Ann Voskamp's Blog, page 67
January 25, 2021
Tired? Weary? Let this prayer renew your soul
Bill and Kristi Gaultiere are opposite personalities. Bill is a Type A thinker and Kristi is a relational feeler. They blend their styles and stories their book Journey of the Soul to guide you through the stuck places in your spiritual life and into greater intimacy with God, emotional health, and loving relationships. It’s a grace to welcome Bill and Kristi to the farm’s front porch today…
guest post by Bill and Kristi Gaultiere
S
ome years ago I (Bill) did a triathlon with a one-mile swim, 25-mile bike ride, and 10K run. I was very slow on the swim, so when I got to the bike ride I was at the back of the pack.
I pounded on the pedals and soared down the highway at twenty miles an hour, passing lots of bikers. That was fun!
But then my chain fell off. I had to pull over to the side of the road, turn my bike upside down, get my fingers all greasy, and mess with the chain to get it back onto the chainring. Meanwhile, streams of bikers were passing by me.
“I push myself to work hard and do good rather than enjoying the Spirit of Jesus and relying on His power.”I got back on my bike and pounded on the pedals and passed people again.
But then my chain fell off again! I had to do the same routine: turn my bike upside down, get greasy, and put the chain back on. Of course, bikers were flying by me again.
As before, I got back on my bike and pounded on the pedals. Now I was passing the same bikers for the third time.
One guy looked over at me, just inches from my face, and exclaimed, “Man, you’re strong . . . but stupid!”
I was unwise not to prepare my bike, so even though I finished the triathlon, I lost time and enjoyment.
In our spiritual journey we’re prone to be strong but stupid, having zeal without knowledge (Prov. 19:2). We can start strong this way, but before long we tire out or breakdown and have to pull over to the side of the road.
Too often I’ve made this mistake. I push myself to work hard and do good rather than enjoying the Spirit of Jesus and relying on His power. Moral muscle seems wise when it generates right actions but it falters in the end (Col. 2:23).
The wisdom we need for life is expressed in the motto “Don’t try — train with Jesus” (see 1 Tim. 4:7).
Levi VoskampTraining with Jesus is the opposite of being strong but stupid. It means asking the Lord to coach you in using a variety of spiritual disciplines to become a different kind of person.
“Real life change happens at the soul level. It addresses our whole person to foster increasing intimacy with God and Christlikeness.”Instead of focusing on loving actions we focus on the source of our actions in our heart and soul. We rely on God’s grace to develop the inner character and habits that empower us to do loving actions whenever needed.
Real life change happens at the soul level. It addresses our whole person to foster increasing intimacy with God and Christlikeness.
For Jesus’ disciples a pivotal moment in their journey of the soul came by watching Jesus pray. They heard Him call God “Papa.” They saw that His praying life gave Him unfailing compassion, brilliant wisdom, and power to heal.
So they asked Him, “Lord, teach us to pray” (Luke 11:1).
This was not a polite petition, but an urgent cry of the heart: Lord, teach us to pray! They longed for the life they saw in Him.
That’s when the Messiah and Master shares what we call the Lord’s Prayer. He isn’t giving us a formal prayer — it’s his personal prayer.
As Dietrich Bonhoeffer once said, “The Lord’s Prayer is the Psalms in miniature.”
Jesus spent His whole life praying the treasury of David, and then He distilled the essence of all 150 of its prayers into five categories of petitions for living as His disciple in the Kingdom of God.
Jesus gave great sermons on prayer, but His model prayer is not primarily for intellectual learning — it’s for emotional and relational bonding.
“Jesus gave great sermons on prayer, but His model prayer is not primarily for intellectual learning — it’s for emotional and relational bonding.”That’s why when Martin Luther’s barber asked for help in prayer the great reformer didn’t give him a lecture. Instead he wrote him a forty-page handwritten prayer letter to help him “suckle at the Lord’s Prayer like a child.”
To empathize with his barber, Luther admitted that at times he also became “cool and joyless in prayer.” He found that the best remedy was to use Jesus’ prayer “as a pocket lighter to kindle a flame in the heart.”
Let’s pick up Jesus’ Pocket Lighter to warm our hearts with love for God:
Our Father in the heavens, always near and ready to help,
May your name be precious to us and bring us delight always.
May your Kingdom of the Heavens come to rule over us so your good, pleasing, and perfect will is accomplished in us.
Please provide for us the food and care that we need today.
Please forgive our sins as we forgive those who have sinned against us.
Please hold us by the hand so we don’t fall down in trials and are kept safe from all evil.
In everything help us to live in your kingdom, by your power, and for your glory. Amen. (Matthew 6:9–13; paraphrased by author)
I encourage you to take a few minutes to go back through Jesus’ prayer one line at a time. Each line is a petition to warm your heart for God.
Pause to slowly breathe in deep, filling your lungs with air . . . As you exhale, release feelings of hurry or stress . . .
Then repeat that petition slowly, personalizing the words for yourself and anyone you’re concerned for . . .
Praying the Lord’s Prayer in this way, can help you feel and trust God’s loving presence and guidance on your journey.
Bill and Kristi Gaultiere are Doctors of Psychology and Spiritual Directors. As co-founders of Soul Shepherding they help pastors and all kinds of people to thrive with Jesus in life and leadership.
Their new book Journey of the Soul, along with the companion Leader Guide and Soul Talk Cards, guides you through the stuck places in your spiritual life and into greater intimacy with God. They draw on over 70,000 hours of experience providing therapy and spiritual direction to help you get unstuck and identify the next steps you need to take to grow emotionally and spiritually — no matter where you are or how long you’ve been following Jesus.
Preorder Journey of the Soul by February 15, 2021 and you’ll receive a digital copy of the Leader Guide FREE on February 16, 2021! Click here for pre-order info. This guide is perfect for leading a small group through a curriculum based on the topics discussed in the book.
[ Our humble thanks to Revell for their partnership in today’s devotion ]
January 23, 2021
Only the Good Stuff: Multivitamins for Your Weekend [01.23.21]
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:
Marcin Zając
Marcin Zając
Marcin Zającstep outside and inhale slowly this weekend
because we all need to be rescued…
Matt Cramer Photography
Matt Cramer Photography
Matt Cramer Photography
Matt Cramer Photography
Matt Cramer PhotographyI MEAN…oh my: now if they don’t bring a huge smile…!!
love the work of this faith based husband and wife team
fascinated: How to Practice Effectively…for just about anything (!!)
can you even?!? ‘Papa’ has pieced together hundreds of quilts in recent years – to wrap people in need with love
He’s donated to shelters, to veterans, and his latest batch of masterpieces is going to refugees
“I feel pretty good about helping somebody get a smile on their face”
lots to absorb and consider here: Wisdom of the Geese
standing ovation for someone doing great things:
so after his bike was stolen? he went and did this…
Snowflakes – some of the most beautiful works of art to adorn planet earth
But how do these extraordinary creations take shape? Through breathtaking macro and time-lapse photography and computer animation, explore the science behind the wonder in a film you may never forget…
thank you, The John 10:10 Project
Be inspired and empowered each week with this new podcast available on Apple and Spotify
What does it mean to say that the God of the Bible is gracious?
In this video, the BibleProject looks at the Hebrew words for grace and understand it to be a rich concept that has profound implications for how we see God. When we look to the biblical meaning of grace and understand God as gracious, we see a God who loves to give generous gifts to undeserving people.
What do you do when your story isn’t turning out at all like you had planned?…when hopes turn to heartbreak and plans turn to pain?
This one is needed… I found it so helpful this week:
When You Don’t Like Your Story
feeling the anxiety today? so much of the antidote to anxiety is the adoration of Christ
Cranking this worship up during our morning rhythms & liturgies – “…when I fight, I will fight on my knees…”
The Story of the Apostles’ Creed
so we circled ’round his little project here… it made us smile
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 this year than by renewing the life-changing habit of daily gratitude. You in?
tears every time I listen to this one: No One Ever Cared For Me Like Jesus
… 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)
glory, glory, glory
Have you been praying about a situation & waiting for an answer? yeah, with you
In times of waiting, we must remember God is working. He’s working out the answers even though we may not know all the details.
Never, ever give up…
5 STAR story: come see how these elementary school teachers in the same school are inspiring their students
Post of the week from these parts here:
Your goals for this year? Those resolutions? Yeah, how’s that going for you?
How about a key to keep moving forward & not get stuck:
Goals? Dreams? Hopes for 2021? Stuck? How to Get Unstuck (with video from farm)THIS: People are experiencing life transformation from having God’s Word in a language they understand
Beyond grateful for the faithful work of Seed Company
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: Remember
The world will get loud this week — make stillness to hear Him still.
“Incline your ear & come to Me; hear, that your soul may live…” Isaiah 55:3
When you read to the end of God’s Word? You know it’s all going to be okay in the end.
[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 21, 2021
Goals? Dreams? Hopes for 2021? Stuck? How to Get Unstuck (with video from farm)
(Don’t miss the included video)
So I want to give you this story, and maybe it should rightly start like the best one does: “In the beginning.”
Because it was right in the very beginning of a brand spanking new year that my farming man asked me to go for a ride down to the river.
“The way you came here, is not the way out of here.”To make tracks through the fields of snow, to wind down through the woods hushed under its blanket of white, and make our way to where the river winds slow under the willows, laced in this skirt of ice.
But just south of this grove of gnarled apple trees, huddled close in the January winds, the field wasn’t frozen a solid safe,
but was actually this soggy bog under an unsuspecting cloak of snow.
Which meant that? My farming man and I went down like a stone in a winter quicksand. Yeah: mud spinning up,
and ATV sinking down in a muck sea and there we were:
In the beginning of a new year, with all it’s new goals and plans and resolutions, already kinda mired down and —
stuck.
You know that of which I speak?
But you’ve got to know that the Farmer had a cable winch at the ready, at the front of that all terrain vehicle.
So he slogged up to one of those gnarled apple trees, slung the cable around and he engaged that electric winch, and that all terrain vehicle churned and dug and spun and the Farmer rocked that ATV and gunned it and the winch kept hauling in the cable, which was what kept hauling that ATV, inch by muddy, sloppy, mucky inch, out of the mire till it finally just lurched free.
“There is no getting out of any mire without an anchor.”And then, not to be undone, now that he had gotten unstuck, my farming man turned and grinned and asked me to get back on our all terrain vehicle and ride on down the river bank with him.
Past where the cattle tracked down to the water’s edge to drink, down past the low river crossing, down through the cedars heavy with snow. And when he revved the ATVs engine to run us through a snowy tangle of neck high grasses just where the river curved north, I’d shook my head and, over the revving of the engine, I’d leaned close to his ear, just to pull his leg, and said:
“You just think you can go anywhere now, do anything, just because you’ve got a winch on the front of this thing, don’t you?”
But he was already shaking his head, pointing across the barren clearing filled with this knee high snow.
“Absolutely not. Because look around you: You can only get unstuck if you’re close to a tree.”
“You can only get unstuck if you’re close to a Tree.”And he cut the engine and everything stilled and I could hear the river running and the truth of things running through everything.
There is no getting out of any mire without an anchor.
There is no hauling out of muddy messes without Tree of Christ.
There is no way to traverse all of life’s terrain without the Cross Tree of Calvary.
In the beginning of a new year, when our goals, our plans, may not be going as we expected, and when the terrain in a pandemic may be different that what we hoped, we can become more disoriented than what we’ve ever known.
When what did work, now doesn’t work, when what we envisioned, isn’t what now we’re living, we get stuck.
When we are deeply disoriented, deeply disillusioned, deeply stuck, our immediate default is to return to our old ways of doing things, reorient to our worn out ways — the way that got us stuck in the first place.
“The way that got you stuck — can’t be the way that will get you unstuck.”The way that got you stuck — can’t be the way that will get you unstuck.
The way you came here — is not the way out of here.
Who we will need to be for the unknown future, is different than who we were in the known past.
The terrain under all of our feet has forever changed, because of a global pandemic, that has caused economic tidal waves, that has shaped societal shifts & and if we honestly look at the geography of reality, the truth is: This ain’t Kansas anymore, and we ain’t ever going back to that Kansas, because Kansas as we knew it doesn’t exist anymore.
We get to grieve. We get to, and we need to, pause and and acknowledge and lament and feel and deeply grieve.
“In the hardest storms the way to be Resilient is to: Lament, Repent & Reorient.”After the season we’ve all had, it’s worth noting that there is only one emotion that becomes a title of a book in all the Bible: Lamentations. Lamentation is the emotion that brings motion to our pain, moves the stress of the grief through our own souls and moves us toward God.
We lament the losses of the last year, and we grieve the chaos that a pandemic has wrought, and pause to acknowledge that our goals for this year may be off to a stumbling start, but we are absolutely not getting stuck — because all of our emotions can be our very soul in motion, moving us toward God.
W hen you are stuck, the way free is proximity to the God-Man who hung on the Tree because if you don’t have something, Someone, to hold on to you, you get mired down and forget your true identity.
“Keep calm & just keep coming back to Jesus.”When you feel like you’re failing, it’s the Tree of Jesus that says you are safe and found.
When you feel like you’re behind, it’s the Tree of Jesus that says you are held forever in His hand.
When things look impossible, it’s the Tree of Jesus that says nothing is impossible and hope can rise.
And in the deep snow quiet, I can hear the river rippling on with this very real hope, no matter what the messiness or terrain:
Keep calm & just keep coming back to Jesus.
When you are personally trying to change, when the fabric of a country is trying to change, when the whole world is dealing with unparalleled change, when we are all headed off the only maps we’ve ever known, what is key:
In uncharted territory, the one thing you’ve got to chart out is how to daily maintain proximity to Jesus’ Tree.
“Trust fuels all travel. Trust is traction.”The primary way to navigate unknown territory is to commit to the knowness of relationships, to choose to intimately know, and to be known. Unless we make time to know, and to be known, in our relationship with God, and with our relationship with each other, there’s no way across unknown terrain.
Because, whatever our terrain right now: Trust is traction. Trusting Jesus with our messes, trusting each other with our vulnerabilities — and trusting Jesus to tell us who we are, and show us the Way to who we are all called to be.
Trust fuels all travel. And w here there isn’t the truth of Jesus — to anchor who we really are, to determine our truest identity, to root you in realest reality — there is no trust, and thus, there’s no way through.
“There is no way through without truth — so you’ve got to stay close to Jesus who alone is the Truth, the Way, the Life.”There is no way through without truth — so you’ve got to stay close to Jesus who alone is the Truth, the Way, the Life.
There is only one way ever to get unstuck and that is to stick close to the One who hung on the Tree at Calvary.
If we hold on to Jesus and each other, there is always a way through.
And in the beginning of a new year, after we got unstuck, after we meandered down by the water, after we heard the river singing hope through the cold, the Farmer and I followed the road through the snow like a story we trusted held good things up ahead.
And I held on to my farming man all the sure way home under trees.
January 20, 2021
When You Don’t Like Your Story
If Sharon Jaynes were my next-door neighbor, we would sit long on my front porch and whisper stories of how God has taken the broken pieces of our lives and fashioned and fitted them into a masterpiece of His grace. She would tell of how she refused to stop in the middle of her story and determined to keep moving forward with the flow of God’s pen, and then I would tell of mine. Our hearts beat with the same passion to see God through the see through placed of pain and embrace the story we have been given. It is my joy to invite Sharon to the farm’s front porch today…
My son, Steven, and I sat on the floor in his room playing a card game. The summer was proving to be the best ever.
Our golden retriever, Ginger, had just delivered seven adorable puppies, Steven was enjoying his sixth summer of life, and after four years of negative pregnancy tests, God had surprised us with a new life growing inside my womb.
But as Steven and I sat cross-legged on the carpet, I felt a warm, sticky sensation run down my leg. A trip to the bathroom confirmed my greatest fear—my dream slipped away. Later that afternoon, the doctor voiced the weighty words, “There is no heartbeat.”
“What do you do when heartbreak slams into joy?”What do you do when heartbreak slams into joy? When your soul cracks open and there just aren’t enough tears? When hurt steals your hope and you want to give up on life? When deep soul lesions make a mockery of your faith?
I wish I could tell you I left the doctor’s office quoting Romans 8:28 about how “all things work together for good” (ESV).
I wish I could tell you that I calmly accepted the loss of my baby with faith, trusting that even this was somehow part of God’s plan.
I wish I could tell you I spent the rest of the day singing “It Is Well with My Soul.” But I didn’t do any of those things.
I went home, crawled in bed, and pulled the covers up over my empty womb and broken heart. I didn’t want to talk to anyone, especially God. And what I did say to Him wasn’t very nice.
How could you do this to me? If this is how you treat those you love, then just forget it! You answered my prayer only to take it back! Why me? Why this? Why now?
God and I had a lover’s quarrel that summer. Actually, I was the only one arguing. I felt betrayed by the One who was supposed to love me most. Pierced by the One who was supposed to protect my heart.
“I felt betrayed by the One who was supposed to love me most. Pierced by the One who was supposed to protect my heart.”And while I gave God the cold shoulder, His warm embrace refused to let me go. He stayed right by my side, waiting, wooing, and drawing my hurting heart back to Him.
God always wants to heal our broken places and fill our empty spaces. I can see that now, but I couldn’t see it then.
So, as God persisted, I resisted.
Our sweet friend Ann once wrote, “I wonder . . . if the rent in the canvas of our life backdrop, the losses that puncture our world, our own emptiness, might actually become places to see. To see through to God.”
I had been thrust into one of those rents, a see-through place, but until I opened my eyes, I would not see God through the loss of my child.
Everybody loves a good story, but not everybody loves their own story.
Mistakes pile high like weeks-old laundry. Shame whispers, “If they only knew.” Tear-stained pages warp and cause the volume to fall open to unwanted pages. Dog-eared corners mark traumatic happenings we keep going back to in order to make sense of it all.
Some pages have spots worn thin from rubbing a mental eraser over words that won’t go away. Lines we’ve tried to cross out instead stand out and taunt us.
“God always wants to heal our broken places and fill our empty spaces. I can see that now, but I couldn’t see it then.”We’ve all got them—unwanted pages. Yes, I’d like a different story, please.
For most of us, it is not the whole of our stories that we don’t like, but just certain parts. Our tragedies, traumas, and too-dark-to-tell memories may be different, but the pain is the same.
A husband left.
A boyfriend cheated.
A friend betrayed.
A parent abused.
A boss misused.
A disease ravished.
A steering wheel jerked.
A gunshot fired.
A child died.
I don’t know the difficulties you’ve been through, but I do know your story didn’t end there. There is more to be written, and God is even now dipping His pen into the inkwell of wholeness, writing your story and mine into His larger story. God turns broken stories into beautiful prose and unwanted pages into stunning narratives of victory. That’s not just a promise; it’s a bedrock truth—one I know from personal experience.
The parts of my story I used to wish God had edited out have become the ones God has highlighted as His most amazing work.
Months after losing our baby, God gave me a sweet gift. I was lying in bed trying to picture her in heaven. I wondered what she looked like. I wondered what she was doing. I wondered if I’d recognize her when I get there. Then I pictured her with Jesus, playing. She wasn’t sad at all.
In my mind’s eye, God pulled back the curtain separating the physical from the eternal and gave me a glimpse of her. It was a see-through place in the torn canvas of my life.
My season of deep mourning ended that night. I stopped asking, “Why me?” and started asking, “What now?” Like a miner with a pickax, I was ready to look for the veins of gold buried in the dark and rocky soil of my suffering. I was ready to learn whatever God wanted me to learn about myself and about trusting in His unfailing love, even when my life felt like it was falling apart.
“With all our worst chapters, we can wrest redemption from the jaws of brokenness and allow God to use it for good.”During those days, I sensed God asking, Will you trust me? I didn’t understand why my narrative was unfolding as it was, and I didn’t like this painful twist in the plot, but I did believe that, in the end, my story would be a good one.
I believed it because God is good, and His ways are good. And I believed it because I knew even then that when God allows hurt to happen, He uses the healing of that hurt to give us a purpose we might never have known without it. As Jesus told His disciples, “You don’t understand now what I’m doing, but someday you will,” (John 13:7 NLT).
Several years after our family’s loss, I discovered that Sharon was the name of a fertile valley in Israel. And suddenly I realize that even though my medical chart read infertile, God had made me a fertile valley in ways I had never imaged. That tearstained chapter of disappointment had become one of my greatest victories.
Hardships often prepare ordinary people for an extraordinary destiny.
And with all our worst chapters, we can wrest redemption from the jaws of brokenness and allow God to use it for good.
Our pain can become a portal of God’s grace.
Our ravaged pages can become God’s redemptive masterpiece for the world to see.
Sharon Jaynes is a blogger, speaker, co-founder of Girlfriends in God, writer for Proverbs 31 Ministries, and best-selling author of 25 books.
Today’s devotion was taken from her latest release, When You Don’t Like Your Story: What if Your Worst Chapters Could Become Your Greatest Victories. In the pages she asks, what if God doesn’t want us to rip out our difficult stories but repurpose them for good? We can learn to embrace the story we were given, and to trust God to keep writing our story into His. When we do, God turns broken stories into beautiful prose and unwanted pages into stunning narratives of victory. We can see that our struggles have made us stronger, braver, and wiser than we would have ever been without them. Click here to watch a video or read a sample chapter.
[ Our humble thanks to Thomas Nelson for their partnership in today’s devotion ]
January 18, 2021
Their Success Isn’t My Failure
Caitlin Henderson takes the stories from her life on the farm, and pulls out the Biblical lessons, testifying to God’s goodness and love. She is passionate about sharing those lessons she’s learned with others through her writing and speaking. She never fails to leave the audience captivated with the wild stories that come from living on a farm, but always makes sure they leave encouraged with Biblical truth. It’s a grace to welcome Caitlin to our farm’s front porch today…
guest post by Caitlin Henderson
I slid the cake pan into the oven and dusted my flour covered hands on my apron, looking like a modern-day June Cleaver. I walked to the sink to begin scrubbing the dishes and making lunch.
Every time we have a beautiful fall day, I get the urge to bake. Days like that fill my cup and remind me of the simple beauty in life that is right in front of me.
As I placed the last mixing bowl in the drying rack, my phone rang. “Honey, could you run outside real quick and help me back up the combine to the header trailer?” my husband asked. Jake hadn’t been home from harvest very long, and he was trying to get all the equipment cleaned up and stored in the sheds before winter.
The headers that attach to the front of the combine can be taken off and put on a trailer so they can be transported more easily. Jake just needed me to stand by the trailer and tell him how far back to come and which direction to go to make sure the hitches lined up.
I ran outside to the driveway, where the trailer was parked, and I held up my hand to motion to Jake to keep backing up. I pointed to the right with my thumb, trying to get the hitch in the perfect spot. “Okay!” I yelled while making the stop signal with my hand.
As Jake climbed off the combine, I saw him laughing. “What’s so funny?” I asked.
He grinned as he pointed to my outfit. “You forgot to take your apron off.”
I looked down and realized I had, in fact, forgotten to take my apron off. That explained the flirty grin on his face. I laughed with him and told him that if ten years ago someone told me that one day I would forget to take off my apron before hooking up a combine to a trailer, I would have fainted.
Jake snapped a picture as I stood in front of the combine, proudly wearing the hand-quilted apron given to me as a wedding present. That apron was my favorite, and I loved wearing it.
“It doesn’t matter exactly what my day looks like, but it does matter that I am where God has called me.”The grease stains reminded me of the times I had tried to cook for my family in those first years and miserably failed. That apron reminded me of the memories made in our little farmhouse kitchen when I placed it on our oldest as he learned to help cook. I remember the way it dragged the ground and how he squealed with excitement when he cracked his first egg without getting shell in the bowl.
That night I posted the picture Jake had taken on my Facebook page. I said that God had made me a farmer’s wife, that I never would have chosen this life for myself and never would have imagined this is where I would end up but that God knew what He was doing and I was so thankful.
Some days I do nothing but cook, clean, and take care of needy, tiny humans. Other days I run a combine for fifteen hours and get covered in wheat dust and grease.
It doesn’t matter exactly what my day looks like, but it does matter that I am where God has called me.
And that means the work I am doing is important.
“That’s what comparison does to us. It comes in and tells us to look at a glimpse of someone else’s life and see how we don’t measure up.”Then I reminded the people seeing that photo of me in my apron that their roles were important also. That whoever was reading that post mattered and that even if they were feeling trapped inside their homes with children or working jobs they didn’t love or trying to juggle a million things at once, their roles were important; they were each seen by God.
But as I scrolled through the comments, I started playing the comparison game with each one.
She works on their farm full time. I’m not strong enough for that, I thought. She makes every meal for her family from scratch. I wish I did that. She is killing it in her career, I’m kind of jealous.
With each thought, I compared my role with someone else’s and came to the conclusion that I didn’t measure up.
I had gone from being content and joyous to feeling frustrated and doubtful about my efforts.
That’s what comparison does to us.
It comes in and tells us to look at a glimpse of someone else’s life and see how we don’t measure up.
It starts a snowball effect, and as the snowball rolls down the mountain, it takes with it our contentment and joy. It clouds our thoughts and prevents us from clearly seeing the importance of our purpose or role.
“When we stop comparing ourselves, we can turn our faces back to what God is asking us to do.”When we take our focus off letting God use us for that purpose and turn our focus to someone else, we cannot live out our own callings.
Paul talked about this in Galatians 6:4–5: “Each one should test their own actions. Then they can take pride in themselves alone, without comparing themselves to someone else, for each one should carry their own load.”
I don’t want to spend my life trying to live out someone else’s purpose, and I don’t think you do either.
When we stop comparing ourselves with the mom on Instagram who seems to have it all together (even if we know she really doesn’t, because none of us do), we can turn our faces back to what God is asking us to do.
And when we regain that contentment and joy in knowing we were created for a purpose, we can show genuine kindness and encouragement to those in the lane next to us who are striving to live out their purpose also.
We can be their cheerleaders, encouraging them to keep pressing on in whatever it is they were made to do because we know that their success doesn’t equal our failure.
Caitlin Henderson is a young farmer’s wife who draws on her life with kids, cows, and a front-porch view to help us see God’s goodness and beauty wherever we are, reminding us that the simple life is not a place to be but a way to be.
When Caitlin, a small-town girl, fell in love with a farm boy named Jake Henderson, she had little idea what farm life—or marriage and motherhood—would bring. But raising a family on a farm is teaching her more about God’s goodness and grace then she could have imagined.
Faith, Farming, and Family: Cultivating Hope and Harvesting You Wherever You Are is a rich, story-filled walk through farmhouse hallways, harvest-ready fields, and God’s bountiful dreams for our lives. As Caitlin reflects on everything from wayward tractors to watching a marriage grow from surviving to flourishing, she reminds us to see the redemption in our own stories.
Join Caitlin in exploring biblical truth through the eyes of a farmer’s wife, whether you are wrangling kids onto a school bus, sowing creative seeds in a business meeting, or walking the pastures of your own family farm. Faith, Farming, and Family invites us to recognize God’s beauty right in front of us so that we might find the courage to take the next step—or the first step—into His incredible calling.
[ Our humble thanks to Waterbrook for their partnership in today’s devotion ]
January 16, 2021
Only the Good Stuff: Multivitamins for Your Weekend [01.16.21]
Happy, happy, happy weekend!
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 — and that there’s love everywhere & for ((you))!
Serving up only the Good Stuff for you & your people right here:
Jessica Walker
Jessica Walker
Jessica Walker
Jessica Walker
Jessica WalkerThe heavens declare the glory of God…
grateful for the beauty Jessica captures and shares with us
hold on for this one! truly amazing!
friendship through 10,000 miles… incredible:
Project Kindness: families leave super tips, spread kindness
because: “It’s good to give and always be kind”
Loyal Love:
The Hebrew word khesed is one of the most common descriptions of God in the Hebrew Bible, and it’s almost impossible to translate into any other language! This word is rich with meaning, combining the ideas of love, loyalty, and generosity.
Come along with the BibleProject as we explore this fascinating Hebrew word and how it shapes our understanding of God’s character
Young Man Overcomes Illness by Learning Skills From a Near Lost Art: Watchmaking
Saddle Up and Read
WOW! so love what she’s doing here: come see how she’s using her horses to bridge the literacy gap among children
Katarzyna Załużna
Katarzyna Załużna
Katarzyna Załużna she captures the ordinary in extraordinary ways
Joni Eareckson Tada shares profound encouragement in the midst of her struggle with Covid…
please don’t miss & share with a friend
Vaneethas has an astonishing, Job-like story of how an existence filled with loss, suffering, questioning, and anger became a life filled with shocking and incomprehensible peace and joy.
I hold Vaneetha in the highest esteem… and cannot recommend this free online event enough:
please consider joining in online this Tuesday evening! Click here for more info and to register.
a calming visit on the beach with some friends
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 this year than by renewing the life-changing habit of daily gratitude. You in?
Fear is a Liar
cheering loudly at this story: can you even?!?
Uber Passenger Looking to Put ‘Good Out in the World’ Helps Driver Graduate Twice
beautiful words from a dad’s perspective about his son…
never, ever give up! What can we go do today?!
What do you do when your marriage seems unfixable, when your situation is impossible?
Sharing this today with deep tenderness and genuine empathy and humble understanding:
The Number One Thing that Saved Our Impossible Marriage
glory, glory, glory
A Powerful Celebration of Scripture! May it strengthen your own gratitude for it:
so many tears…watch what happens when people celebrate the translation of Scripture into their own language
Grateful for the tireless work of Seed Company
5 STAR story right here: it’s really a matter of loving people
… 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)
Trust God’s Timing: God is in control
All Who Believe Battle Unbelief
“Unbelief will block the channels of faith, it will rob you of joy, and, if undealt with, it will destroy you.”
thank you, Jon Bloom
one to listen to again and again…
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: Christ Be Magnified
Yeah, it may feel like Mount Everest in front of you.
But the deal is: Every mountain that every Christian ever faces, the Lord levels with sufficient grace: The Lord Will Provide.
You don’t have to climb mountains named I Will Perform.
You don’t have to climb mountains named I Will Produce.
Jesus flattens that mountain before you with His Grace: The Lord will Provide.
With enough strength.
With enough wisdom.
With More Than Enough of Himself.
More important than you trying to muster up sufficient grit and determination for the new year — is that you simply accept His sufficient grace and LIBERATION every day.
Every single mountain in front of you is named…”The Lord will provide.” Genesis 22:14
[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 13, 2021
The Number One Thing that Saved Our Impossible Marriage
In these tender times, we lean into tender things, wishing we were sitting across the table, to hear softness, and see gentleness in kind eyes. There are conversations that are best in the context of real supporting, unconditional relationships, and we frame today’s conversation like that, with deep tenderness and genuine empathy and humble understanding. Today, it’s a grace to welcome my friend, Laurie Krieg, to the farm’s front porch today…
My heart felt icy. “Why am I even in this marriage?” I silently asked Jesus. “God, help me. Please, give me some hope.”
I clicked on a Christian podcast seeking to encourage married people. The gender joking began immediately: “Is it God’s big joke that He makes men and women get married?” I braced myself, guessing I knew what would come next. I’ve heard it dozens—if not hundreds—of times.
“Seeking unity through our differences preaches the gospel.”“I mean, seriously! We all want to have sex before we get married, but then we get married, and surprise! Men like their sports, not talking emotionally, want lots of physical intimacy, and they want to be left alone in their ‘man caves.’ Women? They like Pinterest, talking emotionally, they don’t want sex, and they want to relate in their ‘she sheds.’ But! We are in a covenant, and God hates divorce, so, ha ha! Stinks to be us. We are stuck!”
Click. I couldn’t listen anymore. My cold heart squeezed in pain.
Yeah. Why is it male-and-female marriage? If you all hate each other so much, why are you even married?
The weight of their gender jabs fell extra heavily on my ears. I wasn’t just wrestling with staying in my marriage to my husband, Matt; I was wrestling with staying in my marriage to a man.
We all have our own story and this is my story.
And I am grateful to vulnerably and humbly share my story, and grateful for people to hold space for my story and the way it unfolded.
For as long as I can remember, I have been attracted to women. After college, as I wrestled with either killing myself, or coming out as a lesbian atheist, I reached out to a therapist for help with the suicidality.
This Jesus-loving counselor not only helped to remove shame and self-hatred from my life—she helped me to encounter Jesus like I never had before.
Her work through the power of the Spirit did not transform me from gay to straight, but it cleared a path in my heart to receive more of God’s love.
Katie Huff Photography
Katie Huff Photography
Do you know what God’s love does? Paul in Ephesians says, “May you experience the love of Christ, though it is too great to understand fully. Then you will be made complete with all the fullness of life and power that comes from God” (Eph. 3:19, emphasis added).
God’s love empowers us to die daily to self (Luke 9:23). It empowers all of us to surrender our own versions of brokenness to the Lordship of Christ.
Then God called me to marriage. “I have someone for you.” Marriage and singleness are equally valuable modes we do the mission to make disciples, and only He knows which one will sanctify and bless us the best. Marriage was for me—not for everyone like me.
After this call to marriage, God did not make all men attractive to me—that would have been weird and stressful. He connected my heart to one man, Matt. What started as friendship turned into intertwined hearts. I found I wanted to marry him. Not men, but Matt. (And he wanted to marry me, so that was good…)
We thought our unique situation would actually give us an advantage when it came to the marriage gig. We knew the stereotype that “men and women get ‘tricked’ into marriage by their hormones,” but we weren’t like them. We were better.
“We didn’t get snookered! Our life together started on the basis of friendship, being on mission with Jesus, and knowing each other’s strengths and weaknesses,” I thought before getting married. Boom. Winning at wedding.
Until we weren’t. Our friendship had grown cold. The once-easy laughter was rare, and until a month before this moment when I flipped on the podcast, I had my eyes on the exit.
One foot in and one foot out, I went on a silent retreat—a last-ditch effort to sort out what God wanted for me. As I sat in a sunbathed room literally making a pro-con list of leaving my husband, God interrupted me with the book of Jude.
Who reads Jude? Apparently, I do, but only because it was next on my daily Bible reading plan that I was oddly still doing in the middle of this mess. Turns out, God’s Word truly is alive and active (Heb. 4:12), and He brought some of that living Word to mind as I wrestled:
But you, my dear friends, must remember what the apostles of our Lord Jesus Christ predicted. They told you that in the last times there would be scoffers whose purpose in life is to satisfy their ungodly desires. These people are the ones who are creating divisions among you. They follow their natural instincts because they do not have God’s Spirit in them (Jude 17-19).
Those who follow their natural instincts…do not have God’s Spirit in them?
“So, if I follow what is natural to me because of the Fall—which would be leaving Matt—will I not have God’s Spirit in me?” I paused my journal-praying. “Well, what does your Spirit give me?” Everything was on the table.
In the next two micro-seconds something shifted in the room, and I experienced what I can only describe as a taste of hell: a tiny experience of a life completely devoid of God.
I was so cold and so terrified, and it wasn’t like I was empty—“Ho hum, I need a sandwich”— it was like I was emptiness.
“He is the only Source of life, hope, and peace. The only Source.”I was left gasping for breath, but one thing was crystal clear to me: God’s Spirit—the Holy Spirit—isn’t some sort of Jiminy Cricket, “Always let your conscience be your guide!” character. He is the only Source of life, hope, and peace. The only Source.
And if I wanted Him, then I wanted what He had for me. What He had for me was this marriage. This impossible marriage.
And we all have our own impossible marriages.
“How are you going to fix this, God?” I asked as I absentmindedly twisted my wedding ring around my finger after clicking off the podcast. I was committed to God and therefore committed to this marriage, but I was baffled as to how He would fix it.
I was scared of listening to more podcasts. Scared of picking up marriage books. Most of them assumed you were pro-male-female marriage, and thought you’d laugh along with them as they built rapport with you through gender jokes.
Why male-female marriage, Jesus?
“If I wanted Him, then I wanted what He had for me. What He had for me was this marriage. This impossible marriage.”Then Ephesians 5 hit me like truck. I had heard verses 31-32 in Christian settings hundreds of times before, but I always missed the point.
As the Scriptures say, “A man leaves his father and mother and is joined to his wife, and the two are united into one. This is a great mystery, but it is an illustration of the way Christ and the church are one.”
Hold up, hold up, hold up: What is the “great mystery”? That the ol’ from-Mars men and from-Venus women fall in love? “But ha ha! You’re tricked into a covenant!”
No! The great mystery is that God wants to and will marry dusty, human, image-bearer, beloved us (Rev. 19:6-9).
What? That’s bananas. How different are men from women? I mean, okay, stereotypically pretty different. Hence, the jokes.
How different is God from humanity? Ontologically different! Eternally different! Cosmically different! Paul says in Ephesians 1:21, “Now he is far above any ruler or authority or power or leader or anything else—not only in this world but also in the world to come.”
And yet Jesus will marry us!
Our marriages tell this love story. When very-different men die to self to be one with their very-different wives, they show the world how very-different Jesus died to be one with very-different us, and how we are to do the same.
“It is divine design. Marriage is a living, breathing picture of the gospel to our neighbors, to strangers, and to the children in our home.”Marriage is not a cosmic joke nor cosmic punishment. It is divine design. Marriage is a living, breathing picture of the gospel to our neighbors, to strangers, and to the children in our home.
Celebration of sex difference rather than eye-rolling was one of the greatest lightbulb moments in saving our marriage.
It propelled me not to run toward a Hallmark-movie-ending kiss with my husband, but it pushed me to take the next right step.
And now? Four years after listening to that podcast, I can’t believe I get to do this. I cannot believe I get to live this gospel metaphor with my husband.
But the battle for Christians to show the gospel metaphor through Christian marriage—specifically through sex difference—isn’t over. The gender joking in podcasts, books, retreats, and everyday conversation seems unending. Can we please stop?
Too many hurting married people are secretly listening to their friends, picking up books, and clicking on podcasts—looking for hope—and are missing something amazing: Sex difference in marriage isn’t a cosmic joke or punishment. It’s divine design.
Seeking unity through our differences preaches the gospel.
Laurie Krieg is a teacher, author, and ministry leader who equips the church with a gospel-centered approach to sexuality and marriage. Laurie’s husband, Matt, is a licensed therapist with specialties in issues related to trauma and sexuality.
Maybe you read this and were inspired at some level, but also thought, “But I don’t have an impossible marriage. They do. I don’t.” If you have been called to marriage, this means you have been called to show the world a living, breathing, 24-7 picture of the gospel through oneness with your spouse. For all of us? That is absolutely impossible–without Him (Matt. 19:26).
Read more about Matt and Laurie’s version of an impossible marriage (and receive some practical, gritty hope for yours?) in An Impossible Marriage. In this book, Laurie and Matt lay out an engaging picture of their marriage in all its pain and beauty. It’s a picture that points us, over and over again, to the love and grace of Jesus—as marriage was always meant to do.
January 11, 2021
How in the world do we adjust to constant loss?
When I first met Vaneetha Risner, almost a decade ago, her divorce had just been finalized and we talked about how God had radically transformed her through suffering. Her story, which she tells in her memoir Walking Through Fire, is one of deep loss- contracting polio as an infant, being bullied as a child, suffering multiple miscarriages, burying a son, dealing with escalating weakness that will end in quadriplegia, being betrayed and abandoned by her husband- yet her story is much more than that. It’s the story of our God who meets us in our pain and is using every heartache for something bigger than we can ask or imagine. It’s a grace to welcome Vaneetha to the farm’s front porch today…
When the doctors said I should get a wheelchair, I fought it. It meant I’d be viewed as disabled and I’d spent my entire life fighting that label. But now things were different – I needed the chair to maintain my strength and keep me from falling- so I was forced to reframe how I viewed it.
“I had to focus on what was good in my life and see the wheelchair as a blessing.”I had to focus on what was good in my life and see the wheelchair as a blessing. Without it, I risked falling, wasting my energy, and being confined to the house more.
The wheelchair offered me freedom.
I had to change my perspective about using it—just as I had to change my perspective about everything. If I obsessed about what I’d lost or longed for or missed, I couldn’t enjoy what I had.
I needed to look forward and embrace the life I had, the life God had given me, even though I knew loss would be a constant.
Philosophizing didn’t make things any easier. When Dave and I went Christmas shopping, looking for a sweater for Shalini’s husband, I noticed the stares and curious looks. As we entered the store, the saleswoman looked at Dave and asked, “Is there anything I can help you find?”
“I needed to look forward and embrace the life I had, the life God had given me, even though I knew loss would be a constant.”I answered. “We’re looking for a quarter-zip sweater for my brother-in-law. Do you have any of those?”
Continuing to look at Dave, she asked, “Is there any particular color or material you’re looking for?”
“A wool blend would be great,” I responded in a loud voice.
This time she looked down at me and said, “We just got a new shipment in with a merino blend.” Then turning back to Dave, she said, “It’s a little crowded in the store. The sweaters are in the back, and I’m not sure if her wheelchair will fit back there. I can bring them out to her.”
Her? Her? I wanted to shout at her. “You can bring them out to us!” I answered.
Then she glanced down at me and said, “I’m so glad you’re here. And I love your shoes.”
My shoes? I laughed inside because we all knew my shoes—the kind the clinic had recommended—were truly ugly. She was simply doing what countless others would do: find one point of contact with me, like my shoes, and otherwise ignore me. Almost every time I went out in a wheelchair, people would address Dave about me, as if I couldn’t speak for myself.
I was no longer treated as an equal to people who were able-bodied, and I felt that humiliating loss of dignity.
“I was no longer treated as an equal to people who were able-bodied, and I felt that humiliating loss of dignity.”But it was the small, seemingly insignificant losses that cut the deepest. Like the time I was trying to move a sculpture from one shelf to another and dropped it and it shattered. I can’t decorate anymore. I hadn’t even decorated much before, but I had once been able to if I wanted.
My mind flashed back to my childhood in the hospital ward, waiting for someone to bring me a bedpan. I could still feel the embarrassment and shame of being wiped, of being helpless. I shuddered knowing that one day I’d go back to that.
Was it possible to accept continual loss? To become used to the terror of constant decline? Or maybe the only possible reaction was to hate every single minute of it and rage against what was coming.
I began to read Joni Eareckson Tada, who became a quadriplegic at seventeen after a diving accident. As an artist and author of many books on suffering, she became my role model for living with loss and pain.
Joni wrote that her disability had deepened her passion for Jesus. I couldn’t understand how, but I knew that the same God who had transformed Joni could transform me as well.
“I talked to God throughout the day, telling Him everything that was hard, everything that felt crushing, everything I hated.”She often mentioned that the angels and demons are watching us to see how we respond to trials. Knowing her life could display God’s worth to the unseen world inspired Joni to endure, to trust God, and even to choose joy when she was alone.
Joni’s perspective helped me reframe my daily struggles that were largely hidden from others. I took comfort knowing God would never leave me and clung to this assurance from Isaiah 43:2:
When you pass through the waters, I will be with you;
and through the rivers, they shall not overwhelm you;
when you walk through fire you shall not be burned,
and the flame shall not consume you.
But even with these promises and Joni’s example, despair and anger arrived in wave after wave.
God could have prevented this. Since He hadn’t, did that mean He’d chosen this suffering for me? Why would He do that to me? Hadn’t I been through enough?
“I repeated the words of sorrow from Scripture until they became my vocabulary.”The questions felt unanswerable. Raw. I knew I needed God’s help to go on. Yet I hesitated to cry out for help to the One who had seemingly lowered me into the pit, instead of lifting me out of it and setting my feet somewhere firm.
Just as in the months after Paul’s death, lament became my language. Morning after morning I woke to read and recopy the psalms of lament, claiming them for myself.
Every word I shaped with my pen was depleting my body’s energy but writing by hand in my journal was too important to abandon. It was my one indulgence.
Forsaken
Broken
Groaning
No answers
No rest
No hope
I talked to God throughout the day, telling Him everything that was hard, everything that felt crushing, everything I hated. I repeated the words of sorrow from Scripture until they became my vocabulary.
“My brutal honesty pulled me toward God. And the closer I was drawn, the more my lament transformed into worship—and even trust.”As before, my brutal honesty pulled me toward God. And the closer I was drawn, the more my lament transformed into worship—and even trust.
Actually, it wasn’t transformed. I learned that lament didn’t need to be transformed—lament itself was an integral part of genuine trust and worship.
I’d rather be dead than be a burden.
My fingers worked a pen across the page of my journal.
Hearing others say their lives are harder because of me . . . it all seems too hard to imagine. It seems so unfair.
But in Your infinite wisdom, You chose this for me. You gave me the drive to push, to succeed, to help, and yet all along You knew this would happen. Show me what I can learn from this and help me glorify You through this. Help me to grieve honestly—but not as one without hope.
Sometimes it was hard to tell where my writing stopped, and my prayer began. Sometimes I wrote things that I prayed would save my life.
My life is for your glory. Bring something beautiful out of it.
Vaneetha Risner understands suffering. It’s hard and heartbreaking and she’s the first to admit that she doesn’t willingly embrace it. But she’s experienced the grace, provision and love of God in unforgettable ways through her pain and she wouldn’t trade those encounters for anything. In her memoir, Walking Through Fire, Vaneetha doesn’t just tell us about how to meet God in the grittiness of loss– she authentically shows us. This more than a memoir; it is a story of God’s faithfulness in suffering.
Vaneetha two daughters, Katie and Kristi, who she raised mostly as a single parent and is now married to an amazing man named Joel. They live in Raleigh NC and this video tells a bit of her story.
Vaneetha is a modern-day Job. And this is the story of a woman who feared God enough to not be afraid to cut through the smoke of things and be howlingly honest with God, to say out loud what a whole world of us are thinking…
If you preorder Walking Through Fire now or before January 19, 2021 , you can stream the entire audiobook immediately, read by Vaneetha, for free as well as download an exclusive album featuring songs by Ellie Holcomb and Christa Wells among others.
January 9, 2021
Only the Good Stuff: Multivitamins for Your Weekend [01.09.21]
Happy, happy, happy weekend!
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 — and that there’s love everywhere & for ((you))!
Serving up only the Good Stuff for you & your people right here:
Photo by Cassie Matias on Unsplash
Photo by Samuel Scrimshaw
Photo by Ricardo Gomez Angel on Unsplashget outside, breathe deeply, and enjoy your weekend
21 Places to Go in 2021 – is your favorite on the list?
because we all need hope
Ruurd Jelle van der Leij
Ruurd Jelle van der Leijhe captures birds in extraordinary ways
so who knew?!? How playing an instrument benefits your brain
View this post on InstagramA post shared by Good News Movement (@goodnews_movement)
what a great idea!
never, ever give up
Trusting God When Times Are Hard
To Keep Pain in Check, Scientists Say ‘Count Down’
3 incredible life stories: they’ve all endured life-changing tragedies but they never, ever gave up
Their stories are profound and will inspire you to live beyond your limit
Get More from the Bible This Year: Six Marks of Mature Reading
just so good: Say I Won’t… don’t miss this one & share with a friend
created in the image of God:
Italian Photographer Shows What Childhood Looks Like In Different Corners Of The World
What does it mean to say that God is slow to anger? In the Bible, God’s anger is a just response to human evil, which is motivated by God’s justice and love.
In this video, BibleProject explores God’s anger and justice in the Bible and shows us how it all leads to Jesus
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 this year than by renewing the life-changing habit of daily gratitude. You all in?
yes and amen: Let there be peace on earth – and let it start with me
one to read again and again: Towards A Better Us In 2021
“Behavior is always driven by whatever we desire most. For behavior to change, desire must be transformed first. It’s inside-out, not outside-in.”
glory, glory, glory
again and again: Truth I’m Standing On
thank you, Priscilla Shirer…
how discerning the voice of God can change your life, and set you on a clear path
Quiet time as a life-changing, intimate time with a close & personal God?
I’ve been doing this & it’s been flat-out changing my life in ways I never would have expected:
Revolutionize Your Quiet Time: How to Turn Your Quiet Time into a Life-Changing Time of Encountering the Living God (with Best Resources)
an electrician hardwired for kindness stepped up and changed her life
“It’s what you’re supposed to do”
Post of the week from these parts here
In hard days like these, on the day after Epiphany, after Three Kings’ Day, maybe this is epiphany — because we all need some wildly transformative & tangible hope:
In Days Like These: What Allegiance to the King Looks Like (About Nationalism, Syncretism, & Evangelicalism)
tears here…Your Heart, oh God, is all I Want
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: I am thankful for the scars
…yeah, it’s ridiculously tempting to think this time of year: “I am what I accomplish. I am what I weigh. I am what I achieve. I am what I do.”
But shake off that lie: Your activity for Christ does not give you your identity. You are not what your hands do. Your intimacy with Christ is what gives you your identity.
You are what your heart is. And your heart is held in His no matter what fails today, your heart is loved by Him no matter what any numbers say today, your heart is strengthened in His no matter how overwhelming things look today. Identity literally means “the same” — that regardless of changing circumstances, the core of you is unchangeable, stable, is the same.
When your identity is in Christ, your identity is the same yesterday, today and tomorrow. Criticism can’t change it. Failing can’t shake it. Lists can’t determine it. When your identity is in the Rock — your identity is Rock Solid. As long as God is for you, it doesn’t matter what mountain rises ahead of you.
You aren’t your yesterday, you aren’t your messes, you aren’t your lists. You are brave enough for today because He is. You are strong enough for what’s coming because He is.And you are enough for all that is because He. always. is.
[excerpted from our little Facebook family … come join us each day?]
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 7, 2021
In Days Like These: What Allegiance to the King Looks Like (About Nationalism, Syncretism, & Evangelicalism)
T
he day after Epiphany, after Three King’s Day, the day that’s believed that the three wise men followed the star to the feet of the God-King, I can’t stop thinking how I once met a man on the other side of the world who told me:
“You have to come into the King’s presence, before you can go out into the King’s world.”
“The King of King’s mandate is never one country first, but that those who choose to go last will ultimately be first.”
He told me how, in many places on this planet still today, there are people groups who have to have come into their King’s presence, before they can go out and do any work with their King’s blessing.
And the day after what some call Epiphany, I am having an epiphany of my own:
Before we can go out into the world, we have to come into His presence.
And day after day, of coming into the King of King’s presence, you come to realize you’re pledging allegiance to this King of the Upside Down Kingdom who aligns Himself with those who are pressed down, with those who are crying for justice in the streets.
You come to realize:
The King of King’s mandate is never one country first, but that those who choose to go last will ultimately be first.
“The King of Kings is never for one country, but for one Kingdom.”
The King of Kings doesn’t align with one national party, but He aligns all His people in one global church.
The King of Kings is about every nation, every tribe and every tongue pledging allegiance to one banner of self-sacrificing, cruciform Love.
And allegiance to the Way of Jesus means that godly ends never justifies ungodly ways.
“Allegiance to the Way of Jesus means that godly ends never justifies ungodly ways.”
When Christians believe pledging allegiance to a national leader can save their vision of the world, that is no longer Christianity; that is nationalism. And cloaked idolatry.
When one’s flag-waving Christianity could not possibly translate to Rwanda, Haiti, the Philippines or Aruba, it’s no longer Christianity; that is nationalism. And antithetical to the Kingdom of God.
When one’s Christianity more readily links arms with supremacists more than with believers of different nationalities — or with believers who supported different political positions — that’s not Christianity; that is nationalism. And it’s self-harm against the body of Christ.
“When one’s focus is more on national power than biblical piety, we aren’t walking Christ’s Way, but have twisted country and Christ in a sick, syncretistic way.”
Evangelicalism infected with nationalism isn’t Christianity, but a syncretism of demonic white supremacism.
Faith that is more hungry for power than caring for the hungry isn’t a faith that follows Christ. Faith that is intoxicated with power has never drank Christ’s cup.
Maybe the epiphany that comes on Epiphany, on Three Kings Day, is that:
When Christians make an idol out of nation, they make an altogether false Christ.
In the church’s earnestness to make an enraged, hurting world Christian, how many of us Christians have become enraged, and hurt Christ’s witness?
Because when we pledge allegiance to the King of Kings, our purpose is never to leverage political power to protect self-interests, but to pick up our cross, because the sacrificial cruciform ways of Christ leverages a completely otherworldly power that’s interested in protecting others.
“True Christianity is never rooted in state power, but in the saving, serving, sacrificing power of Christ.”
Genuine followers of Jesus do care about politics, not because they care about gaining power, but because they care about helping the people who are disempowered. St. Paul and the Apostle John and King David, prove power is never about self-interests but for caring for the interests of others so they know God is interested in them.
True Christianity is never rooted in state power, but in the saving, serving, sacrificing power of Christ.
And we are all invited to be part of a faithful global body of Christ-followers from around the world who link arms and quietly kneel down to live it:
The Jesus of the Bible isn’t about striving after worldly power — but about sacrificing for worthy principles.
The Jesus of the Bible rejects all forms of supremacy as a demonic stain on true Christianity.
“The Jesus of the Bible isn’t about striving after worldly power — but about sacrificing for worthy principles.”
The Jesus of the Bible calls us to submit to our national governments and call out national idolatry, to pray for our leaders and never let any leader lead us away from living the humble, sacrificial way of our only Leader.
When we pledge allegiance to the King of Kings, we don’t think the “other side” should cease to exist, but believe we actually exist to love everyone so well that they see Jesus inside of us — and long to have Him touch the wounds in their side too.
Allegiance to the King of Kings is about welcoming everyone, especially someone on the “other side,” to our personal tables, because Christ knows there is more than one side to any common table, and yet we are called to be God’s grace and live broken and given to each other, so we are all transformed into the image of Christ.
“When we pledge allegiance to the King of Kings, we don’t think the “other side” should cease to exist, but believe we actually exist to love everyone so well that they see Jesus inside of us — and long to have Him touch the wounds in their side too.”
The real good news is that anyone born anywhere on the planet can have citizenship in the one true Christian nation in the world, the Ekklesia, to be the ones who are “called out” of this world into the Ekklesia, the global Church that is without borders, without racism, without idolatry, without enemies, without flags, because the only banner over us is the Love that reconciles God and humans in a healing communion of transformation.
And because our citizenship is in heaven, we, as the Ekklesia, the bride of Christ, who will be from “every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages,” will one day stand before our Bridegroom Christ, we can do nothing less than to begin to be about ushering in His new kingdom now, through racial justice and reconciliation, through cruciform immigration and refugee care, through a robust womb-to-tomb, Consistent Pro—Life Ethic, not because it’s political, but this is what it means to live cruciform and biblical.
Christ-followers who believe the good news believe that wherever they stand has to be compassionate good news for the marginalized and vulnerable and struggling, or it’s fake news and not Jesus’ news.
Christ-followers believe it’s not too late to realize the lateness and direness and the gravity of the hour, and that, no matter what, we are here for such a time as now, not to just gain power, or the upper hand, but to be the just, healing, restorative hands of Jesus.
Christ-followers believe the true way to fight the dark is not with outrage, but with outreach.
Because this is the critical moment that resonates with the reality of it:
“Christ-followers believe the true way to fight the dark is not with outrage, but with outreach.”
“If you persist in staying silent at a time like this, help and deliverance will arrive… from someplace else — but you and your family will die.” Es. 4:14
“The only thing that counts is faith expressing itself through love.” (Galatians 5:6)
If we persist in staying silent at a time like this kind of injustice, at a time like this kind of division, of racial oppression, and in-utero destruction, at a time like this kind of decision — not only may our Christian witness die, but more of those who are oppressed and marginalized, who are our own family, will die.
Our Jesus died for more justice and shalom than this.
For such a time as now, it’s worth risking to love cruciform, to reach out to our neighbor, to stand for Gospel-saturated justice, to lay down privilege, to live the way of costly faith.
And all around the world, the day after Three King’s Day?
A whole world of believers come again into their King’s presence, only to be so deeply transformed, that there is this brave going out from the King’s presence to live the Upside Down Kingdom of wildly transformative and tangible hope.
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