Living the Christian life is a journey of suffering and joy. It’s a road on the way to Damascus. These stories include what it means to live as a fisher of men in modern day times.
Beware of what’s convenient.
I’ve never known the devil to offer something that takes work.
Don’t pass up what you need for something you want.
Relationships. Your job. Discipline with your money and health.
What looks easy now will require work to clean up later.
Don’t settle. Stay true to your convictions.
I always wanted to save the world; every homeless man and all the hungry children. My parents thought I’d outgrow it. I never did. I also wanted to be a crime-solving detective so I took investigative reporting for a test drive and found I’m an activist at heart.
Death will shatter walls of insecurity and take away the excuses to wait another day to do what you want to do. My brother was just a year younger than me. Losing my best friend as a teenager unveiled the deep seeded strength my soul found in God; a faith that had been nurtured morning after morning through searching the scriptures for the mystery beneath it all.
My aim is to inspire myself to move forward every day. From the overflow, I hope to inspire female confidence in others. We are so conditioned as women to hate on ourselves and reject compliments. Many of us have been taught that men validate a woman’s self-esteem so we’re left empty when there’s not a ‘he’ in our lives. We have to start by encouraging ourselves and then strive for healthy female influences to fill us. Then maybe we would find our attention in loving others.
The greatest lesson I’ve learned is to let whatever I do today be enough. If I run two miles and don’t lift weights afterward, it’s okay. I know that I’m enough. Successful enough, smart enough, pretty enough, healthy enough.
There was a time I trusted every single person and was teased for being so naïve. Too many lies and lessons later, I’ve learned to listen to my intuition and the Spirit’s leading. My heart still feels open and I’m ever madly in love with people, yet by the grace of God, I’m also more rooted in reading situations and have come to understand this heart needs protecting.
Thus, over the years, my skin has thickened and my heart softened.
Leaning into love a little more, I’m more obliged to let a man open my door than do it all on my own. And I bask in this sweet gesture. Saying no to someone who offers to help is closing a door.
Doing what I fear helps crack open the seed that helps me grow. I read somewhere that a human’s greatest fear is being alone. When I watch the world spin over the axis of careers, material, and relationships, this conclusion is certainly true for my own life. Taking the leap into living alone, traveling as a party of one, and remaining content as a single woman has been the biggest journey of faith for me.
I’m a believer in the impact of healthy habits, not just physically but emotionally as well. A morning routine of quiet time over coffee has a profound effect on my life. It is essential and helps me to live in the moment. 
I’ve gotten better at slowing down and being more mindful of myself. My pride used to thrive on crushing it at work, crushing it at the gym, but leaving my mental health at bay. Getting up at 5 a.m. helps me claim the first part of my day in solitude without competing demands for what keeps me grounded. This is my sweet spot. There’s morning runs or afternoons in weight training. Monthly massages have been a game changer.
My focus is to commit to few demands, narrow the numbers and deepen each one as far as we can go together. Primarily, I look for shoulders wearing interesting layers and vulnerable souls who demonstrate strength over their emotions.
If we were to spend a dreamy day together, it would begin over coffee, unraveling our hearts in the Word. The sun would smile brightly and we would nod to how marvelous He has made this life. I just imagine in the end, that the moon would find us around a fire laughing at how crazy and adventurous this life really is.
I am blessed, beautiful, confident, secure, forgiven, redeemed, talented, qualified, prosperous, disciplined, focused, creative, prepared, equipped, empowered, anointed, accepted, healed, and approved.
With layers of humility, I accept the abundance of love, joy, and peace that spills from heaven into the depths of my soul.
I am motivated to be more than average or mediocre; I am a child of the Most High God.
Victory follows me all the days of my life.
I dare you to declare this over your life every day of 2016. With bold authority in Jesus’ name, I can tell you that your year won’t be crowned in just goodness, but also in supernatural healing, unmerited favor and bountiful breakthroughs. Amen.
He sees you. He chooses you.
He knows your story and He knows your name.
No matter what you’ve done, His love for you is just the same.
Then he was told, “Go, stand on the mountain at attention before God. God will pass by.”
A hurricane wind ripped through the mountains and shattered the rocks before God, but God wasn’t to be found in the wind; after the wind an earthquake, but God wasn’t in the earthquake; and after the earthquake fire, but God wasn’t in the fire; and after the fire a gentle and quiet whisper.
When Elijah heard the quiet voice, he muffled his face with his great cloak, went to the mouth of the cave, and stood there. A quiet voice asked, “So Elijah, now tell me, what are you doing here?” 1 Kings 19: 11-13 (MSG)
Merry Christmas!
His name is Jesus.
Luke 2:4-21 And because Joseph was a descendant of King David, he had to go to Bethlehem in Judea, David’s ancient home. He traveled there from the village of Nazareth in Galilee. He took with him Mary, his fiancée, who was now obviously pregnant.
And while they were there, the time came for her baby to be born. She gave birth to her first child, a son. She wrapped him snugly in strips of cloth and laid him in a manger, because there was no lodging available for them.
That night there were shepherds staying in the fields nearby, guarding their flocks of sheep. Suddenly, an angel of the Lord appeared among them, and the radiance of the Lord’s glory surrounded them. They were terrified, but the angel reassured them. “Don’t be afraid!” he said. “I bring you good news that will bring great joy to all people. The Savior—yes, the Messiah, the Lord—has been born today in Bethlehem, the city of David! And you will recognize him by this sign: You will find a baby wrapped snugly in strips of cloth, lying in a manger.”
Suddenly, the angel was joined by a vast host of others—the armies of heaven—praising God and saying,
“Glory to God in highest heaven,
and peace on earth to those with whom God is pleased.”
When the angels had returned to heaven, the shepherds said to each other, “Let’s go to Bethlehem! Let’s see this thing that has happened, which the Lord has told us about.”
They hurried to the village and found Mary and Joseph. And there was the baby, lying in the manger. After seeing him, the shepherds told everyone what had happened and what the angel had said to them about this child. All who heard the shepherds’ story were astonished, but Mary kept all these things in her heart and thought about them often. The shepherds went back to their flocks, glorifying and praising God for all they had heard and seen. It was just as the angel had told them.
Eight days later, when the baby was circumcised, he was named Jesus, the name given him by the angel even before he was conceived.
We’re still a couple days away from Christmas and I have yet to board a plane to be with family, yet somehow we’ve already found the short fuses and tension stretching patience with each other.
Can you relate?
The problems may have nothing to do with you except that you’re within proximity of the resentful responses and it’s pulling on your patience to stay present with people like this.
I’m paddling in this boat with you, my friend.
The enemy just needs to get us wrapped up in anger and bitterness to steal the show from what this holiday is all about. He wants you to be a bitter soul behind a beautiful face, crippled by the offenses this Christmas.
Maybe you’re coming to the table feeling resentment because your family could never completely understand how your own rejections feel. Yours are seemingly impossible to forgive.
Unforgiveness is the devil’s design to keep you bruised and bleeding and long-term angry. He can use even the lightest offense to do it. You’re not the victim of offense. You’ve been targeted by the devil with anger and he’s been strategizing how to suck all the power out of your life.
Forgive. Because what you have now is not freedom but bitterness. Your forgiveness doesn’t benefit the other person… it’s for you to feel whole and complete. Genuine freedom is waiting for you on the other side of forgiveness. Release your friends, your family… and the ticket agent juggling ten jobs to get you home for Christmas.
My prayer is for God to pull out all the stops and give you the strength to release others from what they owe you. May the Lord shift your thinking from the same old broken roads to a path of peace with each other and focus on the purpose of coming together. #fervent
Don’t let the people you love determine how you’re going to love.
The story of the prodigal son isn’t about a rebellious son who returns home.
This is a story about the grace and tenderness and mercy of a father who would leave his home and run toward a son who rejected him.
His name is Jesus. God left His home to come to this earth in the form of a man for you.
He doesn’t give gifts to people who think they deserve it. God gives gifts to people who know they are not worthy of it.
God thought about you not at your best but at your worst.
May your soul feel chased down by the tender love and mercy of a father this Christmas. And may the overflow of your heart remain full of hope, generously sharing this great joy we have found in Jesus.
30 minutes in I realized just how long it had been since my friend and I shared a table together. And I also noticed how the discussion had shifted back to me quite frequently. He stayed at the surface of his story about financials and friends. It was obvious he was dodging until I pressed into the personal parts, like relationships and dating.
“The truth is you are a good person and she is a good person and your dinner together was a culmination of two really great people coming to the table with charming souls to share,” I suggest. He is stunned by the honesty in this statement and we stare as these bittersweet morsels sink in.
She told him she wasn’t ready for a relationship. Those words shatter a man’s self-esteem with rejection.
My friend doesn’t want to accept a variable equation where good plus good includes carry overs to help us grow; he expects these exchanges to equal happily ever after.
“Don’t let the lack of her readiness speak rejection over your soul,” my voice whispers through the noise. “Look at me and hear these words, you are worthy. She is worthy, and she is not ready to receive that.”
Before he can salute this sage suggestion, I credit the man who simultaneously broke and mended my heart with these words.
Grasping to accept the brutal and beautiful truth, we stew over our menu. Or at least I was. In the silence, his heart was souring in light of my certainty.
Looking up from the insert of specials, I ask if he knows what he wants.
“What women want is a man who treats them less than they deserve,” he gathers.
It is clear bitterness has barged in offering a menu with some bite.
“Don’t go there,” I say. “Some women settle for less than they deserve. It is a lost battle with self-esteem.”
The taste of a woman’s sabotage is pungent for a goodhearted man to hear, mostly to men like my friend, who have protected purity because of what he believes; she is the beauty and he is the beast.
He stares at his plate and stabs the Caesar salad with his fork, “it doesn’t make sense and now I don’t know what to do.”
Sadly, I’m afraid I stirred up more confusion in this conversation than where his convictions led him before dinner was served.
Buried beneath the bewilderment, I can see he is scared. He spent seven years waiting on a woman he concluded was ‘the one’. And now she’s not. The painful admission of his past associates his responsibility with her integrity; his willingness to stay with her decision to walk away.
We’re on to the main course as he finally cuts into the slice of sirloin and baked potato, “I just don’t know if I can wait on someone like that again.”
Contentment has been the centerpiece of this conversation, with self-esteem and pride dipping and dodging around the table to get a clearer view.
As a woman with more remorse than respect for the way she’s treated a man, I must say to you now, what she couldn’t say then.
The way your heart loves generously is how Christ loved the Church. Your words stir more healing and forgiveness than burden with hurt. Your reflection encourages the hopeless; your hand gives joy to the homeless. Your subtle strength to protect souls over sharing their stories is simply admirable. I see a man still mounted on his horse while blazing through his own battles. Yes, I see you clearly; a man after God’s own heart. I am in awe of you, and I’m scared.
If I accept your love, then I too must acknowledge God’s mercy. But my struggles are still in me and I’m just not ready. I don’t know when the slate of my soul will feel clear, yet having you wait is my greatest fear.
The tone in my voice grates through a generous wedge of his reality and shreds the truth into bite-size helpings he can digest.
Her fight with the former is not meant for his medal of honor in the future. She must find the bravery to face these mistakes in her own timeline.
Though every prince wants the privilege to gallop in on Goliath, every princess must stir up strength to stand and slay her own struggles.
And my friend, well, he must stand guard over his own heart, and silence the voices sizing up a prince’s value with the world’s vision of what it means for a man and woman to be apart.
We don’t go to church when we have it all together.
We go to church when we need answers… direction, and clarity, healing, and breakthroughs, money, and deliverance.
Whatever you’re searching for in this life, I promise you Jesus is at the stern. He can speak to your storm.
We all face a sea of decisions, fear and even regret. And for a little while, you may believe that all the patchwork in your own power is enough to hold things together until another storm crashes into the seams, where things are a little weaker than before.
It doesn’t matter how big the sea is or how much skill you have, you will not reach the other side of it without Jesus.
