Ann Voskamp's Blog, page 158

Why ThanksGiving & ThanksLiving is Radically Subversive: {and Everything You Need to Have the Best Thanksgiving & Holidays Yet}

Mama can kick leaves in the woods like she’s tearing back the crumpled paper wrapped over the surface of things.

She walks with a stick.

She dragged it out from under some maple saplings. And then she pins that trail under her right down.

Like there’s no loud and flippant way she’s letting anything make her miss the now right under her, no way that that now could just up and slip out from under her.

You could be a sophisticated cynic and miss your whole life that way.

You walk a bold, amazed way when you know the destination is right here.

What had Mary Oliver defiantly scratched down with an inked stick of her own?

“When it’s over, I want to say: all my life I was a bride married to amazement.”

Everyone’s wild to stop feeling overwhelmed – but nobody ever wants everything to stop and be over .

Mama walks like that through the woods. Like she knows it’s going to be over someday… all over.

And then there’ll be that stark moment when you turn and see what you were married to. You can live your life as the bride married to Hurry, having affairs with Not Enough, Always Stress, and Easy Cynicism. Yeah, I guess we all get to choose our own bedfellows.

Mama’s standing there, already decided.

When it’s over, I want to say: all my life I was a bride married to amazement, vowed to Awe Himself, covenanted to Christ –and I took the whole of everything He gave in this gloried world into my open arms with thanks.

Because really? Yeah, I guess so —  Anybody can be a cynic. Cynicism is laziness in every way.

The real heroes are the ones who never stop looking for the possibility of joy. The brilliant are always the one who look for the light. 

“Here is good. I think we should do it right here.” Mama taps the ground of the trail with her stick, holding here down. Here always has some good if you look at it long enough.

“Good light.” Mama looks up.

So that’s where Levi and I drag the tables to. Haul in stumps to stand in as legs for plank benches. Throw old quilts down as tablcloths and lay out the plates.

“Are we crazy?” I tug at the end of one of the quilts. Mama raises her one eyebrow — “I mean, not in a general, yes, obviously-we-are-crazy sense — but in a specifically in a trying- to- have- a- Thanksgiving-dinner in- the- woods- sense?”

Mama grins. Winks. Knowingly.

Yeah – she doesn’t have to say it.

Wherever you are – Thanksgiving is always for those crazy enough to see grace for the trees.

Thanksgiving is always for the courageous and Grace is always for the risky.

We lay out the table and string up the banners and make up our Thanksgiving Tree  —-

And it’s all ridiculous enough to be meant to be —

It’s like the unlikely feast in the middle of the trees is the unexpected that is right.

There’s Mama and the kids and the Farmer and cousins and aunts and uncles and a Thanksgiving in the woods, in the coming dark and the cooling light, and this feels subversive and it feels right.

Because the shock of it is:

Grace is never passive. Grace is a hijacker. 

Grace hijacks the dark, the impossible, the unlikely, the angry, the cynics, the doomed.

Your calling is radically this: Gloriously hijack every darkness with grace.

To love mercy and do justice and follow Christ means to be The Revolutionary Guerillas of Grace — radically turning the fallen world Upside Down.

And if grace is a hijacker of the dark — then it makes sense to give thanks in the most unlikely places. 

Mama serves up pumpkin pie under a beech tree. Men eat the last of the turkey under the ancient limbs of oaks.

I look at them all and I love them for this.

Sure, why not get really subversive with this giving thanks and giving it forward and go hard after the dark this month —

Thanksgiving is more than a holiday — it’s meant to be all our days. 

And when Thanksgiving become ThanksLiving — we not only give thanks for the gifts in our life — we want to become a gift in other people’s lives.

“Nothing is more powerful in than the word than Giving.

For God so loved the world — that He did what?

For God so love the world that He gave . . .

Thanksgiving. Forgiving. Care-giving.

Giving It Forward Today — being the GIFT. Living broken and given.

Life-giving.

Everything that matters in living comes down to giving.

learning the art of living is learning the art of giving.

The art of really living, of giving, is believing there is enough Love in you, that you are Loved enough by Him, to be made enough love to give.”

~ The Broken Way, A Daring Path to the Abundant Life 

Could there be anything more powerful than this:

Giving thanks — and then giving it forward — living broken and given, into the abundant life. 

These two beats of the Father’s heart has what forever changed my heart.

That’s what’s happening here:  Daily Doxology is how to Detox your soul. And daily being broken & given like bread, living given like a gift, gives your soul joy.

It’s always dark or doxology — (and yeah, amazing grace — we get to decide.)

It’s always being givenness that breaks brokenness. 

It feels subversive and radical and — like hijacking the dark.

Yeah, maybe that’s it — a Personal Revolution of Counting Gifts and then being the Gift  — that turns everything around.

There are always the quiet revolutionaries who give thanks for grace in the unexpected — and then are grace to others in unexpected ways.

There are always the real revolutionaries who know this overthrows all the pressing dark.

There are, even now, the revolutionaries who know salvation is no cheap gift; they know what they were saved for. They choose to give glory with the breaths given — and then live given into His glory.  They choose to be the gift, broken and given. They choose to be married to amazement because only amazing grace divorces souls from the dark.

The kids are lit in the last light, like their hair has been caught on glory.

The way they laugh and it rises and nothing can hold it down. Mama walking through the leaves sounds like the rustling open, the unwrapping of gifts.

I can’t take my eyes off those three kids with their backs pressed up against the bark of a Tree.

The way grace hijacks all these shadows even now.

 

Start your Own Personal Revolution this Holiday Season: 
1. Count Gifts — all through the holidays, counting blessings, count gifts, 3 a day. 
2. Make your own: The Thanks Giving Tree {Free Printable}

1. Print out The Thanks Giving Tree (Spanish Edition here)

2. Cut out all of the leaves. Hole punch each leaf. Slip a string through each hole. Hang the leaves on a bouquet of branches in a container of your choice.

3. Reflect on its verse and make the verse your prayer of thanksgiving back to God. Then jot down one gift you are grateful to God for on the back of the leaf.

Make giving thanks a daily habit — and daily wear joy! 

4. Be the GIFT throughout the holidays. Pick up a copy of The Broken Way and print out the daily GIFT list — and not only count gifts but this holiday season, feel the joy of being the GIFT — being broken and given like bread and giving it forward today.

5. We’d love to see you counting gifts and being the gift? Share how you are counting gifts with your Thanksgiving Tree or ways you are being the GIFT with the GIFT list?  Share with us on Twitter? Instagram? (@annvoskamp #BetheGIFT #1000gifts) or over in our Facebook community?

Download your Thanks Giving Tree & GIFT calendar here:

 

CBA Christian Retailing Review:

“Written in an amazingly touching style, this book will resonate with those who know pain. 

It is as though Voskamp has captured and bottled the song of the hurting and gives them hope. 

The Broken Way is emotional, tender, and filled with good news…

Passionate and Powerful.” ~ CBA Christian Retailing Review

Limping Along: What Happens When We Allow Things to Entangle Us

When bestselling author, Francine Rivers was a little girl her family traveled, camped and explored God’s creation. It’s in her DNA. She recently started a series of posts called Earth Psalms as a way to encourage readers to look at the world God created and to search for the subtle message that will expand their love for Him and create a desire for a closer relationship with him. She joins us on the Front Porch today so she can share one of her Earth Psalms with you. Ask the Holy Spirit to open your eyes, ears, and heart to receive what God has for you?

guest post by Francine Rivers

Those who trust in the Lord will find new strength. They will soar high on wings like eagles. They will run and not grow weary. They will walk and not faint.  Isaiah 40:31

 

So a friend called from Hawaii and told me about an injured seagull she saw on the beach.

The poor bird couldn’t walk at all but flutter-hopped in its quest for food.

On closer examination, my friend saw that fishing line entangled the bird’s legs, hobbling it.

She approached slowly, extending her hand in the hope she could remove the line and do something about the bird’s wounds. Frightened, the gull flew off, legs still hobbled and infected.

Sometimes we are like that poor seagull.

We become entangled in bad habits or addictions, in destructive relationships or all manner of fears.

We peck away at our daily tasks, trying to forget the pain. All the while the infection of sin is growing and going deeper until it threatens to destroy us.

The seagull flew away from my friend, who wanted to untangle the fishing line and wash the wounds.

We too often turn away from those who want to help us—and even from God, who is the only One who really can get rid of our sin.

Sometimes we turn away out of fear, other times out of shame.

More often, we turn our backs because of our pride.

We don’t want others to see us at our ugly worst, so we limp along, pretending we’re just fine.

The pain of removing what holds us captive can be frightening.

Yet if we lay aside all those things that encumber our walk with God, if we strip off the sin that slows us down, as Hebrews 12:1 says, then we find the freedom and healing that come from being reconciled to God.

We no longer have to hobble about in isolation, like the injured seagull, but we can live in communion with God the way we were created to.

When we trust fully in God to help us and refuse to let our pride turn us away from His forgiveness, then He will renew our strength, giving us joy and energy for the tasks ahead.

We will run and not grow weary; we will soar high on wings like eagles.

Sin and despair, like the sea waves cold,

Threaten the soul with infinite loss;

Grace that is greater—yes, grace untold—

Points to the refuge, the mighty cross.

Grace, grace, God’s grace,

Grace that will pardon and cleanse within,

Grace, grace, God’s grace,

Grace that is greater than all our sin!

“Grace Greater Than Our Sin”

“Forgiveness is always free. But that doesn’t mean that confession is always easy. Sometimes it is hard. Incredibly hard. It is painful to admit our sins and entrust ourselves to God’s care.”  Erwin Lutzer

How do you react when you’re struggling and someone tries to help you?

When you’re tangled up in sin, how do you respond to God?

Why do you think we often turn away from Him?

How do we benefit by letting God and others help us?

What sins, bad habits, or poor choices might be entangling you and keeping you from living with freedom. What could you do this week to throw those off?

It’s a reality — that Jesus is the One who gives us strength. And it can be a heartache — that too often we let ourselves become constrained by sin. That is what can trip us up, distracts us, and keeps us from living well.

When we’re stuck in sin — we don’t have to get stuck in the trap of turning away from Him.

What can turn everything around in the midst of everything —- is turning to Him.

You can feel at the edges of things — God reaching out to heal us.

 

New York Times bestselling author Francine Rivers has continued to win both acclaim and reader loyalty around the globe. Her numerous bestsellers include A Voice in the Wind, Redeeming Love, and Bridge to Haven.

In her new weekly devotional Earth Psalms, Francine invites you to join her in seeking the Creator through the marvelous natural world we live in. Stunning photography, scripture excerpts, applications, and prayers will inspire, encourage, challenge and comfort you. This is one to be visited again and again. 

 

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

 

when you want the messiness of things to pass — America, Meet America; People, Meet People [#1]

Dear America —

Remember how we ran into each other a few weeks ago and I raved about how we loved you and were grateful for you?

So then I up and ran out to meet you, went on a 10 city tour and walked your streets, held  your babies, hugged your great-grandmothers, sat with you, drank coffee with you, laughed too loud with you, wept hard with you, and it’s come to this: I couldn’t love you all more. And then I realize that we can —  we can all love each other more and love is what never fails.

America, meet America.

Humans, meet Humans.

We’re all more beautiful than we know — because we’re known and seen and loved in ways we don’t know.

… not one of us ever walks alone. 

In New York State, the loveliest lady  leaned over to me at the check-in counter & said “I think I know you & we’re already friends!” (This is always a true story no matter where we are: There is no such thing as a stranger — we are all already friends just waiting to meet. The world is hurting but the world is holy.)

And I shook her hand like an awkward fool, grabbed and pen and gifted her a bunch of pages with my brokenheart scrawled all across it, and she reached for my hand: “Our girl was airlifted to a city hospital last night because she needs an organ transplant & our whole world.. and she … And… we’re just… Heartbroken…”

And I pulled her in close and we held on & sometimes falling apart together is how things fall together… And there is no such thing as other people’s children — all children are all of our children. 

When one of us grieves, we all grieve and when one of us feels pain, we all feel pain, and there is no such thing as us and them, but us with them, which means there is just all of us. 

Then her husband gathered round us & choked it back, his hand resting on her shoulder: “Re-member the word He’s given us: Fear not. Believe.”

He turns to me. “I carry these verses around in my pocket. Hand them out to people. A Word for the day. A gift. And that’s one God gave for us, back when our daughter first got so sick: Fear not — Believe.”

Fear not — Believe… Those are the Words that the Maker of the World  has given the entire world. 

Fear not a grim forecast — Believe in the casting of a vision for more grace, more goodness, more God.

Fear not all the unknown things — Believe the God who knows all things.

Fear not each other — Believe in the best of each other.  

Fear not  — Hope always.

And Hope has hands and hope leans into where it hurts and hope gets to work so that hoped-for things can rise.

We stand there in the middle of the airport and we all hold hands, one mama flying to her hospitalized daughter and one believing father who hands out the GIFT of God’s Word to people he passes throughout the day —  and we pray because this is where hope always begins, and hope never ends when prayers never end.

People? Meet People. 

America, Meet America, Humans, Meet Humans.… because this is who we are meant to be — we find each other, we ache with each other, we hear each other, we hold on to each other and we pray for each other. 

It’s true that it happens on Sundays, just before they pass the bread and the wine, but it’s happening too on street corners, happening in store aisles, happening in airports and offices and check out lines, the way we, the people, pass the peace.

You may not hear the quiet murmurings of “Peace of Christ to you” like you do on Sunday mornings — but you can witness it everywhere: The way an elderly man passes the peace of a smile to the woman picking over tomatoes too in the vegetable department, the way one dad with kids passes the peace of a nod to another dad juggling a screaming toddler and undo-operating stroller, the way we pass the peace and hold a door open for each other, the way we hold space for each other to think differently, live differently, see differently, the way that we pass each other peace and grace and respect and love no matter what is different between us.

If we passed the peace to every person we pass throughout the day, maybe some of the pain things would pass? 

Maybe — When we pass the peace to each other, we can find a peace that passes all understanding.

This whole universe is Grace University. And honouring one another is how you get an honorary degree at Grace University.  Everywhere, we get to learn. Everywhere is a class. Everything begins with the next face you see, the next person you stand beside.

There is no greater grant you can receive — than to grant grace.

Now is when we don’t grow cold to love. Now is when — we can’t let our need to be heard make us deaf  to where we need to love.

We can’t let our increasing need to be heard — decrease our need to be compassionate.

Because if our hearts no longer have compassion — than our hands no longer have anything to offer the world. 

Compassion literally means co-suffering  — and it’s only when we are willing to co-suffer with people, that we get to say that we have compassion for people. And it’s only when we have compassion for people — that we get to become more like Christ. 

And one Lovely Lady in the Buffalo airport ask me to keep praying for her girl and I keep nodding yes. Who of isn’t in need of an organ transplant? Who of us doesn’t need a new heart? 

She lets me pray with her and she walks the broken way of humility and vulnerability and generosity, giving me bits of her broken heart, and she lets me carry a bit of her brokenness, invites me to have compassion, to co-suffer a bit with her, and this is a kind of healing. I try to memorize the beauty of her.

It’s never the things you carry that hurt you — but how you carry those things.

There is a beautiful broken way that offers a new way.

There is a beautiful way we can all be together.

There is autumn in the wind, there are geese flying south over cornfields. There are roads and ways to be taken and people meeting people, people fearing not and hoping always, and peace being passed between us all —

like gifts falling like a quiet mid-November rain.

 

Related: Find the free November GIFT calendar here & be the GIFT & pass the peace in the streets — for such a time as now… and the tour of America, Meet America; People meet People series will continue over the next several weeks — you are all such people! with such stories!

CBA Christian Retailing Review:

“Written in an amazingly touching style, this book will resonate with those who know pain. 

It is as though Voskamp has captured and bottled the song of the hurting and gives them hope. 

The Broken Way is emotional, tender, and filled with good news…

Passionate and Powerful.” ~ CBA Christian Retailing Review

if you’d love for things to turn around: an unexpected revolution

There is a turning around of things

a kind of revolution

that calls through everything,

that says only one thing is needed right now,

that could break all this brokenness.

Lean in and listen for it right here?

(So when it gets to the part right here in Life Today, where Sheila Walsh and I about heart-explode — yeah, that’s when the breaking of all the brokenness begins.)

Thinking there really maybe ain’t nobody who doesn’t need this right about now:

(email readers — you just have to grab a cup of something warm & join us right here?)

 

CBA Christian Retailing Review:

“A personal manifesto for the brokenhearted…

Written in an amazingly touching style, this book will resonate with those who know pain. 

It is as though Voskamp has captured and bottled the song of the hurting and gives them hope. 

The Broken Way is emotional, tender, and filled with good news…

Passionate and Powerful.” ~ CBA Christian Retailing Review

Only the Good Stuff: Multivitamins for Your Weekend [11.12.16]

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:  

Dirk Dallas via fromwhereidrone.com
Dirk Dallas via fromwhereidrone.com
Dirk Dallas via fromwhereidrone.com

when I sit with his photos, the world stops and exhales

and now he has plenty to pass around

Seth Casteel

he captures kittens in mid-pounce come see

nature as art

Matteo Stucchi: @idolcidigulliver 
Matteo Stucchi: @idolcidigulliver 
Matteo Stucchi: @idolcidigulliver 

some of the most unique desserts right here

airless bike tires that will never go flat? yes, please

so can you guess the objects?

never give up hope: after 3 years, an 82 yr old found his wedding ring in his own garden

she let adversity become her greatest teacher

Advent starts in 2 weeks – time to pull out your Advent wreathes 

Christmas is coming!

Enter The Greatest Gift Giveaway at DaySpring to be randomly selected to win almost $350 worth of prizes including The Greatest Gift, as well as the Unwrapping the Greatest Gift.

Don’t want to wait to see if you win? Check out the amazing deals going on right now in DaySpring’s Advent Sale.

#beTheGIFT: “the sense of community is incredible” yes, yes, yes

a life-changing bond: “she gave me freedom”

and maybe he’s on to something here?!

connect recommend highly enough:

Shop handcrafted accessories that create dignified jobs & connect caring consumers to artisans all around the world. 

he’s helping to transform shelter dogs – inside and out

How can the church lead with love? Don’t miss this.

This Q series, hosted by Gabe Lyons, features an exclusive, commissioned Q Talk delivered by Dr. Greg Thompson and is divided into segments for easy consumption.

come get away for a bit?

About the Election & How to Live Right Now:

5 Words of Jesus that Will Change Everything

absolutely beautiful

Post of the Week from these parts here

win or lose, here’s a way forward through this messy brokenness

politics aside — family really is the most important

she is really on to something here – an inventive way to help those in need and those helping those in need

she is choosing to #beTheGIFT

getting food to those who need it most: come see those who are making a difference

having the faith to keep going and make a difference

a humbling grace to have my friend Charles Morris out to the farm recently. A man of deep warmth and wisdom, Charles hosts the radio program,  HAVEN Today. We sat around the table talking to the kids about life and Jesus and loving well, while also  discussing today’s topic in this video: Living The Broken Way

This is one short segment of an hour long interview you can see in it’s entirety right here

Just -thank you. You all made The Broken Way  land on New York Time’s Best Seller’s List in its first two weeks out in the world —
I can’t thank you enough for Being Part of the Revolution:  #TheBrokenWay #BeTheGIFT

Take the Dare, Join the Revolution, Pick Up The Broken Way — and Experience Deep Transformation

yes, yes, yes and amen

  [ Print’s FREE here: ]

…when your identity is in Christ, your identity is the same yesterday, today, and tomorrow.

Criticism can’t change it. Failing can’t shake it. Election results can’t ruin it. Lists can’t determine it.

When your identity is in the Rock, your identity is rock-solid. As long as God is for you, it doesn’t matter what mountain rises ahead of you.

You aren’t your yesterday, you aren’t your messes, you aren’t your failures, you aren’t your brokenness.

Let’s believe and put on repeat all day: You are brave enough for today, because He is. You are strong enough for what’s coming, because He is. And you are enough for all that is, because He always is.

 

[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.

Links for 2016-11-11 [del.icio.us]

Sponsored: 64% off Code Black Drone with HD Camera

Our #1 Best-Selling Drone--Meet the Dark Night of the Sky!

feel like the only one in a crazy world? healing the lonely in you & me

Almost two years ago, I wrote that I fervently believe Scott Sauls’ first book, Jesus Outside the Lines, 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’s second book, is a direly needed, must-read for the times we are in: Befriend: Create Belonging in an Age of Judgment, Isolation, and Fear. It gives us joy to welcome our friend, Scott Sauls, to the farm’s front porch today . . .

guest post by Scott Sauls

Thanks to social media, we are more connected than ever.

We are a lot lonelier, too.

Social media does have its benefits. Like steak, wine, and politics, social media can add value to our lives—in moderation.

But like steak, wine, and politics, it can also damage health if we consume too much.

For example, according to a 2015 Forbes study, as social media engagement increases, so does anxiety and depression.

Rather than create belonging, this act of trading presence and eye contact for a screen can feed narcissism, gossip, comparison, low self-esteem, and isolation.

This should not surprise us, because digital likes, follows, feeds, and fans are weak imitations of actual, in-the-flesh friends. Promising to cure our loneliness, they rarely deliver.

Instead, they add to our loneliness.

This loneliness of ours is not a flaw.

We aren’t lonely because something is wrong with us. We are lonely because something is right with us.

Our loneliness is the image of our triune, communal God in us, beckoning us to connect, to know and to be known, to love and to be loved, to befriend and to be befriended.

Loneliness urges the withdrawn self to engage. It calls the online persona to become a person again. It calls the impostor to get healthy by getting real.

Loneliness begins to fade when the image-conscious self-editor, the retreater, the hider, and the poser in us begins a transition toward transparency.

But transparency can be fearsome and disorienting.

In an interview about his book, How I Lost Five Pounds in Six Years, comedian Tom Arnold got honest and said that the reason he writes books, the reason he does comedy—the reason he does everything—is because he is deeply broken and is desperate for people to like him.

Tom Arnold’s (and our) insatiable hunger for “likes” taps into the image of God in us and our longing to be known and loved, to be exposed and not rejected. It also taps into our fear of being cast out, excluded, diminished, and forgotten by the people we let in.

Because ours is a world of judgment, isolation, and fear—because we have reasons to assume the world is not safe—we become social chameleons, blending into the colors and textures of whatever environments we inhabit.

We have a chameleon self for each situation—our work self, our party self, our church self, our at-home self, our Internet self, and many other selves that we put on to self-protect.

Like a chameleon, we are in chronic adaptation mode, tweaking our external colors and textures to blend in and belong and to ward off potential predators.

Sadly, this destructive strategy appeals to our frail and fearful hearts.

We want to be vulnerable, to love and be loved, yet we are afraid to risk and expose our true selves.

But C. S. Lewis was right: “To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything and your heart will certainly be wrung and possibly broken.” And yet, says Lewis, “The only place outside Heaven where you can be perfectly safe from all the dangers . . . of love . . . is Hell.”

How can we find healing for our ache of loneliness?

Where can we turn in our search for connection and for a safe space to know and be known?

In our age of church shopping, church critiquing, church splitting, and church leaving, it seems we have forgotten Jesus’ vision for the church.

We must remember that the church is not a social club for well-dressed posers; it is a hospital for the sick, and Jesus is the chief Physician.

The local church is a detox center for addicts—for those addicted to drugs and sex, as well as junkies desperate for their next hit of porn, gossip, power, recognition, greed, and retail therapy.

Jesus’ vision for the church as a purposeful, powerful, healing, safe hospital for the sin-sick addict in all of us stands in stark contrast with our all too common view of the church as an optional, shiny social club add-on to our lives.

Membership in a local church means joining your imperfect self to other imperfect selves to form an imperfect community that, through Jesus, embarks on a journey toward a better future together.

As Dietrich Bonhoeffer reminds us, he who loves his dream of community more than the Christian community itself, with all of its weaknesses and frailties, becomes a destroyer of Christian community.

When we dismiss the local church, we dismiss and become destroyers of Jesus’ first and foremost love.

If only there were a church resembling the church of the New Testament, we tell ourselves, then we wouldn’t be so cynical about the local church.

We forget that the church at Corinth was narcissistic, arrogant, dysfunctional, litigious, and sometimes adulterous, racist, and unjust. Yet it received more redemptive attention and energy from Paul than any other New Testament church.

It seems that as Paul beheld the wormy caterpillar that was Corinth, he also envisioned the butterfly. He seemed confident that he who began a good work in them would be faithful to complete it.

How do we experience loneliness-slaying love in the midst of imperfect, messy community? It has been said, “Be kind because everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle.”

As we limp toward transparency and community and friendship with our own fears and insecurities, we recognize that we aren’t alone.

We are all much afraid. We all feel more insecure than confident, more weak than strong, more unlovable than lovely, more irredeemable than redeemed.

When we see that we are not alone, we can reach out to one another.

Don’t underestimate the power of words. While shaming words can take courage out of a soul, encouraging and affirming words can put courage back in.

When you offer critique to another soul, do it gently. When you offer encouragement to another soul, do it fiercely.

“But,” we groan, “there are some things that bother me about this community, and there are people I really don’t like.”

Moving even toward people we don’t particularly like can give us our best opportunities to love.

Biblical love is neither a secondhand emotion nor a sweet, old-fashioned notion. Love is actually a battlefield designed to reshape us into the likeness of the one who first loved us when we were not friends with him, but enemies.

“God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us” (Romans 5:8, niv) We love, not in the sentimental sense, but in the gutsy, costly sense, because He first loved us. We do not have the resources in ourselves to extend such selfless love. We are resourced by another, by Jesus Himself.

Emerson once wrote, “One of the blessings of old friends is that you can afford to be stupid with them.”

With Jesus, we can afford to be stupid with Him because He has taken our shame away by moving our judgment day from the future to the past.

His death, burial, and resurrection have established us as His beloved bride, as those whom He is not ashamed to call his sisters and brothers.

We are and forever will be the cherished and kept daughters and sons of his Father, who is also our Father.

We are not a consumer good to Jesus; therefore we are not consumed.

We are his forever family—fully known and fully loved, completely exposed and never rejected.

We can befriend others — because this Jesus is our Friend.

 

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 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 the 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. Befriend is an absolute must-read that I cannot recommend highly enough.

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

win or lose, the way forward through this messy brokenness

If you lean in close — you can hear it, all across the land of the free and the home of the brave :

Some are delighted with relief right now.

Some are despairing with rejection right now.

Some are conflicted and some are confused and some are glad about the election’s outcome and some are deeply grieving that outcome.

There are deeply divided lines and painful brokenness.

“More than 4 in 10 people believe that the other party’s policies are so misguided they pose a threat to the nation.

And more than 55% of Democrats say the Republican party makes them afraid — and 49% of the Republican party says the Democrats make them afraid.”

There is very real fear and pain on both sides and perhaps this is not the time to dismiss each other but to take the time to listen to each other.

Many Americans who felt forgotten and dismissed voted their pain. And now different Americans feel painfully forgotten and dismissed.

Many Americans voted the way they did because of genuine fear for the future. And now different Americans genuinely feel their own kind of fear for their futures.

Strange how that is — We are all the same kind of different.

Family may disagree — but they still agree that they are a family.

So maybe the way forward in the division and the brokenness? The way forward is always to give forward.

Maybe right now — Instead of giving someone a piece of your mind—it’s far better to give them pieces of your heart.

 

Maybe right now —

We Go Forward by Giving It Forward Today —

and maybe it never mattered more than it does today…

#BetheGIFT:

Give someone the benefit of the doubt. 

Involved in a group conversation? Go out of your way to make sure each person feels included. 

Grab a group of friends — and serenade strangers on the street. 

Reach out across dividing lines and say “Hi” to a friend who might be a little different than you. Let them know you love them for who they are, not how they voted.

Take a photo of anything you see that reminds you of someone — and send it their way. It’s a healing way to say “Thinking of You!”

Stand on a street corner for 10 minutes — and give compliments to everyone you see

Reach out to someone today who is feeling hurt, who is grieving. Listen well.

Find one person today who is “other” — who thinks differently, lives differently, sees things differently. And just do that: Listen to each other, listen to the “other.”

Maybe — if each of us, everywhere, could find just one person who is the “other” today — and really listen until the “other” feels understood — this is what it means when Jesus said love one another — to love the other.

Absurd comes from that Latin word, ‘surdus,’ which means ‘deaf.’  Things will only become more absurd times if we don’t listen but grow deaf to each other.

Whenever we deafen, demonize, and dehumanize anybody —  we can legitimize anything.

It’s that Latin word which means “listening,” audire — that gives us the word “obedient.” A Faithful Life is The Listening Life.

Listening fully to each other — is how to be fully obedient to God.

The only way to a sincerely God-Obedient life —  is to live a sincerely Listening Life.

In the midst of the brokenness — now is the time, for such a time, to listen to each other — so that we can be known for how well we love each other.

This might be a step toward the healing we all agree is needed desperately and desperately wanted.

We may not understand each other — but we can stand with each other. Instead of dismissing each other out of hand — now is the time to reach out a hand and deeply listen to each other.

If we all made it a practice to genuinely listen everyday to one person with whom we disagree, we’d get to genuinely practice our faith.

Maybe — God’s purposes come not so much through power but through the compassion of God’s people.

Compassion is more powerful than power. Ask Jesus who chose to die on a cross.

Compassion, co-passion, literally means co-suffering. And co-suffering with the suffering is how Jesus chose to transform suffering. And we’ve all been suffering in different ways, we’re all the same kind of different. Listen well to each other’s broken hearts, to each other’s suffering.

If we could be compassionate with each other — co-suffer — with each other — we could be part of the healing of each other.

If we are passionate about the church having any transformational power in the world, then the call of the church is to be compassionate — to live cruciformational. Formed like a cross, we take the form of reaching hands, open ears, listening hearts.

Because our God is with us, we will be with each other.

Because our God is on the throne, we will not spout off with each other but be on our knees for each other.

Because our compassionate God is all powerful, we will be compassionate with each other because this is the way of the most powerful.

Because our God is close to the brokenhearted — we will be near to the hearts of all the broken — of all of us.

If you lean in close, in the warming autumn days — you can hear it, like the heartbeat of hope:

people coming together to give grace to each other, to be the gift to each other, the brokenness of things being re-membered —

in the remembering that there’s no way to deny anyone a lavish glass of grace from which we ourselves have drank lavishly.

 

Coming Next Week, a new series of posts: Humans, Meet Humans. America, Meet America; Canada, Meet Canadians. I kinda just love all the people, and getting to meet all you beautiful people face to face during #TheBrokenWayTogetherTour, & maybe in seeing each other’s faces & remembering who we all are to one another, we might re-member a bit of the brokenness?

from CBA Christian Retailing Review:

“A personal manifesto for the brokenhearted…

Written in an amazingly touching style, this book will resonate with those who know pain. 

It is as though Voskamp has captured and bottled the song of the hurting and gives them hope. 

The Broken Way is emotional, tender, and filled with good news…

Passionate and Powerful.” ~ CBA Christian Retailing Review

Download Your November G.I.F.T list & bookmark here & take the dare to a beautiful life.

This is the Guaranteed Outcome of The Election

guest post by Michael Wear

This morning, we woke up to heated talk about the presidential election.

Throughout the day, political strategists will make their predictions, and the stakes will be discussed in starker and starker terms as we move through the day.

Millions will agonize over their vote, and then nervously watch the returns come in tonight.

This election has been disconcerting to say the least.

It has been defined by the presumption of fear and instability.

We are told that great enemies surround us, and that our fate will be decided when the votes are tallied.

It is right to think of pleasant things while reading the twenty-third Psalm: the calm of still waters and the peace of green pastures.

We read this Psalm, some of the best-known literature the world has ever known, and we are transported in our minds and in our spirit.

We are reminded of God’s character and the promise He has for our lives.

The Lord is my shepherd, I lack nothing.

2     He makes me lie down in green pastures,

He leads me beside quiet waters,

3     He refreshes my soul.

He guides me along the right paths

for his name’s sake.

4 Even though I walk

through the darkest valley,

I will fear no evil,

for you are with me;

your rod and your staff,

they comfort me.

5  You prepare a table before me

in the presence of my enemies.

You anoint my head with oil;

my cup overflows.

6 Surely your goodness and love will follow me

all the days of my life,

and I will dwell in the house of the Lord

forever.

–Psalm 23

It is a Psalm for all times, a reminder of the constant things and eternal truths.

Yet, to think this Psalm is primarily for our moments of reflection or mourning is to miss its meaning.

The Twenty-Third Psalm is not just for the backdrop of our lives, a reminder in the moments when we finally catch our breath.

No, this Psalm is meant for when we are in the very thick of life, for the very moment of crisis.

David, of course, was not someone who lived a simple life.

He was a warrior and a king. He led armies and slayed giants. He faced major trials—many of his own making.

This Psalm is not just a reflection on God’s faithfulness, but an overflow of David’s experience of God’s faithfulness at the present time.

The same God who led David beside still waters, and who prepared a table for him in the midst of his trial, that God is alive & well today.

If you have cast your lot with Jesus, He says that we can abide in Him and He will take care of our needs.

If David can find security in God as others plot his demise, surely we can trust Jesus for our security in the midst of an election.

This does not mean that we ignore reality.

This is the great relief of the Psalm: that David is able to acknowledge that he walks through the valley of the shadow of death, but God meets him right there in the mess with blessing and anointing and comfort.

Likewise, as we move through this day, we do not ignore the real consequences that the outcome of this election will have on our well-being and that of our neighbors, our country and the world.

We can even care deeply about the outcome.

But let us not live as though we have no Shepherd.

Jesus encourages us, “in this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world.”

We can find security at all times in Him, and we need not fear any evil.

We worship a great and compassionate God, who is ushering in a certain kingdom, and whose term as King is not for four or eight years, but for all time.

 

Michael Wear is the author of the forthcoming book, Reclaiming Hope: Lessons Learned in the White House About the Future of Faith in America.

[image error]Pick up our story of The Broken Way and how to love a brokenhearted world. This one’s for all of us who have felt our hearts break a bit…

This one’s for the brave and the busted and the real and dreamers and the sufferers and the believers.

This one’s for those who dare to take The Broken Way… into abundance

About the Election & How to Live Right Now: 5 Words of Jesus that Will Change Everything

Somebody sure got old Marjorie Knight’s name plain wrong.

I’m the geeky toothpick-kid from one farm over.

Standing there in Miss Marjorie’s aged kitchen smelling of wood stove and rising bread, and you could outline her silhouette there in the window over the sink, her running the water — how she looked like a stone polished perfect.

You could see how the old woman’s shoulders rounded under her tufted polyester sweaters, how the edges of the woman had rounded smooth.

They’d said the cancer would take her in weeks.

That it’d eat right up the rounded sides of her. I weeded her garden.

Mama sent me down the road to Miss Marjorie’s farm with Shepherd’s Pie.

I’d leave the tin foiled pyrex on her glossy floral table cover ripped and fraying at the edges. Her house smelled of a hundred years and Old Spice.

Miss Marjorie never did really just talk — her words chuckled. Like her words rolled like chuckling water over a stony life. I don’t have to close my eyes to still hear her.

Forget whatever anyone else said. Forget whatever any doctor said. The miracle simply happened one day at a time:

Miss Marjorie laughed through the weeks and lived another 22 years.

All that matters is whatever He said. All that mattered was how she lived.

Do whatever He tells you.

Mary had said that to the servants at the wedding of Cana, before Jesus’ first miracle: Do Whatever He Tells You.

Just five words.

I tape it to a chalkboard, folded it into a purse, let the truth of it round off the sharp edges of my life. I walk straighter, braver.

Do Whatever He Tells You. Walk across whatever field, take whatever mountain, cross whatever sea.



Doesn’t matter if anyone else says can’t.

Doesn’t matter if anyone else says don’t.

Doesn’t matter if anyone else says won’t.

All that matters is whatever He. Tells You. 

It’s what we’d told our ragamuffin kids when they were little: “Your Dad will call you– and if you can’t hear him? You’re not where you are meant to be.”

Your Father calls you.

And if you can’t hear Him?

Ain’t that always it:

We want clarity — and God gives a call.

We want a road map — and God gives a relationship.

We want answers — and God gives His hand.

Sure, fences and rules are easier:

This is the best life and that is the less life.  Vote this way — don’t vote that way. This is the way and that way over there is a copout.

But the point is: God singularly calls you and a call from God is about relationship and a call is something one keeps listening for — come this way, come to the land I will show you. 

It’s taking me a life time to learn it: God wants you to lean on the Guide — who speaks to you through His Book.

Why would God give a map — when He wants to give you Himself?

We need the person of God more than we need the plan for our life.

His voic e is what you keep listening for….  and the heart of faith is your ear pressed into the heartbeat of His Word.

“This is the way for you — not her way, not their way — but My Way for You.” Stay close enough to the Word to hear your Father’s voice.

Do Whatever He Tells You.  

Do whatever’s the next thing. Do whatever He puts in front of you and do it with great love and this is what makes any day, any life, anybody great. Miracles keep happening in the mundane.

Do whatever makes you a God-wrestler, that makes you push and press into Him, till He wrests your hip socket and you never walk the same.

He makes you to do whatever He says; He makes you to do the radically great things everyday like:

Trash your anger. Be kind and be gentle and be thankful. Only Speak Words that make Souls Stronger.

Do Whatever He Says. This makes you the Gritty Radical. Simple, daily things:

Never let real joy be controlled by the things you can’t really control.

When the heart’s a bit bitter, better still the tongue. Tongues are tails of the heart. Trust your tongue only when your heart is tender.

The sin of not finding enough Joy in Christ, this is the sin that dresses up as all the other sins.

This is the radical He’s always calling Christians to — the Gritty Radical: that lets the water of the Word keep wearing away the sin, sanctifying.

Don’t be fooled that there’s such a thing as Glamorous Radical. Wherever you are, there’s only Gritty Radical. Just Do Whatever He Says.  

Do Hard Things — most often means doing small, obscure, everyday things.  Just Do Whatever He Tells You.

And what He calls you to will look upside down and it may not look like it makes any sense. I tell myself that every quaking morning: You’re only living Faith when you taste a bit of Fear in your mouth. It isn’t really Faith unless it tastes a bit like fear. Feel the fear and Leap Anyways.

Your Father is infinitely bigger than your fears.

I wear my bracelet, my word for the year marking me: JESUS. Simplicity isn’t a matter of circumstances, but of focus. Five words. Do. Whatever. He. Tells. You.  #DWHTY

It’s changing my year. It’s changing my life: #DWHTY

Success isn’t about being amazing…. it’s about being obedient.

What really matters is living a life that is good on the inside — not one that just looks good from the outside.

I’d told my mama once that somebody should have called Marjorie Knight? Marjorie Dawn.

It’s a thing to be said about a woman, how a woman can make miracles anywhere, just doing whatever He tells you:

The woman had laughed the hard times into the kind of best of times.

 

[image error]Pick up our story of The Broken Way and how to love a brokenhearted world. This one’s for all of us who have felt our hearts break a bit…

This one’s for the brave and the busted and the real and dreamers and the sufferers and the believers.

This one’s for those who dare to take The Broken Way… into abundance