the dishes.

In the winter months, when the Nebraska winds howl and the temperature plummets, he warms my side of the bed with his body before I slip between the sheets in my flannels and wool socks.

He always asks about my day, even when he knows it was probably much like the preceding one.

Luther said marriage is a chancy thing, but my husband isn’t taking any chances.

And I am learning how to love with intentionality by working to give, accept and share my love with him, in big ways and small.

I’m not leaving this one to chance.

 

 

Michelle DeRusha lives in Nebraska with her husband and their two boys. She writes about living out faith in the everyday on her personal blog, as well as in a monthly religion column for the Lincoln Journal Star. You can also connect with her on Instagram.

When Michelle’s editor asked her which of the 50 women from her first book she would pick for a full-length biography, she didn’t hesitate to answer: Katharina Luther.

Their marriage was radically revolutionary and arguably one of the most scandalous and intriguing in history, yet five centuries after they said, “I do,” we still know little about Katharina and Martin Luther’s life together as husband and wife. Until now. Martin and Katharina Luther: The Radical Marriage of a Runaway Nun and a Renegade Monk brings the private lives and the love story of this legendary couple into the spotlight and offers powerful insights into our own 21st-century understanding of marriage.

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

Links for 2017-02-01 [del.icio.us]

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And it’s the kindest kind of true… a kind of gentle relief:

Giving is about what you have in your heart — not about what you have in your hands…

An act of kindness, giving it forward, can be more powerful than a sword in starting movements that move us all toward Love. 

You’re in, right?

You’ve got nothing to lose, right? And only a whole lot of unexpected joy to gain.

Dare with us in 2017?

Let’s start a bit of a kindness movement, a giving, generous, caring, broken and given and transforming movement, that moves us all closer together?

In tender times,  bruised with division — now is the time to all reach out our arms and give one intentional kindness, grace, gift forward today, every day, because now is the season that we live broken and given like bread because this is how we’re given a feast of love, of connection, of community, of communion.

Now is the season that in all our brokenness — we get to become an abundance of joy. One intentional act of Giving It Forward Today — everyday.

We could GIFT each other every day with these small intentional acts of givenness — GIFTing each other these pocket miracles, the miracles we each have in our own pocket.

A 365 day GIFT list, a list of Giving It Forward Today…

Could there be a more beautiful way to live your one life this year — by being the joy we all need?

Dare with us — to take a daring path to the abundant life — to becoming Love in the world!

Download Your February G.I.F.T list & be part of the joy we all need? 

We could all together kinda start a little movement of Giving It Forward Today, choosing to #BeTheGIFT, living broken & given like bread out into a world down right hungry for love right now.

The Broken Way

Pick up your copy of The Broken Way — and break free.

Find all kinds of free tools at thebrokenway.com

how to navigate & hold on to love through a divided world: of bundles & branches & bridges & the broken way of being love

When we were kids, we went to the woods.

Went with my dad in his worn Wranglers, went and cut up wood for the coming winter, chopped and split and stacked maple for the coming cold.

And when at the end of the day, when the greying twilight settled in, thick and quiet and gentle, Dad, he’d ask us to gather up the flurry of tree limbs, the brush, the sticks, and the three of us kids, we’d stand there with bundles of branches, and Dad, he’d dare us:

Go ahead — try to break your bundle of sticks with your hands.

And it couldn’t be done.

Then Dad walked over to my brother and pulled out a random twig from my brother’s bundle of branches — and snapped it like a matchstick between his fingers.

He’d turned and looked into the face of us three kids and he said it like he didn’t want one of us to ever forget:

What’s bound together can’t be broken.

When we let ourselves get pulled apart — then we can be broken apart.

The dark wants to divide, because what is severable is vulnerable.

What is deliberately separable is painfully vulnerable. Just ask Adam and Eve.

I knew what my Dad was saying in the woods:

Though people may not hold the same opinions — they can still hold on to each other.

People may not see eye to eye — but there’s always a way to still walk hand in hand.

Christians need to be most careful with words — if we are the most Christ-full.

The Body of Christ may have a thousand different opinions, a thousand fractions and divisions and circles. But there’s not one of us that isn’t broken in some way.

And acknowledging our own brokenness is what makes high walls between people crumble.

Because it turns out — that when you know you are broken – it’s always your pointing finger that is broken.

You can’t point at anyone else anymore as the only sinner.

Brokenness breaks us from our need to be “right” and breaks us open to our need to extend the grace we have been given.

I went back to the woods the other day, hurting over a broken-hearted world, thinking about how one fence had been torn down by His love, and how I could tear down another fence and love a sister, a person, a family, a people, different than me, how He can give you eyes to see and it’s like you can read the writing right there on all the walls between all of us:

Obedience to the law of Love is the most expedient way to preach the gospel.

What does God do but live the law of love: “All day long I have held out my hands to a disobedient and obstinate people.”

God loves while we sin and love is what makes God the most potent of all.

Love is the the most radically subversive activism of all, the only thing that ever changed any one.

We never have to be afraid to love.

Love never negates truth. Because love never silences Truth.

Love is the language of Truth and grace is the dialect of God and Truth is only understandable if spoken with understanding love.

And unity doesn’t mean that we paper over our differences. It means we open the papers of His Word and dialogue, not open fire and destroy each other.

It could happen like this: We don’t have to confuse unity with unanimity.

God’s people may not have unanimity on everything,

but we must have definite unity in everything,

if we’re ever to have deep credibility through everything.

There may be tension between believers on how to practice our faith – but it is the tension of two people hanging fiercely on to each other, like the tension of a bridge, that the Gospel might go forth into all the world.

If we let go of each other — the Gospel goes nowhere.

“I urge you, brothers and sisters, by the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, to agree together, to end your divisions, and to be united by the same mind and purpose…

Is Christ divided?”  ~1 Cor 1:10–14

Is Christ divided?

That’s how the dark tries to divide: If you disagree with someone on one point – then you must disdain or dismiss them entirely.

And if you acknowledge or affirm someone – then you must agree with them entirely. This is a lie. Break it.

Having Christian convictions can’t ever negate having Christ’s compassion.

I stood in the woods and witnessed the reaching of the trees toward each other. This can be done: We could start reaching out to someone of a different way of thinking, a different political leaning, a different nationality, a different culture, a different orientation, a different skin color – a different religion.

We could invite the other and the different to come break bread — so that there can be a breaking down of walls.

We could be Peacemakers and Rift Menders, the ones who know that the brokenness of humility is the secret to community and the harshness of pride is what builds lines of division.

We could be the ones who know that “the only thing that counts is faith expressing itself through love.” (Gal.5:6)

Only those who love, are sent by Christ. Without love — Christ didn’t send you.

I breathe deep in the woods. Remember to keep calm and that is all.

Living angry is spiritual death.

“And real life is about really loving the everyday, different, beautiful people wherever our feet land, to those near us and sitting across from us and streaming by us and those in need far arom us.

And this is the thing to hear everywhere: no matter what anyone’s saying, everyone’s just asking if they can be loved.” [~ excerpt from The Broken Way].

Remember to keep calm and remember that “no matter what anyone’s saying, everyone’s just asking if they can be loved.”

In the woods, the trees keep reaching out — the limbs of very different trees touching.

There is always a way forward that finds a way to love.

People of the Cross — always believe there are bridges that make a way across.

And I watch how all throughout the woods, the branches of the trees  protect each other from the coming winds —

how even the winds grow quiet in here, the trees all standing close together.

 

Related: a brave and beautiful way to keep on loving, no matter how the winds blow

Facing Hard Battles? Here — You’ve Got to Know the Enemy’s Secret Strategy

If I were shipwrecked on a deserted island, I’d want to be shipwrecked with Jennie Allen — because sister knows Jesus, knows His Word, knows how to pray & her & I have been flat on our faces before Him, asking Him to show His way for this generation. I’ve laughed late with her kids and ate around her table and Jennie is nothing if she’s not a pitcher poured right out for her husband, her children, her Jesus and her sisters down the streets and across the aisle and around the globe. Jennie understands the daily struggle so many of us face with inadequacy and insecurity. We often find ourselves paralyzed by the belief that we are not good enough, talented enough, or spiritual enough to do what we are supposed to do in life. And today she invites us into a different experience, one in which our souls are content and everything shifts. It’s a grace to welcome Jennie to the farm’s front porch today…

guest post by Jennie Allen

If I were your enemy, this is what I would do:

Make you believe you need permission to lead.

Make you believe you are helpless.

Make you believe you are insignificant.

Make you believe that God wants your decorum and behavior.

And for years these lies have been sufficient to shut down much of the church.

But now many of you are awake. You are in the Word and on your knees. God is moving through you, and you are getting dangerous. You are starting to get free and leading other people to freedom. The old lies are no longer adequate.

So if I were your enemy, I would make you numb and distract you from God’s story.

Technology, social media, Netflix, travel, food and wine, comfort. I would not tempt you with notably bad things, or you would get suspicious.

I would distract you with everyday comforts that slowly feed you a different story and make you forget God.

Then you would dismiss the Spirit leading you, loving you, and comforting you. Then you would start to love comfort more than surrender and obedience and souls.

If that didn’t work, I would attack your identity. I would make you believe you had to prove yourself.

Then you would focus on yourself instead of God.

Friends would become enemies.

Teammates would become competition.

You would isolate yourself and think you are not enough.

You would get depressed and be ungrateful for your story.

Or —

You would compare and believe you are better than others.

You would judge people who need God.

You would condemn them rather than love and invite them in.

You would gossip and destroy and tear down other works of God.

Either way you would lose your joy, because your eyes would be fixed on yourself and people instead of on Jesus.

And if that didn’t work, I would intoxicate you with the mission of God rather than God Himself.

Then you would worship a cause instead of Jesus.

You would fight each other to have the most important roles.

You would burn out from striving.

You would think that success is measured by the results you see.

You would build platforms for applause rather than to display God.

Then all your time and effort would be spent on becoming important rather than on knowing Jesus and loving people. The goals would be to gather followers, earn fancy job titles, publish books, build big ministries rather than to seek the souls of men and the glory of God.

And if that didn’t work, I would make you suffer.

Then maybe you would think God is evil rather than good.

Your faith would shrink.

You would get bitter and weary and tired rather than flourish and grow and become more like Christ.

You would try to control your life rather than step into the plans He has for you.

The enemy is telling you that freedom is only found in finally proving to yourself and to the world that…

you are important.

you are in control.

you are liked.

you are happy.

you are enough.

Here is the thing. The enemy promises water, but every time we go to his wells, they are empty.

He gives us a sip of water, enough that we keep believing him. We have believed the lie that our cravings will be satisfied if we are enough and if we have enough. So we chase image, answers, things, people—and we wonder all the while, Why am I still thirsty?

God is clear in the book of Jeremiah about what is happening:

My people have committed two sins:

They have forsaken me,

the spring of living water,

and have dug their own cisterns,

broken cisterns that cannot hold water.

Water. No human can survive three days without it. No other resource is more essential to sustain life. None.

There is water for you. Not just enough to quench your thirst but an unlimited supply that will fill you and then come pouring out of you into a thirsty world.

But the water you need is found in only one Source.

I’ll tell you right up front, there is no secret here. Just one answer to your thirst:

Jesus.

“If anyone is thirsty, let him come to me and drink,” He says in the gospel of John. “Whoever believes in me…streams of living water will flow from within him.”

He alone is the source from which flows all the things we crave and hope to become.

He always delivers.

Because with Him, we have Nothing. to. Prove.

 

Jennie Allen’s brand new book, Nothing to Prove: Why We Can Stop Trying So Hard invites you into a different experience, one in which our souls are content and epic dreams unfold through our lives. As you wade into the refreshing truth of the more­-than-­enough life Jesus offers, you’ll experience the joyous freedom that comes to those who are determined to discover what God can do through a soul completely in love with Him.

Jennie is a recovering achiever who is passionate about Jesus. She is the best­selling author of Nothing to Prove, Anything, and Restless, as well as the founder and visionary for the million­-strong IF:Gathering, which exists to gather, equip, and unleash the next generation to live out their purpose. Jennie speaks frequently at conferences such as Catalyst and Q. She holds a master’s degree in biblical studies from Dallas Theological Seminary and lives in Austin, Texas, with her husband, Zac, and their four children. Your soul desperately needs to know  — it has Nothing to Prove.

[ Our thanks to WaterBrook Multnomah for their partnership in today’s devotion ]