Ann Voskamp's Blog, page 178
March 8, 2016
why all your failing at doing things better this Lent — may be a kind of succeeding
I can’t seem to follow through in giving up things for Lent.
Which makes me want to just give up Lent.
Which makes me question Who I am following.
Which, I don’t know — may precisely be the point of things.
When by brother calls, I’m standing on a table, snapping the shutter on a bouquet of roses.
Levi picks it up, his eyes twinkling.
I can only hope Levi doesn’t mention he’s answering because his Mama’s standing smack dab center in the middle of the table, her all happy over a bunch of God glory found in flowers.
“Hello? … Oh, hi Uncle John.”
I smile. Levi’s a miniature mirror image of my brother, smattering of freckles bridging across the nose and the thirty years that span between them.
“What am I doing? But you know already –talking to you.” I can imagine the chuckling on the other end of the line. I set the camera aside, hop off the table.
Levi mouths it large, one hand over the receiver. “ARE YOU AVAILABLE, MOM?”
Oh, but wouldn’t I stop being Mom if I stopped being available? Levi grins and hands over my brother.
“Hey. So tell me. Lent. Fill me in, sister.”
Our faith community doesn’t practice Lent.
And apparently, my brother doesn’t do Google.
When he’s got a question, he calls me on his cell.
If need be, he waits for me to Google. My brother’s a welder.
I can hear the rumble of the diesel engine of his pick-up. He can hear the low roar of my kids.
“Okay… Lent. It’s the preparing the heart for Easter. Like going with Jesus into the wilderness for forty days, that we might come face to ugly face with our enemy. Our sacrificing that we might become more like Christ in His sacrifice.”
The other end of the line is silent. I don’t know if this is good.
I keep talking.
“Lent isn’t about forfeiting as much as it’s about formation.
We renounce to be reborn; we let go to become ‘little Christs’. It’s about this: We break away to become.”
Still silence. I have one last swing at it.
“Don’t think of lent as about working your way to salvation. Think of it as working out your salvation.”
I wait.
And he speaks slow.
“Yes…. Yes…. I get it. I’m doing it. I’m doing Lent. God’s been speaking things into my life and I think this is how He wants to meet me right now.” Like brother, like sister.
I stack clean dishes and we talk about some dark corners.
We confess. We pray.
I forsake and I fast and I forget and I flounder, I fall… I fail.
I’ve made soup. I’ve lit the candle. We bow.
I serve bowls, I pass out bread, I pour cups. They’re talking and I am listening and I blithely sit down and I eat.
I have bread in the mouth, the bowl half empty, when I drop the spoon. I shake the head hard. I taste disgust. I absentmindedly eat in the evening, a meal I vowed to fast from. What was I thinking? I can’t scrub my lips clean.
I choke it out in a whisper, “Do I not think enough of You to remember?”
I close the eyes tight and the heart cries the words silent. “Do I love You so little?”
It is an irrefutable law: One needs to be dispossessed of all the possessions that possess us — before one can be possessed of God.
Let the things of this world fall away so the soul can fall in love with God.
But the flesh is corrupt. I can’t do it.
When my brother calls late in the week to talk Lent, I am honest and it hurts and he listens. He unwraps his week haltingly. Like brother, like sister.
“But Lent is teaching me.”My throat stings. “I see how messy and depraved I am. How incapable I am in the flesh, how in bondage I am. That I can’t keep any law perfectly. Worse – oh, this cuts deep — at times…”
I struggle to keep composure, to grip the words and hand them over. Can I even say these words?
“Worse… at times… I don’t even want to keep the law. Lent’s revealing my messiness, my impotence. The utter death of my flesh. I can do nothing. My Lent convicts: I am a lawbreaker. ”
Yeah, I feel sorta wild, desperate. My brother honors my struggle with his witness.
And I turn towards our Lenten wreath, this path we mark for 40 Days with a moving forward of a symbol of the cross, a moving forward of the candle.
Forty days, I am reflecting on my cross, my sins.
My lent has me hard after the light…
Looking hard for release from this messy body of death.
And there is Jesus.
Jesus with a crown of thorns. Jesus bent low, God carrying my rotting mess, Grace doing what I cannot do, and I cannot ascend to God but He will descend to me.
I whisper goodbye to my brother because I’m sorta all out of words.
I kneel down by this messy symbolic journey I am on.
I finger the wood of the cross. I trace the back bowed. Jesus will have to do everything. Jesus will have to do everything. He will have to accomplish it all. I am ashes and I am dust and I am in dire need and lent has given me clear eyes to see my sin and I am the one broken under all this skin.
I can feel the grain of the tree under my fingertips.
He is the one going to Calvary.
I love Him because His love is the only thing that can literally save me. This wrestle has made that pretty clear.
A failing lent? It is a good Lent because this lament of our sin — is exactly what prepares us for Resurrection Joy found in our Savior.
Lent gives us this gift: the deeper we know the pit of our messiness & sin, the deeper we’ll drink from the draughts of His joy.
Grief is what cultivates the soil for the seeds of joy.
She who knows her sins much? Loves much, and the road to heaven is paved with the realization that I deserve hell. His rising will be all my joy, because I know it in the marrow of the bones: He is all my hope.
The candle wavers.
Yeah — I know that kind of fragility.
Strange how that is — You can sit in the dark of Lent.
And still feel the warming flame of His Grace on your face.
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Resources: A Cradle to the Cross [Advent/Lent] Wooden Wreath
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4. When you click on Download — it will download the document onto your computer – then just print.
Now could be a time of soul revival
Each of these 40 mini cards are meant to be ‘sticky notes for your soul‘ — mobile faith, portable grace — 40 SIMPLE, small cards of prayer, intention, reflection and repentance, for your pocket, desk, kitchen sink, to carry around as a compass to orient to the irresistible beauty of Jesus, to the Cross, throughout the day.
Read the prayers slowly. Give each line time to do its work. Revisit the prayers throughout the day. Linger. Reflect. Return. Let them shape you.
Then at day’s end, quietly hang that day’s compass/card/ornament on a Lenten/Easter Cross Tree, a powerful visual of how we are the People of the Cross.
This could be a Lent to repent. To refresh. To revive.
March 7, 2016
how to keep falling in love again & why it matters
Stay in love.
I tell the girl that in a hardly voice, the kind of voice that comes from a primal place.
Though, truth be told, she tells me she doesn’t know if she had ever found that love place in the first place — which, yeah, makes it relatively hard to stay in love.
“I don’t think I’ve ever loved Jesus. So I don’t know what it means to stay in love with Jesus?”
I swallow hard — oh.
“Jesus has been about getting into heaven.
Jesus have been about getting saved.
Jesus has been about getting good.” She’s numbering off what she knows on her glossy red fingernails.
How in the world did Jesus get to be our check-off list, these rungs on a ladder, the morality we pull on to dress for success?
When Jesus is been about getting into heaven, getting saved, getting good, Jesus isn’t a passion in your life, He’s a tool in your toolbox — and tools can get flippantly tossed. Anybody can buy any old hammer in any aisle of Walmart.
When Jesus is been about getting into heaven, getting saved, getting good —
Jesus is only merely useful to you — when He longs to be ultimately beautiful to you.
Her eyes are searching mine, more than a bit desperate.
“I thought Christianity was about getting into heaven, getting saved, getting good — No one ever told me that Christianity was about staying in love.”
Falling in love, staying in love? That’s what seduces across the radio waves. That’s what the lingerie catalogues woo us with, what the billboards tease us with, what the MTV videos hard sell.
When the world ’ s selling goods dressed up as love while the church is selling law dressed up as good news — – guess where the next generation starts lining up?
Looking into the eyes of this hardly twenty-something girl, it’s about as crystal clear as it gets:
Our faith better be deeply connected to our senses and our heart, or a sensual world will destroy our faith and steal our heart.
If Jesus hasn’t passionately wooed you — the world eventually, definitely will.
She tells me her exam schedule and what lipstick she thinks is best for spring and she tells me that she’s still going to church with a bunch of kids from her dorm but everyone is hooking up and she just tells me straight up: “Look, we all just want to follow our hearts…”
On the wall right behind her, I’ve got taped up #JesusProject memory verses:
“I seek not my own will but the will of Him who sent me…
You search the Scriptures because you think that in them you have eternal life; and it is they that bear witness about ME.”
And all I can think is: Unless Jesus has all our heart, we don’t want to follow where our hearts will lead us at all.
Unless you fall in love with Jesus — you fall into debated regulations.
Unless you fall in love with Jesus — – you fall into dead religion.
Unless you fall in love with Jesus — you fall into dreaded rules.
Unless you fall in love with Jesus, you end up having an affair with the world.
We sit by the front window and I pour her a cup of steaming tea and I tell her what I’ve tasted: how the earth under our feet, the spring rains coming down on our faces and the stars spinning all around us in all this brazen glory: this is for us, us, us.
These are for you—gifts—these are for you—grace—these are for you—God, so count the ways He loves, a thousand, more, never stop, and feel it in your veins, and taste it on your lips, and feel it before you die, or you die — the wooing love of God.
There’s a cross on the table. There’s a back hunched in this staying, remaining, iron love. Gaze on that Cross —- see those arms spread eternally wide open. Who ever loved us like this, to death? to life?
I can feel it — and we have to feel it — He’s writing it into the world, in His Word, in a thousand ways, the way you stay in love:
You ’ re more than your hands do.
You ’ re more than your hands have.
You ’ re more than how other hands measure you.
You are what is written on God
’
s Hands:
Safe. Held. His. Beloved.
Related:
My own story of discovering how much He loves me
March 5, 2016
Only the Good Stuff: Multivitamins for Your Weekend [03.05.16]
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:
Warren Keelan / Instagram
Warren Keelan / Instagram
Warren Keelan / Instagram
your free invitation to exhale
Nick Kontostavlakis
some of the best travel photos of the year – because maybe your soul needs this exhale?
and the winner…. is?
Google researched that the key to a productive team —
is exactly what we’ve gotta keep telling the kids
oh.
The Open Book
The Open Book
one bookshop — that may be the perfect novel idea
kids found it fascinating
really. this is about perfect: never be afraid to get help when you need it
because typewriters need to keep tapping
Luke Tyree
Luke Tyree
Luke Tyree
because sometimes you can’t stop until you just say it
Mikkel Østergaard and DanChurchAid
shot of a lifetime
This week’s Sticky Note for Your Soul:
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rescues happen where and through who you’d least expect
Kansas City Community Kitchen
sometimes how we do something makes a bigger difference than what we do
be awed
Lexi Behrndt
Lexi Behrndt
one broken heart. healing others
“There’s this prevailing voice that it can never get better — that it’s always going to hurt. And yes — it will hurt for the rest of your life, but there can also be good in it, too.”
watch what he did with 2,000 marbles —
& believe you have everything you need to make your life sing.
Anything is possible
a firefighter sorta dares the rest of us to one act like this #DareOn
meet the man who keeps us all on time
Jennifer Liv Photography
before time runs out: “this is the story I have to tell you”
Post of the Week from these parts here:
…yeah, headlines keep coming loud & it can feel like there are things crumbling around us.
And you can want someone to quietly hand you down some brave:
when it’s time to be brave & pray: for us & our brokenhearted land
go travel anywhere this weekend: glory is everywhere
you don’t have to do much to make somebody happier today
why make every second count this weekend
dare to hope and dare to dream
…and every sorrow only made Your joy go deeper
…a thousand ways the winds blow hard in this neck of the woods but —
Letting the winds hurry on, letting the worry blow away.
In the still, there’s this knowing His will.
There’s refusing to let worry walk in any front door
& refusing to let trust slip out any back door.
Staying the mind on God,
because there’s no storm in the world
that can move a stayed mind from the peace of God.
[excerpted from our little Facebook community … come join us?]
That’s all for this weekend, friends.
Go slow. Be God-struck. Grant grace. Live Truth.
Give Thanks. Love well. Re – joy, re- joy, ‘re- joys’ again
Share Whatever Is Good.
March 4, 2016
why it’s good to want it all: when you’re stuck out in deep waters
Gwen Smith is quick to say that more is not always better. More may include setbacks, more may include being misunderstood and discouraged, and more may include suffering. But more also means knowing God more deeply, even in the midst of pain. The deepest question behind this search for more from God is this: Do I trust Jesus? Gwen helps us explore this question in light of disappointment and unmet expectations in life. It’s an absolute grace to welcome my friend, Gwen Smith, to the farm’s front porch today…
My friend Dave gives great advice.
He isn’t just a friend; he’s a mentor, and he helps me grow both professionally and personally.
Years ago Dave taught me to pay attention to what moves me emotionally.
To hang out there awhile.
To be present and in the moment.
To consider what it is that triggers me toward a response.
He says that this awareness leads us to create honest, compelling, and meaningful art.
I agree.
One of the church anthems of today that moves me every time is a song by Hillsong United called “Oceans.”
The allure of this song is not just melodic, although the melody is exquisite. Depth of beauty is found in the lyrics because of their complexity and raw vulnerability.
To sing it from the heart is dangerous because it requires that a worshipper surrender the scariest, darkest places of her life to God. It compels her to trust without borders, with no limits. To take a free fall of faith.
The presence of God is powerful when we face intimidating circumstances. In Isaiah 43, the Lord spoke to His chosen ones, the Israelites, of His commitment to be their rescue:
This is what the LORD says—
He who created you, Jacob,
He who formed you, Israel:
“Do not fear, for I have redeemed you;
I have summoned you by name; you are mine.
When you pass through the waters,
I will be with you;
and when you pass through the rivers,
they will not sweep over you.
When you walk through the fire,
you will not be burned;
the flames will not set you ablaze.
For I am the LORD your God,
the Holy One of Israel, your Savior.” (vv. 1–3)
We tremble.
God says, “Do not fear.”
We wander.
Grace calls out to us by name.
We wane in the heat of firestorms.
Love shields us from the flames.
We struggle in the streams and are swayed by the currents.
God reaches for shaky hands, grips us with comfort, and assures us that we are not alone.
He holds on tight and keeps our heads above the water.
I know this in my heart. I know this is true. I know His presence is real and His rescues are promised, but when the waves keep crashing on the shore one after another, I find myself exhausted from the strain … and I wonder if God might have taken a day off.
Like maybe He went to Cabo and is sipping an umbrella drink on a beach resort somewhere. It’s not as if He doesn’t deserve a break, you know! He does so much for so many.
But no! I know better.
God doesn’t even take naps. Only my faith does.
Wake up, sleepy soul. Wake up!
In order to have a faith so strong it can withstand whatever life brings our way—the hurricanes, cancer treatments, eating disorders, hard conversations with hardened hearts, joblessness, broken relationships, doubts that seek to drown us—our hands must raise in surrender to the things He allows. And our eyes must constantly search for His.
While a life purposed for Christ is chock-full of blessings—many of which are completely incredible and comfortable—each surrendered life is also filled with struggles that God uses to help us become mature and complete.
The Bible doesn’t sugarcoat this. It says that we are promised challenges and trials.
That when we choose to follow Christ, some things will actually get worse or become more difficult.
That the world is fallen—broken—and it will hate us as it hated Christ.
That we have to take up our crosses and follow Him.
Love as He loves.
Be holy as He is holy.
Forgive as He forgives.
Endure as He endures.
If we really want it all—all that God has for us—we must search for the blessings in the blisterings as well as in the bliss.
The good news is that there are always blessings in the blisterings. We just need to look for them.
When our eyes are open to seeing the beauty in our brokenness, blessings flow, even in the bloodiest of blisters.
Because trials are trials with all their pain and ache, but hidden in the dark corner of every challenge is an intimate, intensely personal invitation for us to meet face-to-face, heart to heart,
with our Comforter,
our Head Lifter,
our Healer,
our Tear Catcher,
our Provider,
our Counselor,
our Refuge,
our Lord.
If I want all the faith God has for me, I have to want all the depth, all the growth, all the profundity that comes from knowing Jesus.
I need to want maturity and intimacy with Him more than I want comfort.
And when God calls me out into the deep waters of a trial, I want to be a woman who doesn’t run.
Yes. I want to grow in faith, and if one way to do that is to go through trials and challenges, then bring them on.
I want it all.
Gwen Smith is an author who speaks, leads worship, and eats potato chips at women’s events everywhere, and she is a cofounder of the conference and devotional ministry Girlfriends in God.
Gwen’s goal is to help women think big thoughts about God and be inspired to live out the grace and truth of Jesus. She unapologetically urges her readers to want more. “You and I were born for greatness,” Smith writes. “Not for the world’s greatness, but for eternal greatness: to know God and showcase God.” Gwen’s new book, I Want It All: Exchanging Your Average Life for Deeper Faith, Greater Power, and More Impact, will ignite a fire in your heart to experience more faith, more power, and more impact. More of Jesus. All of Jesus. Everything that God has for you. Could not put this one down.
[ Our humble thanks to David C. Cook publishers for their partnership in today’s devotion ]
March 2, 2016
when you’re tired of trying to control everything
The moment I met Logan Wolfram five years ago, she was hesitant to interrupt me as I sat eyes closed soaking in the music of my favorite piano player, David Nevue at the Allume Conference. (You can hear his music in the playlist in the menu bar at the top of the blog). “I feel like I have a word for you, an encouragement from the Lord,” she said, and then she dropped to her knees beside me and laid the words on me like a ton of feathers…weighty but the softness of the Father. Since then, this firecracker sister and I have prayed down heaven together over. She loves people, and community, and laughter, but more than any of those things, Logan loves Jesus with a contagious and authentic spirit that can’t help but draw you in. Logan knows what it is to live curious, and I invite you to join her in the journey of a Curious Faith to tune your ear to Jesus and unlock the hope of heaven in your own life too. It’s a grace to welcome Logan to the farm’s front porch today…
We call it FMN for short.
Family movie night.
And what it really means is all four of us climbing into bed, and not worrying over dropped popcorn kernels that will certainly later poke me in the middle of the night.
It’s chocolate milk and pizza and old family favorites from my husband’s and my childhood.
Star Wars, The Swiss Family Robinson, Pippi Longstocking, and my personal all-time favorite Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory.
I continue to notice in my adulthood how much different my perspectives are rewatching these old favorites.
New truths pop out and arrest my spirit in ways that perhaps even pave the way for God to move big in my soul.
It happened with Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory.
Wonka, master of glorious confectionary inventions, had dreams, plans, and ideas beyond anything that anyone had imagined before. Locked behind great iron gates in his factory were wonders inconceivable. No one had ever entered, but it was generally understood that much goodness was contained within the walls.
The innovation and creativity that emerged was proof enough that the man behind it all had greater vision that any other candy maker in the world.
As the story goes, five lucky children win access to the magnificent factory of candy-making wonder. The whole globe becomes a frenzy of candy buyers, each trying to find a golden ticket hidden in a chocolate bar to secure his or her place in this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.
Once inside, the children began to tour the fantastical facility. One by one, each child makes choices along the journey that disqualify him or her from continuing the experience. Obsession, gluttony, idolatry, and impatience oust the individual participants from continuing the tour through the factory.
One by one, they forfeited unlimited possibility in favor of maintaining control.
Sound familiar?
How often do we forfeit possibility with God in favor of maintaining control?
If there’s one thing life keeps teaching me, it’s that I can’t actually control the journey despite my best attempts.
God in His goodness continues to show that if I’ll just quit trying so hard to control it all, He can take me places I’ve never even dared to imagine.
Where as a child I had seen a handful of kids entering the sweets factory of a creative mastermind, I now began imagine my own humanity staring down the kingdom of God.
In Mike, Veruca, Violet, Augustus, and Charlie, our own struggles are reflected that set us wandering outside of the goodness meant for us.
If we can learn to embrace curiosity after the things of God, we just might inherit the keys to the whole Kingdom. We just might unlock adventure and possibility that we have never dared to dream for ourselves.
How many ways do we too, disrupt the adventure God could have for us?
We so often allow control, impatience, selfishness, gluttony even for good things, and idolatry to stand in the way of following God into His goodness with reckless abandon.
We think we know what is best and so we grab tight onto control to pursue our own possibility.
I am Charlie Bucket in Wonkaland. I am born into brokenness and long to see and experience the fullness of the great inventor and his inconceivable goodness.
I’d guess you are too.
The hope we have in that endless possibility with God is as accessible to us as our curiosity is to pursue Him.
Way better than being one of five who wins, we are all given the opportunity to enter the Kingdom of God.
In Christ, we can all unlock endless wonder and possibility when we pursue God with a Curious Faith.
And so the question becomes, will I let go of control and be curious enough to pursue Him? Will I chase hard to uncover the truth and goodness of God to unlock all that is possible?
The certainty of our faith isn’t found in where we are going, but in Whom we are following.
If we want to truly inherit the kingdom of God, we need to let go of all we try to control and reimagine possibility through the lens of God’s goodness.
A curious and continuous pursuit of our good God opens doors for us to experience all possibility beyond what we could imagine for ourselves.
I don’t know about you, but if I’m picking what is good for my life, then it’s probably going to feel good, look good, taste good, smell good, and be visibly good to anyone who sees it.
But the truth is, even some of the things that have looked “bad” from the outside have turned out to be good for me.
Because, while the currency of God’s goodness looks different from my own, it is infinitely more valuable.
Hard things make us dig deep within ourselves to find strength we didn’t know we had.
Loss teaches us to appreciate blessings that surround us.
And while I don’t want to minimize the depth of any pain and the years it can take to overcome the brokenness we experience in this life, there is good to be found, even in the hard and even through the bad.
As we embrace a curious faith, we exchange the currency of our control for the wealth of God’s possibility.
Maybe sometimes we do think we can control the way things go. To some extent we have the capacity to define our own paths and make decisions that shape the way we live.
We can direct behaviors and events, but when we allow that thinking to rule the way we live, we also lose the capacity to be curious about things unknown and outside of our own plans, outside of our limited view.
Control robs us of curiosity and puts a ceiling on our allowance of God’s possibility in our lives. Because after all, you can’t be curious about something you control.
I’ve heard it said, “Blessed are the curious … for they shall have adventures.” And, friend, when we try to control our lives, we miss out on the adventure of faith.
If we always see or know where we’re going or what we’re doing, we’ll miss Wonkaland…
and we just might miss the endless hope and possibility of the Kingdom.
Release control…
be curious, and rediscover hope in the God of possibility.
Logan Wolfram would give you full access to her pantry if you lived next door. She is a plate-juggling mom and interior decorator turned author, speaker, and host of the Allume Conference. She is a passionate leader who desires to see women live fully in Christ.
Curious Faith: Rediscovering Hope in the God of Possibility is about rescuing the now…and exploring possibility with a God who is unlimited, unpredictable, and ever-loving. Inordinate, everyday curiosity shows you how to find the co-ordinates of God’s everyday grace. With fresh vision and vibrant faithfulness, Logan hands you a needed compass with these pages. A powerful read for soul-change.
[ Our humble thanks to Cook Publishers for their partnership in today’s devotion ]
February 29, 2016
when it’s time to be brave & pray: for us & our brokenhearted land
Piece by piece, you can feel something crumbling.
You can stand at the window on this fragile, untried day that comes around only once in four spins around the sun, stand there at the strange edge of February, and you can watch the dissolving of winter all across the fields…
And you can feel this melting away and crumbling of things in unexpected ways.
Crumbling and disintegrating of things that needed to go.
And yet too — this breaking into pieces of things that leave you feeling… this odd sense of uncertainty — a precariousness.
A sense like, for all of us, that there are things that are a bit — teetering on an edge.
And there’s brave standing at windows everywhere.
Who are putting one foot in front of the other, who are swallowing down the coffee and are done with struggling in their own strength and are starved for some supernatural help to take some supernatural steps. You can’t do God’s Work without God’s Power.
There are people who know that you can’t slay your fears without a Prayer Sword of Courage.
Prayers make us Slayers.
Nothing will change unless we change something.
There are people ready to pray their way through Lent for their people, their country, their whole world.
“IF… My people who are called by My name humble themselves and pray and seek My face and turn from their ways, then I will hear from heaven, will forgive their sin and will heal their land.”
The snow’s thawing away all the way down by the woods — a letting go.
Until there is Repentance — there will be no Difference, there will be no Deliverance, there will be no Resurgence.
Nothing will change unless we change something.
There’s a dripping, a melting of winter from the spruce trees towering to the west.
Only fools face the giants facing us with empty-hands.
The courageous can face their looming giants because they’ve prayed for the help of a God who is far more dangerous anything looming.
And what looks impossible? What looks like it’s crumbling a bit all around us, what looks too uncertain for words?
What looks impossible changes — because when we pray to a God who is ABLE, He changes us into the ImpossABLES.
They say that, even though the woods look grey and dead and lifeless — that the sap is starting to run in the maple trees now?
We believe that faith is confidence in what we hope for and assurance about what we do not see —
and we have assurance that God will make us strong and courageous to “lay down every dead thing we are still holding on to, to dismount from our dead horses,” (Christine Caine) — to stop holding to the past so we can step into what He is holding out to us.
We may not be fearless but we will be strong and courageous and faithful because our faith in Him is greater than the fears in us.
The wind melting the snow out around the edges of the barn — that wind carries something that smells like… smells like courage of good things still oming.
We will lay down our comfort zones because they are death traps, and we will be strong and courageous because He literally save us, and that makes us safe and the safest place we could ever be is in His hand — so we are now called to go live dangerous lives.
It doesn’t matter what the headlines say at the strange edge of February — or what feels like it’s crumbling:
We will lay down our safe, comfortable homogeneous ghettos, and will be strong and courageous in Him to warrior for a diversity, for racial harmony, for Kingdom community, because our GOD is not American, but our God is African and Jamaican and Dominican and about Global Kingdom of God.
We will be strong and courageous because today there will be eyes on us, and they will need to see Christ in us and that we have answered Your calling for us because we have hung up on the lies from the pit of hell.
We will be brave enough to hunger for lives of hidden service in the battle, not for public medals out of the battle. And daily pray for character greater than our calling and for a humility greater than our work.
We will be the strong and courageous who get down on our faces every morning and repent of our fears and our idols and our sins and our messes because there will be no regeneration in this generation until there is a repentance on our faces because we cannot win any battle with rebel hearts, so may a movement of repentance move us so He hears from heaven and heals our land.
We will be strong and courageous to do the new thing, because He is not the God of I was — but He is the God I am and He is doing a new thing and that thing is unfolding right now in us.
We will be the strong and courageous in a “faith that doesn’t erase insecurity, doubt, suffering or fear, but literally, daily, overcomes them.” (Jen Hatmaker)
Strong and courageous in a “faith that is not a formula to get us cheap stuff that only looks like the good stuff, but gives us faith that IS wild and dangerous and IS itself the real best stuff.” (Jen Hatmaker)
We could be the strong and courageous who stand on February 29th and take the next step which may feel like a leap of faith but our best mode of transportation through anything is always a leap of faith.
We could be the strong and courageous because “His hold on us is stronger than our hold on Him” (Jo Saxton) and delivered people go deliver people.
The hopeful stare up the steps. The faithful step up the stairs.
We will never see the miracles of God in us or in this world until we take the next step up the mountain. Even the smallest of faith in a great God is the greatest equalizer, the greatest eraser, and the greatest definer.
Faith fasts from stress and feasts on Grace. Simply: Faith refuses to stress.
Nobody knows how hard we’re all trying to be brave to show up when it’d be easier to give up, to go do hard & holy things when it’d be easier to go do happy things, to not quit when we don’t know how to keep going on.
But there’s this warm breath of courage into our exhausted places “Just Call to Me. I guarantee I will answer you. I will make you strong & brave and courageous.” Jeremiah 33:3 MSG, Joshua 1
You can stand there at the window and feel it — there’s bravery coming in the wind, all across these fields, all across our lands. And?
Our bravery wins a thousand battles we can’t see because our bravery strengthens a thousand others to win their battles too.
We will be the strong and courageous and not pray for the hard to go away but we will pray for a Brave Faith Bigger than the hard to come.
We will be the strong and courageous who do that one next step that seems impossible — because that’s who we are: The ImpossABLES .
We will be strong and courageous and brave —-
because there are angels are closer than we know.
There’s a mist rising down by the woods from the last pieces of snow.. ..
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February 27, 2016
Only the Good Stuff: Multivitamins for Your Weekend [02.27.16]
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:
AV Wakefield
AV Wakefield
AV Wakefield
have to do something important — don’t go.
love comes in all sizes
Wiebke Haas
Wiebke Haas
Wiebke Haas
go ahead — you know you need to smile
what’s it like to return home?
Chris Forrest
the gorgeous ‘snow moon’ you may have missed this week
bringing a bit of the crazy to you
Linnaea Mallette
now — impressive!
sometimes? we all need to be rescued
@cobythecat
yep, his eye are really that blue
anyone else up for an amazing road trip?
dealing with a life threatening diagnosis:
They believed in a God who can do the impossible.
“I can look back and say that He truly sustained me even in all the fear & questioning. In your own storm of sorrow or pain, He’s the anchor who will sustain you too.”
because this unfolded right here in Toronto, Canada, had to share because — well you’ll see why… #GiveEachOtherAChance
Mary Anne Morgan
one crazy flying wish
Jake Farra
Jake Farra
Jake Farra
adventure of a lifetime?
Today
stunning
Driving Miss Norma
at 90? she decided to hit the road
“Keep praying every day and God will take care of you –even when it feels like you can’t care for yourself.”
If you could write a letter to your future self, you’d say?
Post of the Week from these parts here
...really, who knows if that yes is going to come through?
Or if that dream’s going to happen, if that piece of paper’s going show up in the mail, or how that doctor’s appointment is going to go down?
Sometimes? Your whole life sorta feels a bit up in the air:
“How to Cope when Your Life Feels a Bit Up In The Air —
which may mean you’re living the best life”
you can’t can live more than 30 seconds without hope
share the love (don’t leave without seeing this one?)
for every weary woman & every kind man #ShareTheLoad
surrender
… there’s a bunch of us up late who can just thank God we’re not the mistakes we’ve made,
we’re not the plans that have failed,
we’re not the wrongs we have done.
We aren’t forgotten, aren’t abandoned, aren’t alone.
Because You, Lord, say to the lost: ‘Come.’
You say to the Unlikely: ‘Beloved.’
You say to the Battle Weary: ‘Rest.’
You say: “Take every battle to the air in prayer — so your God can take over your battles on earth.”
In a hard and beautiful world,
Your grace, Lord, is the only pillowed relief for our tired souls
to rest in You making all things new.
In Jesus’ name,
Amen.
[excerpted from our little Facebook community … come join us?]
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.
February 26, 2016
one key to walking through suffering
The world erupted yesterday with the cry — We’re In It to End It — in it to end the modern day slavery of tens of millions of desperate people. What do we do with the ache of all the suffering in the world? My friend, Bethany Hoang powerfully leads world-changers into discovering the life-giving connection between seeking Jesus and seeking justice – knowing the love of God more deeply as we join Him in bringing beauty amid brokenness. She speaks, writes, and advises on behalf of organizations such as International Justice Mission after having served as Founding Director of IJM’s Institute for Biblical Justice for more than a decade. It’s a grace to welcome Bethany to the farm’s front porch…
The grainy black-and-white footage showed little girls smiling and giggling, gathered tightly in a small space.
One of them was only five years old, perched on the hip of a girl just a few years older.
Their smiles belied the words they spoke in their native Vietnamese — offering a menu of what sexual acts they would perform and the going rate for each.
The footage also showed young boys serving as tour guides, apprentice pimps who were trained to lead customers into the recesses of the brothels, where the youngest girls were being held.
These young girls were forced to smile; after vicious beatings they knew the consequences of noncompliance. And if the beatings weren’t convincing, the brothel owners reminded the girls that they knew their families and had full access to bring them harm.
The footage of these girls, taken in 2003, contained the first images I had ever seen of trafficking victims.
The girls had been trafficked to a town in Cambodia where the entire village – fourteen square blocks – was dedicated to the lucrative industry of selling children for sex.
If ever there was a place in the world that I could point to as evidence of how deeply this world is “not the way it’s supposed to be,” this little village in Cambodia was it.
How do we hold in tension the truth of God’s goodness and love for justice with the reality of pandemic suffering?
There are countless stories of people all over our world – people created by God for a life of wholeness and flourishing but who instead undergo a living nightmare of injustice.
How do we open our eyes and see the dire needs of our neighbors while holding fast to hope in a God who rescues, heals, and restores?
Bethany Hoang
Bethany Hoang: the day of rescue for the girls. IJM’s first major rescue operation with the Cambodian National Police in 2003.
Even those of us launching forth with the deepest passion for justice and conviction of God’s goodness can lose heart and fail to persevere over the long haul.
Everyone is vulnerable to derailment; injustice can breed disillusionment and doubt. Suffering can drive cynicism or even worse, despair.
But God invites us to come to Him – not in spite of doubt and derailment but in the midst of it.
Woven throughout Scripture is an unguarded type of prayer known as lament. To lament is to as “Why?” and “Why not?” as well as “What are you doing God?” and “Where are you?”
To lament is to pour out our hearts, holding nothing back. It is to pray without trying to be more full of faith than we actually are.
Lament is prayer that honors the honesty of pain and anger while also honoring the truth that God is the one who reigns and whose love never fails.
Lament holds in tension all the suffering that seems to make no sense with a determination to believe that God is just.
Lament draws us near to God when we are tempted to turn away.
Asking “why” – the core question of lament – is not a betrayal of faith.
Directing our cries of lament to God can become a bold demonstration of faith, an acknowledgement of who God is and a determination to draw near to God rather than pull away.
“So you, by the help of your God, return, hold fast to love and justice, and wait continually for your God.” (Hosea 12:6 ESV)
Lament is a gift.
In the midst of everything going wrong around us – whether in the world at large or in the lives of people whose names and faces we know and hold dear –
lament is a gift given to help us hold fast to God.
God invites lament because He knows our temptation to turn away rather than toward Him in the heat of hardship.
The more we probe Scripture to see how prophets and leaders and ordinary people lamented their circumstances, the more it becomes clear that God invites our questions and pleadings rather than our despair and silence.
God can handle the questions we bring; no question is too shocking or big for God.
What pain in your life leaves you raw?
What grief would you prefer to avoid altogether rather than face it through lament?
Where does the suffering of others intersect with your own heart in such a way that you are tempted either to run or close your eyes?
Our prayers might sound something like these:
God, I know You have full power to heal and to rescue and to restores. Why haven’t You healed?
Why do You seemingly stand by while children and even entire families are trapped and beaten and sold into slavery?
Why didn’t You heal my mentor (or my mother, my best friend, my child, my sibling) from cancer?
Why do millions of girls spend their childhoods in brothel dungeons?
Soldiers are using rape as a weapon of war against women and children – why don’t You break the arm of the wicked as Your Word says? How could You allow people to bring this kind of terror on one another?
If Your perfect love casts out fear, why am I still so afraid? Why don’t I have the courage to rise up and follow as You lead? When will I stop faltering in believing You?
Why LORD? You say that You command Your angels to guard and protect; You say that through fire and storm and flood You are with us; You say that even though the mountains crash into the seas You are still God.
You say that You have loved us with a love that is everlasting, a love from which we can never be separated.
Why are there times when we don’t see You or feel that love?
Habakkuk cried our “My God, why?” David cried out in the Psalms, “My God, why?”
Jesus too cried out, “My God, my God, why?”
In Jesus’ cries from the depths of suffering and violence on the cross – the deepest grief ever known – He carried our whys with Him.
It’s a thing to remember who God is even — when you cannot see the truth of who He is in your midst.
All glory will be revealed (Is. 40:5; Rom. 8:18).
And darkness will never be the final word.
Bethany‘s new book, The Justice Calling: Where Passion Meets Perseverance, co-authored with Kristen Deede Johnson, is a comprehensive biblical theology of justice drawn from the whole story of Scripture, and invites us to know more intimately the God who loves justice and calls us to give our lives to seek the flourishing of others.
The call for everyone of us is the Justice of Jesus — and these pages will breathe life and hope into everyone serving on the front lines of brokenness. Pick up this book — pick up hope.
February 25, 2016
how to get through storms dumping on you & everything else burying you
‘Look, the only guys that watch the radar like this are the guys who fly.”
“And the guys who farm.”
Yeah, okay, I’ll give you that — I nudge him — farmers and the flying guys always watching the sky.
The Farmer sitting there in his worn-out Wranglers and tattered t-shirt looks up from The Weather Network and that radar swirling across the screen like a snow windmill.
“Looks like more’s coming.”
Yeah, always more coming. What are they calling this? Snowmaggedon?
I slop up some cesspool from the bottom of the fridge, reciting it to myself: full of grace and truth, verse 14.
Then this week’s verse, there’s the crescendo: “And from His fullness we have all received, grace upon grace” — gift upon gift.
Flip over the laundry. Sure, John could have written, rightly, that we’ve all received “truth upon truth.” But what he writes isn’t that. What he writes is the scandalous: “grace upon grace.” Grace gets the emphasis.
John would go on to write truth or a derivative thereof a total of 55 times in his Gospel. There is never a minimizing of truth.
But the thing is: If truth isn’t full of grace —- it was never truth in the first place.
If truth isn’t formed by grace — then it forms into an untruth.
Grace gets the emphasis.
Boys bicker. Fingers point. Teenagers huff and puff like wolves about to blow some hog house down. Tensions over what happened, when, to whom, what is the truth, have me tauter than some fence wire strung up for a bull.
Grace gets the emphasis.
It’s the last time John writes the word grace in the gospel of John, there in verse 16. Why not ink the truth of more grace?
The actual Greek of verse 16 is χαριν αντι χαριτος (ka-riv anti kar-i’-tos)… Grace anti grace. The word anti is a Greek preposition with several meanings, but scholars generally believe that the truest rendering is upon. Because He was full of grace and truth, from Him we all received grace upon grace, grace on top of grace, one gift stacked on another gift.
That’s what The Amplified Version reads: “gift [heaped] upon gift.”
There’s more than 3 feet snow down the back walkway to the barn. John didn’t have to write much more about grace because he wrote the last word on grace: that it would always keep relentlessly coming —- Grace heaped upon grace. Gift heaped upon gift Always more coming.
No matter what is on the radar — there’s always more grace coming.
The spruce trees hold their limbs out for more of what’s coming.
I stir sauce on the stove, stare long out the window, snow falling on cedars. Think about what it means to wear grace.
“There is no more wonderful word than grace,” Dr. Martyn Lloyd Jones, the great British Bible teacher, said: “It is not merely a free gift, but a free gift to those who deserve the exact opposite.”
Mercy is about not getting; Mercy is God not giving us what we deserve.
Grace is about getting; Grace is God giving us gifts, exactly what we don’t deserve.
Grace isn’t merely a free gift to the good enough — it’s a free gift to those who don’t deserve any gift at all.
Is there a verse anywhere in the Bible like this? To write over the to-do lists and the too-late-darn-it-all-already-messed-that-up lists, words to stick to the fridge, write on the walls, right up your arm:
Because He was full of grace and truth —— from Him we all received one gift after another.
So that is why Paul says, “His grace is sufficient for us.”
This isn’t Snowmageddon — this is Graceageddon.
Graceageddon. It won’t stop coming, covering your mistakes, covering you in love. There’s got to be more than 5 feet out there in the orchard?
Jesus can save you single-handedly. So rest your weary hands in His.
You can believe in grace a lot — but you only start living when you believe in grace alone.
You don’t have to pull yourself up by the bootstraps — you just have to let Jesus draw close.
The snow’s quiet. Everything hushing now. You can feel that drawing close.
The kids are out there somewhere in all this white. Probably that guy named Simon’s out there somewhere too.
That guy who just walks in the snow. Walks miles in the grace that keeps coming down. He goes in circles. Yeah, do I get that.
He makes art. What we all do.
Simon lets his feet make art with every step. Just in the canvas of grace right in front of him.
Sometimes your art will only be seen from the sky, from the perspective of heaven.
The wind will come. Simon’s art will be blown away. Simon knows this.
He still makes art with everyday fallen grace. Simon still creates art knowing it could be gone the very next day.
Then why bother?
Because there will more grace given tomorrow. For more. Always more coming.
There will be more meals to cook tomorrow. More dishes, more laundry. You’re going to have pick up coats and boots and papers and books all over again tomorrow. You can still make art with everyday fallen grace. You can still create art knowing it’ll be gone the very next day. Because there will more grace given tomorrow. To make more. Always more grace coming.
Grace upon grace. And for all the mistakes.
We’re all living in Graceaggedon.
Christ is this endless front of grace —- enough grace for every screaming mother and every addicted father, enough grace for every using teenager and every abusing past and every useless day.
And it won’t stop coming: enough grace for all the raging five-year olds and all the regretting 70 year olds and all the cheaters and speeders and deceivers and for all of us who are all of that.
Enough grace for loving the kid who makes you want to throttle yourself, enough grace for the road that stretches out relentlessly in front of you, enough grace for every temptation, every testing, every trial — and then more will just keep on coming.
Grace is the front that just keeps coming. Grace gets the emphasis.
I exhale.
Christianity isn’t about good people taking vitamins to be even better. It’s good news for bad people who are sick and tired of failing to get better.
We get grace! Gift upon gift, grace upon grace, covering mistakes — a daily canvas to make art that is always seen from heaven — art. that. is. eternal.
Grace is the only relief that never stops coming for you. Grace is the only love that will come through anything for you and has nothing to do with you do. Grace keeps falling to catch the falling.
You can see it out the window, you and the farmers and the guys watching the sky— how the snow keeps keeps coming straight down.
That’s what all this is: Graceageddon. Grace is one-way love that just keeps coming.
Flakes fall, down of angel wings.
You can feel that in the midst of any storm, snow soundlessly falling.
Grace is weightless.
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