Ann Voskamp's Blog, page 260

What to Do When You May or May Not be a Control Freak

Simply put, author and pastor Mark Buchanan is one of my all time favorite writers. His insights into Scripture, the way he turns a phrase, his keen perspective — never fail to startle and astonish. I have been reading his words for the last decade and am always famished for more. I quietly invited Mark today to the farm’s front porch — and his words here are crazy grace:

“Like a city whose walls are broken down, is a man who lacks self-control.” ~ Proverbs 25:28

I was in a coffee shop the other day and a mom announced to her little guy – maybe 2 and a half years old – that it was time to leave.

Little Guy didn’t want to leave.

At first he ignored her, then he defied her, then he assailed her.

To her credit, she remained calm.

She spoke quietly. She stood her ground. She didn’t bargain.

In the end, magnificently composed, she carried Little Guy out the door, a wild banshee of a boy, thrashing and wailing as he went.

It got me thinking about the difference between control and self-control.

These two things – control and self-control – stand at opposite ends of the maturity spectrum.

The toddler was a live-action reel of a fierce effort to control his mother.

And he was a spectacle of immaturity.

The mom was a breathtaking portrait of impeccable self-control. And she was the epitome of maturity.

Toddlers brim with the impulse to control (even as they bungle the execution). A 3-year-old will resort to wild-eyed tantrums, incessant whining, ear-piercing screams, coy manipulation, and flat-out demand to try to get their way: to control their parent, or sibling, or playmate, or the situation at hand.

But as the toddler’s attempts to control things escalate, his ability to control himself deteriorates. His need to be in control makes him more and more out-of-control. The results are not pretty.

This all looks different in adults – usually.

Of course, we’ve all met 28- or 33- or 59-year olds (sometimes in the mirror) who, in an increasingly desperate effort to control people or situations, throw tantrums, power up, make threats, emotionally blackmail, withdraw into icy silence, and so on.

But most of us, by age 19 or so, have an epiphany of sorts: that the louder we shout, the less others listen.

That the more we manipulate, the further others back away.

That the more we toss a fit, the more others look at us and think, “What a sad strange little man,” or, “What a drama queen.”

That’s the epiphany.

But what we do with it matters a great deal. It determines whether we really grow up or not.

The truly wise become deeply humble. They realize that the only kind of control the Bible endorses – indeed, commands – is self-control.

The New Testament has 16 separate exhortations to be self-controlled. It’s a major theme.

So the wise heed that, and work with the Holy Spirit to get a grip on themselves. They receive the comfort, the rebuke, the strength, and the instruction of God himself to discipline their thoughts, emotions, attitudes, and actions.

They give up trying to control others and step up being in control of themselves.

The lovely irony is that the self-controlled exert wide influence. People listen to them. Heed them. Seek them. Follow them.

In other words, the self-controlled accomplish the very thing the controlling desperately want but only ever sabotage.

Here’s what I’ve learned: Every impulse to seize control — is the Holy Spirit’s invitation to practice self-control.

Every nerve jolt to freak out, melt down, start yelling, fly into rage or panic is a divine cue to slow down, breathe deep, start praying, and lean into God.

Every instinct to control something is God’s nudge to control myself.

I don’t always get it right. When I don’t, I not only lose self-control: I lose influence. I lose respect. I lose dignity.

When I do get it right, I gain all around.

Lord, help me get a grip on myself.

Mark Buchanan is a pastor, award-winning author, and father of three who lives with his wife, Cheryl, on the West Coast of Canada. Educated at the University of British Columbia and Regent College. His work has been published in numerous periodicals, including Christianity Today, Books and Culture, Leadership Journal, and Discipleship Magazine. He is the author of seven books: Your Church is Too Safe, Your God Is Too Safe, Things Unseen, The Holy Wild, The Rest of God, Hidden in Plain Sight, and Spiritual Rhythm.

Reading Mark’s blog or staying caught up with him on Facebook is truly soul food….

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Click here to download the FREE EASTER / LENT Devotional: The Trail to the Tree{please give it a few moments to download… thank you for grace!} And if you are thinking Advent/Christmas — Click here to download the FREE JESSE TREE Advent Family Devotional {please give it a few moments to download… thank you for grace!}

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Published on July 18, 2013 06:40

Why Your Kids don’t Need a SuperMama

When one of the boys pulls off his Sunday shoes, the filthy ones ridiculously still clinging to “Sunday Shoes” status, he catches my eye and grins like he’s swallowed a canary.

“So I only wore one sock to church.”

What are you going to do but laugh with the grinning kid?

Yeah, I am that Mom…

Yeah, after 18 years, there it is:

I have been the mama who’s punished when I needed to pray.

Who’s hollered at kids when I needed to help kids.

Who’s lunged forward — when I should have leaned on Jesus.

There are dishes stacked on the counter like memories and paint smeared on the table and there are kids sprawled on the couch trying to read the same book at the same time — and there is only so much time.

I never expected love to be like this. I never expected so much joy. I never expected to get so much wrong. It’s what my Mama’s said to me a thousand times if she’s said it to me once. “It’s not that you aren’t going to get things wrong — it’s what you do with it afterward.“

So you clear off the table and the dishes and the leftover spinach leaves and wash the paint fingerprint off the mess of chairs, and you pick up the socks and shoes strewn through the house like crusty droppings in the park.

And then you swing from the monkey bars in the almost dark with the kids almost grown and you pray that your post-half-a-dozen-babies bladder doesn’t give way leaky on you now, and you laugh so loud you hope they always remember.

There is still light.

There is hospitality — making space inside of you to be a safe place for a child.

And no matter how the craziness of this whole parenting thing all turns out: The reward of loving is in the loving; loving is itself the great outcome of loving. The success of loving is in how we change because we kept on loving – regardless of any thing else changing.

And it’s a relief, how hanging upside down on the monkey bars, things can come to you.

That maybe being the mama I want to be isn’t so much about being more, but trusting more – trusting more in the God of Hagar and Ruth and Hannah, the God who sees the angst, who nourishes the empty places, who hears the unspoken cries — and answers.

That godly parenting isn’t ultimately about rules — but having a relationship with an ultimate God and His children.

That godly parenting isn’t fuelled by my efforts — but by God’s grace.

That if I make God first and am most satisfied in His love — then I’m released to love my children fully and satisfactorily.

That maybe it all comes down to this:

My kids don’t need to see a Super Mama.

They need to see a Mama who needs a Super God.

Right to the last of the light, into the last of the light, there’s this silhouette of a mother running free and barefoot with the kids, no socks at all.

This grace on ground like this.

Click here to download the FREE EASTER / LENT Devotional: The Trail to the Tree{please give it a few moments to download… thank you for grace!} And if you are thinking Advent/Christmas — Click here to download the FREE JESSE TREE Advent Family Devotional {please give it a few moments to download… thank you for grace!}

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Published on July 16, 2013 07:27

How to Live After the Verdict is In

A

sunrise like that could make you believe.

Could make you believe that color is real.

Could make you believe that that no matter what the headlines scream, no matter where you stand on the curving earth, we are all held together by the same gravity, that we all share air.

You could stand there and weep at what isn’t.

And at the wonder of being alive, weep for a world where no one takes a slug of steel to the heart, but everyone gets arrested by the beauty of grace, where no one is followed but Christ alone, where everyone is equal and different and the same and distinct and ours is a world that could listen to angels: Be not Afraid.

You could stand there with light on your face and not turn away to the easy of the dark and the status quo and cynicism, and you could believe in a world where no one is profiled but everyone is profoundly valued, where boys walking down the street with Skittles are simply asked if they need a ride home, where grace is the weapon that disarms the dark.

Christ unequivocally proved it.

You could believe in a world where families living in gated communities of middle class burn with the fire that they are the Esther Generation, light with the purpose that they are here for such a time as this, ignite with glory that they are here to risk their status for those outside the gate — or what will be lost isn’t just your chance to change the world — but your own soul, the soul of this land, the soul of the next generation.

There is the believing something.

Then there is to Be Living It.

First light keeps coming, heat up the sky and you can’t deny the generous shades in the trees.

There are stars above the fields right now.

And there is grass under the limbs in the orchard.

And there are round-faced, tousled children waking and waiting to see what kind of world this is and water falls and light moves and we are the ones who get to be here right now and we get to decide, who have been given now and we get to be angry or get to be the difference and why do we get to be here at all?

You can feel it like a pressing on your heart:

I am oppressed by gratitude.

That I breathe, that there is light.

That there is always hope.

A life oppressed by gratitude lives unbound, lives broken and given.

When your life’s oppressed by gratitude — you can’t help but make your life about freedom for the oppressed.

You could stand here with the defiant brave and watch the sunrise and feel the pressing of your heart and know the verdict underneath your skin, what Martin Luther King said:

“Darkness cannot drive out darkness: only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate: only love can do that.”

The light keeps driving up the greying sky.

You could watch the sun rise and know that we will rise to this.

We will do nothing less than rise.

Photo credit 1 & 2

Caring for the Right Thing at the Right Time

Jason Gray is a singer/songwriter extraordinaire with one of the most genuine hearts after Christ. There are only a handful of music artists that speak to me like Jason’s art does — because he writes real. It takes a very special gift to meld internal revelation with eternal truth and create songs that strike a universal chord with both enlightened scholars and struggling broken souls, but Jason Gray has that gift. Never afraid to look inward for inspiration and just as ready to analyze the world around him, Gray is called to create music that makes a difference … Having him come to the farm front porch today and share an honest parenting story? Purest grace:

The other night while we were washing dishes, my son Jacob said he’d seen a trailer for a movie he wanted to see.

“Oh yeah? Which one?” I asked.

“The new Red Dawn.”

“Ugh.” I said. “Why would you want to see that one? You know they’ve been sitting on it for a couple of years because they knew it was a stinker. I think they’re only releasing it now because it’s got Thor and Peeta in it and they’re hoping they can cash in on their popularity and at least get something back for their poor investment.”

Jacob continued, unfazed. “It’s also got an actor in it who I used to love when I was a kid—Josh from Nickelodeon’s Drake and Josh. I’d really like to see what he’s doing now.”

Undeterred, I continued my diatribe. “Well, I loved the original when I was a kid in the ’80s, but this one got TERRIBLE reviews. It’s going to be bad. I’m just telling you because I don’t want you to waste your money.”

About the time these last words came out of my mouth, I began to realize how much of a self-righteous jerk I was being.

Unfortunately this is not uncommon for me—I can be oppressively opinionated and uppity. By God’s grace, however, I am learning to recognize it better and quicker.

I’m so grateful for growing conviction, the evidence that God is still at work in my life.

A part of my problem is that sometimes I care about the wrong thing at the wrong time.

Sometimes I care about fairness instead of generosity.

Sometimes I care about someone else’s theological accuracy when quiet listening would be better.

In this particular instance I was caring more about the quality of a film than I was caring about the quality of a conversation with my son. (In fact, I think he knew that I wouldn’t care for this movie but brought it up anyway, risking my scorn. Brave.)

Of course it’s good to care about things, and it’s good that I care about things like well-crafted films and good storytelling.

I care, too, about nuanced and cathartic acting performances that are as delicious to the soul as a fine meal is to the palette. I am grateful for my capacity to enjoy these and other forms of art-making: books, music, painting, and on down the list.

I care about these things because I’m convinced that beauty matters and is both a grace to be enjoyed and a calling to participate in.

But in that moment with Jacob, my care for a certain kind of beauty turned ugly because I was picking the wrong thing to care about.

Consequently I failed to recognize a more subtle and significant beauty that was being offered to me: the beauty of my son sharing his simple desire to see a movie—one that reminded him of fond memories of his childhood.

In that moment I had also been offered a chance to create something beautiful myself: a generous response with the power to foster a culture of kindness, grace, and intimacy in our home. What work of art—be it a song, a book, or a film—can compare to this?

By God’s grace I recognized what I’d done early enough to maybe do something about it.

“Ah Jacob. I’m sorry. What a jerk I am sometimes. Can we try this again, would you let me? Let’s start over. Tell me again what movie you want to see.”

He laughed, but played along. “Dad, there’s this movie I really want to see. It’s called Red Dawn.”

“Oh yeah? Man I loved that movie when I was kid. Tell me more about it, why do you want to see it?”

“Well, it’s got Peeta from The Hunger Games in it. It’s also got Josh from Drake and Josh” and just looks kind of cool to me.”

He was creating something beautiful of his own by graciously playing along with me, giving me a chance to make amends. This is the beauty of grace.

“Awesome! Well, let me know when it comes out and maybe we can watch it together.” I said, smiling.

“Okay, dad,” he said, smiling back. He had accepted my apology and offered me a way back into his world. He is a kind boy.

Later that night my youngest son Gus asked if I’d lay by him in his bed a little bit before he went to sleep.

After a little reading (from The Jesus Storybook Bible—so, so good, check it out if you haven’t already!), we lay there a bit in the dark.

Kipper and Jacob had come upstairs and were across the hall talking with their mom, laughing, being rambunctious and making some noise.

I sensed it was distracting Gus in the quiet of the moment we were sharing.

With every word and bark of laughter he heard from across the hall his body would tense. I could tell he was about to holler down the hall for them to be quiet because he was trying to sleep.

I was about to say, jokingly, “Man, your brothers are noisy!”

But remembering my earlier moment with Jacob, I wondered if there was something else I might say that would be better, something that might help foster kindness, grace, and intimacy in our home.

What was the right thing to care about?

“It’s nice to hear their voices, isn’t it?” I whispered to Gus in the dark.

“Yeah,” he said as his body noticeably relaxed.

He was quiet for a moment, and then said, “That’s just what I was going to say.”

{RSS readers, come click here to view/listen to the the video — consider pausing music by clicking the speaker icon in the bottom left hand margin}

This song of Jason’s is a favorite with our Hope-girl — and her mama. There isn’t a day that goes by that Jason’s music isn’t played at our house — he speaks to souls in deep and authentic ways. Take a listen to Jason’s latest and catch up with Jason here and here.

Click here to download the FREE EASTER / LENT Devotional: The Trail to the Tree{please give it a few moments to download… thank you for grace!} And if you are thinking Advent/Christmas — Click here to download the FREE JESSE TREE Advent Family Devotional {please give it a few moments to download… thank you for grace!}

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Published on July 12, 2013 05:45

A Prayer for the BrokenHearted

Father of the broken-hearted daughter…

oh, hear our prayer….

Give Your daughter the wisdom to know it:

Hiding when you’re hurting won’t heal you and growing isolated can just let infection grow.

Give Your daughter the love to live it:

The secret way to heal a broken heart is to let love leak out like an ocean through all the cracks.

Give Your daughter grace to do the crazy impossible:

It’s the hurting and wounded who are always the ones called to be medics — to administer lavish grace, to cast the messy in the best, merciful light.

The best way to tend to your open wounds is to open your arms. Out-loving is the only ointment that healed anything.

Let the broken choose it: When you’re most wounded by words, run to the only Word that always brings healing.

Let the broken see it: When you’re wounded and need dressing, look in the mirror, touch you face, and see how He clothes you in righteousness, wraps you in promises, swathes you in a Savior — who saves.

When you have Jesus on the inside, you’re never on the outside.

Let the broken say it: When you’re bruised by lies, believe truth and whisper it louder: I am my Beloved’s.

When Love’s got hold of you, there isn’t a lie in the universe that can pull you apart.

Let the broken trust it: Giving the benefit of the doubt — is what benefits the people of the Faith.

Doesn’t love always believe the best, not the worst?

And may that wind the brokenhearted daughter faces, may it fly her hair like a glory flag,

And may the hills that rise before her be but an exhilaration,

And may all her trials be but a trail,

all the stones on the way be but grace stairs to God.

:

In name of Jesus who broke His heart to heal ours…

Click here to download the FREE EASTER / LENT Devotional: The Trail to the Tree{please give it a few moments to download… thank you for grace!} And if you are thinking Advent/Christmas — Click here to download the FREE JESSE TREE Advent Family Devotional {please give it a few moments to download… thank you for grace!}

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Published on July 10, 2013 07:07

Why Faith Is an Answer to Prayer and Prayer Is an Answer to Faith

So, as I pray and prepare to head out to the NACC (come join us at the NACC?) in Louisville, Kentucky this week, Liz Curtis Higgs hometown, her and I are planning to not only take in the NACC, but take a day, Lord willing, to wander and talk and “that is, that [her] and I may be mutually encouraged by each other’s faith” (Romans 1:11-12). Liz Curtis Higgs is the humble, wise (and funny!) author of 30 books, including her nonfiction bestseller, Bad Girls of the Bible , and her newest release, The Girl’s Still Got It: Take a Walk with Ruth and the God Who Rocked Her World , and she has presented more than 1,700 inspirational programs in all 50 United States and 14 foreign countries — and she’s about as down to earth and warm as it gets. I just love her, can’t wait to see her this week, Lord willing — and this post from Liz? Well, have a seat on the porch with us —

Imagine if each time you had the urge to text, tweet, email, log onto Facebook, or phone a friend to share some heartfelt need, you stopped and prayed instead.

Really prayed, trusting God to answer.

That’s faith.

Asking and believing in the same breath, then waiting and trusting in the next, knowing God responds to his children individually. He not only listens to us, he loves us. He not only loves us, he knows what is best for us.

But how can we be certain God knows what’s best? And how do we trust him when the life we’re living now doesn’t fit anybody’s definition of good, let alone best?

Oh, do I have a story for you.

Come with me to first-century Capernaum, a fishing village on the northern shore of the Sea of Galilee—

a lake, actually, and a beautiful one, surrounded by low hills.

This is the town Jesus called home as an adult. “Leaving Nazareth, he went and lived in Capernaum, which was by the lake” (Matthew 4:13). A place of miracles and healings. A sacred place.

I visited there one autumn. Took shelter from the rain beneath a grove of olive trees. Taught the stories of biblical women while standing amid the synagogue ruins. Wept at the nearness of Jesus.

This particular sister’s story always does me in. Grabbing tissues now.

A woman was there… Mark 5:25

A woman. No name. No age. Could be any of us.

Jesus has just arrived on the lakeshore, where a large crowd gathers around him, pressing him from every side. When you’re a miracle worker, everyone wants a piece of you.

Our woman is “among them” (CJB), “in the crowd” (CEV), hoping no one recognizes her. She’s come a long way to see this man. Thirty miles, some scholars say—a great distance for a woman who is not only unclean but unwell.

…who had been subject to bleeding… Mark 5:25

Are we talking about that kind of bleeding? In the Bible? Yes. Call it what you will—“a flow of blood” (AMP), “a hemorrhage” (CJB), “the bloody flux” (WYC)—this is every woman’s nightmare. An endless period. Not just one week a month, but every week of every month, she “suffered…with constant bleeding” (NLT).

…for twelve years. Mark 5:25

Twelve. Years.

This unnamed woman has earned our sympathy in a matter of words. The pain, the shame, the hygiene issues, the anemia, the exhaustion.

Desperate for relief, she did what we all do. She sought earthly help first.

S he had suffered a great deal under the care of many doctors… Mark 5:26

Are we reading this right? The doctors increased her suffering? Sadly, that’s what every English translation tells us. She “endured many things under many physicians” (LEB), who “treated her, and treated her badly” (MSG).

Not only is her body bleeding. Her bank account has been bled dry as well.

…and had spent all she had,… Mark 5:26

Bless her, she “spent everything” (CEB), “her life savings” (CJB). So she is not only in pain. She is also living in poverty.

And if all that isn’t heartbreaking enough…

…yet instead of getting better she grew worse. Mark 5:26

I can’t bear it, can you? Her health is shattered, her money is gone, and she’s worse now than she was before.

But she has not lost her grip on hope.

This is what makes her story so remarkable. She doesn’t give up on God. She doesn’t—at least in the biblical text—question him.

She doesn’t abandon her faith, even though her world appears to be falling apart. She still believes.

Faith is all she has left. And faith is all she will need.

Many of us struggle daily—with health concerns, money woes, loneliness, fears—wondering why God hasn’t delivered us from our misery. If he can end it, why doesn’t he?

Anyone who thinks they have an answer to this question is making stuff up.

We cannot speak for God. We cannot explain why he acts or does not act. What we can do is trust him, put our hope in him, and seek his face.

When she heard about Jesus,… Mark 5:27

You know he was the talk of the Galilee. All those healings? All those miracles? Our girl “heard the reports” (AMP). She kept her ear to the ground. She kept her heart open to the possibility. And when the news made it to her corner of the world, she made tracks for Jesus Town.

…she came up behind him in the crowd… Mark 5:27

This is very descriptive. She didn’t just walk up to him. She came from behind, where she could see him but he couldn’t see her.

Why? Because she’s a bleeding woman. She really shouldn’t be out in public, where someone might brush against her.

The rules for women during their monthlies were very strict: “anyone who touches her will be unclean till evening” (Leviticus 15:19).

The one thing no one wants to do is touch her, or have her touch them.

That’s why she approaches him from behind “under cover of the crowd” (MSG). She’s hoping she can snag a miracle, then make a run for it, with no one the wiser—least of all, him.

This woman who isn’t supposed to touch anyone is about to break the Law.

…and touched his cloak,… Mark 5:27

Whether you call it his “garment” (ASV), his “clothes” (CEB), or his “robe” (NLT), it’s his outer clothing, the first thing her fingers could reach.

And she must be bending down, nearly crawling on all fours, because the way Matthew 9:20 tells it, she touches the “hem” (KJV), the “fringe” (NASB), the “bottom of his coat” (NLV). Perhaps she feels unworthy of touching his sleeve or his shoulder. Or perhaps she just doesn’t want to be discovered.

Here’s what matters most: she has the faith to reach out in the first place. She believes the Lord has the power to heal her.

…because she thought, “If I just touch his clothes, I will be healed.” Mark 5:28

She thought. She believed. She trusted.

And because of that she reached. She put her faith in motion.

Truth is, she did so miles ago when she left the safety of her home and started out for Capernaum.

It was a walk of faith on the outside, yet a leap of faith on the inside.

Too often we base our faith on how we feel. A better measure is how we act, what we do. This is what James 2:17 is trying to get across: “If it is just faith and nothing more—if it doesn’t do anything—it is dead.”

She knew exactly the outcome she wanted and she believed with all her heart that it was possible. This thought of hers must have rolled over and over in her mind: “I shall be made whole” (ASV), “I shall be restored to health” (AMP), “I’ll be made well!”” (HCSB)

It is right and good to pray for faith. Then it’s time to move. Stretch out our hands. That’s when miracles happen.

Immediately her bleeding stopped… Mark 5:29

She didn’t just feel better; “her flow of blood was dried up at the source” (AMP). Hallelujah!

…and she felt in her body that she was freed from her suffering. Mark 5:29

Even more than a physical kind of “feeling,” this was a spiritual awareness. “She knew she was well” (CEV).

Think of it! All the burdens she brought with her are gone in an instant.

No more pain, no more shame, and no more blood.

At once Jesus realized that power had gone out from him. Mark 5:30

Uh-oh. She’s not the only one who noticed this seismic change. Jesus sensed it too. This miracle took place in the spiritual realm—her faith, his power—yet both of them felt it in the physical realm. Blood stopped. Energy flowed. Zap.

He turned around in the crowd and asked, “Who touched my clothes?” Mark 5:30

Right about now our girl’s stomach must be tied in a knot. He knows. Even though he’s asking a question, she can see he already has the answer. He turned around, didn’t he? He’s looking for her. He knows.

Alas, the duh-sciples do not know. They usually don’t. A miracle occurs right in front of them, and they miss it.

We do the same, all day long, usually because we’re looking in the wrong direction. Or thinking too much about ourselves.

“ You see the people crowding against you,” his disciples answered, “and yet you can ask, ‘Who touched me?’ : Mark 5:31

Bless them. They are clueless here. You can almost hear a faint note of scolding in their words, or at the very least, incredulity. “Look at how many people are pushing against you! And you ask, ‘Who touched me?’” (NCV)

Jesus doesn’t let their lack of faith slow him down. He’s too busy eyeballing the crowd.

But Jesus kept looking around to see who had done it. Mark 5:32

The woman could have avoided his gaze, crawled away, kept her healing to herself. But those are cowardly acts, and faith always requires a measure of courage.

She walked many miles. She stretched out her hand. This is her third act of faith: she throws herself at his mercy.

Then the woman, knowing what had happened to her, came and fell at his feet… Mark 5:33

This is so brave. After all, she’s just stolen a miracle! Jesus might take it back, if such a thing could be done. She might start bleeding again. The crowd might stone her for breaking the Law. Who knew how this might end?

No wonder she’s frightened. And yet, she speaks—another act of faith.

…and, trembling with fear, told him the whole truth. Mark 5:33

We can see her shaking all over as she confesses “the whole story” (ERV) to Jesus. What exactly does she tell him? Leave it to Dr. Luke to fill in the blanks for us: “In the presence of all the people, she told why she had touched him and how she had been instantly healed” (Luke 8:47).

Her faith is so strong, she holds back nothing. I believed. I touched. I was healed.

He said to her, “Daughter,…” Mark 5:34

Hit the pause button. This is too big not to mention. It’s the only time Jesus addresses a woman as “Daughter,” and it’s this woman. This ostracized, unclean, don’t-get-anywhere-near-her woman. He’s telling everyone in the crowd, “She’s family. She’s one of us. She’s mine.”

And then he tells her something amazing.

…“your faith has healed you.” Mark 5:34

We know the power went out from him. So, didn’t he heal her? Yes, but she had to reach out, believing it would happen.

For years I struggled with the fact that she touched his garment, breaking the Law of Moses to do so.

And then one day it hit me. If her faith was part of the miracle, then when she stretched out her hand she was already healed.

The threads of that garment had nothing to do with her being made well. It was the power of Jesus passing through the fabric and meeting her where she was, crouched down behind him in the crowd.

When he tells her, “you took a risk of faith, and now you’re healed and whole” (MSG), that’s not just for her sake. All the people pressing against him need to hear it too.

It’s as if he is saying, This is how it works, people. This is what faith looks like.

His last word to her is a sweet benediction.

“Go in peace and be freed from your suffering.” Mark 5:34

Shalom. Peace. It’s a freedom like no other.

I was in the midst of working on this post when an email appeared. Ruth Ann, a seven-year breast cancer survivor, wrote, “I am thankful for each day I have. I was scared to death at first, but God gave me peace.”

Isn’t that what we all long for? Not absence of troubles, but peace in the midst of them.

Ruth Ann shared the whole truth, just like our woman in Capernaum: “I realized that God was in control, not me. God was and is with me.”

There it is. The big aha. The two things you need to know in life:

God is in control. God is with you.

Peace.

Liz Curtis Higgs is the humble, wise (and funny!) author of 30 books, including her nonfiction bestseller, Bad Girls of the Bible , and her newest release, The Girl’s Still Got It: Take a Walk with Ruth and the God Who Rocked Her World , and she has presented more than 1,700 inspirational programs in all 50 United States and 14 foreign countries — and she’s about as down to earth and warm as it gets.

And oh, your heart would be deeply nourished by Liz’s weekly Bible study blog, posting every Wednesday.

Her current feast-series is The 20 Verses You Love Most. Who doesn’t need that?

Click here to download the FREE EASTER / LENT Devotional: The Trail to the Tree{please give it a few moments to download… thank you for grace!} And if you are thinking Advent/Christmas — Click here to download the FREE JESSE TREE Advent Family Devotional {please give it a few moments to download… thank you for grace!}

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Published on July 09, 2013 07:07

How to Keep up the Fight for Joy:

The ring Sara sent me in June, it didn’t fit on my middle finger.

Sara had wore it on her middle finger — until the ring’s sterling silver weight had made her enflamed knuckles burn.

That’s when she wound it off slow, slipped in an envelope and had her grocery lady drop it off at the post office.

Sara knew. The fire in my bones had been about extinguished.

If I wore it — would I feel the heat — ignite?

This is what the letter said:

I am sending you my favorite silver ring I used to wear on my middle finger every day. I can’t wear it anymore as it’s too heavy on my sore fingers… It is purposefully hammered and bent, the way I often felt — the way you are feeling — but it is beautiful and perfect in its imperfections.

I don’t know how Sara knew how this season had battered hard. I don’t know when I told her that fear sometimes made my teeth chatter, a blast of cold wind right down the nape of my neck. Or when I told her I had grown too scared-paralyzed to pluck out words – that somehow, somewhere, someone would misunderstand, and I couldn’t bear the risk of befouling the cause of Christ and how to keep breathing when you’re where you don’t want to be. That my bones felt a bit deadened and felt ash-grey.

I do remember writing this to her one night in March, knowing she was housebound and maybe words might free her. It was my first real letter to her:

I wish you were here tonight, Sara. The sun is setting over the snow all melting. The world is pink and glowing, warm and resting. The dishwasher is twirling, swirling, humming. Shalom is here in the rocking chair reading aloud to herself from her reader…. little whispers…. sounding words out.

Hope is playing at the piano — “Cherry Blossoms in the Rain” — the notes send me across to Asia, the blossoms falling all around us, and a haunting cry too somewhere underneath the lilting high notes, an ache for all that is lost and falling away — the snow melting… the blossoms falling… seasons changing.

I wanted to share the beauty of this moment with you, Sara. Just to sit with you … and share eucharisteo with you.

The bread of His grace in this moment.

And when I see things that make me sing and ache and give thanks for the wonder of this amazing grace, just this moment. –

I think of how you live what I long to.

Sara had turned all the pages in that book I had stumbled to scratch awkwardly down.

Her first letter to me said that her vocabulary had a new word: eucharisteo.

She wasn’t simply reading it. She was living it.

She wrote it on her wall. Eucharisteo. Offered the word to us, even in her own handwriting.

Though her spine was fusing and her lungs ached… though she smiled a bit weakly to think she might live decades with pain that was at least an 8 on the painscale… though she hadn’t been out of her house in 3 years because the air of this world would kill her – Sara was taking every moment as grace, charis, giving thanks for it, eucharisteo, and finding joy, chara. Grace, gratitude, joy – eucharisteo.

Sara chose joy.

Wherever I went, I twisted the silver ring that she had worn on her middle finger of her left hand, that I now wore on the far finger of my left hand.

I walked through the forest. Stood on the water’s shore. Tried to find the words again so I could see how The Word’s writing Himself into my story. I told Sara that I carried her with me, right to the edge. Me the woman terrified to leave her house, wearing the ring of the woman who couldn’t leave her house.

When I didn’t know how to go, didn’t think I could walk out the door, didn’t know how to keep breathing, I’d feel the weight of that ring. Sara would dance if she could go. Sara would laugh at the grace of going. Sara wouldn’t contort this blessing into a burden.

Why in the world make blessings into burdens? Why choose fear instead of joy?

When I surrender to stress; don’t I advertise the unreliability of God?

Sara told me: “I had to choose fear–or completely trust Him. One cannot exist if the other is true.”

Her, so wise. I turned the doorknob, silver ring on finger.

God is the air of this world.

And fear is always the flee ahead and stepping into fears can be the first step into real faith and focusing the eyes on all the grace here is what keeps the focus on His all sufficient grace.

There is never fear here in this moment— because the Presence of I AM always fills the present moment.

We could do that: Practice the discipline of the Present.

Sara told me:

The pain is present and I know I’m getting slower, but this is it: to live for this moment and this moment only… I’m just thankful He’s with me. That I’m never lonely for Him.

And my gift today?

There is a tree in front of another building that I can see from my window. There was a slow breeze today and the branches drifted back and forth so slowly, like they were dancing and waving to me.

I had to resist the urge to wave back.

Sara chose joy and she waved back to grace.

I sent her photos from the front porch and of standing on these floors here, practicing the Praise of the Present, and of friends who choose joy with her.

And a few weeks ago, Sara smiles back from the screen and tells me this in this gravelly voice, coughing it out, that she is saying it too: Yes to God. I have to turn from the screen, everything running liquid. She says it too? She knows it too: when we need peace – we only need to say yes To God’s purposes.

How can she say that? Because what she believes, she lives — and she scrawls it everywhere and all over my heart: eucharisteo. Yes, God, yes! Grace, gratitude, joy — eucharisteo.

And a night in late September, after hospice is called in and she knows she finally, thankfully, turned homeward, Sara writes me:

I don’t think I’ll be able to write again as I’m getting too weak, but you need to know — when you feel weak, take a deep breath.

I closed my eyes tight, blink it all back… Sara knew: That biblical scholars realize that the name of God, the letters YHWH, sounds like the sound of our breathing – aspirated consonants. God Himself names himself — -and He names himself that which is the sound of our own breathing.

When you are weak – take a deep breath. That’s what Sara said at the end: Breathe. Say His name. Say Yes to God. Eucharisteo.

Her last words to me: You will never be alone or need to be afraid.

I reach out to touch the screen, touch her one last time, ring touching her last pixels and she is still breathing.

As long as she breathes, she says yes to God.

I keep my hands there on the screen, on Sara’s words, on Sara – her encircling me in silver, my bones all burning love and Him and joy.

And Hope, she’s playing it in the night shadows again, playing it again tonight, Cherry Blossoms in Rain on the piano, the song she now calls Sara’s Song — her fingers, all her fingers, playing the notes.

And again there’s an ache, a haunting echo, and the notes feel like the far oriental east, like a winging, like a long leaving, like standing at the edge of what once was and witnessing the losing of something pure and prayed for.

After the last high note, Hope whispers it into the stilled dark: “Mama? That whole song?

It’s played on the black notes.“

The black notes can make music too. The black notes can choose joy too.

Somewhere in the house, in the dark, I can hear it — how a door opens, how Sara now walks straight through into light…

When she turns and waves back to grace, I’ll take a deep breath and wave to the extraordinary joy of her too, her silver ring shimmering on my hand here –

the weight of all His sheer glory …

::::

::

the One Thousand Gifts that never end… thanks for the grace and the gifts — a way to choose joy…

#4, 893 : excited for all the new things swirling in head and heart after staying with Katie and what it means to live radical here : looking forward to wrestling this out in the next few weeks

# 4, 894 : speaking this week at the North American Christian Convention and looking forward to seeing what God is doing in His Church here and around the world

#4, 895 : kids painting and creating out on the porch

#4, 896 : early morning fog over the wheat field

#4, 897 : reading through the book of Mark in that early morning fog

# 4, 898 : catching up on my Romans Memory work — getting there! {The whole family just about has Romans 1 memorized and ready to start Romans 8 … join us for Romans 8?}

#4, 899 : Sara’s ring on my finger this morning

#4, 900 : choosing joy today — because the thing is: Let something steal your joy — and you let something steal your strength

Join us? And happily change everything by keeping your own crazy list of One Thousand Gifts? Dare you to Joy! Take the dare to Fully Live!

1. Grab this month’s Free JOY DARE Calendar with 3 daily prompts to go on a scavenger hunt for God’ gifts … {or write down any gifts you choose. Use the free app.} 2. Count 3 gifts a day and you have over #1000gifts in 2013. Jot them down in the new numbered One Thousand Gifts devotional journal — The Farmer’s writing in his with a red pen and daily – the numbers in the journal already there! Motivating… 3. Share your gifts everyday in our beautiful Facebook community to enter everyday for the monthly $100 Amazon draw (or link to your blog post with your list of gifts). 4. Count #1000gifts in 2013 and enter to win a Nikon DSLR camera with lens. Slow Down. Savor Life. Give thanks. Believing something is one thing. But the Best only comes when you decide to Be Living it. Please, jump in, make your life about giving thanks to God! — Just add the direct URL to your specific 1000 gift list post… and if you join us, we humbly ask that you please help us find each other in our refrain of thanks by sharing the community’s graphic within your post.

Give thanks to the Lord! His Love Endures Forever!

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from the archives

Click here to download the FREE EASTER / LENT Devotional: The Trail to the Tree{please give it a few moments to download… thank you for grace!} And if you are thinking Advent/Christmas — Click here to download the FREE JESSE TREE Advent Family Devotional {please give it a few moments to download… thank you for grace!}

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Published on July 08, 2013 07:02

10 Links: Sharing the Happy this Weekend

and I smiled when I found him up here… from my instagram this week

How Clutter Impacts the Brain … and what to do about it … thinking much about this

The whole slideshow of the teacher who wore the same outfit for 40 years

A favorite on Instagram: Benjamin Hole

Free at Christian Audio, the highly recommended novel, Jayber Crow

The OB doctor who sings welcome songs to every baby he delivers…

What the Night Sky Would Look Like if other Planets were as close as the Moon

Free Chalkboard Printables

Theses families …. watch this without the happiest tears?

The most beautiful time lapse ever? The whole earth is full of the glory of God..

Just that, this weekend, friends–

Go slow. Be God-struck. Grant grace. Live Truth.

Give Thanks. Love well.

Become the gift.

Click here to download the FREE EASTER / LENT Devotional: The Trail to the Tree{please give it a few moments to download… thank you for grace!} And if you are thinking Advent/Christmas — Click here to download the FREE JESSE TREE Advent Family Devotional {please give it a few moments to download… thank you for grace!}

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Published on July 06, 2013 04:45

The Amazing Power of Patriotism

It was when she leaned back to watch the fireworks.

When the kids, full of strawberries and ice cream, sprawl about her in the grass, waiting in the thickening dusk, waiting in the sea of blankets spread out and tilted lawn chairs and balding men with bare hearts sit near the white crowned women whose lives had birthed glory.

It’s when her husband unfolds on the ground beside her and finds her hand there in the dark.

When they both sit there with their fingers laced and pressing into the damping grass, into the steadying earth under them, and the first set of sparklers goes off on the other side of the bleachers, that’s when she tastes something sweet and full of light in the back of her throat, like an ache for all this grace.

For all these dirt-worn faces of honest farmers, the strong backs of willing vets, the lights there on the highway of every long-haul truck driver who just keeps working on.

That’s what it was — a love for the kids who run bases on a thousand ball diamonds, the teens who bag a million bags of groceries, the doctors who catch a whole country of squalling babies, for the mothers over stoves and the fathers over garbage bags, for the sheets of rain out across the lake in the muggy swell of a summer thunderstorm, the wind rippling glory through waving fields of golding wheat, for how many trains rolling through how many towns and on until they are memories in how many horizons.

The sky keeps blooming light.

And the shade of a country of maples stretches. And a land of winding rivers carves through forests and fields, and generations of voices carries over yards and campfires and front porches and somewhere a radio mutters a song and the night fills with a whole a nation of steeples proclaiming their thanks to the skies.

She can feel the dirt like a homecoming under her.

She knows what she is made of and where she’s from.

And that we all feel this undeniable bond with the land of our birth, and she knows it: we are all born of the dust of the earth and the breath of God.

And this is what makes us bound to all the earth’s people and to our homeland of heaven. And she looks around at the dads rocking babies and the kids curled in blankets and she feels it like a work of fire in her: Heavenly patriotism is this belief that all human lives everywhere are worth the same.

That we’re a country of countries, a world of families, a earth of one human race, and that was it — the essence of this great land she lived in. What really unites this great land is more than a flag — it’s an idea. The idea that all peoples under heaven are the idea of a Great God.

That all peoples under heaven, in our back alleys and in our hospitals, in our prisons and shelters and headlines and every person in our far-flung world, are flagged as the handiwork of God, the dream of God, the art of God. Everywhere she looked, there it was — “I was the stranger and you welcomed me in.“

It was strange and glorious, how it was happening in her, for her nation, for all the nations: Heavenly patriotism makes you patriotic for all of humanity.

And under fireworks, she watches them all.

The mothers stroking the hair of drowsy ones and toddlers clapping awed for every color eruption, eyes reflecting every blooming of the sky, and the old men with arms around their elegant wives.

And there’s a nurse somewhere who keeps watch and a clerk who keeps a gas pump open and a farmer stays up in the barn with a sick calf and a youth group giving it their all a million miles away from home and there is a whole world of people and glory and her life could be about the liberty of all. You are doing something great with your life – when you’re doing all the small things with His Great love.

You aren’t a citizen of here working your way into heaven. You’re a citizen of heaven working His Way through here.

And it was there in every flag: the stripes that went on like a road, like The Way of Love that goes everywhere and always welcomes the wander in.

All those stars like a Love that can’t be contained by the walls in this world.

There under the bloom of fireworks,she could feel it –

the love of Christ exploding a heart.

Celebrate your freedom & liberty today and free one child from poverty – in Jesus’ name?

Celebrate our bounty with one child’s freedom?

Sponsoring a child through Compassion is 1 proven thing that really works to change the world.

Look into one child’s eyes here if you are in Canada and here if you live in the US… Freedom! Liberty for all!

photo credit 1 and 2

Click here to download the FREE EASTER / LENT Devotional: The Trail to the Tree{please give it a few moments to download… thank you for grace!} And if you are thinking Advent/Christmas — Click here to download the FREE JESSE TREE Advent Family Devotional {please give it a few moments to download… thank you for grace!}

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Published on July 04, 2013 08:16

When You’re Done with Pundits, Soul Wrestling & Looking at the Sky: {25 Things I learned from staying with Katie Davis}

So there was this girl named Katie and she laughed loud and like an angel when someone said she was like Mother Teresa.

Threw back her head and laughed loud into the sky.

It’s strange how this can move in you, a laughter like this , and how hands can embody love.

Katie was 18 when she flew to Uganda.

She took Jesus at His Word: Real life is lived on your knees. I was a whole lot older than that when I first started to read over at Kisses from Katie, years ago now. I am still finding my knees and what it means to really live.

How in the world do you keep on living everyday in middle North America when you’re mildly wild to go live something as radical like Katie?

How many of the Esther Generation hear Jesus asking us now: “Why do you stand here looking into the sky?” (Act 1:11) We’re hungry to do more than stand here looking at the sky – but tell us what? Where? How?

How many women on this spinning globe read Katie and lay in bed at night desperately wrestling and writhing with their own life, hearts dizzy and aching… I was one of them. These are not trite ponderings. You only pass by this way once.

Your life is passing like a hand waving from the back of a train and every choice determines whether you are on the right track. It all matters. How do you keep your nails filed and you eyebrows plucked when your secret hope is to have dirt under your fingernails and the strings of your heart plucked into a symphony that might make stars move?

Go ahead, give us that. We want that. We are the generations that are done living the comforts of this world and we’re ready to live uncomfortable because we’re ready for the comfort of God.

“Jesus wrecked my life.“ That’s what Katie said. ”For as long as I could remember, I had everything this world says is important. In high school, I was class president, homecoming queen, top of my class. I dated cute boys and wore cute shoes and drove a cute sports car.”

Having everything doesn’t mean you have the right track.

“Slowly but surely I began to realize the truth,” Katie gives words to all generations: “I had loved and admired and worshiped Jesus without doing what He said … I wanted to actually do what Jesus said to do.”

That.

The Esther Generation, the North American Church, we’re hungry for uncomfortable and that’s where we are at:

We are done with loving Jesus – without doing what He says. We know that loving Jesus means doing what He says.

But what in the world does that really look like? How? Where? And our husbands are here.

Katie graduated highschool – and then got on a plane for Uganda. Serving at a Ugandan orphanage was to be short-term. One year – and then back home to “normal” and the shimmer of the American dream.

But Katie watched rag-poor parents hand over their children to the orphanage so they’d get three meals a day and education. She was witnessing the ripping apart of families. She waited on God. She didn’t wait for someone else to do something. She saw a need and said to God, “Here I am – Use me.”

By His grace alone and out of her offered weakness – she ended up pioneering a sponsorship program, including meals and school fees, to keep kids in families — over 600 of them. She started a school feeding program for a few thousand more. When a storm toppled a house on to a 9-year-old down the street, and Katie discovered that her, and her 7 year old and 5 year old sisters were all living alone, orphaned, and fending for themselves, she said they could sleep at her house until God made it clear what came next.

What came next is that they called her Mommy.

We want clarity; God wants us to come closer. Life is always clear when you press closer and see it through the sheer love of God.

That’s what Katie did. And that’s how it began – one surrendered girl right out of high school finding herself mothering 13 little girls.

When I find out Compassion Canada has invited our oldest girl and I to Uganda to meet our sponsored child, Katie emails, “Come!” Hope and I show up on her doorstep late on a Thursday afternoon. Hope stands there smiling shyly at 13 smiles. Katie and I fall into each other arms and we believe in miracles.

In five minutes, I am on Katie’s couch and her little Patricia has dragged up a pile of books and I am sitting criss-cross applesauce and reading The Ox-Cart Man aloud in Uganda with this little girl nestled on my lap, her head of braids tucked under my chin. I think my heart might explode.

Love is complicated and the simplest thing in the world. And that is all there is.

Katie stirs beans in a massive pot on the stove and one of the girls pulls up a chair and mashes a mountain of potatoes and I read of The Ox-Cart Man selling his cart at Plymouth market and there’s a map of the world on the wall over Katie’s table and that’s what I want to do –

We could write it on a million kitchen chalkboards: You are doing something great with your life – when you’re doing all the small things with His Great love.

You are changing the world – when you are changing one person’s world.

You aren’t missing your best life – when you aren’t missing opportunities to love like Christ.

Katie and I stay up ate into the night talking, two mothers, and I feel like I am breathing anwers. Her daughters sing loud. “The Sound of Music has nothing on us,” Katie grins and I laugh louder. We tell each other how each other’s book has changed each of our lives and how God is in the business of miracles, of using obedient yeses from the weak and unlikely to do the impossible, and how heat like this does crazy things to our hair.

Mother of a half-dozen, I watch 13 girls with their 24-year-old mother for 3 days. Grace reigns and peace pervades. You mother as well as you know your Father. I look at Katie and all I can think: She mothers like she’s memorized the face of her Father. It is a holy witnessing.

Katie pours over Scripture at the close every meal. She reads His Word like something’s burning hot in her chest. Her girls never leave the table without smiling toward her, a chorus: “Thanks Mom… for food.” For food. Not this particular food, not this particular meal – but for just. for. food. at. all. I never leave the table without blinking it back.

A man with a flesh eating virus limps to the door. Katie opens the door wide, grabs him a chair, dresses his wound. I watch this and can feel the shifting in me. We go out to the slums, to where Amazima, Katie’s ministry, feeds hundreds of kids. We sing Gospel songs till I think we might lift the roof. I swing with kids and wonder how to touch the sky. How to touch the sky. I watch Amazima give each child a bag of rice before they leave for home, a stream of gratitude on red roads – because one young woman said yes. That one young woman turns to me on the way home and I remember how she smiled it: “The answer to everything is relationship.” And I nod and feel it again and relationship with Him is always the answer and then how we live that out in relationship and this is what I know: Relationship is reality.

Her daughters braid Hope’s hair, this plaiting and lacing and how the strands give way and wrap round each other and are strong in the wrapping around each other. Hope’s heart-tied. She can’t stop smiling. A farm girl from Canada giggles too late into the night with sisters from Uganda and Katie and I whisper, “Shhhhh.”

One of Katie’s daughters has a birthday.

Katie and I stand together in the kitchen and make up 6 pans of lasagne and it’s like I can the feel the sky descending. She’ll serve 22 tonight. We’ll have to squeeze on the benches. She bakes a cake and lights candles. And I feel the lighting.

Living radical isn’t about where you live — it’s about how you love.

It’s about realizing– Love doesn’t happen when you arrive in a certain place. It happens when your heart arrives in a certain place – wherever you are, right where you are, dirt road Africa or side street America.

Because it isn’t where we love. It’s how we love. It’s who we love. The reward of loving is in the loving; loving is itself the great outcome of loving. The success of loving is in how we change because we kept on loving – regardless of any thing else changing. The value of loving is in the value of being like Christ.

People are starved for Christ everywhere; there are poor too down our streets and down our halls and downs our pews. Radical begins finding them and radically loving them.

I look at Katie Davis and she is this: She is one mother. She is us. She is the Esther Generation. She is one mother who lives the welcome of the Gospel. You can look into the eyes of her children and see resurrection. You can see how her door is an open welcome to the wounded, her couch an open welcome for the drunk, her garage an open welcome to the homeless, her bed an open welcome to the sick, her table an open welcome to anyone – her smile an open welcome to every one of her children, every stranger, every guest.

Because her Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, said, “I was a stanger and you welcomed me” (Matthew 25:35).

We are done looking into the sky – we are ready to fling open every door in our lives, we are ready to tear down every gate. We are the Esthers inside the gate — and the hurting and the poor, the oppressed and the ignored – is Christ on the other side of the gate. Christ is saying: “I was a stranger and you welcomed Me. I was the stranger on the other side of the gate — and you risked everything inside the gate for the One outside the gate – Me.“

It’s not nameless masses of the deserving poor on the other side of the gate; It’s Christ. Every single stranger, every single disadvantaged, is Christ and if you love Him — you have got make your life about tearing down the gates.

Every face is the guise of Christ.

I look at Katie. Radical isn’t as much about where you move – but about looking into the face of Jesus – and letting Him move you where you are. He may move you to Africa – or across the street. But if the love of Christ moves you – it will move you out into the world. He will move you to tear down gates.

Pundits can banter about one southern cook and the nature of racism in this continent, about the nature of marriage and truth and grace and orientation and the Church, and our screens can explode with opinions and rebuttals and politics.

But our answers to all the raging questions of the day won’t be found in what we write: it will be found in how we open our doors.

Our actual theology is best expressed in our actual hospitality.

And I don’t mean that hospitality is one quaint ministry for those good in the kitchen and keeping their house picked up. Hospitality isn’t for the good housekeepers — it’s the grid of life for anyone keeping company with Christ. Hospitality is meant to shape our churches and politics, our work and our schools, our homes and our faith and our schedules and our meals and our lives.

Hospitality is Life with no Gates.

Hospitality means if there is room in the heart —

there is always room in the house.

And if we’ve really welcomed Christ into our lives – it means our lives are evidence that we’ve welcomed the strangers and the neglected and the outcasts.

The Esther Generation lives it and the North American church is hungry for something as authentic and organic as hospitality: Don’t start with a program. Start with a plate.

My girl and I live 3 days with Katie and we are lit:

The radical practice of hospitality begins with each child, each knock, each phone call: Every interruption of the day is a manifestation of Christ.

There are no interruptions in a day.

There are only manifestations of Christ.

One of Katie’s daughters had whispered it:

“Mommy, if Jesus comes to live inside my heart, will I explode?”

And Katie had said —“No!” and then —

“Yes, if Jesus comes to live in your heart, you will explode… That is exactly what we should do if Jesus comes to live inside our hearts.

We will explode with love, with compassion, with hurt for those who are hurting, and with joy for those who rejoice. We will explode with a desire to be more, to be better, to be close to the One who made us.”

And Africa undoes me and I’m exploded and broken wide open with the Esther Generation –

broken and exploded by Christ –

a thousand bits of His Love bringing down the sky and tearing down gates.

Related:

How to Be Beautiful and Have a Beautiful Home and Life

The Research that Proves You Can Change the World

A Letter to the North American Church: Because it is Time

Why You Are Where You Are: For Such a Time as Now

An Internet Love Story: How to Live Free

Visit Katie Davis’ Blog: Kisses from Katie

Check out the beautiful necklaces and bracelets that Katie’s ministry offers by employing Ugandan women: wear real beauty.

Katie’s unforgettable, NYT bestseller: Kisses from Katie