you can do what He’s calling you to: a kindling post

you can do what He's calling you to: a kindling post

some kindling to help light your fire:

The Lord knows your breakthrough is taking a long time. He is waiting, too.

He knows the enemy has tried to wheedle his way in and get you on the merry-go-round of doubt:

Is it because I still haven’t learned my lesson? Is it punishment? Is it because I don’t deserve what I’ve been hoping for? Is it because someone else needs the answer more than I do? Is it because I’m too stupid to figure out the answers?

The Lord knows the lies and accusations you’ve been wrestling with. Here’s some truth to hang onto:

He is giving you the wisdom you need as you abide.

He doesn’t love anyone else more than He loves you. He’s not playing favorites.

His provision has no limits. He doesn’t have to choose between needs to fill.

His timing is protecting you from things you don’t know about, and preparing you for more than you imagine.

If any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask God, who gives generously to all without reproach, and it will be given him. But let him ask in faith, with no doubting, for the one who doubts is like a wave of the sea that is driven and tossed by the wind. For that person must not suppose that he will receive anything from the Lord; he is a double-minded man, unstable in all his ways.

— James 1:5-8

You don’t have to know what you’re doing when the Lord tells you to do it.

You don’t have to wait until you have it all figured out. In fact, a lot of people do it that way but it’s just disobedience pretending to be responsible.

Yes, do some research. Figure out your first step. But if He tells you Go, then do it asap. Your joy is at stake.

Show Him you can be trusted with the little things so He knows you are ready to steward the bigger things you’re asking for, too.

You can do the thing He’s calling you to today. The big, brave thing, and the small, annoying thing. The new unfamiliar thing. The strong, steady, obedient thing.

He’s holding favor for you as you trust Him. He moves mightily on your behalf and loves your heart that pursues Him and chooses His ways over your own preferences. He is taking that surrender and molding your desires so they align with His, making it easier and easier to hear Him and know the way to go.

My soul makes its boast in the Lord; let the humble hear and be glad.

Oh, fear the Lord, you his saints, for those who fear him have no lack!

The young lions suffer want and hunger; but those who seek the Lord lack no good thing.

Come, O children, listen to me; I will teach you the fear of the Lord.

What man is there who desires life and loves many days, that he may see good?

Keep your tongue from evil and your lips from speaking deceit.

Turn away from evil and do good; seek peace and pursue it.

— Psalm 34:2, 9-15

There will be people out there who misunderstand you maliciously and religiously.

So caught up in their own misinterpretation, refusing to see other perspectives, eager to judge and be offended, they will miss the forest for the trees just as they have missed the point that could have broadened their own understanding.

Sometimes they cloak their condemnation with misapplied scripture to keep themselves on a high horse of self righteousness while criticizing those they know nothing about and quenching the Spirit they don’t understand.

But you will know them by their fruit, Jesus said.

So abide. Keep abiding. Keep doing what the Lord has called you to do. It is the only way we bear fruit, and our growth is helped by a good application of manure every once in a while. 😏😎

Beware of false prophets, who come to you in sheep’s clothing but inwardly are ravenous wolves. You will recognize them by their fruits. Are grapes gathered from thornbushes, or figs from thistles? So, every healthy tree bears good fruit, but the diseased tree bears bad fruit.

— Matthew 7:15-17

Abide in me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit by itself, unless it abides in the vine, neither can you, unless you abide in me. I am the vine; you are the branches. Whoever abides in me and I in him, he it is that bears much fruit, for apart from me you can do nothing.

— John 15:4-5

The Lord is not waiting for your perfection or performance to deliver you. He did not bring breakthrough or deliverance or answers to people in the Bible because they checked off all the boxes. He doesn’t deliver because we are perfect, but because He is.


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wholeness matters: how the Church shows the world what it’s made of

Sips of water. Piles of tissues. No energy to move. Fever, accompanied by chills, aches, and sniffles.

I retreated (slowly) back to bed with a couple of books. The bummer about being sick and spending all day in bed with books is that usually you’re not coherent enough to pay attention or understand what you are reading in the books. So after finishing a chapter for our Gaining Ground group – which is not a hard read to start with – I grabbed a book of fluffy fiction off the shelf that had been recommended by someone online.

wholeness matters: how the Church shows the world what it's made of

It looked interesting: Apocalyptic drama from an unabashedly conservative perspective. Curious. Okay, let’s see what you got.

Now, I know going into these things that this is not a Christian book, so I am not expecting Christian content. But I do expect decent writing, plus a good story that neither insults my intelligence nor demands too much of it when most of my caloric intake for 24 hours has come from vitamin C and ibuprofen.

And for the first, oh, fifty pages or so, it was fine. I couldn’t tell you for sure though, because the book is in the trash over there and it’s not worth getting up to tell you specifically where my level of disgust caused me to throw it in that direction.

I’m not sorry, either. Books are generally sacred in this house, but not that kind. Not the kind that parade as promoting conservative values while the reluctant hero uses women like toilet paper in a pathetic display of a dirty old man’s royalty-driven fantasy.

Here’s the thing: What good is it to promote “conservative values” if they are so riddled with contradictions that you have to put the phrase in quotation marks when referring to them?

What good does it do to push any of those values if the other stuff you’re promoting rips the rug right out from under that foundation?

What good does it do to promote, say, the second amendment, if you are simultaneously muddying the waters by promoting a culture that leads to rampant abortion, pornography, infidelity, and other abuses toward women and the institution of family?

Pardon me while I climb a little higher on my soapbox – I am, you know, fairly petite, and also increasingly unfiltered from all the sinus pressure – and mention just a couple of recent incidents that illustrate this compromise.

The first was a few weeks ago when, in a private group chat, a proclaimed Christian social media influencer started berating and insulting someone else in the chat, and when I came to her defense, he immediately told me to “F— off.”

This guy is actually doing a great work for the conservative cause in a certain area, yet he completely destroyed his reputation and witness among those of us who saw his true colors. He chose excuses over apology that day, and continues to post prayers every Sunday for his 40,000 followers. (I assume his wife, children, employees, and mental state all need serious prayer, too.)

Then last week, an ignorant man trolled my devotional video and left a long stream of abusive comments and accusations because I am (gasp) a woman who has a platform about Christian living. Don’t you know that women aren’t supposed to talk about Jesus? Don’t you know that if they do publicly say anything about Jesus, it’s considered teaching and you should immediately 1 Timothy 2:12 them outta the Kingdom?

I didn’t. I have, however, actually studied the Bible for over twenty years, and know that a couple verses taken out of context without cultural application do not a mandate make. Especially when multiple passages in context show otherwise.

These men who profess a passionate desire for truth but only display it in fragments are as ineffective as a kid charging onto the battlefield with a BB gun, shooting at those who are doing the real fighting on their behalf. My guess is these guys have related issues (with women and otherwise) under the surface that are also compromising their witness.

It’s important to note that misogynistic drivel like this has played a huge part in driving the overcorrections of radical feminism and loss of gender roles. Dishonor of women from insecure, lecherous men is met with a backlash of dishonor from insecure, grasping women, with children taking the bulk of the crossfire – and misogyny ends up feeding the root of the abortion movement. Fragmented people find themselves culpable for the some of the very acts they condemn and claim to fight against. Stick that in your pipe and smoke it.

Bullies, oppressors and all men who do violence to the rights of others are guilty not only of their own crimes, but also of the corruption they bring into the hearts of their victims.

– Alessandro Manzoni, The Betrothed

Wholeness matters, and if we are walking wounded and broken, our testimony and legacy will be wounded and broken as well.

Last week our pastor said, “The Lord moves in a unified church. The world is questioning who we are, and what the Church is. What are we showing them?”

The Church is obviously not the same thing as the conservative movement, though there is clear overlap. But if those who claim to be part of the Church can get their collective act together where wholeness is concerned, we’ll see a lot more movement in those conservative values we claim to care so much about.

Wholeness runs deep and wide, and not one of us is the same as anyone else — some of us are deeper in some aspects but just barely getting our toes wet (or still standing on the shoreline) in others. Our depths are in different areas, and we stretch wide and shallow in different areas, too.

Some of us are great at forgiveness or purity, and others are deep into kindness, mercy, or truth. Some of us regularly practice watching our words or taking the log out of our own eyes. Some of us are growing in repentance, and pushing hard to go deep in self control.

We’re meant to grow in all directions, of course — it’s called wholeness, not partness. Not one of us is off the hook in any area.

God is constantly leading each of us deeper and wider in different areas because He knows the waters we’re afraid of and avoiding, and He wants our character to represent Him in fullness.

We avoid certain areas, though. We think there are sharks in those places and we have too many good excuses for not going there. The battle is too hard. The Greek is too unfamiliar. The sins are too comfortable. Egos are too fragile.

But God is calling us to claim that territory, because the more wholeness we walk in, the less territory the sharks have to move in.

The church leads the culture, not the other way around. So, how are we leading? Where are we following or imitating, instead of igniting and inspiring?

The more kindness we show, the less need for forgiveness there is.

The more self control we use, the less regret we have later.

The more Greek we learn, the less stupid we sound when trumpeting out of context verses we haven’t actually studied.

The more purity we display, the more protected our marriages are.

The more protected our marriages are, the more protected our children are.

The more humble we are, the less we will fall.

So we press into those dark areas with intention to conquer. Because we were once sharks, too.

We can’t expect to win battles when we spend so much time alternating between committing friendly fire and shooting ourselves in the foot. With those kinds of leaders we are worse off than before: One or two pet causes upheld, while the foundations of society that those causes claim to benefit lie in ruins.

Some of the sharks really are well meaning, though. They truly think that they are doing Kingdom work in their bloodletting.

“Beware of false prophets, who come to you in sheep’s clothing but inwardly are ravenous wolves. You will recognize them by their fruits. Are grapes gathered from thornbushes, or figs from thistles? So, every healthy tree bears good fruit, but the diseased tree bears bad fruit. A healthy tree cannot bear bad fruit, nor can a diseased tree bear good fruit. Every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire. Thus you will recognize them by their fruits.

“Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but the one who does the will of my Father who is in heaven. On that day many will say to me, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name, and cast out demons in your name, and do many mighty works in your name?’ And then will I declare to them, ‘I never knew you; depart from me, you workers of lawlessness.’

– Matthew 7:15-23

Jesus knows how to sort us out. He knows when things are not as they seem. He knows who is fake and who is real.

And He knew what it would take to bring redemption and wholeness. He decided we were worth it.

Won’t it be amazing when those who are true are revealed to each other? When the men who put women down for daring to speak will understand for the first time how their misguided efforts actually diminished the very thing they claimed to be fighting for? We will meet each other unhindered by pride, unshackled from insecurity, eyes fully open. In wholeness.

We will be repentant without shame, forgiving and forgiven.

The waters will be clear, shark-less, farther than our eyes can see.

turning it up: support for adoptive families comes to audio

Here’s a confession that those of you who are regular readers here already know: I go in phases of sharing about adoption and special needs. Sometimes I forge ahead in it and share several posts here or on social media, and other times I pull back to recuperate.

It’s hard to share. It’s super personal. The issues are painful. But those issues need to be seen.

Not everyone will stop to notice. Most will probably keep scrolling — no shame, we all need a little mindless scrolling sometimes — and some will click “like” on the posts without even reading them because they’re too long.

I get that. I skim or skip posts sometimes for the same reason.

But we miss things when we’re always too busy to stop and notice them.

And adoptive, foster, and special needs families are collapsing from people being too busy to notice them.

These families are in our churches and neighborhoods — until they’re not. Until they give up on church or they give up on marriage. Until it all becomes too much because people are so busy scrolling past, giving a thumbs up to the concept of adoption but having no clue about what’s really going on in these families.

How do we move upstream to prevent divorce, depression, abuse, and suicide? How do we draw people into the church and community instead of driving them away from it?

By seeing people. But we have to look past the surface and stop scrolling for a few minutes to do it.

So I’ve collected my adoption posts in one place here. They are full of the stuff under the surface, behind the curtain, while we try to walk the line of privacy and transparency. They are by no means the full story, but they are enough to give the respectful, caring observer plenty to think about…and to send a message to other adoptive, foster, and special needs families. Here’s that message:

YOU ARE NOT ALONE. And you’re not going crazy. You are seen and loved and understood. 🖤

I know some of you are done with church. Some of you are done with marriage. Some of you, for the sake of younger children and your entire family, have been done with adoption and had to disrupt.

(If you’re not one of those families, that means they had to give up their adopted child to be adopted by another family — and face all the judgment, condemnation, and assumptions from a society that doesn’t know what goes on behind the scenes and is also unwittingly ignorant of the role they may be playing in the disaster and heartache these families endure.)

None of this should ever happen. Adoptive families should never feel alone and be left by the communities around them to quietly implode behind closed doors.

We can intentionally be part of the solution. 

And we need to be, because there are plenty of people who seem intent on being part of the problem, too busy reveling in their know-it-allness that they cannot fathom there might still be something to learn about this — like the Goodreads reviewer who gave Upside Down a mere 2 stars because I am “only an adoptive mom” and not a trained, lettered professional who actually (smirk) knows anything about attachment issues, mental health, or adoption.

That’s right; instead of studying for years behind a desk, I have only lived this out in my own home, 24 hours a day, for more than twice the amount of years it takes to get a bachelors degree. Clearly I have no expertise on the subjects of adoptive family support or adoptive parenting worth sharing.* #blessherheart

When I originally wrote Upside Down as a series of posts, I got emails, messages, and phone calls every day from adoptive, foster, and even biological parents who were going through the same stuff — but they thought they were alone. These were their most common responses:

“I thought we were the only ones who went through this.”
“I don’t know who to talk to.”
“I didn’t know how to explain this.”
“I thought we were alone.”
”I wish everyone we knew would read this.”

But you know what the most common response is from non-adoptive/foster families? It’s this:

“Whoa. I had no idea.”

No wonder these families feel alone.

It’s past time to change that.

And now there’s no excuse not to, because Upside Down is now available in audio (as you read that, you should hear it in a victorious sing-song voice, like TA-DAHHH!) and the first three segments are totally free and full of the inside scoop people needed yesterday, before they did that thing that triggered the adoptive kiddo to regress. So grab them here and share them with your friends, teachers, pastors, nosy neighbors, favorite aunt who stillll doesn’t get it, and anyone else who needs to know how they can truly support adoptive and foster families without unintentionally causing further harm.

Because we’re gonna change this thing. The world will see that what adoptive and foster families are doing is vital, but the work cannot be done without understanding and support. And we shouldn’t have to anymore.


*In case you’re wondering, I have similar inept, unprofessional, raw, untrained experience in pursuing God while being a mom of many, dealing with special needs and fighting depression and encountering other messy life circumstances in motherhood — so you should *definitely* stay away from Oh My Soul and ABIDE and Work That God Sees too, since I don’t have the right letters after my name and therefore have nothing worthwhile to share in those, either. Seriously, those books are only for the rest of us. xo