Tag: religion

Be Heard

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Be Heard

I’m working on a short story.

Wanna hear it?

Okay, here goes. . .

Once upon a time, maybe a month or so ago, in a location far, far – okay maybe not that far away, a person said something to Joyce.

The something that was said made Joyce really mad.

Joyce was so mad she could spit fireballs and smoke was coming out of her ears.

Joyce knew she was right.

Joyce wanted the world to know she was right.

She prayed for direction (and maybe some sweet vindication).

She desperately wanted to be heard.

She NEEDED to be heard.

Joyce realized regardless of who was right, the bigger issue was that her love was growing colder by the minute.

Joyce felt really sorry and realized she had no control over the other person, but that she could always control her own reaction.  So she did speak, but she spoke in a way that gave her opinion without trashing the other person’s.

And they all lived happily ever after.

 

 

Okay, so maybe not so much short story and more just life in motion, but a true story nonetheless.

 

There is a lot going on in the world right now. . .

 

Take politics.

Were you team Hilary or team Trump?

Wait,did I go there too soon?

 

Okay, how about civics.

Where do you stand on the debate regarding law enforcement and race?

 

Global Events?

What is your stance on how terrorism should be dealt with?

 

If you’re breathing, you probably have an opinion on each one of these matters, with compelling reasons for why your opinions are the right ones.

 

These are all important issues.

Issues that affect communities and nations.

Issues that need to be talked about.

Issues that need to come out into the light.

 

I agree.

 

We need to be heard.  But our need to be right cannot override our love for people.

 

But Joyce, you say, these are really important issues.

 

Yeah.  Yeah, they are.  The future of our country, the upholding of justice, and human lives are all really important.

 

But what if in all of our arguing and trying to be heard, we are slowing tearing one another down?

 

And then, going from bad to worse, it will be dog-eat-dog, everyone at each other’s throat, everyone hating each other. . . . For many others, the overwhelming spread of evil will do them in—nothing left of their love but a mound of ashes.

Matthew 24:10 & 12 

 

What if we gave people the freedom to make their own choice without the name-calling and volunteering to help them pack for the long trip to Canada.

 

My beloved friends, let us continue to love each other since love comes from God. Everyone who loves is born of God and experiences a relationship with God. 

1 John 4:7 (The Message)

 

Easier said than done, huh?

 

How the heck do we speak up when the world has gone mad, and when we want to be heard?

 

I always find that coffee helps.

I mean, who are we kidding.

Coffee pretty much fixes everything.

 

Drink coffee.

With people.

Surround yourself with the reminder that God loves people.

And once upon time, you and I did too.

 

And you pray.

Don’t fret or worry. Instead of worrying, pray. Let petitions and praises shape your worries into prayers, letting God know your concerns. 

Philippians 4:6 (The Message)

 

And trust God.

Before you know it, a sense of God’s wholeness, everything coming together for good, will come and settle you down. It’s wonderful what happens when Christ displaces worry at the center of your life.

Philippians 4:7 (The Message)

 

Does that mean we shouldn’t talk about these things?

 

Maybe.

 

If it’s stealing your love for people, it’s not worth it.

 

I thought the whole Team Edward/Team Jacob debate was crazy but Team Trump/Team Hillary wins hands down.  I gotta be honest, I’ve really struggled with this, the last few months.  Holding my convictions in my hands without losing the love in my heart for people.

And funnily enough, it was Twitter that convicted me.

Yeah right Joyce.

No really – I promise.

 

Bill Johnson tweeted this: “This election is the most bizarre in my lifetime, yet it’s not confusing.  The spirit of offense is robbing people of their ability to discern.  Pray for wisdom, without the accusations.  For wisdom, seeing from God’s perspective, is really all that matters.”

 

Bill Johnson.

 

Geez.

 

The man even tweets revelation.

 

So, you’ve made it all the way through this blog and here’s what I hope you take away from it today:

 

Your voice DOES still matter, and it’s okay to be excited if you were a part of Team Trump.

 

And it is just as okay to be disappointed and angry if you were Team Hillary.

 

And it’s okay if you voted third party and are disenfranchised with politics altogether.

I’m not here to tell you how to feel.

 

But the fact that you feel something means you cared.

 

So. . . take all the time you need to process this election, and remember that God works all things together for the good of those who love him.

 

He’s got this.

And he’s got you.

 

 

Photo Credit: “Cafe” by Unsplash permissions through C.C. by 2.0

Throwing Up With Words

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Scattered: Finding God In Your Story (Chapter 1)

 

Hey, I hope it was a great Monday for you today.

 

If not, hang in there – it’s almost over and tomorrow will be better.  Remember, God’s mercies are new every morning.

 

God’s loyal love couldn’t have run out,
    his merciful love couldn’t have dried up.
They’re created new every morning.
    How great your faithfulness!

Lamentations 3:22-23 (The Message)

 

Right now, I’m bobbing my head like an idiot, listening to Andy Grammer, because you can’t not move, listening to Andy Grammar and I’m staring at the rain drizzling down the window at Starbucks and – – – oh my gosh, I forgot to tell you, Starbucks moved in like a mile from my house.

 

Ba-bam!  There it is, proof that there is a God and he soooooo loves me!  I am one happy girl slurping on my PSL (that’s a Pumpkin Spice Latte, for those of you not yet fluent in Starbucks speak).

 

At any rate, I thought I’d share an excerpt from Chapter 1 of my book, Scattered: Finding God In Your Story.  I’ve had several people tell me recently that they have always wanted to write their story.  Maybe you’re one of those people, harboring the dream of becoming a story-teller and sharing your life with the world.  If so, then this is for you tonight. . .

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1

Bleh

Throwing Up with Words

 

 

The thing about writing is – there really are no rules in the beginning, except one.

 

Just write.

The temptation is to overanalyze or criticize.

You’re not in it for anyone but you at this point.

The idea is to just get the raw emotion out.

 

It’s a lot like throwing up.

 

After my husband and I first got married, we went to a fondue restaurant.

It was awesome, except when it wasn’t.

 

Which was about an hour after we got home.

 

We both had gotten food poisoning.

 

For the next 24 hours we took turns tossing our cookies, – – er, fondue.

 

We would roll over and gently rub one another’s backs and say encouraging things like, “I’m sorry babe, it’ll be o – o –ohhhhhh no, Where’s the bucket?”

 

Romantic huh?

 

That’s kinda what I had in mind when I started writing.

 

Throwing up that is, not romance.

 

I had been poisoned by some things that had happened to me as a child and I just needed to get it out.

 

Hence, the figurative “Bleh” all over my laptop.

 

I would have Oscar-winning rants; all while sipping joe and jamming out to Goo Goo Dolls.  It was messy, it was painful, and in the end – it was healing.

 

I would look up new words to express things like sad and mad.  And later, I expanded my writing to include phrases that expressed deeper emotions . . . like – “really sad” and “really mad”.

 

And there was a beautiful clarity that began to form as I wrote.  .  . I was a hot mess.

 

When I started writing ten years ago, I was really emotionally damaged.

 

As in, I made train wrecks look good.

 

But I heard God speak to me.  It was only one word at the time, “write”.

 

I think I responded dumbly with an “uh, okay.”

 

Really though, what are you supposed to say when God tells you something like that?

“No?”

 

And so began my journey of Bleh.

 

I cried and bled for the art of it all.

Facing painful memories and hoping for answers.

 

After a couple of years, it was there – my art of “Bleh” in black and white.  And it looked something like a Van Gogh.

 

My life splashed on a typeset canvas.

 

Except no one liked me well enough to buy my art of “Bleh”, but on the other hand I didn’t hate it enough to cut off any body parts – you know, like an ear or something.

 

More years passed and I began to value what had been slowly happening to my life through something as simple as writing.

 

Old wounds that never seemed to heal were finally beginning to scar over.

 

I wasn’t as scared of letting my walls down and letting people in to see me in all of my vulnerability.  My relationships with others began to heal, I began to value myself, and my perception of God took on new lenses.

 

So this is my story, and I hope that by the end of this journey, you’ll find that it’s okay to share yours.

 

Because your story is worth telling.

 

To help heal your own heart as much as lend courage to someone else, who may just be in the very place that you have once been.

 

……………………………………………….

 (taken from Chapter 1 of Scattered: Finding God In Your Story by Joyce Ackermann)

Photo Credit: “Woman” by Unsplash permissions through C.C. by 2.0

 

Psssst. . . Don’t forget to come by the Anoka County Local Author Fair on November 5th, 2016 from 11 am – 2pm.

 

Why Boundaries Are Necessary

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Why Boundaries Are Neccessary

I saw this tonight and I couldn’t wait to share this.  Great post by Kris Vallotton on boundaries, why they aren’t selfish and how to start creating some.

 

By Kris Vallotton
October 19, 2016
www.krisvallotton.com

If you don’t manage your life, others will. If you don’t take care of yourself, no one else will. If you don’t set boundaries for yourself, the crowd will get what they think they need from you, but soon there will be nothing left to get. Then they will discard you like an old pair of shoes.

MANAGING YOUR SOUL

If you set boundaries to manage your soul, many won’t like it. They will accuse you of being arrogant, uncaring, not spiritual, unloving, etc. They will tell you about the life of Jesus, who never turned away anyone…of course He didn’t begin His public ministry until he was 30 and died at 33. He also had no wife or children to take care of…no soccer games to go to, no sleepless nights…up caring for a crying babies etc…

If you have a public platform, most people think you are obligated to carry out their will…pray for them at their convenience, take pictures until all you can see lights, hear every detail of their story, while 40 other people wait in line behind them, follow you out to your car or talk to you over the bathroom stall. You are expected to answer every post, email, phone call, text, etc.

If you love God and are passionate about caring for people…if you give people hope and believe in miracles…if you pour out your soul for the broken and the poor…if you are radically generous…you WILL have favor with God and man. BUT if you don’t steward the favor of God…if you let the fear of man be your shepherd…if you convince yourself that you are the savior of the world, obligated to meet every need that you are exposed to…YOU WILL CRASH and the crowd will find another savior.

LEARN TO SAY NO

So a little advise from an aging man; chill…you are not that important. Have fun! Enjoy your life. Learn to say NO! Operate out of overflow. Let Jesus love on you. Let the crowd think whatever they want…and remind yourself that there is always enough time to touch everyone Jesus sent to you.

 

Photo Credit: “Fence” by Unsplash permissions through C.C. by 2.0

The Eye of God

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The Eye of God

I write for my sanity.

You thought I wrote just because I loved you.

I do.

I really do.

But writing also helps keep me sane.

You see, by writing I have a built in excuse to go to a coffee shop every week and write.

My husband is a business guy, I call him the Human Calculator, because, we’ll he is.  It is freaky how well he can calculate numbers and percentages in his head when it comes to money. And because he’s a bottom line kinda of guy, in his mind – paying for coffee every week is a business expense -which means I can get away with it.  (Take notes ladies, this is how it’s done.)

So that’s part one of my self induced therapy plan – self-medicate, ie, drink coffee.

But the other part is to write about how I feel and how I’m processing the world, because . . . lean in. . .  I’m a stuffer.

 

Yeah, you heard me.  I stuff my emotions.

Which is why blogging is a such a great outlet.

At the heart of blogging is connection.

It’s all about letting another person into your world, the way you think and what you feel.

Because of this, bloggers are awesome people.

 

But right now I hate blogging.

And I kind of hate being a blogger.

And I definitely don’t feel awesome.

 

Because it means that I’m one of those people who processes her world by writing about it.

 

 

I’m a stuffer who writes about the stuff I don’t really want to write about because I figure if I put my stuff out there, I won’t be as much of a stuffer anymore. – Say that 10 times fast.

Here’s what my stuffy side doesn’t want to say tonight.

 

God’s not done healing me.

 

I actually thought he was.

I thought I had finally moved past all of my childhood issues and was on the cusp of something big. . . like the promised land of adulthood.

But I don’t think he got my memo.

 

Actually it’s the opposite.

It’s like he saved one of the biggest bombshells for last.

 

And here it is: Because of growing up in a home with a schizophrenic mother and living in a constant state of childhood trauma – I have  ummm — cough — tendencies.

 

What?

 

I said, I have — cough — tendencies.

 

Alright, fine.

 

I HAVE CODEPENDENT TENDENCIES.

There, I said it.

 

Maybe not a shocker for you, but it is for me.

 

And now I’m going from a season where I thought I was finished with all of this inner healing stuff to my-dreams-are-feeling-a-bit-like-sand-slipping-through-my-fingers-all-because-I don’t-know-how-to-not-be-overly-responsible-and-just-trust-God-when-it-comes-to-other-people’s-emotions.

Grrrrr me.

 

Here’s the crazy part, I knew he was up to something.

I was playing the piano one afternoon and just spending time with him, when God shows me this picture of a giant eye.  It reminded me of the nebula in the photo above.  Not intimidating or scary, but I was very aware that my heart was being searched.

And since then, I haven’t heard God say anything about it.

But I’m pretty sure that this discovery of codependent tendencies is tied to that day.

 

God means what he says. What he says goes. His powerful Word is sharp as a surgeon’s scalpel, cutting through everything, whether doubt or defense, laying us open to listen and obey. Nothing and no one is impervious to God’s Word. We can’t get away from it—no matter what.

Hebrews 4:12-13 (The Message)

 

Okay seriously, I didn’t even know I had codependency issues until like 2 months ago.  And it’s not like I want to keep them or anything but man, I wish that God would snap his fingers and make it just go away.

Open a can of miracle, right here, right now.

Because I am one bewildered girl right now.  Lez just be honest.  I did not realize I was as messed up as he is showing me I am.

 

My friends and family, however, are not as shocked.

 

To make matters worse, this has not been a fast moving kind of revelation.  This is more like a slow as molasses revelation.  As in, every day I’m going to show you what is going on and how it is affecting you and the people you love.

 

Ouch.

This really sucks.

 

But I don’t want to stay this way.

I really do want to change.

 

Repentance at its core is being willing to go through the process of being changed.

 

Now that we know what we have—Jesus, this great High Priest with ready access to God—let’s not let it slip through our fingers. We don’t have a priest who is out of touch with our reality. He’s been through weakness and testing, experienced it all—all but the sin. So let’s walk right up to him and get what he is so ready to give. Take the mercy, accept the help.

Hebrews 4:14-16 (The Message)

 

Okay, Jesus, so healing is what you’re offering me in this season.

I’ll take that mercy.

I’ll accept that help.

 

Photo Credit: “Helix Nebula” by WikiImages, permissions through C.C. by 2.0

Falling In Love

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ranunculus-1286874_1920

 

There’s something about love that is both terrifying and beautiful.

A gift.

Torture.

Life.

Pleasure.

Pain.

Seeing and well, being seen.

Surrendering to love is a scary thing.

There’s no self-protection to hide behind.

And no such thing as an emotional condom.

 

But I promise, God is trust worthy and he’s good.

I had a season where I was muscling through life,  wait, who are we kidding – I have a lot of seasons where I just muscle my way through life – which is pretty pitiful because I’ve got like no upper arm strength.

L7 Weenie – right here.

 

My M.O. is to suck it up and soldier on and then I’m exhausted and my spiritual walk becomes oh so not spiritual and no longer relational.

It’s all my effort and no God.

 

But I’ve got some pretty good peeps in my corner and a really good friend of mine felt like God was telling her to share this verse with me one night.

 

Open your mouth and taste, open your eyes and see—
how good God is.
Blessed are you who run to him.

Psalm 34:8 (The Message)

And today I’m passing it along.

Because he is really good.

He’s good, and he doesn’t just expect you to believe some words on a page without any experience.

He’s the God who created things like butterflies and oceans and hugs and raindrops on roses and whiskers on kittens. . .uh-oh, I feel a song coming on.

Come back to love.

If your walk with Jesus has become a little stale and you’re using phrases like “my walk”.  It might be time to fall in love again.

 

To quote Jason Gray:

“It’s gotta be more like falling in love,

Than something to believe in

More like losing my heart

Than giving my allegiance”

Jason Gray from the song, “More Like Falling In Love”

 

Photo Credit: “Ranuculus” by Pezibear is licensed under CC BY 2.o

 

Outside the Faction

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Can I just say, I loved, like seriously loooooved, write it on a notebook like a highschooler, L-O-V-E-D the movie Divergent.

And come on, lets face it, I’d totally be Dauntless.

(Quick movie recap from the author, Veronica Roth: “In Beatrice Prior’s dystopian Chicago world, society is divided into five factions, each dedicated to the cultivation of a particular virtue—Candor (the honest), Abnegation (the selfless), Dauntless (the brave), Amity (the peaceful), and Erudite (the intelligent). On an appointed day of every year, all sixteen-year-olds must select the faction to which they will devote the rest of their lives. For Beatrice, the decision is between staying with her family and being who she really is—she can’t have both. So she makes a choice that surprises everyone, including herself.”)

 

I live a crazy life.

I’m 32 and I still drink my coffee full strength, even after 5 pm.

I’ve got 3 kids all under the age of 6.

And, I drive a mini-van without a spare tire in the back.

 

Need I say more, I’m Dauntless, baby.

 

Jason says, I’d be Candor because I have a hard time keeping my mouth shut.

He’s probably right but since I think I’m Dauntless, he’ll pay for it later.  Maybe he’ll have to jump off a train or something.

I do have a point tonight.

I think.

Oh yeah, it’s this.

Don’t forget to live.

 

Christ has set us free to live a free life. So take your stand! Never again let anyone put a harness of slavery on you.

I am emphatic about this. The moment any one of you submits to circumcision or any other rule-keeping system, at that same moment Christ’s hard-won gift of freedom is squandered. I repeat my warning: The person who accepts the ways of circumcision trades all the advantages of the free life in Christ for the obligations of the slave life of the law.

Galatians 5:1-3 (The Message)

 

Sometimes I feel like I’m stuck in a faction of Christianity.

I think we all do.

There are rules to keep.

Right ways to live.

Wrong things that shouldn’t be said.

Order that has to be kept.

And the truth is, it’s stifling.

 

Like choosing only one faction to live the rest of your life in.

 

But rules were never the point.

Jesus set us free so that we could live. . . free.

 

But the truth is, I don’t know how to live a life free.

I’ve been conditioned to follow rules.

We all have been.

And when God goes a little bit quiet in my life I tend to grasp for rules.

You know some sort of order.

I get sucked back into a Christian-faction mindset.

I suspect you would never intend this, but this is what happens. When you attempt to live by your own religious plans and projects, you are cut off from Christ, you fall out of grace. Meanwhile we expectantly wait for a satisfying relationship with the Spirit. For in Christ, neither our most conscientious religion nor disregard of religion amounts to anything. What matters is something far more interior: faith expressed in love.

Galatians 5:4-6 (The Message)

And so I guess it comes back to trusting him and living a life of love.

That’s how we do this freedom thing.

And that’s the thing that keeps us held together.

 

Dauntless

Being You

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I vacuumed my yard today.

I’m actually pretty proud of myself.

I know, it sounds really weird.

I should explain.

I’m not a yard person.

I’ve mowed grass once in my life. . . and I got fired half way through the job.

Ask my parents – they’ll tell you I was never allowed to mow their lawn again.

I so appreciate other people’s yards but when it comes to my own, well lets just say I’ve been begging my brother in law to nominate me for a yard make-over show.  He says he just needs to take pictures and I’ll be an instant sympathy case.

It’s really bad.

But I’m proud of myself because today, all of that changed.

Because, I vacuumed my yard.

I took my shop vac out and sucked up 4 years worth of dead leaves that had fallen off of our crab apple tree.

I dunno if you’re supposed to do that with a shop vac and the truth is – I don’t care.

It’s how I do yard work.

And maybe you’re one of those practical people who like getting top soil under your finger nails and you bag your leaves by hand, tie them up in those eco-friendly bags and put them at the end of your driveway in a neat little pyramid.  You should know, your neighbors probably hate you.  You set a Martha Stewart standard that no one can touch – but guess what, if you enjoy doing yard work that way, you should grab your rake and hold it high and say with me and my shop vac – I don’t care.

Or maybe you’ve outsmarted us all and you live in a townhome with an association and you have “people” to do yard work for you.  You should know, I envy you.  But if that is how you do yard work and how you enjoy your yardwork then raise your bill for your association dues and say with me, my shop vac, and my friend with the rake – I don’t care.

But the yardie, we should all be careful to not become is the one keeping up with the Joneses.  You know, trying to do our yard work the way someone else does it because they claim it is the only Better Homes & Gardens acceptable way to do yard work.

Now Jesus turned to address his disciples, along with the crowd that had gathered with them. “The religion scholars and Pharisees are competent teachers in God’s Law. You won’t go wrong in following their teachings on Moses. But be careful about following them. They talk a good line, but they don’t live it. They don’t take it into their hearts and live it out in their behavior. It’s all spit-and-polish veneer.

“Instead of giving you God’s Law as food and drink by which you can banquet on God, they package it in bundles of rules, loading you down like pack animals. They seem to take pleasure in watching you stagger under these loads, and wouldn’t think of lifting a finger to help. Their lives are perpetual fashion shows, embroidered prayer shawls one day and flowery prayers the next. They love to sit at the head table at church dinners, basking in the most prominent positions, preening in the radiance of public flattery, receiving honorary degrees, and getting called ‘Doctor’ and ‘Reverend.’

Matthew 23:1-7 (The Message)

You and I don’t get to define who God is and what he stands for, he is the I am.  He is who he is and he likes being God.  I kind of like him being God too, I don’t want to change him or fit him into the box of religion.  He’s not swayed by popular opinion.  He doesn’t get intimidated into being a cookie cutter God.

And the best part is . . . he gets really pissed off when people try to put us into a box of religion too.

He’s jealous like that.

He likes us real.

Really real.

Even if we’re a little odd about yard work.

He isn’t interested in cookie cutter people. 

He likes our diversity, our differences, our goofiness that makes us, well us.

So Jesus was pretty adamant that we not get suckered into falling for the line that we have to follow other people’s rules to get to hang out with him. 

He is God and he wants to be with us.

Like a dad with his kids.

Even if they do crazy things like clog the Shop Vac filter with dirt and leaves.

And if the Bible isn’t enough to convince you that it’s important to know who YOU are to God then here’s a little Dr. Suess for some added inspiration:

“Today you are you, that is truer than true.  There is no alive who is Youer than You.” – Dr. Suess –

Faith Aborted

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Why is our faith broken?

I don’t mean faith as a substitute word for religion – I mean faith, the substance of things hoped for.

The proof of the pudding.

Shouldn’t we be seeing financial miracles, people dancing out of wheelchairs, kids in the cancer ward miraculously with full heads of hair and no sign of cancer, families restored, the list of would be miracles goes on and on and yet it really doesn’t, does it?

Maybe if we just hit it with a hammer it would start working?

Its not like we don’t hope for those miracles but the difference is that:

faith is when hope becomes reality.

I know, I sound like I’ve got this whole faith thing figured out, huh?

Not really.  Truthfully I’m writing for myself tonight more than anything else because I am in the middle of my own personal boot camp of faith.

God is stretching faith muscles I didn’t really know I had.  It’s painful and I’ve fallen down a lot, gotten mud in my face, had to crawl under barbed wire but the sick thing is. . . I kinda like it.

Not the pain but the realization that my faith is growing which means I’m one step closer to being a part of those miracles – partnering with God to bring the heaven, he so desperately desires for his kids, to earth.

I’m stoked.

Even as I type this I’m believing God for an insane amount of money to cover our bills.

Again.

I would laugh if my faith muscles weren’t so sore.

And as I’m believing God for this money to show up, I hear this thought flash across my mind.

“It’s okay if the money doesn’t come through.  You’re on your way, but your faith just isn’t there quite yet.”

My first reaction was to agree with it.  It sounds mildly encouraging even if it’s patronizing.

But then I took a step back and realized that wasn’t how God would want me to think.  He would want me to be crazy courageous believing that the money was coming through.

When Jesus told Peter to come to him on the water.  He didn’t say something patronizing like, “Well, Peter, how’s your faith today?”  or “Were you responsible enough to remember your water shoes?”

Jesus said, “Come!”

Matthew 14:25-31 (HCSB)

Around three in the morning, He came toward them walking on the sea. When the disciples saw Him walking on the sea, they were terrified. “It’s a ghost!” they said, and cried out in fear.

 Immediately Jesus spoke to them. “Have courage! It is I. Don’t be afraid.”

 “Lord, if it’s You,” Peter answered Him, “command me to come to You on the water.”

 “Come!” He said.

And climbing out of the boat, Peter started walking on the water and came toward Jesus. But when he saw the strength of the wind, he was afraid. And beginning to sink he cried out, “Lord, save me!”

 Immediately Jesus reached out His hand, caught hold of him, and said to him, “You of little faith, why did you doubt?” 

So after I decided I wasn’t going to agree with the thought that let me off the hook for really going all in for trusting God to provide, I had this realization that we stand on the threshold of so many of God’s promises and throw the towel in right before we see the promise materialize because we’ve aborted our faith.

We kill it right before it sees the light of day.

We get suckered by the lie that God’s not really coming through after all and so we scramble in our minds to come up with our back-up plans, because we know all too well that disappointment hurts.

And we abort our faith under the pretense that since he hasn’t come through yet. . . well, we should face it – he isn’t coming through at all.

Sadly we miss out on that awesome experience of walking with Jesus on the water.

I bet it was epic!  Super-hero like, even to see Jesus walking on water.

And I imagine that Jesus was excited that Peter had the courage to walk on the water with him.  Just as he’s excited when we stretch our faith to be that much more like him, that much more with him.

And what does he say, but “Come!”.

Don’t give up on your faith – it’s not broken.

It’s just being stretched.

Feel free to grab an ice pack and join me.