Bold Faith

by Stephanie Morrill

Have you ever had things you wanted to do—dreams you wanted to chase, classes you wanted to take, a boy you wanted to date—and been told that you were wrong?

I started dating my husband when we were thirteen. We met on a youth group retreat. One youth leader remarked to me, "You can't date Ben now! He's the guy you're supposed to marry!"

When we broke up our junior year of high school, we were told that was wrong too. (And while I certainly didn't handle things the way I wish I had, it was amazing to watch God go all Romans 8:28 on us and work it out for our good.)

And when we got engaged at age 17? Guess what? Also a wrong choice.

Here we are with our two kiddos after being happily married for 10 years:

You know what I wonder sometimes? What if I had listened to the negative voices of others? What if, instead of listening to God, I had been so spooked by the idea of people thinking I was making a wrong choice that I turned away from God's best for me?

Don't misunderstand me—I'm a big believer in seeking counsel from wise people who love Jesus and have my best interest at heart. In marriage, parenting, career, and spiritual development, I regularly seek out people who are ahead of me so I can glean their knowledge and learn from their mistakes and successes.

What I'm talking about is when God puts something bold in front of us. Maybe it's becoming a foster parent. Maybe it's a community service project that makes our stomach squirm with nerves. Maybe it's an alternative kind of medicine for a health issue. Maybe it's moving to a neighborhood you never would've picked. Maybe it's taking a job that you're passionate about, but that comes with a big pay cut and uncertain future. Whatever it is, will you be brave enough to tune out the chorus of no's, and tune in to the (sometimes) quiet voice of God that says yes? Yes, this is the path to take. Trust me.

When talking about God-sized risks, Beth Moore once said about God, "I'm so far out on this limb with Him, He's the only one who could get me back down." May that be true of me too as I navigate this road.

A Change of Heart

Kansas City has been transformed this past month.  Are the leaves on the trees even changing color this year?  It's hard to tell since everything looks so Royals blue. The Royals winnings have changed the entire atmosphere of our city, but it's the heart of the players and people that have been so fun to witness.  There's just something about hearing 'God Bless America' at our home stadium and even the stubborn attendance of the Marlins Man has become endearing.  

This week we are taking a break from our regular schedule in the A.M. group to learn about Gideon (due to scheduling conflicts with World Series game 6 for our Women Unplugged PM group).  Gideon's story can be found in Judges 6-8, and begins with him in a losing situation.  Anytime you find yourself threshing wheat in a winepress you know it's not good and Gideon was in a desperate place taking desperate measures because he feared the Midianites. The good news is that God wasn't surprised by Gideon's mess and He's not surprised by ours either.  In fact, God appeared to Gideon and God calls him a "mighty man of valor" at a moment when Gideon was anything but, and he does the same in our lives.  When we are in Christ, God calls us, "a royal priesthood", "masterpiece", "righteous", "more than a conquerors", "heirs" when we are still our messy, sinful selves.  Gideon had an encounter with God and Gideon's perspective changed.  God offers us opportunities to encounter Him through Jesus and the presence of the Holy Spirit in our lives.  He will change our lives from the inside out, one "wheat threshing in a wine press" situation at a time.  

Next week we will jump back into "The Story We Find Ourselves In" and look at the life of Joshua.  Until then...Go Royals!

Jena M.

We Are Meant for Relationship

As I sat down to begin this post, I honestly had no idea what I wanted to talk about. I had no clear vision of what I was meant to share with you this week. Some of the ideas that I came up with over the past few days seemed forced or inauthentic. Some seemed too broad, while others seemed too specific. 

It was quite the conundrum.

But of course, because this is God’s message and not mine, I had to get out of His way. 

I ended up walking away from my brainstorming session for a bit. At least until I got my head on straight and opened my ears wide enough to hear what He was telling me. 

Relationships. 

That’s what I’m meant to write about this week. 

And not just the romantic kind. 

I’m talking storge (affection), philos (friendship), and agape (charity). The three forms of love that, quite frankly, are the most difficult for many people to engage in properly. And without storge and philos, I find it next to impossible to even get the romantic relationship right. But that’s another story…

Personally speaking, I’ve always struggled with maintaining consistent and strong relationships with people. It takes more work than one would imagine. 

I’m an introvert, I’m a natural solo being. I am someone who thrives for extended periods of time alone. I’ve done so for many years. And I’ve rarely had the desire or the need to change that. When I need to have a “people fix”, I go to ONE person, have my 30-minute sit down, then go back to my cave. It’s kind of a selfish process, to be honest.

When I serve at Heartland, I typically spend the entire Saturday before alone and in my own space. Because I know that my tolerance level for social interaction will be depleted by that Sunday evening. 

Now, there’s nothing wrong with being an introvert. I don’t think being a person who enjoys solitude is a bad thing. But being a person who enjoys solitude to the point that it becomes a crutch, thus not allowing God’s full creation plan for us to take place, is a bad thing.

You see, God never intended for us to be alone. He never intended for us to walk this life by ourselves. In fact, it’s impossible to do. He made it so. Right from the very beginning, He planned on community, he planned on relationship, He planned on connection — not just with Him but with others like us. With humankind.

“Then the Lord God said, ‘It is not good for the man to be alone. I will make a helper who is just right for him’.” (Genesis 2:18 NLT)

With the making of heaven and earth, land and sea, plants and animals, God created Adam and his companion, Eve. One of the VERY first creations that graced this earth was relationship amongst man.

He created us in His likeness. So that we could not only get to know Him through His plans for us, individually; but also so that we can know Him through interacting with others, who are also made in His image. Because we are each so different, every encounter we have with a person is never the same as the one we’ve had before and won’t be the same as the one we have after. Each relationship is like a fingerprint. No one is the same.

“When God said it wasn’t good for the man to be alone, he wasn’t speaking just about marriage. Genesis 1 and 2 are passages about God’s vision for humanity. God created woman to come alongside the man in this battle of life. She watches his back, he watches her. They’re in this battle together.” (Carolyn Custis James)

It amazes me how easy it is for me to forget that I am not meant to walk alone. I need my family, I need my friends, I need the people that I meet on the street, I need the gentle smiles that I receive from clerks at the supermarket. Those are all God moments that should continuously remind me that He is working. He is constant. He is moving. He is present. But I become so focused on removing myself from the chaos, from the noise and from the confusion that His plan is lost.

Of the 7.1 billion people that inhabit this earth, each one of us has God in us. Each one of us is part of this thing called the Body of Christ. By definition, the body cannot fully function without all of its parts. Functioning requires community, and community requires relationship.

“It is not good for the man to be alone.” (Genesis 2:18)

We are not meant for lives of complete solitude. Human beings are social creatures. He made us that way. It’s honestly one of His greatest gifts to us. And I need to remember to express my thanks for such a gift — by loving and fostering my relationships.

- Christina Marie

What Happens When Copycats and MapMakers Engage the Word

I've always loved maps, but I haven't always loved the Bible.

Sometimes I had it right and it stuck mostly, memorizing scripture, like a poem in your pocket:) Or a cross.

Over years, God's Word became dead to me, as dead as Tevye's daughters*---still alive to their lovers, but rejected, ignored, seemingly forgotten.

I opened the bestseller, the life-changer, the illuminated text.

It lay flat.

Black or red, the font color mattered none, it was Greek to me. If only I had known about the copywork.

A few years later my daughter and I pressed Prismacolor leads to yellowed paper week after week. Great books we didn't completely understand, Paddle-to-the-Sea, Minn of the Mississippi, others, informed the mapwork, instructing us as we traced, etched, copied. Rivers blue, states green, trails hunchbacked curving up, then down for hundreds of miles, mountains upside down and V's. 

The great books became our American story over a year. My daughter and I treasured them as we mapped the characters' journeys over hill and dale. We slapped our maps up on the wall with sticky tack. They hang there still, the edges curling up so, aging nicely as a five-year superhero zooms past, then a swishing setter tail gives the Eastern US a good whack. We come home and find it lying on the wood floor.

Years before, hallowed, hollowing hunger squatted inside

Longing for a satisfying meal.

I wanted to hurl all the volumes I was reading about the Book, this bestseller, life-changer, illuminated text,

At my kind, deep friends,

The ones who sat together encscribing it on their own hearts and each other's with pens of fire. They did a simple act, of turning a piece of notebook paper on its side. 

They turned the paper, turned to pages in the Word, and it turned them upside down.

I hadn't realized it was all around me, they were all around me, this living, working entity of love until I could smell it, like my neighbor's smoking barbeque on a fall night. I wanted some of that.

I missed the memo about the homework, the copy work. They copied scripture, and put it in their own words. It was like learning Geography. To learn maps, you map. Copying corners and curves, boundaries and borders. To learn God's word, they wrote it, copying curves, letters, ball and stick, sloping, typed. They felt it with their fingers, read it with their eyes, mouths, and retold the story to themselves, to one another, again and again. 

The Word Lives whether we want it to or not; engage the living Word---Jesus, and He engages us to engage others.

That sweet striped-socked girl and I could have copied the U.S., the world by our lonesomes, but I'm so glad we got lost in the stories instead. My sweet girl could have spouted capitals and states back to me in a breath. But we traced and copied each word with care, the great skillet handle of Florida, the encircled star of D.C., she, learning for the first time, me remembering renewed. 

My Bible-reading friends could have copied alone or kept their findings to themselves. But they shared. They retold the story to one another, to me, anyone who would listen! In community, with friends, family, a group. Don't miss the crucial bones of the work: ordinary words become extraordinary together. 

Because when we speak God's story and share it, God creates transformation and transparency, etching it into our very souls. Because who doesn't want to hear something good, something life-changing, illuminated?

When was the last time that #1 bestseller of all time changed how you live?

Try turning the paper with me. 

• Take a sheet of notebook paper and turn it horizontal. 
• Draw two vertical lines to make three columns, like this.

• Copy a few verses: three to five? Smaller is better, but more than two for context. 

Column 1: copy the verses verbatim.

Column 2: Write each verse in your own words. 

Column 3: Create an I will.... What is something doable, tangible I can do based on what I read? Smaller is better! One great act of love is just 10 small ones completed over a season. 

I will read a book with my toddler. I will write out my prayers for my spouse. I will ask my co-worker out to lunch. 

Share your small story what God is doing in you with someone and see what happens. You might find yourself turned on your side, in a good way, living a story you've always wanted to love.

- Christina H.

*Fiddler on the Roof, anyone?

A Covenant Renewed and Kingdom on the Move

This week we are looking at Moses and how God worked through him to lead the Israelites out of slavery in Egypt... In the life of Moses, we see that God renews his Covenant commitment to Israel, & re-establishes her Kingdom calling.  God has used the trials of Israel’s time in Captivity to strengthen and form them into a people, and shows up in power to deliver them from their oppressors, which prepares them for the next era of their history; Conquest over the promised land. In order for Israel to successfully return to the land God has promised after 400 years, they must remain faithful to him. God’s people are forced to wander in the desert of Sinai as they waffle between faith & doubt.  Moses leads them during this time & raises up Joshua to lead God’s people into the next era of Israel’s history; to take Conquest over the Promised Land.

Bold Choice

“In the end, it is our decision how close we come (to God) and how willing we are to risk being consumed.”

Mike Breen, Covenant & Kingdom: The DNA of the Bible

I love everything about this sentence!

It kind of perfectly sums up having a relationship with God. There is no sugar coating, no long explanations, no talks of grace or fear, just a decision to be made:

Will we let God consume us?

He will do just that too. He will take your world flip it upside down, then shake it up a bit more, often leaving you in wonderment and breathless.

But, He never lets go. He has consumed you, he is engaged and invested fully and will use you up completely for His will…IF… we are willing. 

We can walk away. It is our choice! Being a Christian is a bold choice. 

People don’t really talk about that, come to think of it I’ve never heard anyone say 

“being a Christian, a follower of Christ, is a bold choice.”

People really should say that!

It was a ballsy move for 12 men to leave their lives and families and follow a stranger into complete chaotic uprising. 

It was a bold move for a prostitute to think, to ask, a holy man (THE holiest of men)  to give her a new life.

It was bold for a wilderness man to go to prison for loving our God. 

It is a bold move for people to travel across the world to foreign lands simply to spread love. 

It is a bold move to be seen with the unwanted, be it drop outs, druggies, immigrants, sick, homeless… (my list could go on and probably is politically incorrect but you get the point).

I think another word for bold is uncomfortable, maybe even inconvenient, definitely rewarding. 

According to Merriam-Webster bold is 

: not afraid of danger or difficult situations

: showing or needing confidence or lack of fear

So, yup, I stand by my statement, people should talk about how bold it is to be a Christian. 

We are choosing to give our lives away, to be consumed. That is a risk for those who don’t believe. 

We get to choose to step too close to the fire and catch ablaze. However, when we are consumed by God’s flame our lives will glow because of it. 

Maybe not in the safe, predictable way that roasting marshmallows by the fire might sound. 

But as for me, I’d rather dance in the flame. 

For our God is a consuming fire.

Hebrews12:29

Joseph's Story and This Week's Homework

In the life of Joseph, we find a man who is chosen by God to enter help establish his Kingdom, even under the intense trials of famine, betrayal, and relocation.  We saw how kingdom power flows from God the King, giving authority to His chosen representatives, which results in the power to accomplish God’s plans (aka. the Kingdom Triangle).  As the story of the foundation of Israel continues to unfold, God’s people are saved through “a great deliverance,” & they find themselves safe & secure in the land of Egypt as Genesis concludes.  We are told in Scripture that Israel is blessed and grows rapidly in Egypt, and that this results in great persecution at the hand of the Egyptians for the next 400 years.  Now, enslaved in Egypt, God’s people cry out to God again, and He reveals Himself to a man named Moses.  It is to the life of Moses that we will focus our daily reading this week, and discuss next time about Israel’s Captivity & Exodus from Egypt, as seen in the book of Exodus. 

This week's homework:

Day 1- Exodus 1:1-22      Day 2- Exodus 2:1-25    Day 3-  Exodus 3:1-19   

Day 4- Exodus 4:1-13      Day 5: Exodus 6:1-13

When You Can't Shake One More Hand or Lift Your Head, Drink This

Dry as driftwood in a sea of people, she wraps her hands around the coffee to warm, the hour's chosen, unresponding friend. The lobby hums like a hive, people's conversations and footsteps sounding a rhythm. "Hello's," "how are you's" reverberating against glass walls, concrete floors. At a teetering table, she chews a Cliff bar methodically as she wishes time and herself away. A small-lipped smile quivers at her mouth's edges when someone passes. Anyone.

To get there, he had to pass through Samaria. He came into Sychar, a Samaritan village that bordered the field Jacob had given his son Joseph. Jacob’s well was still there. Jesus, worn out by the trip, sat down at the well. It was noon...

The coffee cools and she cries silently. Emptiness pressurizes her like a leaky garden hose, ebbing the grief in clear plops, straight and salty into the cup. She might unhinge the faucet itself, right there in the church lobby. She has been singing praises to God with little kids, but she can't, won't do it again. 

How can you give high fives and wave your hands in praise when your soul is bone dry? How can you give when you are needing so much yourself? A kind word, a touch, more than a handful of moments of someone, anyone seeing your pain, your hurt, your need to be known and understood. Engaged.

She is grieving and she knows it finally, for everything that is just out of reach, her many years of friendships, of people asking questions, interested always, and challenging. She moved away from home. Now she is the new person, the outsider. She looks up and sees other people, standing alone, some feeling ethnically or economically or spiritually or relationally less-than she guesses. On the fringe. Like her. Surrounded and alone.

...A woman, a Samaritan, came to draw water. Jesus said, “Would you give me a drink of water?” (His disciples had gone to the village to buy food for lunch.) The Samaritan woman, taken aback, asked, “How come you, a Jew, are asking me, a Samaritan woman, for a drink?” (Jews in those days wouldn’t be caught dead talking to Samaritans.)... 

She wants so badly to pick herself up out of her mess and give something away. She knows that could be the start. She is so empty she can't see how to say hello one more time or extend her hand again without someone really seeing her.

She retreats to the bookstore and hides for an hour, from her expectations of the world, from herself. Then the unsettling knowing comes: bitterness and anger sprouts from her selfish soul. She wants everyone to see her wounds and heal them, instead of the One who heals every heartache.

...Jesus answered, “If you knew the generosity of God and who I am, you would be asking me for a drink, and I would give you fresh, living water.” 

John 4:4-10 MSG

Someone says hello, someone she knows. We all want to know someone, if for nothing but to recognize a face in a crowd. She is snatched, startled out of her hole next to the Marriage books. She will see it as she tells us the story, even if blindness bathes her now: the drink-bearer, the caring coming in the name of Christ. They speak briefly. How are the kids and what did you do this weekend. Nothing really to the approaching friend, everything to her.

Because when you are a deck of cards folding in on yourself, you cannot see past your pain until someone else picks up the deck and holds you, unfolds you.

When she finally exits the bookstore, to move on and be in the world again, she sees the fringe people who had stood alone, every single one of them. She sees them as they are, as we are all meant to be. The shining smile of a tall lanky man opens wide and laughs bright and throws his head back like a Mentos commercial. It is enough to carry her back into the fray of kids and hand motions and words she can't remember.

Join me in finding the fringe people, the lonely, the breaking. We serve in a vast sea of people, so many hungry for One. Remember how He brought you into the light. Bolster your confidence, because it is not about them, or us. The pressure is off, I promise. It is about Him. Only Him. The Healer, the Provider. Abba. Father. Linger and look them in the eye. Hello is just code for "I am thirsty too."

- Christina M.

Praying Hard

I’ve never been very good at the discipline of prayer. Let me clarify -- I’ve never thought I was very good at what I *thought* an “effective” prayer life should look like. About a year ago, I found myself in the middle of a situation I couldn’t quite comprehend and it felt pretty earth-shattering.  In all honesty, the circumstance itself probably wasn’t all that dramatic, but I had just been in a spiritual season of spring -- new things growing in me, new hope springing up, deepening faith.  Going from that beautiful amazing place and taking a sharp turn into something that felt dark and confusing made me dizzy.

I found myself on my knees, quite literally, several times a day. I was desperate for an answer from God. I claimed His promises, I prayed scripture, I laid my heart and hands open before Him. I prayed a lot. I prayed hard. I committed to beginning and ending each day on my knees before the Lord. I did that for several months and, as of right now, no visible answer to that situation has come.

Somewhere along the line, I stopped going to my knees as often. After a while of not hearing or seeing a “direct” answer from God, I guess I got bored or thought it best to “move on.”  Prayer can be a tedious business.  Maybe that’s why I tend to give up so easily. I’ve been saturated by the instant-gratification mentality of our culture.  Prayer is very rarely about instant gratification.  

For the past few weeks we have been talking on Sunday mornings about the “agonizing, utterly contemptible, blessedly redeemable act of waiting.”  I think waiting and prayer go hand-in-hand in the Kingdom.  We’re really always waiting on something from God, and He invites us to be active in the waiting through the discipline of prayer. Whether we are waiting for healing, restoration, a clear path, or a word from Him, God instructs us to pray always (1 Thessalonians 5:17).

On the first week of the series, Dan encouraged us to take whatever we were waiting for and change our prayers to ask for more of the Holy Spirit and the fruits of the Spirit: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, gentleness, self-control. (Galatians 5:22-23)  I can tell you that even though no “answer” came from that intense season of on-my-knees prayer, God met me in ways I never would have imagined.  Even though I didn’t see God answering me in the way I was hoping, my prayers started to change. I began to approach God differently. He met me there on my knees and whispered to my heart, “I see you. I hear you. I love you. I’m going to give you something so much better than what you ask for. I give you Myself.” And that’s exactly what He did.  He spoke identity to me in those moments.  

He taught me the value of contending on behalf of others, whether or not they ever know someone is praying for them.  He taught me to come empty handed before Him and wait with expectation and hope.  

And now I find myself still waiting on a lot of things, but the desperation factor has lessened. Sure, I’m waiting on God, but I’m not praying about those things as often. Why is it that it often takes the dire situations to bring us to the feet of the Father?  So I am praying that God will stir my heart to passionate prayer for the things He cares about and for His kingdom. And I’m praying for strength and discipline to not “give up” on my prayers when I don’t see the answer right away. In his book The Circle Maker, Mark Batterson talks about how God instructed the Israelites to march around Jericho seven times and blow their trumpets before the walls would come down. Batterson wonders, “What if the Israelites had stopped circling on the sixth day?” and he concludes that they would have forfeited the miracle God had waiting just around the corner for them.

Prayer is a mysterious thing, and so is waiting on God. There are prayers that in His divine wisdom, God chooses not to answer in the way we expect. But He always hears us and always gives Himself if we will just ask. And He is always better than whatever it is we are waiting and praying for.

What is it that you are waiting for?  Do you need to “draw a circle around it” in prayer again? How is God changing you through the waiting? Thank Him for those things and keep on asking for more of Him.

Meredith M.

Daughter of a King

For you are all sons of God through faith in Christ Jesus.

Galations 3:26

I’m the daughter of a King.

I’ve always hated those t-shirts…with the tiara and slogan “I’m a princess, because my fathers a King”

You all know the shirts.

I’m a girly-girl. I love dresses and glitter and decorating and shopping and accessorizing, heck I even love tiaras. 

But I also have an edge and an inner strength, and something about those shirts has always seemed too frilly. 

I love princesses, but do not want to be one. I want to make messes and paint (border line inappropriate social propaganda). I want to eat cookie dough (from a tube staring at the ceiling fan). I want to have big emotions and take big actions and face the world head on. 

And something about “I’m a princess” screams, “help me down from my carriage!” 

I’m already off the carriage and in the mud.

Last time we were all together Heather Knight and Shelly Winkler talked a lot about how God is our Father and we have a royal lineage. To be honest, when they started I groaned inwardly, thinking “great, I don’t want a pep talk about my royal identity, I’m confident in myself and in Christ”

But then they said something new…. being royalty comes with great responsibility.

If I am royalty then His kingdom is my kingdom & my inheritance. I have an obligation to take responsibility, to take action to better His kingdom on earth; in every large and small way that I can.

To step up and fight against inequality. 

To speak for those without a voice. 

To use my best manners and kind words. 

To be hospitable and welcoming. 

To walk slowly with those who can’t keep pace.

To help others when it’s inconvenient.

To pick up the pieces of garbage instead of walking around them…

To put myself last….

This is my kingdom on earth. I am a princess and I am a constant representative of my King. 

Royalty isn’t about tiaras or carriages or photo ops on social outings. 

In actuality, being a part of God’s royal family can be a royal pain. 

For to this you have been called, because Christ also suffered for you, leaving you an example, so that you might follow in his steps. 

1 Peter 2:21

   Enter through the narrow gate; for the gate is wide and the way is broad that leads to destruction, and there are many who enter through it. For the gate is small and the way is narrow that leads to life, and there are few who find it. 

Matthew 7:13-14

And you will be hated by all for my name's sake…

Matthew 10:22

We aren’t called to live a plush life full of frivolous comforts. We are obligated to live a life that’s hard and uncomfortable. Jesus never said it’d be easy, He said it’d be worth it. I’ve found that when I begin to get too comfortable God has a way of shaking up my throne. 

I am a princess. It’s a title I don’t deserve, but one I will wear proudly and strive to be worthy of. Being royal doesn’t soften my edge, however it does equip me with royal armor and make me held to a royal standard. 

All who have accepted Christ as their father is royalty. So let us hold each other accountable, with grace for the hard days.  

But ask yourself:

What am I doing to better my Father’s kingdom?

Am I too comfortable?

- Jessi V.

But you are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God's special possession, that you may declare the praises of him who called you out of darkness into his wonderful light. 

1 Peter 2:9 (NIV)

The earth was formless and empty, and darkness covered the deep waters. And the Spirit of God was hovering over the surface of the waters. 

Genesis 1:2 (NLT)

All passages about water and oceans speak to me – I’m sure in a former life I was a mermaid (and I mean that in the most reverent manner possible).

My soul aches for the tide, and the sand, and the salt water and sea foam, and even the seashells.

But more than anything it’s the undeniable presence of God in the roar and whisper of every crashing wave. 

Something about standing on the shore and feeling the salty mist makes me vulnerable and small – bringing me to my knees (quite literally if He wanted).

I can’t hide from His presence, nor do I want to, I simply soak in as much as possible. I know that when I return home and am no longer sandy and staring into His awe-inspiring creation my soul will start aching. 

I try desperately to cling to the small vulnerable part of me, that’s held captive and breathless as I meet the Spirit of God hovering over the surface of the water.

I’ll make mermaid jokes to my husband, but its not about the water or the sand or the freedom of the sea.

It’s about meeting with God and collapsing into the power of His mighty creation.

- Jessica V.