Ann Voskamp's Blog, page 76
August 3, 2020
Why now is the best time to Stop Seeking Perfection
Megan Fate Marshman is determined to use her breathe to spread joy, share truth, and celebrate others. She loves finding God everywhere and sharing what she’s found. If you’ve not had the chance to be in a room where she’s speaking or read a book she’s written, change that in a hurry. And bring a seatbelt. She’s authentic, she’s compelling, and she doesn’t make everything about her. It’s a grace to welcome Megan to the farm’s front porch today…
guest post by Megan Fate Marshman
“Hi, my name is Jessica. Are you calling to give a compliment or a complaint?”
“I’d like to compliment one of your drivers,” my husband responded.
There was a long pause. “I’m sorry, I think I may have misheard you. Did you say you’re calling to give a compliment?”
“Yes, you heard me correctly. I’d love to compliment one of your truck drivers. I’ve been driving behind him and noticed a “How’s-My-Driving?” sign on his truck along with this 1–800 number to call to give feedback, so I’ve spent the past few minutes mentally noting everything he was doing right.”
She couldn’t believe it. She immediately got a case of the giggles. After ten years on the job receiving eight hours a day of back-to-back complaints about her drivers, this call was the very first compliment she had ever received.
In her amusement she urged him, “Please go on . . .”
He continued. “He was doing a fantastic job staying in between the lines.”
She burst into laughter. “Please tell me more, sir. What else did he do right?”
My husband managed to be creative while still remaining truthful. “Your driver maintained an adequate distance between his vehicle and the vehicle in front of him. Your driver also made multiple lane changes and used his turn indicator every . . . single . . . time.” He was on a roll.
Screaming with laughter, she requested, “Please say that lane change one again!”
Before my husband continued, we overheard her boasting to her coworkers in nearby cubicles. “Hey, everyone, you’ll never guess what I have on the line . . . a compliment!” She must’ve put us on speaker because we could hear the enjoyment from the other coworkers as we continued. She thanked us, and we hung up laughing, eyes peeled for any other excellent truck drivers on the road.
Since that day, my husband and I have aimed to habitually find the good in others.
“I have aimed to habitually find the good in others.“
Since witnessing my husband’s pastime of complimenting truck drivers, I’ve begun to understand the power of seeking to find the good in others, too. And what is the very best “good” we can find in someone? God’s image, of course.
My husband didn’t mention God by name, but he did choose to find His image. He chose to respond to people in a way that illuminates the image of God in them. He chose to see the good, he chose to see the right, he chose to see God’s image.
If you are on the lookout for things to complain about, you will absolutely find them. And you won’t just find them, you’ll magnify them. If you are looking for the downsides to yourself and your experiences, you will absolutely find them.
But we can find God everywhere instead. We can find Him in the unlikeliest of places—we can even find Him in people who haven’t found Him yet. It’s a promise. Jeremiah 29:13 God says, “You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart.”
Jeremiah 29:13 is one of the greatest evangelistic texts in the Old Testament. It defines an appropriate approach to God and also presents an astounding truth: God is findable.
When you seek to find God, you’ll find who you’re looking for. What a beautiful promise: We must take God at His Word and not add to His equation. Seek | God = Find | God! God is both the path and the goal.
What we seek in others is important because it dictates what we find. If we’re not careful, we’ll fall into the all-too-familiar-trap of merely finding and focusing on what people do wrong.
If we seek perfection in our family or friends, we’ll find all the ways they fall short.
“What our community needs is not a perfect standard but people who seek to find Christ in others.“
But there’s another way. Rather than falling prey to human nature by seeking perfection, we can instead seek to find the person they’re becoming.
What our community needs is not a perfect standard but people who seek to find Christ in others. If we want to see the people around us growing and becoming people who find the best in others, we need to seek and point out the best we find in them.
Luckily, we’re not without a model ourselves. Jesus saw who people were becoming before they had arrived. From choosing unqualified disciples, to sharing meals with sinners, to the thief He forgave on the cross, Jesus found opportune moments to see who people were becoming.
While we don’t have Jesus’s ability to see the future, we can take advantage of the present by seeking and finding the best in our friends and family. We can seek and point out the seemingly small, yet significant moments where they get things right.
“In seeking to find the good, what others are doing right, we model for them a lifestyle that is counter-cultural.“
Not only does it impact them in that moment, it will impact their future as well. In seeking to find the good, what others are doing right, we model for them a lifestyle that is counter-cultural.
How do I know? Because it took 10 years for Jessica to receive a compliment.
Will you join me in seeking to find God’s image in others a conscious habit?
Let me tell you, we have to be intentional to do so.
If we’re not intentional, we’ll drift toward a critical life—critiquing terrible drivers and complaining about frustrating people.
Thankfully, intentionally seeking and finding the good in others has become one of my greatest delights—and, as a result, people get to see the good in me.
Megan Fate Marshman loves God and His church. She is a teaching pastor at Willow Creek Community Church, speaks to audiences internationally, leads the women’s ministry at Arbor Road Church, and serves as director of women’s ministries at Hume Lake Christian Camps. She recently released her newest book Meant for Good and Bible study curriculum. She currently lives in southern California with her family.
With authenticity and revelatory insights into the character of God, Megan shares an engaging and fresh look at the core themes within the well-loved scripture of Jeremiah 29:11-14. Through winsome and inspiring stories, Meant for Good will show you how to trust God in your daily life and, more importantly, how to trust God’s definition of good above your own.
God has a good plan for you—a plan to give you hope and a future. Are you ready to believe it? Meant for Good is a power-packed, biblical look at the truth that you really can trust God’s plan for your life–no matter what your life looks like right now.
[ Our humble thanks to Zondervan for their partnership in today’s devotion ]
August 1, 2020
Only the Good Stuff: Multivitamins for Your Weekend [08.01.20]
This weekend? Feels like we are walking into new hope, new change, new possibility!
Some real hope in these days — for us all to the real, sustained, needed work & more of the real Kingdom of God to come into a hurting world. Links & stories this week 100% guaranteed to make you smile a mile wide & believe like crazy in a Good God redeeming everything — and that there’s love everywhere & for ((you))!
Serving up only the Good Stuff for you & your people right here:
Ginny Sheller
Ginny Sheller
Ginny Sheller
Kelvin Hudsonwhat this photographer caught on camera? awe-inspiring…
oh my heart…
who can we go surprise today?!?
Emily Polis Gibson
Emily Polis Gibson
Emily Polis Gibsona thousand colors and many more… stunning
never, ever give up… you can do it!
Nikolai Alexiev: Instagram / Facebook
Nikolai Alexiev: Instagram / Facebook
Nikolai Alexiev: Instagram / Facebookbecause some photos around our world cause you to stop and ponder
amazed: a world first
French site where Vincent Van Gogh created his last painting may have been revealed
The site was hidden in plain view for years next to a rural lane near Paris
If you’ve felt smothered in the ‘grey’ here’s a splash of sunshine for your day:
there WILL be blue skies coming soon!
View this post on InstagramA post shared by Good Good Good (@goodgoodgoodco) on Jul 27, 2020 at 7:52am PDT
YES, this: look for the helpers
when neighbors love their UPS driver as one of their own
In the middle of a pandemic, this just might be the spiritual discipline that could actually change everything. Honestly, I’ve been literally, anxiously, waiting for this guide for months because this is actually doable — and, I can testify from experience — completely life-changing.
What this guy has to say is always brilliant — but for where we are all right now — this is transformative:
In a Pandemic: Walking as Healing, as a Spiritual Discipline for these times
because sometimes we all need something new to explore
Where Will Your Twenties Take You?
6 Lessons for Beginning Well
the wonder in the quiet
15 Powerful Photos of the Journey From Child Slavery to Freedom
Beyond grateful for the saving work of Compassion International
cheering: a rather unbelievable gift
August is here!
Maybe in this new month, easy, doable ideas for the whole family to Give It Forward Today — to be the G.I.F.T. Love is a verb and that verb is give. For God so loved the world — HE GAVE. You only have one life — to love well.
And just for you, when you grab the “Be the Gift” book? Your farm girl here will immediately email you your own gift of THE WHOLE 12 MONTH Intentional Acts of Givenness #BeTheGIFT Calendar link to download and print from home!
Love is a verb and that verb is give. For God so loved the world — HE GAVE. You only have one life — to love well.
Pick up #BeTheGIFT — Then receive your own #BeTheGIFT printable calendar by letting us know you picked up a copy of “Be the Gift” here
Love is a verb and that verb is give. For God so loved the world — HE GAVE. You only have one life — to love well.
Pick up Be The Gift & live the life you’ve longed to this year
what happened when he stepped up to help just one person? yeah, you guessed right
View this post on InstagramA post shared by Q Ideas (@qideas) on Jul 28, 2020 at 9:26am PDT
Praying with all of us —
Suffering in Isolation: Why We need to Lament Together
please click here to view on Q Media
this producer wanted to create something that would shine a light and bring awareness to this horrific problem, but also educate people on the shocking statistics. It’s truly something you can’t UNLEARN.
The only way to stop this is to face it. Shed as much light as possible on the darkest corners and GET LOUD. Let’s send out an army to find them and rescue them. Rise UP for children
also grateful for the ongoing efforts of Christine Caine and A21
Post of the week from these parts here
What in the actual world is happening these days? And what actually should be happening? Does anybody even know?
In a hard and confusing season of wild unknowns and uncertainty everywhere we turn, what I’m unpacking as the mama of two kids who live every day with life-and-death unknowns has ended up unlocking some surprising secrets of how to survive the uncertainty of this virus and everything else in these crazy days:
How to Survive Uncertainty (of this virus & everything else): Chapter 4 [Otherwise Known as “How to Hold Space for the Unknown”]
on repeat this week: Run to the Father
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 are 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 invitation 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.
God Saves Us from His Own Wrath: Ephesians 1:7–10
As we step into this new week, in the middle of these uncertain and polarizing days, we can begin to change our world when we set down our boxes and pick up our crosses. Because the thing is:
What we need right now is less outrage and more outreach.
We can practice our faith today by practicing saying it to the mask-wearing people and the school-sending people, to the non-masked people and the non-school-sending people, to those walking this side of the current of things, and those walking that side:
“These are hard days, nothing is easy. You’re doing hard things, how can I make it easier?”
Because especially right now:
All people will know that you are my disciples — not if you label one another, but if you love one another. (John 13:35).
They’ll know you are My disciples if you don’t label the weary, the frustrated, the hurting, the misunderstood, the angry, the people with a different ethnicity, skin colour, culture, or very strong opinion — but if you simply reach out and love them.
[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.
July 29, 2020
How to Survive Uncertainty (of this virus & everything else): Chapter 4 [Otherwise Known as “How to Hold Space for the Unknown”]
In that sing-song tinny little voice of hers, she must holler it at me more than a dozen blasted (and wildly beautiful) times a day:
“Wait up, Mom! Moooom — Wait up! Wait up!”
Her spindly twig legs jump up to sing across the kitchen after me, fly through the garden’s raised boxes after me, dashes across the back lawn and through the ash grove after me to get to the chicken coop and our handful of clucking hens, out to the garden boxes.
“Hold space for ways that are higher than yours, the ways of the One who never stops holding you.”
And I waited up and I scooped her up and and this is how we move through strange days like these, this is how we move through these mid-pandemic days, this is how we manage the unknowns that are part of the human condition:
Hold space.
Hold space for the unknown that you know is coming.
Hold space for ways that are higher than yours, the ways of the One who never stops holding you.
When she and I reached the raised garden boxes out by the chicken coop, I set her down, and I kneel down beside her and pull out of my worn apron pocket these rattling packets of seeds, beans and sunflowers and hollyhocks and lettuce, and her and I, in early May, we scratch holes in the earth.
I watch her hair blowing with however the wind blows. There is something exquisitely beautiful about surrender.
Inside her little chest, there is only half of a heart.
Inside her 17-year-old brother who was out planting beans in long stretches of our farm fields in early May, there is a dead pancreas that will never work again.
She’s on blood thinners to avoid any fatal blood clots; we prick her finger every few weeks to test her blood’s INR. Three times a day, our alarms go off that she needs another dose of liquid beta blocker to slow her heart rate down.
“When you’re holding on to expectations you can’t hold space for your God to hold you.”
Her older brother’s on insulin to avoid dying; he pricks his finger every time he eats or pricks himself with a continuous glucose monitor that he has to wear for a week or so at a time to test his blood’s sugar and avert hypoglycaemic comas or death. Throughout the night, monitors and alarms that jolt us awake us as his blood sugars plummet down and he needs to be shaken awake to immediately swallow down juice to avoid — not waking up in the morning.
She will need a heart transplant someday. He needs to avoid blood sugars destroying his organs every day.
Who knows who will see the next sunrise, the next birthday? Who knows what tomorrow holds? Who knows if we will all finally be through these strange days by this fall, by next winter? This is what I know:
Who knows what the future holds except that you will be held even then.
Let go of holding space for any expectations.
Expectation-free living frees you.
When you’re holding on to expectations you can’t hold space for your God to hold you.
“We just drop these little seeds down into these dark holes?” She’d looked up at me, asked me in early May.
“Uh huh — just like this…” and I gently dropped seeds into the earth.
“Expectation-free living frees you.”
When a seed is buried in dirt, does it wonder how it will breathe, how it will survive, how it live through the unknown of living in the dark?
Does it know even in the dark of the unknown, there is hidden possibility if it will surrender to what it is? Does it know that even here, buried in all kinds of unknown, where it feels fragile and alone, if it will surrender, it can explode with growth?
Does a seed at all know its own possibility?
But then again, you have to ask yourself: Do you know you have unbelievable potential, especially here and now? Do you know how you hold within you unbelievable possibilities of becoming more, especially in this season?
Do you have any idea how you can grow when you hold your hand open to the sky and say, “All I care about is surrendering to the tender mysteries of God.”
No one has any real idea about the future in a pandemic.
No one can predict how long or when this will end, no one can fully predict long term effects of this virus, physically, economically, socially, and no one can predict with any certain accuracy what a post-pandemic world will look like.
“The only thing that is certain is uncertainty — and the certainty of God. A pandemic earnestly compels us to embrace both. This is not a bad thing. All of life is about learning to embrace both.“
But: Even when our expectations aren’t met — we can still meet God. Meeting God in this moment is enough.
And what is predictable right now is the way of seeds. The way of roots and earth and budding and blooming and yielding and becoming.
In the unpredictable times of a mid-pandemic world, what is predictable is that there always seasons, there is always the hope of growth. And as long as the earth endures, we will endure, knowing that seasons come and seasons pass and if we yield, this season can yield.
Whatever we are passing through, it will come to pass. Plant seeds and believe.
“I can do it, Mama, I can do it too. “ She’d leaned over the dirt with her handful of hope.
Those little fingers? I have held them and traced those little lips, in cardiac ICUs through a tangle of tubes and lines and begged God for one more day. This girl unearthed in me time’s utter fragility.
“We think if we can find the certainty of the plot line, then we think we can certainly find a way to control it.”
How long do we all have, how long till we all get through this — how long, how long, how long? Our brains beg for timelines because maybe we’re all addicted to controlling storylines. We think if we can find the certainty of the plot line, then we think we can certainly find a way to control it.
We think if we knew with certainty the story, we’d certainly find out a way to write the story better. We think if we kinda knew what was coming, we could become our own kind of gods — better than God.
Maybe: The reason we don’t get any crystal balls is to shatter any allusion of control.
Maybe: The reason we don’t get any crystal balls is to shatter any allusion of being God.
This is the one great truth: The only thing that is certain is uncertainty — and the certainty of God.
A pandemic earnestly compels us to embrace both. This is not a bad thing. All of life is about learning to embrace both.
When a small girl had finished her deliberate dropping of small seeds into dirt, her and I gently buried them all in the dark, seeds surrendered to the unknown. Accept the unknown — because it’s helping you know how to live.
“The thing that you wish would go away, it’s showing you a better way to live.”
That’s the thing: The thing that you wish would go away, it’s showing you a better way to live.
It’s living with unknowns that lets you know what matters.
In early May, she and I held and buried seeds, and then held the watering hose over tender plants through June, so come July, we could hold baskets full of beans. And everyday we keep holding space for the unknown. Who will survive this pandemic and who will lose people they desperately love? How will we simultaneously keep our sanity, keep our kids safe, keep our family afloat? How will we learn to hold space for grief and joy, for our perspective and for someone else’s?
In this holding space for all the unknown —— there is also this growing awareness that this moment holds possibility.
As I pick another basket of beans and a handful of sunflowers in late July that one small girl and I planted from fragile seeds in early May, I believe it like a growing within:
Hold on.
“Here in the unknowns there is this exquisite gift of knowing more of God.”
Hold space for uncertainty — and trust all this uncertainty holds possibility.
Here holds the possibility that you can find what really matters. Here you can grow love deeper with people you will someday lose. Here may bring you to your knees, but don’t hate what helps you pray more.
Here in the unknowns there is this exquisite gift of knowing more of God.
Here can be a tender surrender. This is how you win peace.
“Mama?” She pats my leg in the garden in July. “See the sunflowers? Why do they all look like that?”
Do I tell her that’s what we call can grow into, in a season of unknown? That especially here we can turn and hold our faces to all the Light?
What I do is kneel and tell her simply, “Let’s hold our faces like that too.”
And I scoop her up and we hardly wait at all till we feel the real warming:
No matter what unknown we face — we face the known love of God.
Related:
How to Survive This Virus
Chapter 1: This is not a drill. The World’s on Fire. We practiced our faith for days like these.
How to Survive This Virus
Chapter 2: Losses Come in Waves: How to Find The Way Through & The Complete Passage Deal
In all these uncertain days, you find yourself at a crossroads every day — and what you need to know is the way to abundance.
How do you find the way through uncertainty that lets you find certain peace, a way to surrender to what is,?
How can you afford to take any other way, especially in days like these?
July 27, 2020
In a Pandemic: Walking as Healing, as a Spiritual Discipline for these times
Sometimes you stumble upon a soul saying all the things your soul feels — and everything you wish your soul had known so much sooner. Hands down, one of my most favorite writers, godly guide and all around kindest person of all time, Mark Buchanan has written a book I’ve been keenly anticipating for months. As someone who walks long and counts steps every day, I can just say that Mark’s most recent book – God Walk – is perhaps his most brilliant and helpful book yet: he takes something so commonplace, so mundane, so pedestrian in the root sense – the simple act of walking – that we mostly take it for granted, and he helps us see it through fresh eyes. He teaches us to marvel at what happens when we just put one foot in front of the other. I am unashamedly thrilled to welcome one of the very wisest and kindest of people to the farm’s front porch today, my friend, Mark Buchanan…
My friend Norm can’t walk.
He once could, with poise, with strength. He wasn’t Buster Keaton, but he strode the earth with vigor and ease and effortless balance.
“He would give almost anything to walk again, and if ever by some miracle of heaven or earth his capacity is restored, it’s almost all he will ever do.”
But in as much time as it takes you to read this sentence, he stopped walking. Not by choice. He lost the use of both legs, and most of the use of both arms, when his horse, his trusted horse, threw him sideways and gravity pulled him earthward and he hit the ground at an angle that broke things inside him.
In a blink, he went from agility to paralysis, from mobility to confinement, from standing most days to sitting all of them. One moment, his legs went wherever he told them. The next, they refused.
Norm once walked all the time but never much thought about it. He never contemplated the simple joy, the giddy freedom, the everyday magic of walking: to bound up or down a flight of stairs, to glide across a kitchen floor, to stroll a beach, to hike a trail.
To move from here to there on nothing more than his own two legs, under his own locomotion.
Now, Norm thinks about walking all the time. He watches others do it—Uprights, he calls them—bounding, gliding, strolling, hiking, and the dozens of other things most of us do with our legs with barely a thought about it. It stuns and saddens him.
He would give almost anything to walk again, and if ever by some miracle of heaven or earth his capacity is restored, it’s almost all he will ever do.
“We walk because if we go much faster for much longer, we’ll start to lose ourselves: our bodies will atrophy, our thinking will jumble, our very souls will wither.”
My friend Norm can’t walk, but he thinks about it a lot.
Until recently, I was the opposite: I walked a lot but thought about it almost never.
Walking is, along with eating and sleeping, our most practiced human activity. But unlike eating and sleeping, we don’t need to do it to survive. And so walking, though our most practiced human activity, is maybe our most taken-for-granted one, and sometimes our most neglected. You can, after all, go only seconds without breathing, mere days without eating. But walking—you can pass an entire lifetime and still do little of that.
Until recently, I had lost, if ever I possessed, sheer astonishment at the simple, humble miracle of carrying myself every day everywhere. These legs are more wondrous than a magic carpet, more regal than a king’s palanquin. But only now have I come to see it.
Everyone who can walk walks, even the most sedentary, if only from bed to couch, from table to fridge, from desk to copier. We walk, for the most part, because we can’t help it—because an escalator or elevator or car or plane or train or golf cart is unavailable. We walk up and down stairs. We walk the lengths of hallways. We walk through malls. We walk from curbsides to restaurants, from parking lots to clothing stores.
“Walking,” Evan Esar says, “isn’t a lost art: one must, by some means, get to the garage.”
Most of us walk unthinkingly, without gratitude, maybe even resentfully. Our walking is accidental, incidental, inevitable, maybe grudging. It’s what we do between sitting.
But not all of us.
Some of us walk because it’s magic and beautiful and mysterious and sometimes dangerous.
We walk because we see things differently when we walk. We feel more deeply, think more clearly.
We walk to figure things out.
We walk to sort ourselves out.
We walk to get in shape.
We walk to get a sense of the scale of things—the bigness of trees, the smallness of beetles, the real distance between places.
We walk because we experience land and sky and light in fresh ways—in ways, I am tempted to say, closer to reality.
“We walk because if we go much faster for much longer, we’ll start to lose ourselves: our bodies will atrophy, our thinking will jumble, our very souls will wither.”
We walk because three miles an hour, as the writer Rebecca Solnit says, is about the speed of thought, and maybe the speed of our souls.
We walk because if we go much faster for much longer, we’ll start to lose ourselves: our bodies will atrophy, our thinking will jumble, our very souls will wither.
Do you not feel this?
I do.
I walk because three miles an hour seems to be the pace God keeps. It’s God speed.
*********
In the beginning, we walked.
In the cool of the day. In the shade of the Garden. With slow animals and fast ones, cheetahs and tortoises; with docile beasts and wild ones, cows and wolves; with creatures that bounded and others that lumbered, with ones that scuttled and others that waddled. The tiger could rend and devour us, except it didn’t, except it pressed its huge head against our hip and stretched its neck out for us to scratch and made a sound of deep contentment in its throat. The chicken eventually bored us—we found it too dull, too pedestrian, too unexotic, to stir our wonder—but that first time we set eyes on it and had to think up its name, we nearly fell over from shock.
And we walked with each other. Hand in hand, I’m pretty sure. Whispering, though no one was eavesdropping. Or so we thought.
And we walked with God.
Talking with Him as though He were one of us, one with us, God among us: a brother, a friend, a confidante. A fellow pedestrian.
It was all good, so very good. There was night, and there was day. And each new morning, we rose and walked again.
And then it all went tragically awry.
“Now walking with God becomes a discipline, something good but hard. We are invited to say yes to it daily, hourly even. Now we must show up to walk with God like all the world depends on it.”
Here, I think, is the saddest line ever written: “Then the man and his wife heard the sound of the Lord God as he was walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and they hid from the Lord God” (Gen. 3:8).
And they hid.
The story doesn’t end there, though. It hardly begins there: before the story is barely underway, we come upon one of the most hopeful lines ever written: “When Enoch had lived sixty-five years, he became the father of Methuselah. After he became the father of Methuselah, Enoch walked faithfully with God three hundred years and had other sons and daughters. Altogether, Enoch lived a total of 365 years. Enoch walked faithfully with God; then he was no more, because God took him away” (Gen. 5:21–24).
Walking with God, walking faithfully with God, returns. Soon after stumbling, we hit our stride again. But now a new thing comes into play: faithfulness. Now we must want it, choose it, seek it. Now we must outwit our reluctance or inertia.
Now walking with God becomes a discipline, something good but hard. We are invited to say yes to it daily, hourly even. Now we must show up to walk with God like all the world depends on it.
“Walking is the one physical discipline that the Bible consistently associates with a life of faith. It’s so common it’s almost pedestrian.”
Which, in a way, it does.
And just so, the language of walking—walking with God, walking in the light, walking in truth, walking in holiness, keeping in step with the Holy Spirit, and such like—laces like footprints all through the Bible, start to finish.
Walking is the one physical discipline that the Bible consistently associates with a life of faith. It’s so common it’s almost pedestrian.
Why not reclaim what you might have lost or forgotten or maybe never knew: make walking with God the center of your life.
Why not choose deep companionship with the three-mile-an-hour God? Bring everything to Him, every last little thing, like a child brings her art from school to show her parents.
Especially, bring yourself to God, every last little bit of yourself, no matter how strong the impulse to hide.
God speed.
It’s been a long time since I have been so excited about a book!
Mark Buchanan is a one of my most favorite writers, a speaker, and a professor. He lives in Cochrane, Alberta, where he teaches at Ambrose University. God Walk is his tenth book.
Drawing on Jesus’s example of walking, bestselling author Mark Buchanan explores one of the oldest spiritual practices of our faith.
What happens when we literally walk out our Christian life? We discover the joy of traveling at the speed of our soul.
Part theology, part history, part field guide, God Walk explores walking as spiritual formation, walking as healing, walking as exercise, walking as prayer, walking as pilgrimage, suffering, friendship, and attentiveness. It is a book about being alongside the God who, incarnate in Jesus, turns to us as he passes by–always on foot–and says simply, “Come, follow me.”
With practical insight and biblical reflections told in his distinct voice, Mark provides specific walking exercises so you can immediately implement the practice of going “God speed.” Whether you are walking around the neighborhood or hiking in the mountains, walking offers the potential to awaken your life with Christ as it revives body and soul.
Absolute 5 star book, that I will be giving as gifts, as walking is life-changing gift for everyone:
God Walk explores the rich and varied benefits – for and from the earth, for our bodies and minds and spirits, for our relationships, for our faith – that come from the simple act of walking.
[Our humble thanks to Zondervan for their partnership in today’s devotion ]
July 25, 2020
Only the Good Stuff: Multivitamins for Your Weekend [07.25.20]
This weekend? Feels like we are walking into new hope, new change, new possibility!
Some real hope in these days — for us all to the real, sustained, needed work & more of the real Kingdom of God to come into a hurting world. Links & stories this week 100% guaranteed to make you smile a mile wide & believe like crazy in a Good God redeeming everything — and that there’s love everywhere & for ((you))!
Serving up only the Good Stuff for you & your people right here:
Esther Havens Mann
Esther Havens Mann
Esther Havens Mannno one captures the wonders of our world quite like she does
bringing her back! and she’s teaching us all about collards… who knew?!?
Anita Demianowicz Photography: Instagram
Anita Demianowicz Photography: Instagram
Anita Demianowicz Photography: Instagramjust so beautiful: this photographer? wore the traditional costume of these countries all over the world
so we gathered ’round this one and could not stop watching!
Kindness ripples back: police department starts fund for woman who donated to injured officer
he discovered the power & beauty in the kindness of complete strangers while walking around the world with his best friend
Cindy Arthur Photography: Instagram and Facebook
Cindy Arthur Photography: Instagram and Facebook
Cindy Arthur Photography: Instagram and FacebookPhotographer’s project: “Love Blooms In Every Color”: to show that even though we may look different on the outside, the most important reminder is that we are all human
Saving lives has become their life’s calling… come see why & how
Video captures moment Pizza Hut delivery driver was left stunned by $100 tip
The kind gesture made the worker’s day. What can we go do today? #BeTheGift #TheBrokenWay
because we all need to dance
Chris Van Riel photography
Chris Van Riel photography
Chris Van Riel photographywho wants to go do this too?! the joys of dogs and frisbees
tears… how this artist is giving back to healthcare workers on the frontlines
so many versions of this one all around the world… The Blessing Canada
7 Children Share Their Favorite Bible Verses
been there too? check this: When God Withholds Sleep: How to Handle Restless Nights
Deeply healing, and truly hopeful, and utterly beautiful. “Financial Freefall: this is for all of us and any of us who have felt like we are falling through insecurity or job loss or 2 AM money worries”
You have to watch this and get to the 11 minute mark & hear what @jamieivey’s brave daughter, Story says.
Thank you @ammanuelacho and Ivey Family – leaning in, listening, learning – and being changed by your leadership
Wondering if love can really make a difference in this world full of injustice and heartache? Can kindness and compassion really break down barriers and change lives? The problems of this world seem far too big…what could we possibly do?
This is for all of us who want to be a part of experiencing a bit of heaven on earth today:
Your Simple Pot of Soup Can Be a World-Changer—Literally
some stories are worth revisiting : Lessons from a 3rd grade dropout
My Only Hope
Gracefully Broken… again and again
Post of the week from these parts here
…yeah, the world is more than a little hurting and loud these days with a whole truckload of pain, and it can be hard to know how to navigate through such uncertain and polarizing waters.
Maybe what we need right now is something as clear and hopeful as this:
3 Real Ways to Navigate Uncertain, Polarizing Days
The Origin and End of All Things: Ephesians 1:3–6
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 are 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 invitation into the next step of deeper transformation, less stress, more joy and abundantly more peace & purpose. You only get one life to love well…to Be The Gift.
on repeat this week: The Story I’ll Tell
Lord, You sure do tell it like it is — You said in this world, we will have trouble, hard weeks, heartbreak.
You said straight up that we’d have to carry a cross, and You said “we must go through many hardships to enter the kingdom of God.” (Acts14:22)
But You said this in the midst of the madness:
“But take heart!” (John 16:33)
We take heart — that You have our heart, that You have our hand, that You are our peace & that You have overcome the world & the dark and whatever overwhelms us.
We take heart — we take Your heart
and we pour a brave and willing love like Yours
over all the open wounds of the world…
that the world may even now
take hope.
In the name of Jesus, the only One who loved us to death
and back to the real & forever life….
Amen.
[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.
July 24, 2020
3 Real Ways to Navigate Uncertain, Polarizing Days
When you stand down at the river, a loud world gets mighty quiet.
Like the mightiness of grace, of God, might actually come in the quiet.
My Grandmother never told me that —
But it’s what I tell the kids a thousand messy times, though they know I’m the one preaching the gospel of the whole shebang to myself:
When you’re worked up, whisper.
“When you’re worked up, whisper.”
It’s how God can usher Himself into a place— ask Elijah.
It’s best parenting practice. It’s best life-survival practice. When the world gets loud, put your ear down to it and listen —and then whisper. When everyone yells, no one can hear.
When the world and you are worked up, whisper — and a pin will drop. The other shoe will drop. Then we can finally get our shoes on, finally get somewhere. Get somewhere better.
The river keeps navigating its complex course.
Keeps rolling out the possibility of another way, a way less travelled, a way through.
My Grandmother and all the wizened ones, they did always say that:
In a loud world — certainty is what sells.
People love the hawkers, the bloggers and big talkers that sell certainty to make things simple. And these are wildly uncertain times where we are all desperate to buy some certainty hook line and sinker.
“Truth comes marked with the fullness of grace — or it isn’t Truth.”
Desperate to turn on the cranked up experts, click on the screaming headlines — and buy what everybody is shopping for: simple certainty. Certainty sells because we like to take our boxes home — to put complicated and nuanced problems in simple boxes, put the unpredictable future in simple boxes, put different people in simple boxes, put our our own messy life in some neat and simple boxes.
Turns out what we want most is someone to just sell us some certainty about who is who, and what is what, so we can have this sense of knowing what’s safe — instead of knowing Who is the Savior who calls us to love in unexpected, dangerous, upside-down ways.
Turns out we want someone to reduce all the narratives to caricatures, give our overwhelmed lives some oversimplified solution, formula, or soundbite, so we can feel the relief of safe — instead of living in the reality of a Savior who calls us to live unsafe so others are literally saved.
We like to buy certainty and take home our little boxes — because we like to check out from really listening to people with different perspectives and simply check off our predictable little boxes.
But the thing is: Truth isn’t found in trite boxes or biting soundbites — Truth’s found in abiding with Christ.
Truth doesn’t come marked as simplicity. Truth comes marked with the fullness of grace — or it isn’t Truth. Truth is a Person and He is the complexity and the empathy and the integrity and the certainty and the supremacy of Christ.
And the river’s wide and deep and strong and long and there are layers to all this water, quiet depths. The travellers and followers and disciples, and we graciously navigate complexity. We acknowledge complexity. A river like this can faithfully carry us Home.
Because the Truth is: We’re not called to carry boxes — we’re called to carry crosses.
Box-carriers want to buy certainty for living. Cross-carriers are about carrying the complexity of living.
Box-carriers strain for the power of controlled lives. Cross-carriers surrender to the power of the Christ-life.
“A kind of miracle happens when we don’t label people but love people.”
Box-carriers box things into simple and easy. Cross-carriers unpack things and sit with the suffering.
It’s only those who carry crosses who can know how there is an intersection of many nuanced and complicated things that bear down heavy on people, so they give people the weightlessness of grace.
We can practice our faith by practicing saying it to the mask-wearing people and the school-sending people, to the non-masked people and the non-school-sending people, to those walking this side of the current of things, and those walking that side:
“These are hard days, nothing is easy. You’re doing hard things, how can I make it easier?”
Because especially right now:
All people will know that you are my disciples — not if you label one another, but if you love one another. (John 13:35).
They’ll know you are My disciples if you don’t label the weary, the frustrated, the hurting, the misunderstood, the angry, the people with a different ethnicity, skin colour, culture, or very strong opinion — but if you simply reach out and love them.
What we need right now is less outrage and more outreach.
A kind of miracle happens when we don’t label people but love people.
Because love is ultimately not a trite good feeling, but a steady current of quiet actions that can carry us all toward the ultimate good, and ultimately God.
Love is stubbornly praying for your ‘enemies’ till you see ‘enemies’ are illusions & God is makes everyone into grace in your life; God is making everyone into a friend.
“Christ-followers don’t need any certainty anyone’s selling — because we have the certainty of Jesus. We have a certainty who saves — who saves us from fear, from worry, from despair, from divisiveness. In uncertaint times, we have a certain Hope. Jesus is the only certainty our future needs.”
If we knew what current everyone was trying to battle, there isn’t even one person we wouldn’t help fight their current with the current of a Greater Love.
Because our faith is about loving in ways that people from all streams of life are carried by the current of His love — toward Him and Home.
The world changes when we don’t categorize, polarize and demonize people with broad brushstrokes — but when we apologize, empathize, evangelize and prioritize people with these quiet brushes of grace.
Because it turns out: Christ-followers aren’t called to go buy certainty — we’re called to go walk by faith.
Christ-followers don’t need any certainty anyone’s selling — because we have the certainty of Jesus. We have a certainty who saves — who saves us from fear, from worry, from despair, from divisiveness. In uncertaint times, we have a certain Hope. Jesus is the only certainty our future needs.
The absolute certainty we have is the Truth of Jesus — and He welcomes us all into the outreach of humble and gracious servant-hearted Faith.
Faith that says we are all just people who are trying, people who are both His good and our bad, and He’s the only One good. Faith that requires His patient love and His merciful understanding and His servant actions and His willingness to suffer with and for the wounded.
A river runs through all the farmland to the east, a river runs through the landscape of all things right now — a certain river of Life and life-giving hope.
“What we need right now is less outrage and more outreach.”
On a warm day in summer you can hear the grasshoppers in the long grass along the riverbank.
And you can hear the pin drop of whisper: Come to Me and drink, all you who are parched for peace & thirsty for unity & looking for the shalom of the Kingdom of God.
The light off the river lights all our faces. Maybe finding stillness, and listening in the quiet right here — there is a hearing, there is a seeing, there is a certain hope —
Maybe the world and every thing we see, maybe it’s all more beautiful in diverse shades of a transforming and outreaching grace.
In all these uncertain days, you find yourself at a crossroads every day — and what you need to know is the way to abundance.
How do you find the way that lets you become what you hope to be, a certain hope?
How do you know the way forward that lets you heal, that lets you flourish, the way that takes your brokenness — and makes wholeness?
How can you afford to take any other way, especially in days like these?
The Way of Abundance — is the way forward that every heart longs for, especially now.
July 22, 2020
When Hard Things and Faith Intersect
Kia Stephens candidly shares perspective from the unedited pages of her Christian experience. As a wife, mother, and a woman who has tasted disappointment she connects with a broad range of readers. Today she is sharing how she is presently learning to abide at the place where her faith intersects with the hard things in life. It’s a grace to welcome Kia to the farm’s front porch today…
The time on the dashboard read 8 o‘clock as my car reached the driveway.
I was tired.
The kids were hungry and I still had to have a much needed phone conversation.
It was one that couldn’t be avoided any longer.
“Most days I feel emotional, fatigued, and inadequate.”
In fact, it was an overdue chat with my father’s insurance company: hashing out details for primary care providers, co-pays and home health. I imagined I would be taking the wheel for my parent’s medical well-being at some point, I just didn’t think it would be at 39.
Life, however, had other plans.
I am the only daughter of my Haitian born father and helping him navigate the American Healthcare system is necessary.
So I made the call and began a journey I was not, nor am I presently, prepared for. It took over an hour to have this three-way chat between the insurance representative, my father and me.
When it was done I wept, not knowing it was the first of many more tears.
This journey requires me to schedule appointments and follow up with doctors out of state while juggling responsibilities for my family of four.
Most days I feel emotional, fatigued, and inadequate.
It can be hard to be diligent in the difficult, faithful while unseen, and brave in the unknown.
This is especially true when you find yourself not at the starting point or finish line of life’s unexpected twists, but somewhere in the middle. Marked by fatigue, this is the place you want to quit but somehow muster the stamina to endure.
The mango wood vase is from GCH
The mango wood vase is from GCH
I have watched many people arrive here.
My colleague did when her husband died suddenly.
My neighbor did when she lost not one, but two children at birth.
“No one is immune. Everyone, at some point will encounter adversity.”
My friend did when she was diagnosed with a rare form of cancer at age 35.
Hard things dawn everyone’s doorstep at some point. Unannounced and abrupt, they sashay in as if invited. Sometimes coming in our childhood when we are most vulnerable. Other times making a grand entrance in adulthood, shattering every ideal we had about how life should be. Sometimes they stay indefinitely.
No one is immune. Everyone, at some point will encounter adversity.
Initially, we may be in shock: dismayed by trouble’s audacity. We might even battle with bouts of anger. In time, discouragement may set in – blurring and preventing us from seeing life through a balanced lens.
Have you ever been there?
Are you there now?
Given the year we’ve had, I’m assuming the answer to one or both of these questions might be yes.
Just this year we’ve experienced political unrest, catastrophic natural disasters, public scandal, and unbearable racial tension. When we factor in our personal challenges these realities are enough to superglue us to a pit of pessimism and hopelessness.
I am tempted to rent a uhaul, pack up all my stuff, and take up residence in this spot but something inside me is discontent with despair: telling me, sometimes screaming – if need be – “We cannot stay here!”
“Peace happens once we accept God’s sovereignty in light of our inability to control the outcome.”
I am convinced it’s hope; she is relentless: often pursuing us when we don’t pursue her.
Her pursuit gently nudges us to pry ourselves from the makeshift shelter we’ve erected and venture a little further to the place where hard things intersect with our faith. Here, amid the confusion and emotional wreckage, we wrestle with reality and the God who defies it.
Peace happens once we accept God’s sovereignty in light of our inability to control the outcome.
We can’t control outcomes.
I am learning this as I grapple with 39: finding myself dealing with compounding hard things. Maybe you do too. God’s peace, however, offers us comfort in the unresolved circumstances of our lives. It is not a comfort that dismisses pain, rather it is One that says, “Come. Rest. Weep. Abide”.
In doing so, we taste a little of what the apostle Paul prayed for the Roman church in Romans 15:13 (NIV), “May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace as you trust in him, so that you may overflow with hope by the power of the Holy Spirit.”
Paul reminds us that hope originates with God. This hope is not rooted in perfect circumstances or our ideals.
On the contrary, this hope is rooted in Christ, His sacrifice for us, and the promise of being united with Him one day when all hard things cease.
“When hard things strike, although our natural response is to fix it or flee, God gives us the choice to trust Him with the outcome.”
As much as I want a life void of difficulties, Christianity is not challenge-free.
Christ, Himself endured incredible trials while depending on His heavenly Father for the strength to finish His assignment here on earth.
He demonstrated what faith should look like.
As we trust God, He fills us with joy and peace until we overflow with hope.
The trusting proceeds the filling.
When hard things strike, although our natural response is to fix it or flee, God gives us the choice to trust Him with the outcome.
In doing so, we learn how to abide and rest at the place where hard things intersect with our faith.
Unexplainable peace is found here.
Kia Stephens is a wife and homeschooling mama of two who is passionate about helping women know God as Father. For this reason, she created The Father Swap Blog to be a source of encouragement, healing, and practical wisdom for women dealing with the effects of a physically or emotionally absent father. Each week through practical and biblically sound teaching she encourages women to exchange father wounds for the love of God the Father.
For more encouragement and to learn more about Kia’s ebooks, Hope for the Woman With Father Wounds and Forgiveness Hacks: 5 Strategies to Help You Forgive.
July 20, 2020
Your Simple Pot of Soup Can Be a World-Changer—Literally
Sarah Jackson thought immigration justice meant higher walls and fiercer laws. Then, on a church border trip, she met a deported young father separated from his US-citizen family. His aching dilemma changed everything for Sarah. She opened her heart—and then her home—to families fractured by a broken immigration system. For Sarah, Jesus’s command to “love your neighbor as yourself” took on a new meaning. Her book, The House that Love Built, restores a biblical vision of hospitality—literally, “love of the stranger”—showing how your own everyday acts of kindness can transform hearts next door to you, in the highest offices in the land, and across the earth. It’s a grace to welcome Sarah to the farm’s front porch today…
From the very beginning of this whole experience, I saw faces that reminded me of my family.
Alicia, a white mom, drove in from Nebraska with her four kids to visit their dad, who was detained in Denver.
“Suddenly, I realized what a humble bowl of soup might mean: that someone cares about your family.”
A West African, he’d been jailed for more than a year for being undocumented. He had lived and worked in the US for years, and his wife and children were American citizens.
But now the whole family was nervous, because he could be deported at any time and not be allowed back for ten years, if ever.
As I stirred a pot of soup for dinner, Alicia recounted their dilemma. With her husband gone, she and the kids had been evicted. Alicia moved them into an abandoned house on the outskirts of town. It had no electricity or running water.
After dinner, as her kids headed to bed, Alicia told me this was the first hot meal they’d had in a long time.
With no way to heat food, they’d been eating meals out of cans. She thanked me and hugged me tightly, not knowing she squeezed a tear from my eye. Her hug felt exactly like one my mother would give.
Suddenly, I realized what a humble bowl of soup might mean: that someone cares about your family.
Simple things. But they’re luxuries to a newly single parent panicked by what the future may hold for her family.
Joy ProutyAlicia’s story was not unique. To see kids traumatized because they can’t touch their father through thick plexiglass in a detention center, to hear them say a tearful goodbye because he might be deported—it’s almost too much to bear.
In 2018, 70 million people around the world were displaced—one out of every hundred human beings on the earth. The vast majority migrate in desperation, fleeing war, persecution, disaster, violence, disease, government oppression, starvation.
“In eight years, I’ve welcomed guests into my home from seventy-five countries and from across the US.”
In the US, about 400,000 people are held in immigrant detention each year. I’ve hosted many of them in my home—3,000 individuals—and I’ve come to realize that no one should be jailed for seeking safety or security, especially those with children.
Most people don’t want to abandon their culture—the scents, the songs, the familiar soil. And nobody wants to leave their loved ones behind.
Their stories are what led me to open the door of my cramped, six-hundred-square-foot apartment to host families like Alicia’s.
I also began hosting people released from a federal immigration detention center in my city. I decided to name my home Casa de Paz—“House of Peace.” That’s what I wanted each of them to experience as they navigate the oftentimes traumatic journey of immigration.
In eight years, I’ve welcomed guests into my home from seventy-five countries and from across the US.
Casa de Paz is no longer a tiny, cramped apartment but an actual house—a nice one, on an average block, in an average neighborhood.
It may look a lot like yours. Three bedrooms, two baths, a basement with room for guests, and a nice big tree out front. Like any house on our block, it all centers on family—joyful meals and tearful reunions.
In that short time, more than 2,000 selfless people have stepped up to volunteer at Casa de Paz, carrying off enormously important jobs: picking up bewildered people released from detention, cooking meals with them, accompanying them to court dates, arranging their travel to reunite with loved ones. And we visit with those inside detention—people like Alicia’s husband—every day of the week.
“We do anything we can think of to alleviate their pain, to remind them they’re worthy of lovingkindness—because God says they are.”
At Christmas and on Valentine’s Day we write holiday cards and include a candy bar for everyone in detention, so they don’t feel forgotten.
We do anything we can think of to alleviate their pain, to remind them they’re worthy of lovingkindness—because God says they are.
Nobody gets paid for doing this; everyone’s a volunteer. That includes me.
We all want to be part of Casa de Paz. Together we’ve heard thousands of immigrant stories, and not one has been easy to hear.
But we all keep coming because of something intangible.
I know exactly what it is.
If you don’t think love actually makes a difference in the world, we have a story to tell you.
This love story has attracted the attention of decision-makers around the world.
The United Nations studied Casa de Paz as a model for immigrant support programs around the globe. U.S. candidates from both sides of the aisle visit Casa de Paz; one left in tears and another came back to volunteer.
A congressman gathers us at his quarterly immigration table. A congresswoman involves us in a monthly phone-in conference. A senator and his staff consult with us. College professors send their students to intern with us. Elementary-school teachers bring their classes to volunteer.
Even the officials at ICE steer the people they release toward Casa de Paz. A historic denomination asked us to join them as a congregation because they say we’re fulfilling the mission of the church: “for whoever loves others has fulfilled the law” (Rom. 13:8).
Yet I have received death threats for what I do.
“To know we belong, to know we matter, to know our worth in the world, even from a stranger—isn’t that what we all want?”
I’m not sure why it has come to this. I never got a death threat when I made meals for people experiencing homelessness, or when I put together hygiene packs for youth who are at risk. So why for a group that’s equally, if not more, at risk?
As I shared dinner with a young African man released from detention, he said softly, “It feels like home here.”
He had no idea how deeply those words went into me.
To know we belong, to know we matter, to know our worth in the world, even from a stranger—isn’t that what we all want?
Isn’t that what’s behind Christ’s two-part Great Commandment to love God and our neighbor?
When we create that kind of space—one where displaced, traumatized people feel they’re home, even for a few hours or days—together we experience a bit of heaven on earth.
“‘Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you something to drink? When did we see you a stranger and invite you in . . . ?’ The King will reply, ‘Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me’” (Matt. 25:37–38, 40, my emphasis).
A world of transformation can start with a simple pot of soup in a tiny apartment. It did with mine.
Sarah Jackson is founder and executive director of Casa de Paz, a hospitality home in Denver that has hosted immigrant guests from seventy-five nations. Casa’s family of volunteers walk daily alongside detained immigrants and their loved ones with visits, meals, shelter, transportation, and emotional support through their arduous experience, one simple act of love at a time. Their amazing story is captured in Sarah’s book, The House that Love Built.
Sarah’s work—Casa de Paz—has been a House of Peace to over 3,000 guests separated from loved ones by US immigrant detention. Breaking down barriers, Sarah’s model of hospitality—literally, “love of the stranger”—drew invitations to speak to congressional leaders, college faculty and church denominations. Then came a request to represent the U.N. Human Rights Commission in her region of the US. All from the simple command to love her neighbor.
The dilemma of “undocumented” people in the US raises urgent questions: What is our responsibility to the “stranger” in our midst? What does God’s kingdom look like in the global-political reality of immigration? What difference can one person make? Sarah engages these questions with tender stories from individuals on every side of the issue—asylum seekers torn from their families, the guards who oversee them, unheralded advocates for immigrants’ rights, and government officials who decide the fates of others.
[ Our humble thanks to Zondervan for their partnership in today’s devotion ]
July 18, 2020
Only the Good Stuff: Multivitamins for Your Weekend [07.18.20]
This weekend? Feels like we are walking into new hope, new change, new possibility!
Some real hope in these days — for us all to the real, sustained, needed work & more of the real Kingdom of God to come into a hurting world. Links & stories this week 100% guaranteed to make you smile a mile wide & believe like crazy in a Good God redeeming everything — and that there’s love everywhere & for ((you))!
Serving up only the Good Stuff for you & your people right here:
Meg Loeks
Meg Loeks
Meg Loeks
Meg Loeks
Meg Loeks
cannot get enough of the wonder of her work
because kindness matters
always a wonder: The 2020 Audubon Photography Awards: Winners
Watched this with the kids and choked up to see how the painting begins — and where it ends…. (More here)
9-Year-Old Kenyan Boy is Honored for Inventing Handwashing Machine That Prevents COVID-19 Spread
intentional acts of connected caring…you must come see what he started and where it’s going
what if we all did this?
Your home longs to tell the best stories.
Stories that empower a sister, change the lives of a whole family, free another soul from darkness.
What kind of stories do you long for your home to tell? Stories of freeing captives? Stories of deliverance from oppression? Stories of life transformation?
Handwoven in Vietnam, our Gathering Basket can come with you or stay right in place. Its generous size and reinforced handles make this basket ideal for your outdoor physically-distancing activities–a light picnic blanket with snacks, a trip to the beach or a visit to the farmer’s market.
When you choose a Grace Crafted Home — you’ll not only know the stories of your mugs, your blankets, plates — you’ll know you’re entirely changing someone else’s life story —- and a bit more of the story of the world. His story.
100% of proceeds go to help fund Mercy House Global’s work in Kenya
it’s a joy to watch her cook
so much love right here…
so who knew? the art of decoding a mystery language
10 Things You Should Know About Prayer
a remarkable story, a remarkable life: when overwhelming tragedy and prayer converge
Thank you, The John 10:10 Project
glory, glory, glory
this girl inspires all with her joy… come see
YES: “…all I saw was broken pieces. But God took those broken pieces, and put them back into something completely different to make me whole again.”
A well-known Christian journalist recently observed, “The mask culture war has got to be one of the most destructive political/cultural disputes in modern American history…and we’re continuing to pay the price.”
Pastor Scott Sauls considers exactly how followers of Christ are called to “exercise their freedom” in such a context.
Be encouraged. Be expectant.
Post of the week from these parts here
You gotta be feeling it too:
What do you do in a world that’s gone mad & growing madder…when you’re smack dab in the middle of a world of crisis & all kinds of personal unspoken broken?
I’ve been doing this & it’s been flat-out changing my life in ways I never would have expected:
In Crazy Times, Why Your Quiet Time isn’t Working: 5 Key Tools to Count on for an Encounter with God (Warning: Only Use these Best Resources if You Want Dramatic Change)
The Blessing Gospel Revamp
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: Thank you, Lord
This is the day the Lord has made, so you don’t have to be worried about it, stressed out about it, or overwhelmed by it — you can exhale & trust & rejoice in it.
If you are breathing, it’s true and you can smile: Today is a ridiculous gift.
Exhale — and fear not the future… so you can enjoy the present.
[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.
July 16, 2020
In Crazy Times, Why Your Quiet Time isn’t Working: 5 Key Tools to Count on for an Encounter with God (Warning: Only Use these Best Resources if You Want Dramatic Change)
Smack dab in the middle of a world of crisis and a war zone of words being volleyed back and forth from all kinds of sides — and all kinds of personal unspoken broken — I have fallen deeper than I have ever known.
Honestly, I didn’t expect it to go quite like this.
But it’s 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.
Levi Voskamp
Ann’s Story posts on Instagram
Levi Voskamp
Levi Voskamp
Ann’s Story posts on Instagram
“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
Ann’s Story posts on Instagram
Levi Voskamp
Ann’s Story posts on Instagram
Levi Voskamp
Ann’s Story posts on Instagram
How 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.
Ann’s Story posts on Instagram
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.
Ann’s Story posts on Instagram
Levi Voskamp
Ann’s Story posts on Instagram
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
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