Ann Voskamp's Blog, page 68
January 6, 2021
Revolutionize Your Quiet Time: How to Turn Your Quiet Time into a Life-Changing Time of Encountering the Living God (with Best Resources)
To be raw honest, I have fallen deeper than I have ever known.
Honestly, I didn’t expect it to go quite like this.
But we just have breathed through all of 2020. What’s going like anybody thought it would?
“God is a communicative being.”
Sure, the news and social media streams are all screaming first thing, day after day, trying to prove who’s telling the truth about the real state of things, trying to convince which way is right through a myriad of messes.
Sure, we’ve got personal pain, unspoken broken, that’s only been exacerbated a thousandfold during a global pandemic and devastating lockdowns.
And, in the middle of everything, like Jonathan Edwards said: God is a communicative being.
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Levi Voskamp
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“There is nothing like knowing that the Communicative God wants to communicate with you.”
God is a Communicative Being who never stops communicating Truth to a world that is in a brutal daily communication war to decide truth.
There is nothing like knowing that the Communicative God wants to communicate with you.
God’s Word to you is never a passing word or line — God’s Word is your very lifeline. In tumultuous times, there is only one voice that can calm seas.
When the sun comes to the window every morning, it comes on fire with a message it can’t contain:
The One who is the Word wants to have a word with you.
“Apathy for God’s Word leads to atrophy of a soul.”
To neglect the only Voice that calms waves is to invite internal chaos. One day, either this world is going to blow apart, or your own world is going to blow apart, and the only way you’re going survive is if you’ve set time apart to let God’s Spirit blow in.
Apathy for God’s Word leads to atrophy of a soul.
Knowing God’s Word is the only way to know your own face. Who we are is only found in the home of Him.
The One who spoke you into being is a Communicative Being who longs to keep speaking to you.
“The One who spoke you into being is a Communicative Being who longs to keep speaking to you.”
And in a world that’s gone mad and growing madder, I find myself stumbling out of bed each morning and falling hard for Him and all His Words.
When the world is all stirred up, a soul can be stirred up to meet with God.
All the mainstream news and social streams can anticipate facing off— and a soul can keep anticipating facing God.
I reach for my Bible first — because if you don’t reach for your first love first, nothing’s going to turn out in the end.
When life spins a bit wild — the best thing to do is fall wildly in love with the Author of Life, who is the author of your Life, and let Him write you a love story, your love story.
Levi Voskamp
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Levi Voskamp
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Levi VoskampHow I Fall Deeper in Love with the Communicative God
1. Pine after the heart of God:
Want the One who wants you more than anyone else. I have found this true, especially at the bottom of all kinds of unspoken broken: God is never an obligation, but always worthy of anticipation. Time with God isn’t an action on some to-do list but an act of Love with Someone.
“Want the One who wants you more than anyone else.”
God isn’t a duty when you are attracted to His beauty.
I can not help it, because this has been my story:
Fall in love with the One who erases all of your falls.
Pine after the One who hung on a tree for you, the only One who ever loved you to death and back to the realest life.
2. Peer into the heart of God:
You fall in love by peering into the eyes of someone.
“When life spins a bit wild — the best thing to do is fall wildly in love with the Author of Life, who is the author of your Life, and let Him write you a love story, your love story.”
When you look into God’s Word, you are looking God in the eye. Peer into the Word like you are looking long into the eyes of God, like you are longing for God.
Read His Word with intentionality instead of randomly: begin to read through the Gospels, work your way through the Epistles, or read one book of Scripture five times through. Highlight themes, repeating words, phrases that connect your heart to His. Trace His face by tracing lines, underlining lines. Study His face, His heart, memorize His eyes.
Open a commentary like this one, if you choose. Grasp God. Simply spend time reading and re-read and re-read the passage from the living Spirit Book like you are reading the eyes of God, listening for God to speak.
Peer into the heart of God because God gives us time, how can we not give Him back some time, any time?
Sleepless nights with young children, season of being stretched? Leave a Bible flat open always by the coffee maker. Every time you brew a cup, quaff back the realest draft of Living Water. With each literal cup you stir: Steep in His Word.
Make the soundtrack of His heart, the soundtrack of your life: Listen to His word with apps like this and this while you get ready for the day every day, every time you get in the car, every time you work out, tying the Word in audio to something in your routine, to tie your heart to His.
3. Personalize the heart of God:
When you personalize God’s Word, you see it’s a Word personally for you.
In the margins of the journaling Bible, or in a separate journal, personalize the Scripture reading from the morning. Write the verses, the text back to yourself, using your name, writing from the perspective and heart of God.
Listen to the movement of the Spirit through His Word. Listen for the heartbeat of God for you through the Word.
“Write the Scripture reading back to you like it’s a love letter from God — because it is.”
Write the Scripture reading back to you like it’s a love letter from God — because it is.
The practice of personalizing Scripture is a practice of entering into His presence, the practice of tuning the heart to hear God speaking personally to you through Scripture, of dialoguing with God through His infallible, living Word.
The practice of personalizing Scripture moves reading God’s Word from a cerebral, intellectual practice, to a deeply intimate practice of heart communion.
Personalizing Scripture lets you be personally intimate with God.
And when you personally know God’s intimate heart for you — this is what ultimately changes your heart.
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Levi Voskamp4. Present your heart to God:
Presenting all of yourself to God is the gift your soul wants most.
Presenting your honest heart in lament, in worship, in prayer, in confession, in repentance, in vulnerability to God gives the soul the gift of communion with God — what every human being was made for.
“Unless we genuinely present all of ourselves to God, we won’t experience God genuinely present to us.”
After pining after the heart of God, peering into the heart of God, personalizing the heart of God, the act of fully presenting your whole heart to God through worship music, through vulnerably journaling, through honest prayer journalling, praying Scripture back to God — this transforms the present moment.
Unless we are wholly present to God with all of ourselves — our lament, our worship, our hopes, our confessions, our heartbreak — we can’t receive the present of wholeness.
Unless we genuinely present all of ourselves to God, we won’t experience God genuinely present to us.
The only way to intimacy is through the door of vulnerability.
5. Participate with the heart of God:
God’s invitation is always participation in God’s work.
“God’s invitation is always participation in God’s work.”
The Triune God is a relationship of participation. Each member of the Godhead lives in fulfilling, self-giving relationship with each other, participating fully in the sacrificial life of each other.
And God’s invitation to every human being is a life of participation in the God’s work. Linger and listen long to the heart beat of God:
How is God inviting you from your holy experience in His Word, in presenting prayer — to participate with Him in His holy work in the world?
Where is He inviting you to participate in the sufferings of Christ, to participate in His redemptive work in your world, participate in ushering in shalom and the Kingdom of God around you, how is He inviting you to participate in following His narrow way especially today?
“God communicates to us that we might participate with Him.”
Ironically, truly observant Christ-followers move from cheap, sideline observations to costly, sacrificial participation.
Only conclude your time of encounter with God after counting how you will make even one degree of movement toward participating more with God.
God communicates to us that we might participate with Him.
And it’s in participating in the Triune God’s heart that we feel the recalibrating of our own.
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Levi Voskamp
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Levi VoskampEarly in the morning, first thing, there’s this turning on of my lamp and this sacred encounter with God:
Pining after the heart of God,
Peering into the heart of God,
Personalizing the heart of God,
Presenting the whole heart to God…
and then
Participating in the heart of God
As this ignites a passion in the heart
for the passion of the Christ.
“The way to counter the fury of a world burning down, is to get down on your knees and light your own heart on fire.”
There is no more fulfilling way to begin the day because I can testify: Short-change time with God and its your own joy that falls short.
Especially when the world is on fire, what it direly needs is more hearts on fire for God’s — because you fight fire with fire.
The way to counter all the madness is to encounter all God’s goodness.
The way to counter all this heartache, is to encounter the heart of God.
The way to counter the fury of a world burning down, is to get down on your knees and light your own heart on fire.
When your heart is breaking, only the sweet balm that comes from breaking open His word can bring healing to your wounds.
I linger long under lamplight with His Love letter open like a light in my hands, kindling me.
Though my hands are holding His Word, there’s enough light for me to see:
Encounter God and you can count on the arms of God carrying you through.
(Warning: Only Use if You Want Dramatic Change in your God Relationship)
The God-Encounter Resources that Have Been Utterly Life-Changing For Me:
ESV Journaling Bible, Interleaved
Prayer: Experiencing Awe and Intimacy with God
The Songs of Jesus: A Year of Daily Devotions in the Psalms
The Power of a Praying Parent, prayer cards
Praying the Scriptures for Your Adult Children
Powerful Prayers for Your Daughter
January 4, 2021
Turning Minutes Into Moments: Letting Symbols of God’s Faithfulness Strengthen Your Faith Today
I’ve always appreciated the way Mark Batterson finds rich meaning in the simple objects and moments of our days. In today’s devotion, Mark turns our eyes to the symbols of our lives that remind us of God’s faithfulness to us. What a gift that God gives many examples throughout Scripture of memorials, altars, and celebrations to help us overcome our spiritual amnesia. He must recognize our need for reminders of His faithfulness, past and present, even in difficult times. It’s a grace to welcome Mark back to the farm’s front porch today…
On May 25, 1979, Denis Waitley was desperately trying to catch a flight from Chicago to Los Angeles for a speaking engagement. There are easier airports to run through than O’Hare!
When he arrived at his gate, they had just closed the Jetway. Denis begged them to let him on that airplane. No luck!
“Had he been on time, it would have been the last day of his life.”
Out of breath and out of patience, Denis made his way to the ticket counter to register a complaint and rebook his travel. While he was waiting in line, an announcement came over the airport intercom. AA Flight 191 to Los Angeles had crashed upon takeoff. All 258 passengers, as well as thirteen crew members, died in the crash. It was the deadliest aviation accident in United States history.
That near-death experience had a life-altering impact on Denis Waitley. Had he been on time, it would have been the last day of his life. Needless to say, he never registered his complaint. In fact, he never returned his ticket for Flight 191. He took his paper ticket and put it in a visible place in his office.
On difficult days, the days when Denis Waitley felt like throwing in the towel, all it took was one glance at that ticket to regain perspective.
Denis Waitley’s ticket for Flight 191 is what I would call a life symbol—a symbol from the past that gives meaning to the present and functions as a compass for the future.
What are the symbols from your past, painful and joyful, that make each day more meaningful?
“A life symbol—a symbol from the past that gives meaning to the present and functions as a compass for the future.”
My life symbols include an oxygen mask from one of my asthma-related hospitalizations; the graduate assessment that showed a low aptitude for writing; a brick from the crack house that is now Ebenezers Coffeehouse; and my grandfather’s well-worn, well-read, well-lived Bible that is almost a century old.
In one sense, those life symbols are worthless. Anybody want an old oxygen mask? I didn’t think so! But to me, they’re priceless! Why? They represent top-of-the-Empire-State-Building and bottom-of-the-Grand-Canyon moments. They taught me lessons I can’t afford to forget. They represent minutes that turned into moments that I will remember forever.
But trust me—this is more than a walk down memory lane. Life symbols are the key to getting where God wants us to go. They’re the key to becoming who God wants us to be. They’re the key to unleashing the power of twenty-four hours.
Remember David versus Goliath? After defeating Goliath, David took Goliath’s armor and parked it in his tent. (See 1 Samuel 17:54.) We read right past this detail, but it’s a big deal. And I mean that literally. Goliath’s armor weighed 125 pounds. I’m not sure David weighed much more than that. Why would he go to all the trouble of undressing Goliath and putting his armor in his tent? If Saul’s armor didn’t fit him, Goliath’s armor would have fit him even worse! If you can’t wear it, why save it?
“Our future-tense faith is a function of God’s past-tense faithfulness.”
Like Denis Waitley’s ticket to Flight 191, Goliath’s armor functioned as a life symbol. When David got discouraged, one glance at Goliath’s armor reminded him that he was nobody’s underdog. That armor fueled holy confidence for the rest of his life. I bet David marked his calendar, celebrating it as Giant Day ever after. Putting Goliath’s armor in his tent was a stroke of genius. We might want to follow suit—pun intended.
According to developmental psychologists, if an object is removed from a baby’s field of view, it’s as if that object ceases to exist. That’s why peekaboo is so much fun with young children! They have not developed the understanding of object permanence.
Simply put, out of sight, out of mind. We never really outgrow this tendency, do we? This is why we build memorials and celebrate holidays.
We have a tendency to remember what we should forget and forget what we should remember.
The way we overcome spiritual amnesia is by building altars. What do we put on them? Life symbols.
Those life symbols don’t just point back to the past; they point to the future.
Our future-tense faith is a function of God’s past-tense faithfulness.
Mark Batterson serves as lead pastor of National Community Church in Washington, DC. NCC also owns and operates Ebenezers Coffeehouse, The Miracle Theatre, and the DC Dream Center. Mark holds a doctor of ministry degree from Regent University and is the New York Times bestselling author of 17 books, including The Circle Maker, Chase the Lion, and Whisper.
Today’s devotion is from his book Win the Day: 7 Daily Habits to Help You Stress Less and Accomplish More. Win the Day guides us to live beyond playing it safe, whether that means taking more risks or embracing more rest. His book is the jump-start you need to go after your goals, one day at a time. As Mark unpacks several daily habits, you’ll see how simple it is to pursue them with focus and dedication—not someday down the road, but now. Transform your perspective of a single day and you’ll discover the potential waiting to be grasped at the beginning of each new sunrise.
[ Our humble thanks to Waterbrook for their partnership in today’s devotion ]
January 2, 2021
Only the Good Stuff: Multivitamins for Your Weekend [01.02.21]
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 Aaron Burden on Unsplash
Photo by Mike Kotsch on Unsplash
Photo by yonatan anugerah on Unsplashdeep breath and enjoy the wonder of your weekend in the new year
To beat the winter blues? Think like a Norwegian…
viral pets that are melting hearts
Best of 2020: The Best “Good News” Stories of the Year
one not to miss: 30 Years in Prison For a Crime He Didn’t Commit
“I choose to embrace the good…”
The Mind-Blowing Mathematics of Snowflakes
inspiring: Teen relearns how to swim after losing eyesight
“This guy, he fist-bumps you, he gives you weather reports. Everybody in the community thinks they’re special and he only does it with them, but it turns out he’s doing it with everybody.”
smiling at this one!
Turns out, the most effective way to limit stress & maximize happiness, according to Harvard — is to have a habit of gratitude.
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%.
The way to make it a happy new year is to make the year about giving thanks because that gives you happiness.The way to fill this new year with happiness is to fill it with thankfulness to God.
“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?
listen to these words… The Road, The Rocks, and the Weeks
sisters give birth 90 minutes apart?!?
yes, yes, yes… Priscilla Shirer: We’re Desensitized to Our Blessings
a look at the top photos from around the globe in 2020
Post of the week from these parts here:
How To Actually Stop Procrastinating (Free Guide) & Do that Hard Thing in the New Year
View this post on InstagramA post shared by IF:Gathering (@ifgathering)
this was the heartbeat of my 2020
deeply convicting…reading is growth
The Church Needs Prophets, But It Wants Lawyers
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: Father Along
Okay, Soul — it’s really gonna be okay today, this week, next year. Because in Him, whatever goes bad, He’ll work it for good. It’s what God does.
He turned water into wine; He will turn the broken into beautiful.
God’s line of work is transformations — so hold on to Him as your lifeline.
You can’t be undone.
No matter what went down yesterday, (this year) — today, (this coming year) is your very own fresh canvas and there really is hope: The future is as bright as the faithfulness of God.
He says to you Himself: “…don’t keep going over old history. Be alert, be present. I’m about to do something brand new… There it is! I’m making a road through the desert.” (Isaiah 43:18 MSG)
Right now through your most unlikely desert places, God is making unbelieveable roads… you better believe it!
Yeah, you can go face the day and this new year with brave joy — God’s. got. your. back.
[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 1, 2021
How To Actually Stop Procrastinating (Free Guide) & Do that Hard Thing in the New Year
Dear Lovely You,
who doesn’t want to do that hard thing in the New Year,
who doesn’t want to get on the treadmill,“You’re meant to do hard and holy things because they are the next thing — to get to the best thing.”
or go for a run,
or sort through the closets,
or tackle the garage, or the piles of paperwork,
or the project that’s hanging over you like a ton of bricks,
or do that big thing that feels like an impossible thing—
okay, yeah, boy, do I hear you.
It doesn’t matter a hill of sprouting beans if you’re 9 and stomping your feet or 16 and slamming doors or 40 and distracting on your phone:
Hard things just keep calling you because you’re meant to answer to higher and better things.
You’re meant to do hard and holy things because they are the next thing — to get to the best thing.
“Life is Pain — and you get to choose: either the Pain of Discipline or the Pain of Disappointment.”
You’re made to do hard and holy things — because there’s no other way to get to the happy and holy things.
You know how we wrote it up there on the chalkboard in the kitchen years ago, and we all memorized it? Well, it’s true, and it’s hard, but there’s a brave hope in it:
Life is Pain — and you get to choose: either the Pain of Discipline or the Pain of Disappointment.
Nothing happens without discipline. No music gets played without discipline. No games get won. No finish lines get crossed. No freedom gets tasted. And you want that.
Yeah, look, we had a kid who scored in the 99.7 percentile on the ACT, and that’s all well and good and all kinds of extraordinarily wonderful, but it’s like my Dad always said:
Brilliant doesn’t matter, if you can’t get out of bed.
Talent doesn’t mean a thing, if you let Fear be some terrorist that takes you hostage.
Potential doesn’t add up to anything, if you get addicted to perfectionism because perfectionism is slow death by self.
“Fire your perfectionism and your procrastination will quit too.”
Fire your perfectionism and your procrastination will quit too.
Because here’s the thing:
The Presenter
You’re the Presenter.
You’ve been given a gift — and you’re the person who is trying to be present to this present moment, and do the hard work of unwrapping your gift, your talent, your vision, your God-given dreams.
Presenters want to be present to life and their calling and the joy and the work — but they know that the path is painful.
The Perfectionist Terrorist
“Sometimes you have to accept that you’ll never be acceptable enough for some people. And whether you accept that as their issue or yours — is up to you.”
Presenters know that the path is painful — because behind ever corner lurks The Perfectionist Terrorist. The Perfectionist Terrorist is a liar to the nth degree — he tells you that if you’d just get it perfect enough, do it right enough, be good enough —- that you’ll be liked by everyone enough.
But the truth of it is? Sometimes you have to accept that you’ll never be acceptable enough for some people. And whether you accept that as their issue or yours — is up to you.
The Perfectionist Terrorist claims to have High Road Motives, claims to want to make everything turn out perfect, but his policing pressures you and poisons you and prosecutes you, until it all paralyzes you.
The Procrastinator
So The Procrastinator tries to protect you, who is really The Presenter, from The Perfectionist Terrorist.
The Procrastinator tries to intervenes with distractions, temptations, and interruptions — or just pushes you to pull out and give up.
Honestly, The Procrastinator is just trying to protect you from the bullying of The Perfectionist Terrorist.
The Perfect Love
So Who’s missing in this struggling, messy triangulation of The Presenter, the Perfectionist Terrorist, and The Procastinator? The compassionate Words of Perfect Love.
“You fire your perfectionism every time you let His Perfect Love ignite you.”
You just need Perfect Love.
There is His Perfect Love who kicks all your fear to the curb.
There is His Perfect Love who accepts you 100% before you perform even 1%, there is His Perfect Love who speaks Protection and Peace and promises the Power of the Holy Spirit — so you can fire perfectionism and procrastination will quit too.
You fire your perfectionism every time you let His Perfect Love ignite you.
When you rest in Perfect Love — discipline comes easily because you’re being a disciple of Perfect Love — you’re following Perfect Love.
And Perfect Love says you don’t to have show anyone up — you just have to show up.
Perfect Love says you don’t have to impress anyone — you just have to press on.
Perfect Love says when you mess up — He’ll pick you up… and when you can’t carry on, He’ll carry you.
“Perfect Love says when you mess up — He’ll pick you up… and when you can’t carry on, He’ll carry you.”
So dear Lovely Kid, Trying Friend, Tired You, who doesn’t want to practice that thing,
clean up that thing,
study for that thing,
sweat on that thing,
or do that big thing that feels like an impossible thing —
You can bravely do the next thing, because God’s got this thing.
Perfect Love terminates The Perfectionist Terrorist — which eliminates the Procrastinator — which liberates you, the Presenter…. to unwrap the gift of right now, your one life.
There’s snow down in the woods, all down the road this morning, the ice clinging at the edge of things —- and you can feel it if you turn your face toward the sun —-
all those hard things melting in the heat of a greater and perfect warmth.
This is The Year
to maybe purpose to —
* Embrace Imperfect.This is The Year to be held by the arms of grace, not to any standard of perfection.
* Engage Silence — not screens.This is The Year to engage silences regularly & retreat to the “back side of the wilderness.” Because when you do not need to be seen or heard — you can see and hear in desperately needed ways.
You find your true self when you look for your reflection in the eyes of souls — and not the glare of screens.
* Be still.Be small. Be Loved. Beloved.
Let yourself be loved anyway He wants to love you. God is always, always good & you are always, always, always. loved.
Be still …. & know.
* Believe in Him for impossABLE things.Believe in Him who makes the ridiculously impossible into the miraculously possible,
the unbelievable into the you-better-believe-it,
the never into the now.
Be the brave people who pray it bold in the space between the end of one year & the beginning of a New Year: BUT GOD.“Ours is the God who whispers: “With Me nothing, Nothing, NOTHING is impossible.”
Believe in Him for impossABLE things — because as long Emmanuel, God is with us & we are with God: nothing is impossible.Believe in Him for improbable, implausible, impractical, impossABLE things.
* Break idols — or they will break you.Break free, break out of ruts, break idols — or they will break you.
* Daily 3 for 10:These 3 for 10 everyday: Word In. Work Out. Work Plan.
It’s not what you do every now and then, but what you do everyday, that changes everything.Word in: Get into God’s Word for 10 minutes and let it get into you.
Work out: Work out. Even 10 minutes of moving is better than nothing.
Work plan: Write out the Work Plan — even just 3 things. And then just start: 10 minutes working the plan.
* Do Less. Pray More.More than your doing hands, God wants your bended knees.
* Let Go of the Outcome.Come completely committed to the process — and completely let go of the outcome.
In the middle of things seemingly not working out for us —- God is working out something in us.
* Learn Endurance.Do Hard & Holy Things. Break the idols of ease — or they will break you.
* Live Given.Because #LoveGives.
Because God so loved He gave.
Because Living is Giving.
* GiveIt
Forward
Today — 3 times a day.
Give It Forward Today & be the #GIFT — give an act of grace forward, 3 times a day. Be a #GIFTivst
It’s the Giftivists are the activists who believe that radical acts of generosity counter radical acts of inhumanity. #GIFTivst
* Grow Brave. Grow in GraceGrow Brave. Grow in Grace. Which is basically the same thing.
I kinda scratched the whole thing down — then slipped the SOULutions into a frame. Figuring that unless you can daily see your Life SOULutions…. the year will end up to be more of a dissolution of your life.
Maybe that’s one of the keys to turn:
Framable SOULutions — to frame up a new year, a new you.
Simply click here for these free tools plus a whole library of free printables too:
December 26, 2020
Only the Good Stuff: Multivitamins for Your Weekend [12.26.20]
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:
Esther Havens Mann
Esther Havens Mann
Esther Havens MannShe captures the beauty all around us in the most stunning ways
so he’s kinda the best: must see this!
Andrew McCarthy
Andrew McCarthy
Andrew McCarthy
Andrew McCarthyOver the last few days, Earth, Jupiter, and Saturn were almost perfectly aligned, a cosmic phenomenon that happens every 60 years as the orbits of each planet determines.
On Monday night, they were the closest since Galileo was alive. They were so close together they practically looked like one object to the naked eye. If you were following along with the live videos I was doing, you’d know that fate and the weather was not on my side that night. However, great conditions last night yielded this image, one that shows the placement of these planets, their moons, and their position against the background stars in detail.
thank you for sharing your stunning work with us, Andrew
You can find more of his work on his Instagram, as there is a behind the scenes video on IGTV
a story of resilience and hope
completely amazed: The Nature Photographer of The Year 2020 Just Announced Their Winning Pictures
the undeniable power of prayer…
Prayer is medicine… and distinguished surgeon Michael Haglund, known as “the praying doctor” discusses how he integrates prayer into his practice
People-Pleasing That Pleases God
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kinda really love this one…
found this interesting – A Biblical Timeline with World History gives you over 6000 years of history at a glance.
View this post on Instagram
December 23, 2020
Why the First Christmas Star in 800 Years? (And How To Be a Star in a Hard Year)
On the darkest day of a very dark year, Farm Girl finds this carved little star left out for her next to a steaming cup of coffee with her favorite chocolate treat and the girl flashes me this knowing grin.
The darkness cracks a bit. It only takes a small act of kindness to make the darkness shrink back.
A few hours later, rifling through a stack of envelopes out at the mailbox, I find a piece of paper, tucked in between a grocery flyer for bananas for 69 cents and a propane bill, with a word from the Lord scrawled across it smudged blue ink, “God is our refuge and strength, an ever-present help in trouble. Therefore we will not fear, though the earth give way, and the mountains fall into the sea….“ Looks like what I call the Light Bomber, she’s struck again the last few days before Christmas, slipping these love notes from the Word in our mailbox every couple of weeks all fall, like they’ll loan us strength as we stumble through a bruising year.
I leave the note by the sink, like it’s a blazing wick of hope in a hard year.
“In a world heavy with lament, we’re meant to be light.”
Small candles can cut through great darkness.
When I find the carved little wooden star later that afternoon next to a surprisingly sparkling clean oven, like a kind light’s leaving behind its calling card, I wink at Farmgirl acting all oblivious.
While Farmgirl helps me wrap up a package for a family ache-grieving the lost of their newborn, she’s quietly singing that hymn of hers like it’s the way she breathes, like the way we can keep praying, “Be thou my vision, O Lord of my heart…. Thou my best thought, by day or by night; Waking or sleeping, thy presence, my light.”
The little carved star’s laying there on the counter. In a world heavy with lament, we’re meant to be light.
More than needing some Secret Santa, this is the year we need some brazen light, that we surprise each other with these quiet acts of kindness and pass on the light, be the light, keep our eyes open for the light.
Fave Advent Resource: Star over the Manger
Fave Christmas Resource:
New Family Book, “The Light Gift”
Fave Advent Resource: 24 Candle Advent wreath
“Can I pass the star on now?! Pulllleeassse??” Baby Girl’s jumping up and down.
I kneel down for her to takes the little wooden star from my open palm. She holds it up to the window.
“You keep passing that little Christmas star on, one surprising little act of kindness at a time. And then come Christmas Eve — you can place your star right there at the manger — and all the kindnesses you did, all the kind light you passed on — it’s your gift to Jesus, being His kind of light in a dark world.”
Baby Girl smiles her toothless giddiness.
“The greater our sense of awe, the greater our sense of connection.”
And on the darkest night of the year, in the year of our Lord 2020, a year that’s clearly seen a war over truth, seen gaping cultural divides, seen deep divisions over racism, and seen more than 1.7 million gasp their last laboured breath before falling prey to a pandemic sweeping the globe, the two largest planets in the solar system align the closest that’s been seen from this pale blue dot of Earth, since 1226.
In 1226, medieval craftsman were toiling away at the rising of the cathedral of Notre Dame.
Somewhere over Notre Dame’s gargoyles, the two milky-white orbs met in the heavens, and the ancients paused in awe.
When the greatest planets meet in this great conjunction in the dark skies, ancients and moderns alike look up at the converging light, and ask with hushed wonder, “What is this great message from on high?”
“This is the year to look up at great stars and feel small with great awe. Because whenever we feel small with awe, we love each other large.”
When there’s a conjunction in the skies, human beings wonder about their partnership with the God of wonders.
It has always been true down through the ages:
The greater our sense of awe, the greater our sense of connection.
When we are in awe, we move beyond ourselves, into something greater than self.
Jupiter and Saturn connecting in the Christmas skies over all our upturned faces in a once in nearly thousand year moment moves us with awe to see how connected we are to all the other holy souls on this planet.
Maybe this is the very year of the last 800 years that most needs us to look up to the starry heavens to a blazing Christmas star drawing us all to focus less on self, and focus on how to be light for others.
“Awe is more than a feeling of being deeply moved, it’s a fuel that moves you to deeply love other human beings.”
This is the year to look up at great stars and feel small with great awe. Because whenever we feel small with awe, we love each other large.
“Awe is more than an emotion; [awe] is a way of understanding,” wrote Rabbi Abraham Heschel. And it’s true: Stand in awe and you understand how you can do nothing less than stretch your hands out to help your brothers and sisters stand.
Awe is more than a feeling of being deeply moved, it’s a fuel that moves you to deeply love other human beings.
When we live full of awe, we are moved to change what is awful in the world.
2018 ECPA award winner: The Wonder of The Greatest
From the curve of the earth in the hours before Christmas, the planets converge, close and blazing, and the stars, twinkling like fireflies finding each other in the dark, seem so close, and all of us, though feeling as distant and far apart as the stars this year, we can all be this constellation of kind, giving light to each other, connected and close.
“Like stars, we can be a light to each other and seem a lot closer than we are.”
I find a carved wooden star left atop a stack of folded laundry, a little carved star left on the pillow of a made bed. I leave a star on a plate of cookies, a star next to to a note about a foot massage. A friend drops off some needed meds in the mailbox, a neighbour leaves a box of oranges at the back door, we check in on some elderly folks, us all converging this time of year, in all the ways we can, to connect and blaze like the hope of Christmas.
Baby Girl draws me a picture of a night sky full of stars, leaves it as a surprise on my desk with a star.
“See? We’re making light everywhere, stars everywhere!” She’s beaming, pure light.
“In the year 2020, we can see that there’s always a way to be light in the dark.”
And I smile. Awed.
Like the stars, we can be a light to each other and seem a lot closer than we are.
And maybe that is what is brilliantly written into the stars, the skies, in the darkest night of the year, in one of the darkest year in living memory:
In the year 2020, we can clearly see that there’s always a way to be light in the dark.
All the stars all “declare the glory of God; the skies proclaim the work of His hands” (Ps. 19) and like those first shepherds, thousands of years ago, we look up to the glory of Christmas star and hear again this Christmas what the heavens still herald:
Be awed by God, and on earth, reach out with love to all men. Amen.
Begin a new Christmas tradition with our new family book:
The Light Gift
Only to discover that she’s been giving to Jesus Himself — her truest Lamb.
The Light Gift features beautiful, hand painted water color illustrations, delightful hidden details of a secret hedgehog tucked on each page, and a truly powerful life-transforming message that’s not just for the kids — but for the searching heart of us all.
Come let the light of Jesus blaze warm in this hard year.
This Advent, Stay in the Story that the rest of your year, your family, will need.
3 Award-Winning books for the Whole Family
The Greatest Gift (adult edition): Christian Retailing’s Best award, 2014
Unwrapping the Greatest Gift (Family Edition): Best Inspirational Book of the Year, CBA, 2016
The Wonder of the Greatest Gift: Best Devotional & Gift Book of the Year, CBA, 2019, (pop-up edition with your own 14 inch tree, 25 days of readings, 25 day advent flap calendar, hiding all 25 Biblically inspired ornaments! For any age)
Love leads us — and we have ourselves The Greatest little Christmas yet!
December 21, 2020
Why Hope IS Actually a Strategy & the Strategy You Need Most this Year
She’d dropped her voice when she told me on a Sunday in Advent that the kid had tried to kill himself.
That there had been texts, photos of a rope, proof of how it was going to be done.
And then this call to 911.
This was the part that she didn’t have words for.
Her hands flailed a bit, like she was drowning, like her flooding tears were drowning her, and she choked and flailed, reached for words to steady herself, as if she could just find words, she could drag herself up out of the depths.
“Hope in Christ is always the next thing, the right thing, and a sure thing.”
How do you make words stretch around an entire ocean of ache?
When your heart is detonated on an unassuming morning and this whole dam lets go and you’re swept away in this flood of pain?
She stood there in front of me like a woman underwater, like a woman underwater who kept talking, as if words were coming out, as if I could hear them, but there were no sounds. Only this death gurgle.
There was nothing that seemed right except to look right into her eyes and not look away. Death gurgles can’t be helped up to air by words, by mere, smothering words.
Death gurgles only gasp relief with the gift of presence, by someone taking you close, lifting you with the soundless warmth of themselves.
I reached for her hand. We found our legs and stood. We went for a walk. Yeah, no chocolate therapy. Neither one of us drink.
So you do what teetolaters and 40-something women who don’t need anymore calories can actually do – I asked her if she had time to step into the conservatory down by the river.
Fave Advent Resource: 24 Candle Advent wreath
The butterfly conservatory on a Sunday in Advent.
A Sunday in Advent when everywhere there is this lighting of Hope candles, Peace candles, Joy candles. When hope rattled more like a death gurgle in her and the boy was somewhere in the bowels of a pyschiatric ward where they try to wrench you from ropes and bed sheets and your own strangling demons.
Maybe if she saw the lighting and flying of butterfly wings, maybe she could believe in things unseen?
“Hope is only for the revolutionaries because Hope dares to says this way should not be — but this way can turn around.”
I held the conservatory’s door open for her.
It’s what hit you when you first stepped into the glass dome — the lightness of the air in here. Here, for a moment, she could breathe here. The waterfall kept murmuring of things coming from somewhere else. Wings, everywhere wings, lighting and lifting, a thousand wings.
She did put one foot in front of the other. This can be biggest brave.
And what she was feeling were actual facts — the boy had been pummelled. People who should have loved him had abused him of all dignity. Places that should have carried him had mercilessly, mockingly crushed him. Promises that should have helped him up had laughed loud and kicked him in the gut. How busted up can you be before your only future is to bust up everyone else?
How do you sand down the razor shards of a shattered heart and piece them together enough so they don’t go around blithely slashing everyone else? How do you hope unlikely things because you love someone to death?
We stood for a long time and stared at the chrysalises.
Thin sheens hung by threads. It didn’t seem possible – that out of silken threads, wings unfolded wet. But we watched it happen.
There were no words. Simply witnessing. We sat at the waterfall. We waited.
“A blue one….” she said it quiet.
“I need just one photo of a blue morpho butterfly, and then we really have to go.” Yes, the morpho butterfly — whose very name means changed. We all need to believe that things can change.
So we tried.
“Hope is not an abstract concept. Hope is not a mirage. Hope is what you do.”
Like wanna-be hunters on some scam safari, wielding cameras for just one shot, we slunk up quiet to this bloom with its mouth opened like a candy bowl of tempting nectar, we snuck behind that lily and this leaf, and the whole farce was good comic relief, us looking more like bad detectives in a cheap 1970’s rerun. Everywhere morpho butterflies slapped shut their inner blue wings, stared back steely at us with their drab outer brown wings.
Please, Lord – just give her one open spread of blue wings.
For crying prayers out loud, just a bit of hope to take out of here.
We waited.
We did what the wisest have always done: Waited and Hoped. And the morpho butterfly just outwaited us.
Flitted blue now and then, always a flash on the periphery, glanced us with possibility, but wherever we spun, it locked us out with a determined bland brown.
“Hope is a strategy. Hope is actually the only strategy you have to have to keep living. Hope is your strategy, your sanity, your vitality and your reality.”
We’re standing there with our waiting cameras and our frames of brown, without a hint of blue — and I look over at my friend and you can read it like a headline, her flat resignation.
Like she’s struggling to breathe again.
A walk through a butterfly conservatory that was supposed to be this metaphor of hope — is fast turning into this mockery of hope.
Sometimes believing in a miracle feels like living in a mirage. You can feel like a fool, walking around with your pitcher. Waiting for a picture.
Really, God? Really?
“My battery is about dead…” She looks down at her camera. She doesn’t have to tell me that there’s a lot more deadened than that. “Let’s go.”
I turn my camera off, nod. What else do you say to a woman who just can’t stand the teasing evasiveness of hope mocking her one moment longer?
So I duck under some leaves across the conservatory walkway and a conservatory park ranger brushes past me and I look for the door – and the park ranger whispers: S.T.O.P.
“One of the morphos has landed on you. Right on you.”
“Your disappointment is our appointment with Hope — trusting that He who is Hope, who is the Only Way, is always making a way.”
I don’t move. I turn slow to look for his stubborn outer brown wings.
“And he’s wide open blue.” The park ranger kneels. “You don’t understand — they don’t do this. They’re the ones that don’t land on people. And they about never rest in their wide open blue.”
My friend nods, she knows, mouth wide open, raising her camera, she knows.
She clicks, snaps, shoots, takes more. More people stop, take more photos. The park ranger asks for my camera, takes a few more. “You don’t understand,” he whispers… “it’s about impossible to get photos of them with their wings in their open blue.”
I nod – whisper it over the indigo wings open there on my shoulder: “And then sometimes — the impossible unfolds into the possible.”
I look over at my friend… who is brimming. Spilling.
Tears are never a sign of weakness. Tears are always the sign of an open heart.
And I mouth it to her, like it’s more certain without any sound, like I don’t want it to slip away from either one of us:
“HOPE.”
It’s a Sunday in Advent. Hope candles are lit everywhere. God is giving you Hope.
Hope — for you.
For you with the kid that seems to have no way through, for you with the heart beaten right down, for you with so much black in front of you that you can’t find the light, for you who can’t see tomorrow being any glint bit better than today —
Hope lights on you and Hope’s just up ahead nodding that it’s going to be okay — you will be okay.
My friend, she’s nodding at me. Nodding at this wide open blue butterfly on my shoulder. And her face is right wet, an ocean of ache running like a waterfall of hope now, right off the edge of her chin, and she chokes it out — “How could we ever not believe? How can we ever not hope in impossible things now?”
The butterfly refuses to close its wings — refuses to do anything but remain open.
And I nod yes, yes because it’s a paradox: the way to hold fast to what you’re hoping for, is to hold that Hope with openness.
With openness, hold fast to that Hope — for if the Hope ebbs away, you become a broken wing who cannot fly.
No matter how we’re hurting — it’s only when we lose hope that the real horror happens.
She’s shoulder wracked, crying, heaving with the relief of it and I pull her close and pray like we’ve been touched, like He’s come near this Advent and Hope candles blazing everywhere unwavering and there’s a boy who can believe — and live — and there’s a weary woman who’s rising and there’s Christ who comes to give us the gift every one wants more than anything — a future and a hope.
“25 minutes.” She whispers. “That morph butterfly has sat on your shoulder for almost 25 minutes.”
And I nod. Of course.
The very least you can do with your life is welcome in Hope. And He has a name.
When He who is Hope Himself moves right into you, Hope is an act that makes you an activist, and hope is what you do.
“When He who is Hope Himself moves right into you, Hope is an act that makes you an activist, and hope is what you do.”
So when we are crushed with crises and catastrophes, when our dreams disappear like an evaporating fog and shame comes in like a hurricane that flattens you right to the ground, when everything you’ve wanted to build feels busted and broke, He who is Hope in us, rises in us to give us the vision of a better way, because He who is Hope is Himself the Way.
Your tears? Are streams of hope — running toward a better way.
And your heartbreaks? Are our aches of hope — beating hard for a better way.
And your disappointment? Is our appointment with Hope — trusting that He who is Hope, who is the Only Way, is always making a way.
Hope is more than a candle, more than one fragile flickering flame in the dark.
Hope is actually your every brave breath, the air filling your lungs every single moment, because you can live maybe 21 days without food, 11 days without sleeping, 7 days without water, 3 minutes without air — but you can NOT keep on living without HOPE.
When things are hard and they tell you to do the next thing — and you have no idea what the next thing is?
Hope in Christ is always the next thing,
the right thing, a
nd a sure thing.
Hope is not an abstract concept.
Hope is not a mirage.
Hope is what you do.
Hope is only for the revolutionaries because Hope dares to says this way should not be — but this way can turn around.
The movers and shakers and busters and hustlers , they will tell you that Hope is not a strategy, as if Hope is pie in the sky, as if Hope is some fuzzy feeling, some cheap, fake substitute, as if the best tactic for life is a day planner, when the truth is:
Hope is the only strategy you have to have to keep living. Hope is your strategy, your sanity, your vitality and your reality.
When you don’t know what to do, Hope in Christ is always what you do.
“When you don’t know what to do, Hope is always what you do.”
The morpho butterfly rests with these open wings on me.
And we rest with these open hands in Him.
And we walk on through, the winged thing never leaving, never leaving, never closing, and it’s a bit like what Dickinson said, but different, and it all still clings to me —
“Hope is the thing with wings
That lands at the end of you
And shows you how to open to possibilities
So you never close again.”
Come let Jesus touch your wounds & heal your hurt with His Love.
This Advent, Stay in the Story that the rest of your year, your family, will need.
3 Award-Winning books for the Whole Family
The Greatest Gift (adult edition): Christian Retailing’s Best award, 2014
Unwrapping the Greatest Gift (Family Edition): Best Inspirational Book of the Year, CBA, 2016
The Wonder of the Greatest Gift: Best Devotional & Gift Book of the Year, CBA, 2019, (pop-up edition with your own 14 inch tree, 25 days of readings, 25 day advent flap calendar, hiding all 25 Biblically inspired ornaments! For any age)
Love leads us — and we have ourselves The Greatest little Christmas yet!
December 19, 2020
Only the Good Stuff: Multivitamins for Your Weekend [12.19.20]
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:
Meg Loeks 
Meg Loeks 
Meg Loeks 
Meg Loeks 
Meg Loeks Maybe the best way to begin this weekend before Christmas? Sit with her photos right here… breathtakingly beautiful every time
this right here: O come, O come, Emmanuel
Christianity Today’s 2021 Book Awards
People of the Book, know we were formed by the Word, and the words we read are soul formational…adding more of these rich ones to my stacks…
on repeat here: Agnus Dei / King of Kings at The Grove, featuring Brooke Ligertwood, Jenn Johnson, & Chidima Ubah
Amazing: Rare ‘Christmas Star’ will appear in the skies this month for the first time in 800 years!
“Humans”: Connecting with the world one photo at a time
“The power found in sharing our struggles is sustaining, if we’ll just give it a try.”
always one to revisit again and again
in awe of this fascinating collection! Here Are The 25 Winners of a recent Northern Lights Photo Contest
always love to sit with this one…
Send a free soundtrack of love to isolated loved ones in hospital, hospice, or care home
When visiting is restricted and your loved one is too weak to Facetime or talk on the phone, you can still reach them with the sound of your voice. Sound of Your Love is a new service that lets family and friends leave voice messages for isolated loved ones, which can be played back to them on a loop by a care worker from any phone. A soundtrack of love, right in their ear! yes, yes, yes!
Sign up for a FREE Sound of Your Love account over the holidays and let your loved one know they’re not alone.
must come read more of this story!
“I don’t think I’ve done anything phenomenal…it’s something that any human being should do. Just be kind.”
just so beautiful… Andrea & Virginia Bocelli singing ‘Hallelujah’
a Christmas to never ever forget — best when it’s shared with a friend
On July 11, 1926, James Allan Francis – a pastor and author – delivered a sermon to the Baptist Young People’s Union in Los Angeles. His stirring message ended with an unforgettable description of the life of Jesus. Francis’s words soon took on a life of their own. They were published and circulated widely, and today, nearly a century later, the impact of this short essay still resounds throughout the world.
This short film adaptation of ONE SOLITARY LIFE
Thank you, The John 10:10 Project
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brilliant – How do you know your calling?
Nona Jones is a thoughtful voice to lean in and listen to
This Video of Children Playing “O Holy Night” is Exactly What You Need Today
Beyond grateful for the life saving work of Compassion International
You are trying so hard. And yeah, I get why you want to set the to-do list out front & center today. Or that huge problem that has to be overcome. But let’s just exhale slow and simply set up the day with this gentle soul-talk:
“I will focus on Jesus today, just Jesus. The secret of joy is always matter of focus: a resolute focus on the Father, not on the fears. And when I feel like I can’t touch bottom is when I touch the depths of God. If He gave His Son to save me, will He not give me everything I need? I will Behold Him everywhere today – and be held.”
Simply set your focus on the Lord — He’s got you today & you. can’t. be. shaken… ~ excerpt from The Greatest Gift
[ Want to preach Gospel to yourself? Free Stress-Free Holiday Sticky Notes for Your Soul, right here: No Stress Holiday Manifesto. Print this set of 25 Note Cards, one for each day in December.]
THIS! May we always remember every word of this one…
Explore God’s heart for His Word and for those still living without it. This 3-day devotional will grow a deeper desire for God’s Word in your own life as well as passion to end Bible poverty.
always humbled by the tireless work of Seed Company
beautiful…had to share
just so good: How God REALLY Sees You
yes, yes, yes: Messiah
one to listen to again and again…
yes, yes: Jesus really loves you
grateful for everything you’re doing, Spread Truth, truly…
Hard family stuff at Christmas? Yep, right there with you. Kinda heartbroken over some unspoken broken? Yeah, that. Where in the world is a bit of the real Christmas Spirit? Yep.
How a Charlie Brown Christmas like this is just for us:
How to Have Yourself a Little Charlie Brown Christmas (About Fears, Heartbreak & Hard Divisiveness at Christmas)
let’s do this! let’s just give a little love
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.
The Reason for Christmas Day
…on the cold nights here, when I feel like I failed hard, when I look around at all that didn’t get done and all that still needs to be done, when I feel too far behind that I can catch up now & everyone else has moved on, and it feels like I’ve missed the boat that everyone else got on, when I wish I had done a whole lot more right and a whole lot less wrong, on the nights when it feels like time is running through my fingers like water, and I can’t seem to hold on to anything before it’s gone—
On these kind of nights? I sit close to the heat of the hearth and the warmth of the flame — and I exhale slow & believe:
“Just like the cold can move you closer toward the fire, hard things can move you closer toward God.”
So, even now, all is well. All is okay. All is grace.
When it’s all said and done, all will be right — and if all isn’t right yet, then all isn’t done yet.
So let it all draw you nearer to God…
He’s drawn to you especially now — and with all these broken pieces, He’s drawing a masterpiece that will make someday make your heart burst into its own flame of praise.
~ from TheGreatestGift
[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.
December 16, 2020
How to Have Yourself a Little Charlie Brown Christmas (About Fears, Heartbreak & Hard Divisiveness at Christmas)
There’s a bunch of kids here, sloshy with hot-chocolate, who just keep playing a Charlie Brown Christmas.
And yeah, I’m not ashamed — so what if it took me a few takes? Because when I finally saw it, I was entirely taken:
Only when Linus retells the Christmas story and repeats what the angel announces, “Fear not!” — does Linus drop his blanket for the first time.
Unwrapping the Greatest Gift (Family Edition): Best Inspirational Book of the Year, CBA, 2016
The Wonder of the Greatest Gift: Best Devotional & Gift Book of the Year, CBA, 2019
And I choke it back and swig down more of my frothy, chocolatey mug.
The first message of Christmas is ‘fear not.’
“The first message of Christmas is ‘fear not.'”
The birth of Jesus — banishes our fears.
Maybe the Christmas Spirit is about letting go of our security blankets.
Maybe the Christmas Spirit is letting go of the security of masquerading perfection — to be secure in a perfect Messiah who saves us from our mess.
Because the Spirit of Christmas releases us from the fear of scarcity — and gives us the security of abundance.
Moves us from the fear of not enough grace, not enough means, not enough us —- to the security of more than enough to give — because we’ve been given Him.
“We talk glibly of the “Christmas spirit,” rarely meaning more by this than sentimental jollity on a family basis. But . . . [the Christmas Spirit] ought to mean the reproducing in human lives of the temper of Him who for our sakes became poor at the first Christmas,” writes the fine man of the Old Book, J.I. Packer.
“It is our shame and disgrace today that so many Christians… go through this world in the spirit of the priest and the Levite in our Lord’s parable, seeing human needs all around them, but averting their eyes and passing by on the other side. That is not the Christmas spirit…
For the Christmas spirit is the spirit of those who, like their Master, live their whole lives on the principle of making themselves poor––spending and being spent––to enrich their fellow humans, giving time, trouble, care and concern, to do good to others — and not just their own friends —– in whatever way there seems need.” J.I. Packer
“The Christmas Spirit is about having the same spirit of Christ.”
The Christmas Spirit is about having the same spirit of Christ.
‘For God so loved the world — He gave.’ Love lives given.
The Christmas Spirit isn’t about getting gifts — as much getting to be the Gift.
Be the Gift of grace, of peace, of hope, of reconciliation.
Maybe the Christmas Spirit is letting go of the security of being right, the security of being distant, the security of holding certain people at arm’s length.
Once, on a Christmas evening, under this comforting blanket of stars poking through the dark, I threw open the door of our beat-up Ford and I took that first step toward a door that had been long shut, and it felt terrifying and terribly freeing, and maybe we only win our battles when we lose our need to be right.
I hadn’t been there in years. I have no idea how long it had been since her and I had talked with any kind of warmth.
The Christmas Spirit is about having the same spirit of Christ. Love lives given.
Every slow step toward her door, the snow crunched, like bitterly cold things that have long stung, could be crushed, giving way to amazing grace.
I’m telling you —
Sometimes you want to turn your back when a relationship gets hard — but you want to face freedom more.
“The spirit of Christmas — is about not having a spirit of fear.”
Sometimes you want to continue your cold war — but you want to be part of peace on earth and in your heart more.
Sometimes every step toward peace with someone — is a journey of a million heartaches within you.
But if He can take a journey of a million light years to meet us in the stench of our manger mires — to make peace with us —-we can take one step after another and make peace across the aisle, the street, the table.
The spirit of Christmas — is about not having a spirit of fear.
I knocked kinda feeble on her door, willing the other hand holding a gift for her not to stiffen so tense, and she opened that door and sometimes when we break into a smile, some of the pain breaks, and we breathe.
Angels still speak — and to us:
Do not fear — even here.
You can let go of the security blankets — He who comes, makes you secure.
“You can let go of the security blankets — He who comes, makes you secure.”
I reached out my arms — and she reached out hers.
And it can happen: That Big Dipper tips over all of us and pours out the Christmas Spirit, and our spirits can come home for Christmas.
She handed me a plate of her pecan pie and we talked by the tree and it wasn’t Hallmark perfect but it was perfectly honest and imperfectly real and all tasted like a slice of heaven to me and I could feel it:
Maybe the Christmas Spirit is letting go — to let the Spirit move.
Maybe the Christmas Spirit — is about letting the Spirit heal you.
Maybe the Christmas Spirit —- means: Reconcile for Christmas.
The Wonder of the Greatest Gift: Best Devotional & Gift Book of the Year, CBA, 2019
The Greatest Gift (adult edition): Christian Retailing’s Best award, 2014
Fave Advent Resource: 24 Candle Advent wreath
I exhaled when I wrote it on a piece of paper here, taped it up over the little Christmas tree right there at the sink, and it felt like a kind of healing:
“Let go of Plan A — Go with ‘Plan Be.'”
Let go of Plan A — Go with ‘Plan Be.’
Fear not! Even now, it’s okay to let go of the security blankets — and go with “Plan Be.”
Plan Be — lets this Christmas just be about being, and it lets other people just be.
When you let other people just be — and don’t try change even one of their heart beats — you become a safe place for your people. The Spirit of Christmas is about letting His Spirit do the changing — in all the people and us.
Simply asking how someone’s heart really is — is the gift every heart really wants most.
Plan Be this Christmas — chooses to simply Be Present.
Be present to the moment as it is, to people as they are, to God with us now, Emmanuel.
“ Plan Be this Christmas — chooses to simply Be Present .”
Be present — and fear not. This is the gift you can have any moment.
Be present to broken hearts — because this is how you give your heart to Jesus.
The kids and I wrap up presents for those who live across fences, across aisles, across the world. The Christmas spirit only asks you to Be Present. Give yourself the gift of God.
Steam rises from hot chocolate mugs before the fire.
Live Plan Be: Be Present — Be the Gift.
We could all come home to each other for Christmas in all kinds of creative ways.
Heard the weather forecast this morning say they’re calling for a white Christmas.
Let it be, let it be, let it be.
What more could any of us want than a little Charlie Brown Christmas of letting go?
To let God come.
Come let Jesus touch your wounds & heal your hurt with His Peace.
This Advent, Stay in the Story that the rest of your year, your family, will need.
3 Award-Winning books for the Whole Family
The Greatest Gift (adult edition): Christian Retailing’s Best award, 2014
Unwrapping the Greatest Gift (Family Edition): Best Inspirational Book of the Year, CBA, 2016
The Wonder of the Greatest Gift: Best Devotional & Gift Book of the Year, CBA, 2019, (pop-up edition with your own 14 inch tree, 25 days of readings, 25 day advent flap calendar, hiding all 25 Biblically inspired ornaments! For any age)
Peace leads us — and we have ourselves The Greatest little Christmas yet!
December 14, 2020
What 2020 Needs: The Beatitudes Project
I was introduced to Stu G at The Justice Conference in Chicago a few years back. If you’ve been anywhere near the global church in the last two and a half decades, you will have sung his songs and heard his music, but that day as he placed a book and CD in my hands, I sensed there was something different about this man, a passion for the life and words of Jesus to be lived out in our chaotic and divided time. Instead of talking about his own songs, he talked about songs from men and women he had befriended in his travels. Instead of telling his own stories, he told the stories of people who’d been abused, forgotten, marginalized. Stu is a man who uses his voice to lift people up, who is using his talent to draw out the talent of others, who is using his influence to tell a story of hope. My prayers for this hurting world resonate deeply with Stu’s heart and vision to help us live our stories through the lens of The Beatitudes. It’s an absolute grace to welcome Stu to the farm’s front porch today…
How on earth are you doing?
How are you inside this ache, lack, and longing called 2020?
You’ve made it to another day, another week, and that’s worth celebrating!
“We want to make a change, but we don’t know where to start.”
It breaks your heart, though, doesn’t it?
What are we supposed to do with all the noise? All the division, brokenness, anger, hatred, racism, protests, conspiracies, and election news that jumps from our screens to our brains every day?
If you’re like me, then it isn’t easy to know how to respond, so often, I don’t know what to say or if I should say anything at all.
So many are hungry and thirsty for love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.
But the Spirit’s fruit appears to be missing in action in 2020.
We want to make a change, but we don’t know where to start.
If you have a few minutes to spare, I’d love to offer some hope in the chaos of this life.
The Beatitude art prints are part of the eCourse, available to download on your device.
You see, this feels a bit familiar to me and reminds me of a time when it felt like the world stopped turning. At that moment, I felt like I’d reached the end of my rope, but God opened my eyes to see some truth I’d never seen before.
“You’re blessed at the end of your rope.” ~The Beatitudes, MSG
It was 2009, and the year that a huge part of my life was over.
I’d spent the previous 16 years with a band of brothers called Delirious? (yes, with a question mark). We started life writing songs and playing music at a youth worship event on the south coast of England with 70 kids. We went on to play in stadiums around the world. We took our blend of rock and pop-infused worship music to some unlikely places: The UK pop charts, Glastonbury Festival, a stadium tour supporting Bon Jovi, to name a few.
It was more than a band and music. It was a movement of history makers where the folks who came to our concerts, who bought our records, and sang our songs, felt like they were in the band themselves.
All that purpose, unity of vision, and how we made our living came to an end in 2009. I got as much help and advice as I could. I wanted to do all I could to help us “end well.”
“I turned my eyes and reliance away from God, and I tried to control everything myself.”
Indeed, all seemed well on the outside, but it turned out I was not a good listener, and on the inside, I was sinking fast and didn’t know what to do. I isolated myself, which is what grief does.
I turned my eyes and reliance away from God, and I tried to control everything myself.
What followed was a tough couple of years that we (my wife and girls) made it through but not without some pain and bad decisions on my part.
The very next year, my family and I moved from England to Nashville, Tennessee. It felt like the right next step to continue in music and to begin to thrive again as a family.
Transition is a funny thing. Endings need grieving, and beginnings need celebrating.
“Endings need grieving, and beginnings need celebrating.”
But what do you do in that bit in between—you know, the bit where you feel a bit lost and feel like everything’s out of control?
I needed to change my behavior, get my vision, and focus back on God, and eventually, it hit me like a train. There I was in my self-induced-bottom-of-life-moment, and I had this sense that God was not far away. Indeed the Spirit of Jesus had been with me all along because that’s what Jesus does. He takes on the flesh and suffering of the world and joins us inside it.
I began to read The Beatitudes.
“Blessed are the poor in spirit for theirs is the Kingdom of Heaven.”
How can that be? What are you on about Jesus? The Message version says, “You’re blessed at the end of your rope.”
Jesus, via Eugene Peterson, had my attention.
I read on:
“Blessed are those who mourn for they shall be comforted.”
“We want certainty and answers, a way out of our mess, but what we are offered is Divine Presence. God is on our side.”
“Blessed are the Meek for they shall inherit the earth.”
“Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness and justice for they shall be satisfied.”
I was shocked at how upside down, counter-intuitive, and provocative, these ancient announcements are.
Surely the crushed in spirit and those who mourn aren’t blessed, are they? What about those without power or who are unseen? Or those who lack justice and ache for it, surely they aren’t blessed?
That’s when I began to realize that I had the idea of blessing all wrong.
I discovered that the blessing in these announcements is Presence. When life doesn’t follow our instructions, and we get knocked off track. When all gets flipped upside down, and we find ourselves at the end of our rope or the bottom of life. We want certainty and answers, a way out of our mess, but what we are offered is Divine Presence. God is on our side.
Seeing blessing this way changes everything. Perhaps we’ve grown up asking for nice things and seeing these as blessings, you know, like when we need a parking space and one “miraculously” appears (I’m laughing here).
But Jesus wants us to know what God is already blessing with His Presence and invites us to push alongside these things.
The first four “poor” Beatitudes are about Grace. The Presence of God for those at the bottom of life.
The second half or “help” Beatitudes are about the invitation to live a different way.
“Blessed are the merciful for they shall be shown Mercy.”
“Blessed are the pure in heart for they shall see God.”
“Blessed are the peacemakers for they shall be called children of God.”
“Our objective is to see what life could look like if we live through The Beatitudes’ lens.”
“Blessed are those who are persecuted because of righteousness, and justice for theirs is the Kingdom of Heaven.”
There is so much to unpack here. What does Mercy look like in the twenty-first century during a pandemic? What is a pure heart? Is this about moral purity, or is it about a divided heart? What is a peacemaker? And how do we find peace within ourselves as well as in our contested spaces?
We know that persecution happens in other countries, but what does this “persecution announcement” mean to someone like me in a town with 900 churches? I’m not going to be persecuted for my faith.
I have a curious and artistic mind, and I began to create. Songs, writings, prayers, meditations…
“Together we can see what the View From Here looks like—a world with more compassion and kindness, where engagement is greater than tolerance.”
I sought out a community of people who somehow embody The Beatitudes, and I wanted to find a way to tell their stories. The Beatitudes Project was born.
The Beatitudes Project is an album of songs, a documentary film, a book called Words From The Hill, painted art, poetry, a podcast, and a study for groups and individuals wrapped in an easy to access online eCourse.
Our objective is to see what life could look like if we live through The Beatitudes’ lens.
Are you overwhelmed by all that’s happening in the world?
You are not alone.
Together we can see what the View From Here looks like—a world with more compassion and kindness, where engagement is greater than tolerance.
Where the poor find help, the grieving find comfort, the meek acknowledged, those who ache for justice find justice.
A world where Mercy flows and extends in every direction, hearts become whole, and peace is the norm.
Amen.
Check this out: The Beatitudes Project is an album of songs, a documentary film, a book called Words From The Hill, painted art, poetry, a podcast, and a study for groups and individuals wrapped in an easy to access online eCourse.
In The Beatitudes Project eCourse, they begin by learning how to listen. Then we hear stories from the poor in India and “the poor” on Wall Street. Stories from refugees and those we see as “other.” Stories of Mercy from a woman who spent 27 years on death row and survivors of prostitution, addiction, and trafficking along with a song about Mercy from Amy Grant. We went to The Holy Land to learn from Israeli and Palestinian Peacemakers. We learn from some Holy Troublemakers about swimming upstream against the dominant powers in the world. There are many other stories, and you’ll see some folks you will recognize who so generously came alongside and collaborated with me both in story and songs.
Teachers, artists, musicians, poets, and activists, such as; Hillsong United, Shane Claiborne, John Mark Mcmillan, Becca Stevens, Matt Maher, Audrey Assad, Amanda Cook, Jeremy Courtney, Amy Grant, Michael W. Smith, Martin Smith, Propaganda, Terrian Bass, and All Sons and Daughters to name a few. Many more incredible people contributed to this project.
Here’s your invitation to join Stu on the Mount of The Beatitudes. He encourages you to look at The Beatitudes of Jesus in Matthew, Chapter 5, and listen to Jesus’ words with fresh ears. Stu’s prayer is that you would hear the invitation to a different way of being in the world and that these words of Jesus will become your anthem of hope.
Please visit TheBeatitudesProject.com and see all the resources they have in the eCourse. In regards to the beautiful Beatitude art prints in this post – they are in integral part of the project, but not available for purchase. The prints are part of the eCourse, available to download on your device.
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