From spiritualinspiration
Wednesday, April 10, 2013
Answer the door to Joy
Today, make up your mind to answer the door to joy! Get up every morning and say, “Father, thank You for another beautiful day. I’m going to be happy. I’m going to enjoy this day because You are faithful. I’m going to brighten someone else’s life. I am choosing to receive Your gift of joy and passing it on to others because I love You, and I know that I am called for Your purposes!”
From spiritualinspiration
From spiritualinspiration
Don't you dare give up
“Let us hold fast the profession of our faith without wavering; (for He is faithful that promised)” (Hebrews 10:23, KJV)
“Hold fast” is not a phrase we often use in this culture. But in the original Greek, hold fast means not only to embrace, but to embrace with force as if someone is trying to take something from you. In other words, you’ve got to have a firm grip or you’re going to lose out! And notice what we are supposed to hold fast to—our profession, our declaration of faith.
I like to think of it sort of like a tug of war. You’re on one end and the enemy is on the other. He’s trying to pull that rope out of your hand. He’s trying to steal your hope and get you to speak negative words of doubt and unbelief. But you’ve got to be determined and stand strong. You’ve got to persevere and hold fast. Don’t let the enemy pull the seed of faith out of your heart! You might need to dig your heals in and get a new grip, but don’t you dare let go! Keep speaking words of faith. Keep speaking words of hope. Keep declaring God’s Word and keep holding fast to the profession of your faith!
“Hold fast” is not a phrase we often use in this culture. But in the original Greek, hold fast means not only to embrace, but to embrace with force as if someone is trying to take something from you. In other words, you’ve got to have a firm grip or you’re going to lose out! And notice what we are supposed to hold fast to—our profession, our declaration of faith.
I like to think of it sort of like a tug of war. You’re on one end and the enemy is on the other. He’s trying to pull that rope out of your hand. He’s trying to steal your hope and get you to speak negative words of doubt and unbelief. But you’ve got to be determined and stand strong. You’ve got to persevere and hold fast. Don’t let the enemy pull the seed of faith out of your heart! You might need to dig your heals in and get a new grip, but don’t you dare let go! Keep speaking words of faith. Keep speaking words of hope. Keep declaring God’s Word and keep holding fast to the profession of your faith!
Tuesday, April 9, 2013
Beautiful, breathtaking, real leadership... Thank you Ann
Dear Church,
Cancer can be deadly and so can depression.
So can the dark and the shame and the crush of a thousand skeletons, a thousand millstones, a thousand internal infernos.
We could tell you what we know.
That — depression is like a room engulfed in flames and you can’t breathe for the sooty smoke smothering you limp — and suicide is deciding there is no way but to jump straight out of the burning building.
That when the unseen scorch on the inside finally sears intolerably hot – you think a desperate lunge from the flames and the land of the living seems the lesser of two unbearables.
That’s what you’re thinking — that if you’d do yourself in, you’d be doing everyone a favor.
I had planned mine for a Friday.
That come that Friday the flames would be licking right up the the strain of my throat. You don’t try to kill yourself because death’s appealing — but because life’s agonizing. We don’t want to die. But we can’t stand to be devoured.
So I made this plan. And I wrote this note.
And I remember the wild agony of no way out and how the stars looked, endless and forever, and your mind can feel like it’s burning up at all the edges and there’s never going to be any way to stop the flame. Don’t bother telling us not to jump unless you’ve felt the heat, unless you bear the scars of the singe.
Don’t only turn up the praise songs but turn to Lamentations and Job and be a place of lament and tenderly unveil the God who does just that — who wears the scars of the singe. A God who bares His scars and reaches through the fire to grab us, “Come — Escape into Me.”
Nobody had told me that –
that one of the ways to get strong again is to set the words free.
You know — The Word that bends close and breathes warming love into the universe…. and the words mangled around swollen secrets and strangling dark — just let the Word, the words, all free in you.
My Dad, he had told me that if I told, it’d slit us all.
So much for believing the Truth will set you free. So much weight for a wide-eyed nine-year-old.
So I locked lips and heart hard so no one knew about the locked wards and the psychiatric doctors and why my mama was gone and it’s crazy how the stigma around mental health can drive you right insane.
There are some who take communion and anti-depressants and there are those who think both are a crutch.
Come in close — I’d rather walk tall with a crutch than crawl around insisting like a proud and bloody fool that I didn’t need one.
I once heard a pastor tell the whole congregation that he had lived next to the loonie bin and I looked at the floor when everyone laughed and they didn’t know how I loved my mama. I looked to the floor when they laughed, when I wanted them to stand up and reach through the pain of the flames and say:
Our Bible says Jesus said, “It is not those who are healthy who need a doctor, but those who are sick.” Jesus came for the sick, not for the smug. Jesus came as doctor and He makes miracles happen through medicine and when the church isn’t for the suffering, then the Church isn’t for Christ.
I wanted them to say it all together, like one Body, for us to say it all together to each other because there’s not one of us who hasn’t lost something, who doesn’t fear something, who doesn’t ache with something. I wanted us to turn to the hurting, to each other, and promise it till we’re hoarse:
We won’t give you some cliche – but something to cling to — and that will mean our hands.
We won’t give you some platitudes — but someplace for your pain — and that will mean our time.
We won’t give you some excuses — but we’ll be some example — and that will mean bending down and washing your wounds. Wounds that we don’t understand, wounds that keep festering, that don’t heal, that down right stink — wounds that can never make us turn away.
Because we are the Body of the Wounded Healer and we are the people who believe the impossible — that wounds can be openings to the beauty in us.
We’re the people who say: there’s no shame saying that your heart and head are broken because there’s a Doctor in the house. It’s the wisest and the bravest who cry for help when lost.
There’s no stigma in saying you’re sick because there’s a wounded Healer who uses nails to buy freedom and crosses to resurrect hope and medicine to make miracles.
There’s no guilt in mental illness because depression is a kind of cancer that attacks the mind. You don’t shame cancer, you treat cancer. You don’t treat those with hurting insides as less than. You get them the most treatment.
I wanted the brave to speak Truth and Love:
Shame is a bully and Grace is a shield. You are safe here.
To write it on walls and arms and wounds:
No Shame.
No Fear.
No Hiding.
Always safe for the suffering here.
You can be different and you can struggle and you can wrestle and you can hurt and we will be here. Because a fallen world keeps falling apart and even though we the Body can’t make things turn out — we can turn up. Just keep turning up, showing up, looking up.
Mama came Home and I found grace, a thousand, endless graces, and it is by grace we are saved, grace adopting us into a family that no illness can ever remove us from.
Grace, that miracle which even the darkest can’t consume, but only consumes you.
Light pried through the dark. A shaft came through a window like a lifeline. And the birds sang and we heard them.
Related:
Praying earnestly for hurting families this weekend (@CNN)
The Story of my own journey back
Share here the one thing you wish people knew about mental health?
{bird photo credit}
Giving thanks in everything because we fiercely believe that Christ can redeem anything.
Join us? And happily change everything by keeping your own crazy list of One Thousand Gifts? Dare you to Joy! Take the dare to Fully Live!
1. Grab this month’s Free JOY DARE Calendar with 3 daily prompts to go on a scavenger hunt for God’ gifts … {or write down any gifts you choose. Use the free app.} 2. Count 3 gifts a day and you have over #1000gifts in 2013. Jot them down in the new numbered One Thousand Gifts devotional journal — The Farmer’s writing in his with a red pen and daily – the numbers in the journal already there! Motivating… 3. Share your gifts everyday in our beautiful Facebook community to enter everyday for the monthly $100 Amazon draw (or link to your blog post with your list of gifts). 4. Count #1000gifts in 2013 and enter to win a Nikon DSLR camera with lens. Slow Down. Savor Life. Give thanks. Believing something is one thing. But the Best only comes when you decide to Be Living it. Please, jump in, make your life about giving thanks to God! — Just add the direct URL to your specific 1000 gift list post… and if you join us, we humbly ask that you please help us find each other in our refrain of thanks by sharing the community’s graphic within your post.
Give thanks to the Lord! His Love Endures Forever!
button code here
Cancer can be deadly and so can depression.
So can the dark and the shame and the crush of a thousand skeletons, a thousand millstones, a thousand internal infernos.
We could tell you what we know.
That — depression is like a room engulfed in flames and you can’t breathe for the sooty smoke smothering you limp — and suicide is deciding there is no way but to jump straight out of the burning building.
That when the unseen scorch on the inside finally sears intolerably hot – you think a desperate lunge from the flames and the land of the living seems the lesser of two unbearables.
That’s what you’re thinking — that if you’d do yourself in, you’d be doing everyone a favor.
I had planned mine for a Friday.
That come that Friday the flames would be licking right up the the strain of my throat. You don’t try to kill yourself because death’s appealing — but because life’s agonizing. We don’t want to die. But we can’t stand to be devoured.
So I made this plan. And I wrote this note.
And I remember the wild agony of no way out and how the stars looked, endless and forever, and your mind can feel like it’s burning up at all the edges and there’s never going to be any way to stop the flame. Don’t bother telling us not to jump unless you’ve felt the heat, unless you bear the scars of the singe.
Don’t only turn up the praise songs but turn to Lamentations and Job and be a place of lament and tenderly unveil the God who does just that — who wears the scars of the singe. A God who bares His scars and reaches through the fire to grab us, “Come — Escape into Me.”
Nobody had told me that –
that one of the ways to get strong again is to set the words free.
You know — The Word that bends close and breathes warming love into the universe…. and the words mangled around swollen secrets and strangling dark — just let the Word, the words, all free in you.
My Dad, he had told me that if I told, it’d slit us all.
So much for believing the Truth will set you free. So much weight for a wide-eyed nine-year-old.
So I locked lips and heart hard so no one knew about the locked wards and the psychiatric doctors and why my mama was gone and it’s crazy how the stigma around mental health can drive you right insane.
There are some who take communion and anti-depressants and there are those who think both are a crutch.
Come in close — I’d rather walk tall with a crutch than crawl around insisting like a proud and bloody fool that I didn’t need one.
I once heard a pastor tell the whole congregation that he had lived next to the loonie bin and I looked at the floor when everyone laughed and they didn’t know how I loved my mama. I looked to the floor when they laughed, when I wanted them to stand up and reach through the pain of the flames and say:
Our Bible says Jesus said, “It is not those who are healthy who need a doctor, but those who are sick.” Jesus came for the sick, not for the smug. Jesus came as doctor and He makes miracles happen through medicine and when the church isn’t for the suffering, then the Church isn’t for Christ.
I wanted them to say it all together, like one Body, for us to say it all together to each other because there’s not one of us who hasn’t lost something, who doesn’t fear something, who doesn’t ache with something. I wanted us to turn to the hurting, to each other, and promise it till we’re hoarse:
We won’t give you some cliche – but something to cling to — and that will mean our hands.
We won’t give you some platitudes — but someplace for your pain — and that will mean our time.
We won’t give you some excuses — but we’ll be some example — and that will mean bending down and washing your wounds. Wounds that we don’t understand, wounds that keep festering, that don’t heal, that down right stink — wounds that can never make us turn away.
Because we are the Body of the Wounded Healer and we are the people who believe the impossible — that wounds can be openings to the beauty in us.
We’re the people who say: there’s no shame saying that your heart and head are broken because there’s a Doctor in the house. It’s the wisest and the bravest who cry for help when lost.
There’s no stigma in saying you’re sick because there’s a wounded Healer who uses nails to buy freedom and crosses to resurrect hope and medicine to make miracles.
There’s no guilt in mental illness because depression is a kind of cancer that attacks the mind. You don’t shame cancer, you treat cancer. You don’t treat those with hurting insides as less than. You get them the most treatment.
I wanted the brave to speak Truth and Love:
Shame is a bully and Grace is a shield. You are safe here.
To write it on walls and arms and wounds:
No Shame.
No Fear.
No Hiding.
Always safe for the suffering here.
You can be different and you can struggle and you can wrestle and you can hurt and we will be here. Because a fallen world keeps falling apart and even though we the Body can’t make things turn out — we can turn up. Just keep turning up, showing up, looking up.
Mama came Home and I found grace, a thousand, endless graces, and it is by grace we are saved, grace adopting us into a family that no illness can ever remove us from.
Grace, that miracle which even the darkest can’t consume, but only consumes you.
Light pried through the dark. A shaft came through a window like a lifeline. And the birds sang and we heard them.
Related:
Praying earnestly for hurting families this weekend (@CNN)
The Story of my own journey back
Share here the one thing you wish people knew about mental health?
{bird photo credit}
Giving thanks in everything because we fiercely believe that Christ can redeem anything.
Join us? And happily change everything by keeping your own crazy list of One Thousand Gifts? Dare you to Joy! Take the dare to Fully Live!
1. Grab this month’s Free JOY DARE Calendar with 3 daily prompts to go on a scavenger hunt for God’ gifts … {or write down any gifts you choose. Use the free app.} 2. Count 3 gifts a day and you have over #1000gifts in 2013. Jot them down in the new numbered One Thousand Gifts devotional journal — The Farmer’s writing in his with a red pen and daily – the numbers in the journal already there! Motivating… 3. Share your gifts everyday in our beautiful Facebook community to enter everyday for the monthly $100 Amazon draw (or link to your blog post with your list of gifts). 4. Count #1000gifts in 2013 and enter to win a Nikon DSLR camera with lens. Slow Down. Savor Life. Give thanks. Believing something is one thing. But the Best only comes when you decide to Be Living it. Please, jump in, make your life about giving thanks to God! — Just add the direct URL to your specific 1000 gift list post… and if you join us, we humbly ask that you please help us find each other in our refrain of thanks by sharing the community’s graphic within your post.
Give thanks to the Lord! His Love Endures Forever!
button code here
Monday, April 8, 2013
The Open Door
I believe that God is ready to present you with new opportunities. He wants to open new doors before you. It doesn’t matter what’s happening in the world around you, God’s Word remains true!
Remember, in an instant, God can bring the right people into your life, the right opportunities, and the right resources to take you to a whole new level. Today, choose to keep an attitude of faith and expectancy. Begin to thank Him for the opportunities that are just ahead for you. Shut the door on fear and let God lead you by His peace through the door of opportunity He has prepared for you!
From Spiritual Inspiration on Tumblr
Remember, in an instant, God can bring the right people into your life, the right opportunities, and the right resources to take you to a whole new level. Today, choose to keep an attitude of faith and expectancy. Begin to thank Him for the opportunities that are just ahead for you. Shut the door on fear and let God lead you by His peace through the door of opportunity He has prepared for you!
From Spiritual Inspiration on Tumblr
Friday, April 5, 2013
A Confident Woman
spiritualinspiration:
8 Traits of a Confident Woman
1. She’s had enough. When you’ve had enough of living for someone else, pleasing others, craving others’ approval or of those who bind your life with theirs; when you’ve had enough of the fear of confronting someone or are ready to stand up for yourself, you’re walking in your God-given confidence. When you are ready to step out of these types of situations and follow God fully, you are a confident woman.
2. She doesn’t concentrate on her weaknesses but instead she develops and maximizes her strengths. She discovers her strengths and asks God to help her
3. She believes in her values. She can confidently say about herself the same things that God says about her. She sees herself as God sees her no matter what anyone has ever said to her or about her. She is grounded in her identity in Christ.
4. She allows God to work through her flaws. We all have flaws. Not one of us is perfect. She loves herself in a balanced and healthy way and never despises or rejects herself. 5. She takes care of herself. This means to take care of yourself first and foremost before taking care of others. This is not selfish. What does the airline hostess say about the oxygen mask? “In the event of an emergency, put your oxygen mask on first then assist someone else.”
6. She knows her strengths. Take inventory of yourself and think about what you are good at, perhaps something you have not noticed. Make a list of what you are good at. Whatever you are good at is the area God has gifted you. This is what you must serve to the world.
7. She gets out of the boat and doesn’t sink. A confident woman gets out of her past and all that’s associated with it. She doesn’t murmur and complain about missing out on life because of her past. She doesn’t hide her past and she knows she will never be free if she keeps running away from her past. She is no longer stuck in her past and her past is no longer stuck in her. 8. She never stops trying. A confident woman recovers from setbacks. She is in charge of her destiny and keeps trying different things until she discovers what she is here on this earth to do. She will experience some set-backs, some disappointments but she never stops trying until she discovers her place. This place will feel right to her.
And the greatest thing about confidence is when it is rooted in God, we can act in boldness and assurance in Him. So we can say confidence is all about being positive concerning what you can do and not worrying over what you cannot do. A confident woman is opened to learning because she knows her confidence allows her to walk through life’s doorways eager to discover what waits on the other side. She knows that every new unknown is a chance to learn more about herself so she can unleash her abilities. She engages in positive self-talk.
8 Traits of a Confident Woman
1. She’s had enough. When you’ve had enough of living for someone else, pleasing others, craving others’ approval or of those who bind your life with theirs; when you’ve had enough of the fear of confronting someone or are ready to stand up for yourself, you’re walking in your God-given confidence. When you are ready to step out of these types of situations and follow God fully, you are a confident woman.
2. She doesn’t concentrate on her weaknesses but instead she develops and maximizes her strengths. She discovers her strengths and asks God to help her
3. She believes in her values. She can confidently say about herself the same things that God says about her. She sees herself as God sees her no matter what anyone has ever said to her or about her. She is grounded in her identity in Christ.
4. She allows God to work through her flaws. We all have flaws. Not one of us is perfect. She loves herself in a balanced and healthy way and never despises or rejects herself. 5. She takes care of herself. This means to take care of yourself first and foremost before taking care of others. This is not selfish. What does the airline hostess say about the oxygen mask? “In the event of an emergency, put your oxygen mask on first then assist someone else.”
6. She knows her strengths. Take inventory of yourself and think about what you are good at, perhaps something you have not noticed. Make a list of what you are good at. Whatever you are good at is the area God has gifted you. This is what you must serve to the world.
7. She gets out of the boat and doesn’t sink. A confident woman gets out of her past and all that’s associated with it. She doesn’t murmur and complain about missing out on life because of her past. She doesn’t hide her past and she knows she will never be free if she keeps running away from her past. She is no longer stuck in her past and her past is no longer stuck in her. 8. She never stops trying. A confident woman recovers from setbacks. She is in charge of her destiny and keeps trying different things until she discovers what she is here on this earth to do. She will experience some set-backs, some disappointments but she never stops trying until she discovers her place. This place will feel right to her.
And the greatest thing about confidence is when it is rooted in God, we can act in boldness and assurance in Him. So we can say confidence is all about being positive concerning what you can do and not worrying over what you cannot do. A confident woman is opened to learning because she knows her confidence allows her to walk through life’s doorways eager to discover what waits on the other side. She knows that every new unknown is a chance to learn more about herself so she can unleash her abilities. She engages in positive self-talk.
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