Ann Voskamp's Blog, page 66
February 10, 2021
Trading Your Plans for a Life That Matters
Due to setting aside a successful football career to embrace the dirt of this earth and grow from it life for others, Jason and Tay Brown’s story is close to my heart, as you can imagine. The founders of First Fruits Farm in North Carolina, the Browns are uniquely equipped to tell us about noticing and relishing God’s harvest in our lives. Except for what they hold back to feed their family, they give the food they grow away. I could not love this story more! A true life of service. It’s a pleasure to welcome them to our farm’s front porch today….
D
uring our first harvest at First Fruits Farm in 2014, we saw how much hunger there was, even in our little area of North Carolina. We knew we had to keep giving.
Give, God tells us. Give till it hurts. It’s been hurting for a while now.
“Give, God tells us. Give till it hurts. It’s been hurting for a while now. But we’ve never been happier.”But we’ve never been happier.
First Fruits Farm has truly become, in practice, All Fruits Farm. Except for what we hold back for our family, we give the food we grow away.
Food banks and soup kitchens depend on what we grow. We’ve donated more than a million pounds of food since we started.
But it hasn’t been easy. We’ve wondered sometimes how we’d be able to keep doing what we’re doing.
People have told us that what we’re doing is not sustainable—that we can’t keep giving away everything we grow and hope that the miracles will still keep coming.
“You keep giving help like this,” my father sometimes tells me, “and pretty soon, you’re going to be the one who needs some help.”
He’s got a point. But I also recognize that I’m attached to a kingdom with unlimited resources—that I’m loved by a generous God.
And so we keep giving. We keep working. We keep doing what God called us to do.
I’m working harder now than I ever did playing football. I’m sacrificing more now than I ever did playing football.
And some people might wonder, Why bother? Why put so much into this work when, compared to the NFL, you’re getting so little out of it?
But here’s the difference between my life then and my life now: When I go to bed, I have a sense of peace and satisfac tion.
“Here’s the difference between my life then and my life now: When I go to bed, I have a sense of peace and satisfaction.”The stress that I felt playing football is gone. And, although it’s been replaced by different stresses, I know that all my problems come with a purpose. A mission. I know that what I’m doing now isn’t just for me. It isn’t even just about all the thousands of people who might otherwise go hungry.
It’s for God. I’m doing what God has truly called me to do.
One of the Bible’s most famous verses is Philippians 4:13: “I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me” (nkjv). Sometimes when you hear ministers preach on that verse, they concentrate on the “I can do all things” part. “I can do all things!” they say, and they talk about the miracles that the disciples and apostles performed: healing the sick and curing the paralytic and even raising the dead.
But you know what? The context in which Paul said that has nothing to do with great, miraculous happenings. He was talking about being strong through difficult circumstances and finding a sense of contentment even in the midst of them.
“I know that all my problems come with a purpose. A mission. I know that what I’m doing now isn’t just for me. It’s for God.”Paul was saying, Look, I know what it feels like to be hungry. I know what it feels like to be full. I know what it feels like to be rich, and to be poor. But I’ve learned how to be content in every state. “I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me,” Paul said. That’s where the stress should be. Paul wasn’t talking about miracles; he was talking about finding peace through God’s plan, even when that plan is hard.
I know what it’s like to be rich, and to be poor. I know what it’s like to have everything, and I know what it’s like to cry out to God in the middle of a dusty, fly-infested field.
My life of comfort is gone. I stress and I sweat and sometimes I wonder how the next bill will be paid. But I’m content. I’m content in Christ, because He strengthens me.
God called me to be a farmer. And guess what? He’s calling you to something too. He’s knocking on your door. He’s whispering your name.
You may think it sounds crazy at first. You may worry what people would say if you actually dared to listen.
But you know what? Listen anyway. Follow.
The life you find may be strange and uncomfortable. It may be hard. It may push you to what you think is your breaking point and keep pushing you—pushing until you cry in pain and frustration and anger.
“It’s only by following that you can find real contentment. It’s only by following that you can find real purpose.”But follow anyway. It’s only by following that you can find real contentment. It’s only by following that you can find real purpose.
For all the work I do, for all the weariness that sinks and settles deep into my bones, I wake up every morning, look out the window, and feel . . . amazed.
I can’t believe that God allows me to steward this place. I can’t believe how blessed I am.
I see the sun rise over my barn, the sky painted orange and purple.
I hear the birds in the oak trees beyond.
I breathe in the scent of the animals, the plants, the water in the air.
And I feel God beside me. Above me. Everywhere. Because I am right where He has called me to be.
Jason Brown grew up in Henderson, North Carolina and played football at the University of North Carolina. After being drafted by the Baltimore Ravens in 2005, Jason became a free agent in 2009 and was signed by the St. Louis Rams for $37.5 million, making him the highest-paid center in the league. Three years later, Jason left behind several lucrative offers from the NFL and bought a 1,000-acre farm near Louisburg, North Carolina.
Jason is the author of Centered, the inspiring riches-to-rags-to-true riches story of how he left behind a lucrative career in the NFL to buy a 1,000-acre farm in North Carolina. He has been farming full-time since 2013, and he gives everything that he grows to the poor. He and his wife, Tay, have been married since 2003 and have eight children.
[ Our humble thanks to Waterbrook for their partnership in today’s devotion ]
February 9, 2021
How to disconnect in order to reconnect: exchange your on-line distractions for real-life devotions
Wendy Speake is a passionate Bible teacher with a hunger for Jesus like no other. With a gift for storytelling and biblical life application, she’s led thousands in feasting on God’s Word through her annual online sugar fasts. But Wendy knows that we aren’t only affected by what we take in through our mouths, but also by where we focus our eyes and our hearts. It’s a grace to welcome Wendy back to the farm’s front porch today…
I was inside at the dining room table, writing out a grocery list, as my sons played in the pool in our backyard.
The sound of their laughter wafted in through open windows. It was an unseasonably warm spring day—mid-March and already ninety degrees. Summer, it seemed, had come early to Southern California.
“I had a choice: share the spectacle with my online friends or soak it up with my family.”“Mom! Mom! Mom! Mom!” the boys called as they scrambled out of the water. I looked up to see what was causing the commotion and couldn’t believe my eyes.
Thousands of butterflies fluttered around the boys. Everywhere, as far as my eyes could see, butterflies swarmed and swirled in all directions. Immediately I stood and ran toward my room. My first thought was to grab my phone. I needed to start a Facebook Live at once!
Halfway down the hall, I remembered I had just begun a forty-day social media fast during Lent. In addition to staying off of Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram, I had decided to keep my phone in my room so that I would be present and available to my family.
But what was happening outside was amazing. I’d never seen anything like it in all my life.
I had a choice: share the spectacle with my online friends or soak it up with my family.
Wendy Speake
Wendy Speake
Making the decision to forsake my phone, I turned toward the sound of my children’s laughter. As I walked out to the patio, the fluttering of butterfly wings brushed my skin. The slippery cool touch of my youngest son’s arms around my middle made it hard to breathe, or maybe it was the miracle of the moment. I caught my breath, overwhelmed.
“There is a God!” I cried out to the boys.
“Good job, God!” my oldest shouted out loud.
We locked eyes then and smiled. He’d remembered how I taught him to define praise when he was just a toddler. “Praise is telling someone what a good job they did. It’s the same with giving God praise. When you see something beautiful like a sunset or a newborn baby, simply tell Him, ‘Good job, God!’”
“I want to commit to living eyes up, instead of hunkered down and hidden behind my screen—seeing but not seeing.”“Good job, God!” we shouted together.
All three wet-from-the-pool boys were counting aloud, “178, 179, 180, 181, 182 . . .” I joined them in the counting, and we got to well over one thousand before the mass migration moved on.
For the next few weeks, however, we saw at least twenty butterflies in any direction we looked everywhere we went throughout town. Others had captured the moment on their cameras that day, but I caught the moment in real life—the whole glorious display.
While I love fasting from social media during Lent, I want to learn to live this way on a regular basis.
I want to commit to living eyes up, instead of hunkered down and hidden behind my screen—seeing but not seeing.
Devices are divisive, I’ve found. They divide me and distract me from time with the Lord and the real-life people I most adore. The ones I like distract me from the ones I love. Those I follow online distract me from the only One who said, “Follow Me!”
But here’s the simple truth: when you put down your phone, it’s easier to lift up your eyes.
And when you lift up your eyes, you see not only your family and your friends, your neighbors, and the whole wide world full of people needing your loving attention but also the glorious display of a praiseworthy Creator.
“Here’s the simple truth: when you put down your phone, it’s easier to lift up your eyes.”Unfortunately, as soon as a sunset-sky begins declaring God’s glory, I’m posting a picture of it along with the hashtag #psalm19—“The heavens declare the glory of God.” During those sacred moments, with my head bowed over my phone, I miss seeing the setting sun transform the sky from mango to magenta as the Master Craftsman splashes heavenly hues across the canvas of heaven.
Though those first moments sincerely stun me, I am quickly distracted from the celestial service in the sky by an overwhelming urge to post it online. And though I feel joy in sharing the image with my online friends, the truth is that I experienced only a few moments of glory when I could have soaked it up for another seven minutes.
In my attempt to share His glory with others, I often miss out on so much of it. I miss much when I share much.
Years ago, I went on a famous hike in Yosemite National Park known as the Mist Trail. Afraid of damaging my phone, I left it with a friend who stayed behind with the youngest climbers.
As the rest of us ascended the mountain beside the falls, we had to bend over and use our hands to prevent ourselves from slipping. The trail, hewn from massive slabs of granite, was slick with moss. A constant stream of water droplets covered everything. At one point I looked over my shoulder and caught sight of the most vibrant rainbow.
I couldn’t stop myself. I stood right up and lifted my hands in response to God’s glory on display.
“Are you tired of looking down? I’m wondering if all our looking down is causing us to feel down too.”The impulse to praise the Lord was too great! Strangers crawled past me on all fours while I stood erect, crying, with hands lifted high.
One of the men in our group yelled over the roar of the falls, “Wendy, get down now!”
It was dangerous for me to be standing on the slick, moss-covered slab of rock, but my whole being responded to the glory. It was foolish, but even more foolish is never looking up to see God’s glory on display. Never looking up to the heavens, never hearing the proclamation shouted night and day, day and night . . . that’s a whole other kind of slippery slope.
Are you tired of looking down? I’m wondering if all our looking down is causing us to feel down too.
Colossians 3:1-2 in The Message translation invites us, “Don’t shuffle along, eyes to the ground, absorbed with the things right in front of you. Look up, and be alert to what is going on around Christ—that’s where the action is.”
With Lent only one week away, let me invite you to look up!
Consider fasting from social media in an effort to get social with the Lord and the real-life, flesh-and-blood people all around you.
Look up!
Exchange your online distractions for real-life devotion this Lenten season.
Wendy Speake is a trained actress and heartfelt Bible teacher who ministers to hearts through storytelling and biblical life application. During her career in Hollywood, Wendy found herself longing to tell stories that edify, encourage, and point audiences to Jesus Christ. Today she does just that, writing books, speaking to groups across the nation, and leading multiple online fasts and Bible studies each year. Wendy hosts her annual online Sugar Fast every January and then leads her Jesus-hungry friends into a 40-Day Social Media Fast during Lent.
The question Wendy dares you to consider is: Would you be willing to disconnect from the world (and the world wide web) in order to connect with the One who made the world? So often we run to social media to deal with our loneliness and stress, when Jesus clearly invited us, “Come to Me when you are weary and heavy laden, and I will give you rest.”
Join Wendy for a 40-Day Social Media Fast this Lent (it begins February 17) to help you exchange your online distractions for real-life devotion. Find out more about The 40-Day Social Media Fast and the 40-Day Fast Journal at 40daysocialmediafast.com—or consider doing the 40-Day Sugar Fast if you find yourself turning to a sugar high rather than The Most High during your days.
This “screen sabbatical” in The 40-Day Social Media Fast is designed to help you become fully conscious of your dependence on social media so you can purposefully unplug from screens and plug into real life with the help of a very real God. Take a break from everyone and everything you follow online. Disconnect in order to reconnect with the only One who said “follow me.”
[ Our humble thanks to Baker for their partnership in today’s devotion ]
February 8, 2021
When it feels like others are blessed while you’re stuck
Ever feel like something’s holding you back? As if you lack an important key that could change everything? Is there someone you love who seems stuck? You’d like to help them, but how? What’s missing? Maybe it’s blessing that’s missing—a positive, faith-filled vision spoken over our lives. If you’re tired of striving to be better, maybe it’s time to just stop trying so hard and receive a deeper revelation of who you are in Christ. The power of blessing is a golden thread that weaves its way through the whole Bible, but we read and talk about it surprisingly little. In the scripture, blessing is more than a relationship principle—it’s a mystical grace that actually empowers people. I want that power at work in my life and I want to share it with others, don’t you? In his new book, The Power to Bless, Pastor Alan Wright shares his inspiring journey from craving blessing to living the blessed life and shows, step by step, how anyone can learn to bless us others. It’s a grace to welcome Alan to the farm’s front porch today…
S
ome people try hard to succeed so they will feel blessed. Other people try hard to succeed because they already feel blessed. It’s the difference between striving and thriving. It’s the difference between death and life.
For most of my life I was the former: laboring for the blessing I never knew.
“I was trying to buy blessing, but it was costing me joy and peace.”Dad had left home when I was in fourth grade, so he wasn’t around to paint a positive vision for my future.
Evidently, he bragged to others about me, but he wasn’t comfortable looking me in the eye, affirming my unique gifts, and pointing me toward a God-given destiny.
So I grew up trying to prove my value as I groped in the dark for my place in the world. Though some unblessed people rebel, I performed in order to feel blessed—make all A’s, obey all the rules, win all the tennis matches.
I was trying to buy blessing, but it was costing me joy and peace.
That’s why Genesis 1:28 is one of the most important verses in the Bible to me. Note well the order of events: “God blessed them. And God said to them, ‘Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it, and have dominion.’” With God, the blessing is not the reward for productivity—it’s the power for it.
The principle of blessing makes your job as a parent, spouse, friend, teacher, employer, or coach simple: just show people who they were made to be.
Does God sometimes put odd things in our lives to teach us important lessons? I guess if He gave Hosea a prostitute wife and sent a worm to eat Jonah’s shade plant, He could give me an immortal tadpole.
“With God, the blessing is not the reward for productivity—it’s the power for it.”The never-changing tadpole actually belonged to my daughter, Abby. When she was five, she came home from her preschool with it. It seemed simple enough—the tadpole was destined to become a frog in front of our eyes. Of course, we needed to dechlorinate the water and change it often.
And, as it turns out, tadpoles are picky eaters. We had to boil spinach, freeze it in ziplock bags, and sprinkle small portions into the tadpole bowl each day. But no worries—in a matter of a few weeks, our spinach-boiling and water-changing duties would be over, and we would have a full-fledged frog that we could release into the wild.
After two weeks, the other preschoolers’ tadpoles had started sprouting legs and dropping tails. But Abby’s didn’t. Her tadpole kept swimming around its bowl and eating frozen spinach. Then two months went by.
My wife Anne bumped into Abby’s preschool teacher, Miss Nikki, at the ten-week mark. “Hey, Nikki, when in the world is the tadpole going to turn into a frog?”
“What are you talking about?” Miss Nikki asked.
“The tadpole you sent home with Abby. When will it grow legs and all that?”
“Uh, that should have happened long ago. Are you saying your tadpole is still a tadpole?”
“Yep—totally tadpole. Zero frog.”
“That’s impossible.”
Another impossible month went by. And another. And another. A year and a half later, Abby’s tadpole was still a tadpole. We were the only family in the history of the world to own an immortal, unchangeable pet tadpole.
“I think that’s how you and I change—not by trying harder to become something better but by being blessed with a vision of who we are designed to be.”One day an older Abby came home from summer camp with an aquatic frog. We were suddenly proud owners of both a tadpole and a frog. We considered placing them in the same bowl, but we were concerned that the unusually large immortal tadpole would eat the smaller though fully developed frog.
So we put the aquatic frog in its own bowl next to the tadpole on the shelf in Abby’s room.
The next day, my seven-year-old daughter called me at the office. “Daddy, Daddy, you won’t believe it!”
“What!”
“My tadpole has grown legs!”
“What? Are you serious? Are you sure you aren’t just looking at your new frog?”
“Daddy, I’m telling you the truth. My tadpole has legs!”
Since it’s part of my job to bear witness to miracles, I packed up and dashed home. Not only did the tadpole have legs, but it also had started losing its tail. By the next day, a full metamorphosis had taken place. Within forty-eight hours of placing a real frog next to its bowl, the immortal tadpole had transformed into a full frog.
Evidently, it just needed to see what it really was.
I think that’s how you and I change—not by trying harder to become something better but by being blessed with a vision of who we are designed to be.
I bet you can think of someone you love who is gifted but who is underachieving because they don’t believe it.
You might know a girl who is lovely and smart, but because she doesn’t feel that way about herself, she keeps dating guys who are the opposite. Perhaps you love someone who is discouraged and depressed because he feels like a failure.
Underachievers don’t start excelling because someone tells them to try harder. Girls don’t pick the right guys because we tell them they ought to be pure. Depressed people don’t get better because we tell them to be happy.
“The best way to grow as a Christian is to quit listening to your own deceived heart and start listening deeply to what God has to say about who you are.”People don’t change until they see themselves differently.
When we spend time telling young frogs how much they still look like tadpoles, they’re likely to stay tadpoles longer. Everyone you meet is, in a sense, both a tadpole and a frog.
The best way to grow as a Christian is to quit listening to your own deceived heart and start listening deeply to what God has to say about who you are:
When you sin, God calls you “holy” (Heb. 10:10 NIV).
When your money runs out, God calls you “rich in every way” (1 Cor. 1:5 NCV).
When you feel ashamed, God calls you “blameless” (Eph. 1:4).
When you’ve done nothing majestic, God calls you a “royal priesthood” (1 Pet. 2:9).
If you feel like a tadpole today, you don’t need to try harder to grow legs—you just need a new vision of your life.
Your metamorphosis will come when you see what God has designed you to be.
Alan Wright is the lead pastor of Reynolda Church in North Carolina, a four-time author, a popular conference speaker, and the host of a daily thirty-minute radio program syndicated on more than four hundred stations, which encourages listeners through the good news of the gospel.
With honesty and warmth, Alan shares his inspiring journey from craving blessing to living the blessed life. The absence of his father’s affirmation left him struggling for years with symptoms of the unblessed life: shame, pretense, and drift. The Power to Bless is a revolutionary book that unveils God’s plan for our transformation. Rather than withholding His blessing until we prove ourselves worthy, God blesses us so we can be productive. Through the lens of the mysterious blessing of Ephraim and Manasseh, the book leads readers into the deepest blessings of God and teaches them how to bless others.
With biblical insight and practical wisdom, The Power to Bless shows you how to craft a positive, faith-filled blessing. By learning a few simple, biblical skills for imparting life-changing blessings, you’ll be more spiritually blessed than you’d ever imagined, and you’ll be equipped with the power to bless the people you love.
[ Our humble thanks to Baker for their partnership in today’s devotion ]
February 6, 2021
Only the Good Stuff: Multivitamins for Your Weekend [02.06.21]
Happy, happy, happy weekend!
Let’s not let the everyday routines numb us to the miracle of living every day! Some real, down in the bones JOY to celebrate today! Links & stories 100% guaranteed to make you smile a mile wide & believe like crazy in a Good God redeeming everything. Never, ever give up…there really is hope, even for us.
Serving up only the Good Stuff for you & your people right here:
Photo by Jon Flobrant on Unsplash
Photo by Daniele Buso on Unsplash
Photo by Mike Kotsch on Unsplashget outside and inhale deeply this weekend
Can you even?!? Happy snow day!
[ From Smithsonian’s National Zoo & Conservation Biology Institute and giant pandas Mei Xiang and Tian Tian. ]
View this post on InstagramA post shared by Good News Movement (@goodnews_movement)
you okay? because, yeah, sometimes we just need a hug
extraordinary wonder
Kid President went off the air for a few years… so what happened while he was gone?
they’re headed out again to celebrate kids all over the world doing good things who deserve to be celebrated and heard and applauded
…because everyone responds to love
Anastasovski Goran
Anastasovski Goran
Anastasovski GoranWildlife Photographer Captures What Love Looks Like in the Animal Kingdom
the wonder of it: watch a Salamander Grow from a Single Cell in this Incredible Time-lapse
oh my heart: 25 Children in Poverty Share Encouraging Messages for Hard Times
okay, this made me literally smile a mile wide!….
… and you know how I love my Typewriter keyboard? (I mean! Listen to it! How can I not love that sound?!? 
)
Honestly, in these strange days, I’m getting flat out desperate for a reprieve of REAL FUN.
In days like these, fun in your life is something we simply cannot afford to miss out on and this is a direly needed breath of fresh air:
Fun Matters More Than You Think and Here’s Why
a calming visit with friends in Big Sky Country
cheering loudly: 10-year-old boy clears snow off cars for hospital workers
“I was thinking they’ve been helping us a lot through this whole pandemic, and I figured why don’t we help them, you know? Some of them say, ‘Thank you so much,’ and I’m just really happy to see them happy… We want them to be able go home and see their family after a long day of work.”
#BeTheGift #TheBrokenWay
over & over: I Thank God
The Lord is working in the ashes… please don’t miss this life-changing video…a true miracleYou are invited you to be a part of this holy recovery story. Please consider joining Mercy House Global as we ask God to bring beauty for ashes.
We are SO GRATEFUL to God for His protection. No one was harmed and all moms, babies and staff were able to get out. It’s a true miracle.
Please join us and pray for peace and provision in this tragedy. Everything has been destroyed …
Mercy House is launching fundraisers in phases to help begin the recovery process. They know that this won’t be quick or easy… but believe God is in the ashes and so and that’s just where they want to be.
Mercy House exists to engage, empower and disciple women around the globe in Jesus’ name. They provide for the rescue of pregnant girls in Kenya and provide a home for them.
Rescue a Girl. Empower A Family. Redeem A Generation.
If you are able to help, please donate here
… classic loveliness in our Fair Trade store, Grace Crafted Home:
using these items every day here on the farm
Your home and life can tell a story — that’s changing the story of the world.
(100% of proceeds go to help fund Mercy House Global’s work in Kenya)
inspired by true events… full of empathy and hope
Study after study found? Nothing, absolutely nothing interrupts anxiety like gratitude. The research indicates that recording just 3 gifts a day is a kind of cognitive training, a way of reorganizing your brain around a focus on goodness, that it increases an individual’s positive outlook by 25%.
“Whatever you do, do everything…giving thanks” Col. 3:17 God’s will is for us to give thanks in all things…because this is how we can live with joy through anything… This is the year to take the Joy Dare — which just gives you 3 prompts a day, to notice, find, feel the joy of seeing 3 ways God is loving you — and dare to give thanks in all things, dare to look for the good, dare to notice God’s grace, dare to pay attention to all the ways God love you.
(P.S. Print the 2021 updated Joy Dare right here under “Free Tools”
And P. P.S.: The little book that started this habit of gratitude for us — One Thousand Gifts — turns TEN this year (!!!) and we have some big things coming this year to celebrate how thankfulness has changed our lives.
come along? glory, glory, glory
Fearless Faith
Jesus KNEW:
Perspective & encouragement for anyone who is feeling the disappointment of Simon – “I’ve worked so hard and didn’t catch a thing.” (Luke 5:5)
My Word for the Year: h o p e …. Bracelet: at The Keeping CompanyPost of the week from these parts here
So — to be honest — I’ve sat with this burning in my bones for more than a month or two— & today I couldn’t hold it back anymore:
Questioning Believing in God? Me too. I’m Doing This Instead.Father, remind me You’re here…
Books for Soul Healing:
Joy is actually possible, right where you are.
Take the dare to discover: Life is not an emergency…Life is a GIFT. Life is too short to do anything but truly savor it — to count all the ways you truly loved.
What if Brokenness is the Path into the Abundant Life?
You don’t have to be afraid of broken things — because Christ is redeeming everything.
There’s no other authentic way forward — but a broken way — right into a profoundly abundant life.
Journey into a deeply meaningful life with this devotional and take sixty steps from heart-weary brokenness to Christ-focused abundance. The Way of Abundance — is the way forward every heart needs.
Be the Gift is a tender intivation into the next step of deeper transformation, less stress, more joy and abundantly more peace & purpose. You only get one life to love well…to Be The Gift.
on repeat this week: The Gospel
Nothing is more necessary than finding God and falling in love and deeper into Him.
Because — Love decides.
Love decides everything.
What you are in love with decides what you live for.
What you are in love with decides what you get out of bed for.
Fall in love with the One who fills your lungs with this breath and all these people and this sky and all this light, all this glorious light.
You have to fall in love because this will get you up and keep you going every day.
And Love isn’t about agreeing with someone, it’s about sacrificing for someone.
Love decides everything — which is another way of saying, Sacrifice is the essence of everything.
Go fall in love with grace and mercy and the only One who has ever loved you to death and back to the realest life — because the world is begging us all to get out of bed and sacrifice for someone hurting, for someone different, for someone forgotten or marginalized, to hold the hand of someone who doesn’t look like us, to lean in and listen to someone angry and grieving and doubting the likes of us, to give a bit of ourselves to those who feel like they aren’t given much real space at the table.
Read the headlines, read your news feed, and then defy the dark and go fall in love with kids raised in different neighbourhoods than yours, fall in love with God in the faces that tell stories different than yours, fall in love with people who think and live and walk in circles far different than yours. Sacrifice for someone so your sanity, your joy, your fulfilment isn’t sacrificed.
Sacrifice will always leave you the most satisfied.
Fall in love, stay in love, stay sacrificing, and you live the most satisfied.
What you are in love with in your life — decides everything about your life.
Love decides everything.
[excerpted from our little Facebook family … come join us each day?]
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 4, 2021
Questioning Believing in God? Me too. I’m Doing This Instead.
The truth is, after a brutal year, I have decided I do not simply believe in Jesus. I am done with that life. Mainly because it turned out to be guttingly empty and hollow — and, frankly, not enough.
After nearly a year of navigating a global pandemic, lockdowns, border closures, economic upheaval, political, cultural and church divisiveness and polarization, this is where I find myself landing:
I do not believe in Jesus, I live in Jesus.
“I do not believe in Jesus, I live in Jesus.”
In this polarized war over what is truth, what is reality, what is identity, what is Christianity, what is evangelicalism, what is wrong, what is right, what is left, all I’ve got is this:
Create your own alternate god, and you end up living in an alternate reality. The only way to not live in some parallel universe is to come to the Cross of Christ.
Live in a universe where the sun revolves around you, and eventually life as you want it will wither up and die.
Only when your life revolves around the Son is there any hope of real life.
People may almost universally believe that Jesus is a good person, but the only way to have a good life is to choose Jesus as your whole universe.
“People may almost universally believe that Jesus is a good person, but the only way to have a good life is to choose Jesus as your whole universe.“
And this past year, more than any other, has led me to realize:
Jesus is not a belief to me, He is breath to me, not some theory, but all my gravity, not a lens for my life, but He is my life. The Triune God is not one sphere of some multi-dimensional life — He is atmosphere, terra, lung and the only way to not suffocate in self.
We aren’t good news, evangelical Christians, if we believe the fake news that Christianity is only the mental assent of faith in Jesus, without requiring the lived allegiance of faithfulness to Jesus.
The Gospel truth is that believing in Jesus is being saved by a faith that is committed to a life of faithfulness.
It’s the covenantal faithfulness of Christ alone that saves us, and we respond to His saving faithfulness, by covenanting our own faithfulness to Him. (And just because we will be faithless, doesn’t mean that it’s less important that we commit to reorienting ourselves back toward faithfulness.)
“For too long we have lived a cheap faith, instead of a costly faithfulness.”
For too long we have lived a cheap faith, instead of a costly faithfulness.
Cheap faith says one only has to believe.
When the truth is:
Believers, by the Scriptures own account, aren’t the ones who are really Christians. Even the demons believe.
Real Christians aren’t merely the believers; Real Christians are actually the faithful followers.
We can say we pay allegiance to Jesus, but that is cheap talk; we aren’t paying allegiance to Jesus unless it costs us something.
Following Jesus means a cost will follow.
Following Jesus will mean a cost of comfort, cost of reputation, cost of relationship, cost of status, cost of self, cost of things near and dear, and though it may feel like a rendering in two, any cost for Jesus is only gain for now and all eternity. I’m betting the farm and staking my whole life on this.
I’m daring to believe it and desperately trying to live it:
Following Jesus will cost you laying down the kingdom of self to give you the upside down kingdom that has only upsides for all eternity.
“Following Jesus will cost you laying down the kingdom of self to give you the upside down kingdom that has only upsides for all eternity.”
Jesus-followers daily follow Jesus into the reality of the Real Universe, the only Real Universe that will actually last forever, the only Real Universe where those who accept they are at the end of themselves get to accept the endless kindness of God. Any other universe is vaporous mirage.
Why believe that the Real Universe is the one of the Triune God instead of believing in any another universe of our own imagining?
Because, if the universe has a beginning — and research concludes it does — it has a cause.
And if the universe has a beginning that has a cause, it has to have its beginning in that which is uncaused, beyond time and space, which means: “In the beginning, God…. “
This Real Universe, caused by God, cannot be a product of chance.
My Word for the Year: h o p e …. Bracelet: at The Keeping CompanyPerhaps the most impressive example of how incomprehensibly precise the existence of our planet is that “the initial distribution of mass energy to give the low entropy throughout the universe necessary for life is fine-tuned within1 part in 10 to a factor of 10(123). That means? If you took a sheet of paper and filled it with zeros, then reproduced zeros on sheets of paper lined up across the entire universe, 15 billion light years across, that number would still be smaller than 10 to a factor of 10(123).”
“It takes far greater faith to believe that this universe is a product of chance than it takes to have faith in God as the Maker of this Real Universe.”
It takes far greater faith to believe that this universe is a product of chance than it takes to have faith in God as the Maker of this Real Universe.
Dr Anders Sandberg of the Future of Humanity Institute very recently reported of his team of researchers analyzing the likelihood of life such as ours anywhere else in the universe, “to get estimates of just how unlikely the steps could be”, and confirmed: “We feed in data about when things happened on Earth and a guess of how many steps there were, and in return we get the most likely levels of difficulty.”
He concluded?
“[The data] turns out to indicate that, yes, we are an unlikely planet.”
In all the universe, ours is an unlikely planet — because we are made by Love… by a Love that is beyond this universe.
But what of the Problem of Evil in this universe?
The truth is: If there is no God — there cannot be any objective moral values. If atheism is ultimately true, then there is ultimately no basis to argue anything is objectively evil. But the human heart knows that murder, rape, violence against children is objective evil, and objectively exists in this universe. And if one believes in the reality of evil, one is faced with the reality of God.
The problem of evil is answered by the fact that there is no believing in evil unless there is believing in God.
“The problem of evil is answered by the fact that there is no believing in evil unless there is believing in God.”
And yet, one always has the gift of options — one can exit the Real Universe of God and live in an alternate universe of one’s own imagining. We all get to decide if want to do it our own way, have our own Kingdom where we make up our own laws of nature. And yet I can testify from the scars of my own wayward life:
Defying the ways of God is like trying to defy the law of gravity.
During this past wildly hard year, a popular, lead Christian musician went to his tens of thousands of Instagram followers to humbly and honestly offer that he no longer believed in God and, genuinely heartbroken, I was deeply struck when I read the last few lines of his walking away from God:
“My wife and I — we didn’t enjoy going to church. We didn’t enjoy reading the Bible. We didn’t enjoy praying. We didn’t enjoy worship. It all felt like obligation and our lack of enthusiasm about those things always made us feel as though something was wrong with us. Now I don’t believe anything was wrong with us. We simply didn’t believe — and we were too afraid to admit that to ourselves.”
“Enjoyment in God is evidence of attachment to God. Enthusiasm for the Word of God is powerful proof of being in the God of the Word.”
I ached with their tender vulnerability and the courage of their confession: again and again, they didn’t — enjoy, enjoy, enjoy, enjoy. They lacked enthusiasm for God.
And I found myself struck with the deepest conviction:
Lack of joy in God, reveals lack of belief in God. Enthusiasm itself means “in God” — entheos; Lack of enthusiasm for God means one likely isn’t in God.
Enjoyment in God is evidence of attachment to God.
Enthusiasm for the Word of God is powerful proof of being in the God of the Word.
My Word for the Year: h o p e …. Bracelet: at The Keeping Company
My Word for the Year: h o p e …. Bracelet: at The Keeping Company
My Word for the Year: h o p e …. Bracelet: at The Keeping Company
When the sun rises again in a ball of glory over this planet, floods morning light across our old floors, I’m swept away again by the all the Love of this one Real Universe, the only one where Hope really exists.
“In these strange days: There is more than believing in God. There is enjoying living in God.”
Hope only exists in the Real Universe where death has been killed at the Cross, where life has meaning beyond the walls of this earth, where Hope has a name and rose from the grave and engraved your name on the palms of His hands. Alternate universes with their alternative facts can’t offer any meaningful alternative to Christ-centric Hope.
And with another dawn in the Real Universe of the Upside Down Kingdom of God, there’s the Hope only found in deeply inhaling in the atmosphere of Love Himself, the overflowing reality of the Trinity, and this is what it means to enjoy being fully alive.
In these strange days: There is more than believing in God.
There is enjoying living in God.
There is enthusiastically breathing in the only atmosphere non-toxic to the human soul: grace.
Want Ann to read this post to you? Listen to the Post
February 3, 2021
How to Pray into the Peace that Passes Understanding
When Linda Evans Shepherd waited for her infant daughter to emerge from a year-long coma following a car crash, she discovered Job’s secrets to a prayer that not only saved her life, but emersed her into the miracle of peace. This sweet spot of prayer can never be duplicated with begging, demanding, or scolding God. It’s also powerful enough to prevent emotions from controlling your life. With deep insight into the peace that passes understanding, Linda shares her journey from despair to miracles. Her latest book, Praying Through Every Emotion, Experiencing God’s Peace No Matter What offers you a way to pray peace into your own life. I invite you to open your heart and welcome Linda to the farm’s front porch today…
guest post by Linda Evans Shepherd
The first beams of dawn poured through a naked pane of glass as I lay listening to my daughter’s mechanical breathing. I rubbed the sleep from my eyes and starred up at Laura’s heart monitor.
Its glowing red pulse told me she was still alive. Sort of.
I sat up from the hard plastic mat in my window seat bed and stared down into an inner-city neighborhood.
“We don’t have to let our emotions rule us. I’ve learned the peace of God can transform our pain.”That’s when I saw him. The figure of a young boy. For weeks I’d watched the child climb upon the roof of his white clapboard house as if to hide from the trauma beneath its shingles. I longed to join him to let him know I understood.
If only I had a rooftop where I could wait for my heartbreak to stop.
I looked back at my peaceful twenty-one-month-old daughter, in a sleep so deep that no one could wake her. Her lungs rose rhythmically as her ventilator puffed breaths of life.
I stood and kissed Laura’s cheek. How I loved my precious baby who no longer smiled, cried, or called me, “Mama,” at least, not since the car crash three months earlier.
Though I pray you’ll never hover over a child’s hospital bed, I know you’re already initiated into pain, heartache, and despair at dark times in your own life.
The truth is that sometimes we can’t escape these difficult emotions. They creep in uninvited and in response to circumstances, trauma, self-pity, tragedy, anger, grief, lack of sleep, hunger, bad moods, and more.
But we don’t have to let our emotions rule us. I’ve learned the peace of God can transform our pain.
Joy Prouty
Joy Prouty
My discovery came after a team of healthcare professionals surrounded me with their prognosis of my daughter’s future. “There’s no hope,” they declared. “Your daughter will be a vegetable until she’s eighty.”
“I never found relief in begging, demanding, or scolding God. I only found relief in prayers of trust.”That night, as I sat in the shadows of my daughter’s hospital room, my eyes fell on my bottle of pain reliver. If I swallowed the pills and unplugged my daughter’s ventilator, we could escape our living hell. Why not? God hadn’t intervened in these three long months and the weight of my hopelessness was too much to carry.
But it was Job who stopped me from ending our lives. Yes, Job, the biblical great who lost it all; his possessions, livelihood, and even his children. To make matters worse, his best friends denounced him as a sinner while his wife told him to ‘curse God and die.’
Job’s heart and life were broken, and all the while, God remained silent.
But despite his despair, Job prayed , “Lord, even if you slay me, yet I will trust in You.”
In my own dark night, Job’s prayer inspired me to call to God.
“This kind of prayer meant I had to turn over my problems to God. It was the only way to make a difference in my difficulties.”I prayed, “Lord, I’m going to trust You and give You this terrible mess to see what You can do with it.”
That’s how prayer became my heavenly rooftop escape from pain.
However, I found that not every prayer brought peace.
I never found relief in begging, demanding, or scolding God. I only found relief in prayers of trust.
This kind of prayer meant I had to turn over my problems to God. It was the only way to make a difference in my difficulties.
The results were so marvelous that I begin to share what I learned with others. Groups began to invite me to speak, and with delight, I would lead my new friends in prayers of relinquishment and trust. As I spoke, I could hardly wait for the moment where the faces of the members of my audiences would glow into sweet smiles of peace.
I’ve discovered that the prayer of trust is the real prayer of faith.
“I’ll be honest, emotions like loss, anxiety, grief, stress, disappointments, anger, depression, are still a part of my life. But that doesn’t mean I can’t have victory over these emotions.”The more I trust God, the more peace I feel and the more miracles I experience. In fact, my daughter woke up from coma despite the doctor’s prognosis of hopelessness. It happened the moment we put her newborn brother into her arms.
I’ll be honest, emotions like loss, anxiety, grief, stress, disappointments, anger, depression, are still a part of my life. But that doesn’t mean I can’t have victory over these emotions.
When my daughter breathed her last breath only a few years ago, I grieved for her.
Yes, I miss my sweet girl who had grown into a lovely young woman with multiple disabilities; disabilities that made no difference in my love for her.
Though I’ve experienced the sorrow of losing her, I am trusting God to hold her in His heavenly arms.
I trust Him, even in her death.
Linda Evans Shepherd is a woman who loves to say “Yes!” to God. God first surprised her with an assignment when He called her to write a book, even though her daughter was just out of coma and she still had a baby on her hip. That was thirty-five books ago, with her bestselling novels and prayer books receiving acclaim with multiple awards including Selah, EIA, Carol, and Christian Literary awards. Her writing continues with her latest book, Praying Through Every Emotion: Experiencing God’s Peace No Matter What.
Human beings are emotional creatures. We feel deeply, and at times our emotional responses to our situations may be overwhelming. Whether it’s disappointment at an opportunity missed, grief when a loved one dies, anxiety when we go through a big life change (even a positive one!), or uncertainty when faced with a situation outside of our control, we can take those feelings to God–immediately — in prayer, and He will give us peace, comfort, and clarity.
Topically arranged so you can go directly to your particular need, Praying Through Every Emotion offers transforming Scripture and prayer to help you change your perspective, heal your emotional wounds, and find yourself unburdened from cares and concerns.
The power-packed prayers cover nearly 70 different emotions, from feeling angry, broken, or exhausted to feeling confident, hopeful, and joyful–and everything in between. You’ll even find prayers for the really hard things, such as when you feel depressed, shamed, or suicidal.
[ Our humble thanks to Revell for their partnership in today’s devotion ]
February 1, 2021
Fun matters more than you think and here’s why
Annie F. Downs and I have been friends for years and if there is one thing she is dependable for, it is fun. It’s one of the things I know her for. But there’s always something deeper to it. And when you can hold them both, the joy and the sadness, and ask yourself the right questions, you’ll experience fun in a way that heals and changes your life. It’s a grace to welcome Annie to the farms’ front porch today…
I was lucky enough to grow up on the same eighteen acres where my mother grew up. And for my entire life, my grandparents lived on the land as well.
“Snapping beans was simple. I wouldn’t have been able to put that word around it as a child, but I know now that the spot it filled in me was the spot that loves simplicity.”As you turn off Ebenezer Road—the double mailbox on your left, the gazebo covering a freshwater well on your right—the driveway crunches under your car tires because it is pure gravel. The grapevines are there on your left as well, three rows of them, and if you look just over them, there’s a small but impressive garden. The yard continues to the fence that touched our neighbor’s property.
From Ebenezer Road, headed up the drive, my grandparents’ house is on your right. And then on the left is our house, and just as you look past the front porch and the front door, you see a pond with a grassy trail circling full around it.
My grandfather moved to the farmland on Ebenezer Road in 1941. And for a time, it operated as such. By the time my parents were married and pregnant with me (the first grandchild), the place where the barn sat was better suited to be a home, so my parents built one. Within months after I was born, they moved out of my grandparents’ house, where they had been living, just across the driveway to the house that would be ours.
I’ve ridden my bicycle over every inch of those eighteen acres. I’ve played house and played basketball and pretended to be a television host (me) interviewing guests (also me). I’ve built forts and created worlds and raced sticks down the creek behind the pond.
Joy Prouty
Joy Prouty
Joy Prouty
Joy Prouty
I remember snapping beans on the front porch of my grandparents’ house while sitting next to my mom and my grandmother. My memory isn’t precise, but it was summer and I was wearing shorts, though it wasn’t incredibly hot. Though to be honest, if we were snapping beans on the front porch on a summer evening in Georgia, it probably was hot.
But my brain doesn’t remember that part. There was one section of the porch that was always cool because it was always in the shade. The ground was cement and bordered with bricks. I can almost feel that spot again, my bare legs touching the cool cement, a colander in my lap.
“I think when we go looking for fun what we are actually looking for is home.”The long beans were in a green plastic bag of some sort from the local farmers market, and we each had our own colander. The first move was to pull the long string from the tip of the bean to the tail, then break the pod into three or four bean-length sections. You knew you’d gotten the right spot when it snapped. It’s like the bean always knew.
I was never a huge fan of chores, like many children I am sure, but there was something about snapping beans.
It mattered. It was outside, it was with my family, it was a task that had a successful ending every time.
Snapping beans was simple. I wouldn’t have been able to put that word around it as a child, but I know now that the spot it filled in me was the spot that loves simplicity.
I don’t know what was running through my grandmother’s mind as she sat there, or my mother’s, but I’m sure the task couldn’t have felt as simple to them as it did to me. I was probably thinking about a book I was reading or a friend at school or absolutely nothing.
I miss thinking about nothing.
R. R. Tolkien once wrote, “Certainly there was an Eden on this very unhappy earth. We all long for it, and we are constantly glimpsing it.”
“We are looking for simplicity, something to fill that spot that has been left by growing up or growing out or moving on.”Eden is the first place humans ever lived, according to the Bible. In Genesis 2, before there was sin and before there was the brokenness we all feel, there was Eden. It was a garden and it was perfect. The humans there worked and gardened and cared for the animals and loved each other with no shame. And it was how things were always meant to be.
Though none of us have been there, don’t you sometimes miss it? Maybe those simple memories of snapping beans are so strong because they feel like an Eden that I long for.
My childhood was not perfect, but I do have certain memories, like snapping beans with my grandmother, that remind me of something that I feel has slipped through my fingers.
It was simpler then, with the beans on the porch. I was just Annie.
I think when we go looking for fun what we are actually looking for is home.
We are looking for peace.
We are looking for simplicity, something to fill that spot that has been left by growing up or growing out or moving on.
“We have lost Eden in every way, but I’ve come to realize that it’s the moments of fun that remind us that Eden ever existed in the first place.”While we think we want fun, what we really want is Eden.
A few years ago my parents moved to a new house. The one on Ebenezer Road wasn’t the right fit for them after my grandparents passed away and all of us kids left home.
I have struggled with my parents moving out of that house. All of our family events took place on those eighteen acres for our whole lives: Christmas mornings, Thanksgiving dinners, birthdays, random summer nights, Sunday afternoons after family lunch at a buffet restaurant down the street.
So while I know it isn’t my house anymore, and while there are plenty of memories there that have shaped me in all the right ways and some of the wrong ways, I also know that I’ve lost something by losing the house on Ebenezer Road. I feel it deeply.
We have lost Eden in every way, but I’ve come to realize that it’s the moments of fun that remind us that Eden ever existed in the first place.
I may not be able to meet you there, but something inside of me knows what it feels like there. Something reminiscent of snapping beans on the front porch.
Annie F. Downs is a bestselling author, sought-after speaker, and successful podcast host based in Nashville, Tennessee. Engaging and honest, she makes readers and listeners alike feel as if they’ve been long-time friends. Founder of the That Sounds Fun Network—which includes her aptly named flagship show, That Sounds Fun—and author of multiple bestselling books like 100 Days to Brave and Remember God, Annie shoots straight and doesn’t shy away from the tough topics. But she always finds her way back to the truth that God is good and that life is a gift.
We know there are certain things we must have to survive–food, shelter, and safety to name a few. But there are also aspects of life that truly allow us to be joyful and fulfilled. For popular podcaster and bestselling author Annie F. Downs, fun is close to the top of that list. Few would argue that having fun doesn’t enrich our lives, but so much gets in the way of prioritizing it. Tough days, busyness, and feelings that are hard to talk about keep us from the fun that’s out there waiting to be found.
With That Sounds Fun, Annie offers an irresistible invitation to understand the meaning of fun, to embrace it and chase it, and to figure out what, exactly, sounds fun to you–then do it! Exploring some research and sharing some thoughts behind why fun matters, she shows you how to find, experience, and multiply your fun.
[ Our humble thanks to Baker for their partnership in today’s devotion ]
January 30, 2021
Only the Good Stuff: Multivitamins for Your Weekend [01.30.21]
Happy, happy, happy weekend!
Let’s not let the everyday routines numb us to the miracle of living every day! Some real, down in the bones JOY to celebrate today! Links & stories 100% guaranteed to make you smile a mile wide & believe like crazy in a Good God redeeming everything. Never, ever give up…there really is hope, even for us.
Serving up only the Good Stuff for you & your people right here:
Giulio Groebert / Instagram
Giulio Groebert / Instagram
Giulio Groebert / Instagramhe captures the most breathtakingly beautiful scenes…
anyone else wanna visit here?!? really, don’t miss this right here!
View this post on InstagramA post shared by Good News Movement (@goodnews_movement)
I miss you more
View this post on InstagramA post shared by Anjuli | Paschall (@lovealways.anjuli)
…deeply resonated with this, losing sleep & praying more, & failing but trying to be humbly faithful.
Love you dearly, Anjuli Paschall
How Great Tho Art – like maybe you’ve never seen
Study after study found? Nothing, absolutely nothing interrupts anxiety like gratitude. The research indicates that recording just 3 gifts a day is a kind of cognitive training, a way of reorganizing your brain around a focus on goodness, that it increases an individual’s positive outlook by 25%.
“Whatever you do, do everything…giving thanks” Col. 3:17 God’s will is for us to give thanks in all things…because this is how we can live with joy through anything… This is the year to take the Joy Dare — which just gives you 3 prompts a day, to notice, find, feel the joy of seeing 3 ways God is loving you — and dare to give thanks in all things, dare to look for the good, dare to notice God’s grace, dare to pay attention to all the ways God love you.
(P.S. Print the 2021 updated Joy Dare right here under “Free Tools”
And P. P.S.: The little book that started this habit of gratitude for us — One Thousand Gifts — turns TEN this year (!!!) and we have some big things coming this year to celebrate how thankfulness has changed our lives.
What better way to kick off a new month than by renewing the life-changing habit of daily gratitude. You in?
The Auroras (or Northern and Southern Lights) rank among the seven greatest natural wonders in the world. For millennia, they have captured the imaginations of anyone who has witnessed their ethereal beauty in the polar skies.
In this video the Mystery of the Auroras is an unforgettable exploration of why these incredible light shows occur, and what they reveal about God.
thank you, The John 10:10 Project
What It’s Like to Carry On a Tradition With a Friend Who Can’t Remember It
I’ve been thinking about it all week. This is a story you won’t ever forget. And your friends will thank you for reading it.
I’m a Christian. Why Should I Get a COVID-19 Vaccine?
Everyone has a valid opinion. This one is worth taking the time to at least consider…
so who knew? This Incredible Animation Shows How Deep The Ocean Really Is
COVID Vaccines and Fetal Cells: What’s Ethical and What Isn’t?
Always consider the source… and Randy Alcorn’s research here is invaluable and definitely worth prayerfully reading
Living with the Dark Winters in Sweden | Midnight sun & Polar night
come along for the most extraordinary virtual tour?!
Pausing & listening to the stories and struggles of others always opens the door to greater empathy and understanding…
and our world can always use a little more of that
grateful for those who share their hard stories to help others
Listen in as my friend Sheila Walsh and Max Lucado discuss that there is power in our scars because they are proof that God heals and redeems
The Lord is close to the broken hearted
found this truly fascinating: How does the Bible get translated into other languages?
Seed Company is at the cutting edge of bringing the Bible to people who have never had God’s Word in a language they understand.
Beyond grateful for their tireless life-saving efforts
a story of kindness, friendship, and the fear of being left behind:
a friendship takes flight — as a mouse that wants to fly and an injured bird cross paths
so good: Rehab for the Fault-Finding Addicts We’ve Become
You know Les Mis? I was 13 when I first saw it on stage & when our oldest was 13 he read the whole book in 2 days & aren’t these the days now to dream of dreams again? And this is the Hope of Les Mis like you’ve never experienced it before. Just — wow.
You don’t want to miss this:
How to Find Hope in Turbulent Times: Les Misérables like you never expectedDon’t Limit God
Nick Vujicic has overcome life’s challenges through strength & hope found in Jesus Christ. Regardless of your limitations, you can find everything you need in Jesus. Please watch this one?
How the Promises of God Calm Our Fears
love his perspective and attitude and devotion to others…this one may surprise you
Christine Caine: “Choosing to Break My Victim Mentality”
“…some of us have received salvation, but we don’t walk in the light that is ours, beyond our past…I am no longer define by what happened to me…”
glory, glory, glory
Post of the week from these parts here:
…yeah, who knows how long we’ve got? Can somebody answer that? And, really, we just gotta know…will there be enough time?:
How to Live When: You’ve Got No Idea How Much Time You’ve Got LeftAm I Too Hard on Myself? // Ask Pastor John Piper
Books for Soul Healing:
Joy is actually possible, right where you are.
Take the dare to discover: Life is not an emergency…Life is a GIFT. Life is too short to do anything but truly savor it — to count all the ways you truly loved.
What if Brokenness is the Path into the Abundant Life?
You don’t have to be afraid of broken things — because Christ is redeeming everything.
There’s no other authentic way forward — but a broken way — right into a profoundly abundant life.
Journey into a deeply meaningful life with this devotional and take sixty steps from heart-weary brokenness to Christ-focused abundance. The Way of Abundance — is the way forward every heart needs.
Be the Gift is a tender intivation into the next step of deeper transformation, less stress, more joy and abundantly more peace & purpose. You only get one life to love well…to Be The Gift.
on repeat this week: Run to the Father, again and again…
Here, let’s make this real, real easy today: Just focus on the good.
“You’ll do best by filling your minds… on the best, not the worst;
the beautiful, not the ugly; things to praise, not things to curse…
Do that, & God, who makes everything work together,
will work you into His most excellent harmonies.”
Phil.4:8MSG
That’s all today, Soul: Just Focus on the Good –
Focus more on living Truth than pointing out error,
Focus more on celebrating the beautiful than decrying all that’s broken –
Focus more on being a servant than on being right.
[excerpted from our little Facebook family … come join us each day?]
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.
January 28, 2021
How to Live When: You’ve Got No Idea How Much Time You’ve Got Left
When I called Mama this morning, she told me how someone we desperately love was told by a doctor this week that she only had 3-5 years left, max.
And in the stunned silence… mama had whispered,
“You’re going to have to figure out how to live without knowing when you die.”“Yeah, who knows how long we’ve really got?”
Somebody answer us that in a tipsy world of a novel pandemic and new variants and various vaccinations and all kinds of uncertainty.
Maybe if someone told us that we had ten whole spins around the sun left, we’d be duped into thinking there was time to fritter away the breathing with flipping channels or flipping fingers or flipping lids, as if that ever made the living better instead of really bitter.
“Maybe no one ever really knows,” Mama is quietly reflective on the other end of the connection.
Yeah, yeah — go ahead and rattle the door all you want, but there ain’t no one ever who really knows how long you have.
You’re going to have to figure out how to live without knowing when you die.
Death may be certain, but when it comes is uncertain, which is what makes the living gloriously uncertain — a choice .
Who knows if you’ve really got time to clean out the garage, or to read this endless news feed, or to pick up and move to Haiti and live your dream of spending the fleeting time holding the hands of forgotten ones.
The road ahead would seem obvious if you knew how much road ahead there was.
But no one tells you if you have just enough time to laugh till your belly hurts, one more time with the beautifully strange people you love, if you have time to pull their neck close and whisper hoarse in their ear that there aren’t enough words to say what a love like this has done to you.
No one tells you if you have enough time to try to change the world or just enough time to try change your own story.
“No one can tell you how much time you’ve got for what matters. Only you can tell how much time you’ll make for what matters.”If you knew how much time you have to live, you’d know how to live.
I think about this as the mama of two children with life-threatening health complications:
When will our youngest daughter’s heart begin to fail and we will need to get on a list and wait for a heart transplant before her’s beats its last? Will our youngest son’s diabetes have a diabetic low while driving down some highway at 100 km an hour or while he’s sleeping in the dead of night so he doesn’t wake up come morning?
When we live daily fighting back death you realize:
You don’t know how much time you have to live — so you have to make time to make the life you want to live.
Everyone knows they will die, they just don’t know when. So forget about the when.
Who cares when you die. The real question is: when will you start to live?
You already know: You will die .
So the only question that remains is: Will you live?
The right question isn’t:
How many days do I get to live but — How am I living today?
Will you risk impossible things today so you remember how much you love the rush of real oxygen in your lungs, adrenaline in your veins?
When will you lay there just to listen to the sound of him breathing in sleep beside you?
When will you memorize the way her hair feels as you stroke it back from her brow?
“Sometimes the only way through is not taking the next step — it’s taking a wild leap of faith.”When will you bend over the cup and inhale the steam of tea and breathe in living?
When will you have time to walk in the woods with no place to go but looking up?
When will you be done with the armed way of living — when will you drop the arms you’ve crossed in front of you like some cynical shield, steeling you from really feeling?
Let the grief for all the losses, and for all that isn’t, just come. Tears can fall like rain and wash your wounds right clean, and wounds are beauty marks that can make you one of the medalled warriors.
You can join the brave and move crossed arms into open hands, into open hands to receive and really feel the glory that is called life.
There is common grace everywhere but it is startling uncommon to taste it on the tip of your tongue or feel it pulse through you.
Sometimes the only way through is not taking the next step — it’s taking a wild leap of faith. Take it. Do it. Live it.
The question never is: How long have I got to live?
“The point is simply: You’ve got to live. You get to live. Today.”The point is simply: You’ve got to live. You get to live. Today.
Do not spend the life you do have — wishing for the life you don’t have.
There is snow clinging to window panes today.
There is breathing that can cling to sheer Glory today. Sheer Grace — sheer God.
Yeah, who knows —
What would happen if you treated everyone you met today as if they only had 12 hours left to live?
Somebody could make all the minutes of their day just answer that.
After I say goodbye to Mama this morning, I can hear it from the kitchen sink —
The hands on the clock ticking like a miracle about to detonate into sheer glory.
My own story — of how to figure out how to live my one life…
Because your soul needs you to take the time to figure out how to live your one life
January 27, 2021
How to Find Hope in Turbulent Times: Les Misérables like you never expected
Terri Kraus first experienced the Les Misérables musical at the historic Auditorium Theater in Chicago in the spring of 1989. Thus began her deep love and appreciation of the Christian themes of this unforgettable story. In this abridgment she have sought to capture the essence of the story, the human drama, the power of grace, and the rich spiritual awakening of the characters while maintaining the integrity of Hugo’s original work. What an amazing honor and privilege it’s been for her to be entrusted with the abridgment of this epic novel for this exquisitely illustrated version. I hope it will cause you, too, to love this captivating, compelling, and inspiring story! It’s a grace to welcome Terri and the works of Victor Hugo to the farm’s front porch today…
guest post by Victor Hugo and Terri Kraus
N
ot a door in the bishop’s house was locked. Formerly loaded with bars and bolts like the door of a prison, the bishop had all this removed. They were easily opened with a simple push.
The bishop had written three lines in the margin of a Bible: “The door of a physician should never be closed; the door of a priest should always be open.”
That evening, there was a loud knock on the door of the bishop of Digne.
“The door of a physician should never be closed; the door of a priest should always be open.”A traveler entered, with a rough, hard, tired, and fierce look in his eyes. He was hideous.
The man said loudly, “My name is Jean Valjean. I am a convict, nineteen years in the galleys, four days ago set free. I have walked twelve leagues. I went to an inn, and to the prison. Nobody here would have me. A good woman showed me your house, and said, ‘Knock there!’ What is this place? I have money, which I have earned in the galleys. I am very tired—and I am so hungry. Can I stay?”
“Madame Magloire,” said the bishop to his housekeeper, “put on another plate.”
“Stop!” the traveler exclaimed. “Did you understand me? I am a galley-slave, a convict.”
He drew from his pocket a sheet of yellow paper. “My passport. It says, ‘Jean Valjean, a liberated convict—five years for burglary; fourteen years for attempted escape four times. Very dangerous.’ Everybody has thrust me out. Have you a stable?”
“Madame Magloire,” said the bishop, “put some sheets on the bed in the alcove. Monsieur, sit down and warm yourself. We will take supper.”
At last the man understood; his face, which had been gloomy and hard, now expressed stupefaction, doubt, and joy, and became absolutely wonderful.
“What! You won’t drive me away? You call me monsieur and don’t say, ‘Get out, dog!’ I shall have supper, and a bed like other people with mattress and sheets? You are a fine man, an innkeeper, aren’t you?”
“I am a priest who lives here.”
“A priest! You are the curé of this big church? How stupid I am; I didn’t notice your cap. You are humane, Monsieur Curé. Then you don’t want me to pay you?”
“No,” said the bishop, “keep your money.”
“Monsieur Curé, you don’t despise me. You take me in and I haven’t kept from you where I come from and how miserable I am.”
The bishop touched his hand and said,
“You need not tell me who you are. This is not my house; it is the house of Christ. It does not ask any comer whether he has a name, but whether he has an affliction. You are suffering; you are hungry and thirsty; be welcome.
And do not thank me. This is the home of no man, except him who needs an asylum. I tell you, who are a traveler, that you are more at home here than I; whatever is here is yours. What need have I to know your name?
Besides, before you told me, I knew it.”
The man, astonished, said, “Really? You knew my name?”
“Yes,” answered the bishop, “your name is My Brother.”
Meantime Madame Magloire had served up supper. The man fell to eating greedily. The bishop said grace, and said to the man, “I will show you to your room.” Then he led his guest into the alcove, before a clean white bed.
The traveler asked, “Who tells you that I am not a murderer?”
The bishop responded, “God will take care of that.”
Then, moving his lips like one praying, he raised two fingers of his right hand and blessed the man, who, however, did not bow, and went into his chamber.
*******************
Les Misérables is inspired by the June Rebellion in Paris. In 1832, a throng of tens of thousands stormed the Bastille, infuriated by economic hardships, food shortages, and the callous attitudes of the upper classes.
“The bishop’s compassion, pointing him to Christ, is the spark that begins the dramatic transformation in Valjean’s life.”It depicts the misery of the impoverished Parisian underclass who had little voice in society. Hugo provides that voice. The June Rebellion was largely forgotten until 1980, when the astoundingly popular musical version of Les Misérables opened on a London stage.
The book begins in 1815 and tells the fictional story of Jean Valjean, unjustly condemned to nearly two decades of prison for stealing a loaf of bread to save his widowed sister’s starving children.
Upon his release, treated like an outcast everywhere, he loses all hope, until the good Bishop Myriel takes him in and blesses him with God’s love, causing him to create a new life for himself.
The bishop’s compassion, pointing him to Christ, is the spark that begins the dramatic transformation in Valjean’s life.
“Today’s world is full of the same injustice, depravity, conflict, suffering, and hopelessness as the world was in 1815. And yet, the gospel is still just as powerful to transfigure the lives of sinners.”But for decades he is hunted by the ruthless policeman Inspector Javert, who is obsessively devoted to enforcing the letter of the law. Valjean, miraculously saved for God’s work, chooses to care for Fantine—a desperate, dying factory worker who has been forced into prostitution—and later her orphaned daughter, Cosette. These decisions change their lives forever.
Les Misérables is a moving story of the power of grace redirecting one’s life, and how striving for salvation through works can be destructive.
In the original text, Hugo uses the word transfiguration—a complete change of form or appearance into a more beautiful or spiritual state—to describe the total transformation of Valjean through the power of the gospel.
Today’s world is full of the same injustice, depravity, conflict, suffering, and hopelessness as the world was in 1815—evidenced by the disturbing events we read about in the news. And yet, the gospel is still just as powerful to transfigure the lives of sinners.
The questions I ask myself are,
“Am I filled with the astonishing grace that Jesus, the sinless Son of God, showed even the worst of sinners?”“Am I that spark? Do I, like Bishop Myriel, respond to people as those created in the image of God—with a warm, compassionate heart? Am I an open door? Do I call them ‘brother’ or ‘sister’?
Or am I more like Inspector Javert, whose legalism became the driving force behind his actions? When choosing to either condemn or forgive, am I filled with the astonishing grace that Jesus, the sinless Son of God, showed even the worst of sinners?”
These questions have driven me to my knees, asking Christ to humble and fill me with the unconditional love that sent Him to the cross to die for the sins of mankind.
They require me to let go of my self-righteousness and acknowledge my own sinfulness.
This Bishop Myriel kind of compassion could be transformational because it is the same kind of unfathomable love that God offered undeserving me.
It has the potential to cause sinners to turn from sin, and to be the spark that begins the transformation of their lives.
Terri Kraus is the author of three novels—the Project Restoration series—and one upcoming devotional, Farmhouse Retreat. She is also the coauthor of ten novels with her husband, award-winning, bestselling author Jim Kraus.
Victor Hugo (1802-1885) was a French novelist of the Romantic movement. He was a reformer whose aim was twofold: in literature, he fought for truth; in politics, for the cause of the people. He wrote many volumes of poetry, but he is best known outside of France for his novels Les Misérables and The Hunchback of Notre-Dame. He was a great campaigner for social causes, especially the poor. He published Les Misérables, a major novel about social misery and injustice, in 1862. Hugo died at the age of eighty-three.
Les Misérables is a story of compassion, forgiveness, justice, and the will to survive amid the shadow of turmoil and revolution. For the first time, Victor Hugo’s masterpiece is a mixed-media special edition complete with French-inspired watercolor paintings, decorative hand-lettering, vintage imagery, and space for journaling and reflection. As you read and connect with this unique, artfully-designed Visual Journey, its pages become a canvas on which to chronicle your own story, struggles, and personal triumphs.
Since its first publication in 1862, Les Misérables has inspired millions of people to embrace sacrificial agape love and kindness, and to extend care and compassion to the poor and marginalized.
[ Our humble thanks to Tyndale for their partnership in today’s devotion ]
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