The Captivating Presence

My spirit has been in turmoil for the past 24 hours. Honestly, it's been longer than that, but I'll say 24 hours for now. This morning for my devotional, I read this by Albert Edward Day and I wanted to share it.

I came to a new understanding why Jesus passed up the religious establishment of his day, the economically secure, the socially prestigious, and sought out the poor, the outcast, the sinner, the broken, the sick, the lonely. He felt as we so often do not feel, their sorrow. He was acquainted, as we too seldom are, with their grief. On Calvary he died of a broken heart.But that heart was broken long before Black Friday, by the desolation of the common people. "In all their afflictions he was afflicted."

Most of the time we are not. We seem to have quite a different conception of life. We avoid as much as possible the unpleasant. We shun the suffering of others. We shrink from any burdens except those which life itself inescapably thrusts upon us. We seek arduously the wealth and power that will enable us to secure ourselves against the possibility of being involved with another's affliction. Lazarus sometimes makes his way to our door step. We toss him a coin and go on our way. We give our charities but we do not give ourselves. We build our charitable institutions but we do not build ourselves into other's lives.

I saw this a lot when I was running the soup kitchen, so that was part of what I told people, give me your money, so I can help them! 

This presence of mind that the economically secure and socially prestigious had in Jesus' time, is alive and well in our time, in our churches, and in our country.

If this slaps you in the face, pokes you in the eye, or makes you want to call me up and give me a piece of your mind...all I can say is take it up with Jesus. 

Fill me up Lord!!!

Preacher man and I set up for our Bible study last night around 5, came home, got it together and went back to church about 6:15. The women had been in the sanctuary last week and the men had taken the fellowship hall. We had around 20 women and 11 guys, so we thought we'd get a little closer and put the gal's in the hall and the guys in the conference room. Mind you, I set up for 24 women, cuz a few had told me they couldn't be at the first one, but would make it to the rest. We began at 6:30, after adding 2 more tables and a total of 30 chairs, which were all full! I have never in my life had 30 women show up for a Bible study, ever! There's a part of me that wants to break them down into smaller groups so we can have sharing going on, and there's a part of me that say's keep it one group. 

It blew my mind! I told them so too! I did most of the talking and I felt like that's what they wanted and needed right now. I was talking about how precious they were and that they were worthy to have God's Holy Presence live in them and it was like God smacked me up side the head. I sensed Him saying; Look at them, I love them so much and I think it surprises them. They are my sweet girls. Just look at them. Who wouldn't love them? That's when it hit me... no one has told them that before.

My heart was breaking and I really couldn't talk fast enough to get the words out. I told them again of their worth and that God had a plan for each of them. A few had expressions that showed shock, but I had to confess, I knew how hard it was to believe. How could God love me, for me? The answer is, I don't know, but I do know he does.

See, I think we as women have been tying for so long to be just as good as men that we have forgotten how to be women. We want the power and the prestige, to climb that corporate ladder and be all that we can be. But then we see that the ladder we've been climbing is leaned against the wrong wall, our power and prestige has gotten us heart attacks at 50, and we are flat out miserable! 

That my friends, is when we can be molded and formed by the master. When we come to the end of ourselves and all we can do is look up, that's when God say's My Turn!!!

So we have started on this journey of seeing our spiritual life as a cup, ready to be filled with the Divine! I am beside myself with excitement and can't wait to share with each one of these lovely ladies, just how much God loves them and to see what He has planned for each of them!

Yeah God!!! Get em!!   

List's

So how many things are on your list to get done today? I have 10! I also have to admit, that it's from yesterday's list too. I have 5 things marked off, 2 of which belong to today! Yeah!


Do you find yourself doing that? Making list's. Do you stick with them? Mine seem to carry on for about a week, with additions and check offs. At one time, when I was running the soup kitchen, I kept my daily list on notebook paper. Yes, I had that many things to do! Now a day's, even though I seem to have a lot to do, my list is on post it notes or Marriott note thingys that they leave in the room for you to put list's on. 


I think this is where Covey got the idea for his Day Planners, of which I've had many! We just love checking things off and being organized, or at least looking like we are. 


Here are my questions: 


Do these list's hold our life in balance?
Do these list's bring us health?
Do these list's bring us closer to God?


I'm going with Maybe, Sometimes, and Probably not. In fact, if your like me, when a space opens up it's meant to be filled. 


Here's a new thought that will seem crazy to most people. Let the Holy Spirit come up with your list! I like to think that's why my list may last a week. I get it done, I just let the Spirit decide when it get's done. Take showers...please. I used to get up and first thing I did was take a shower. I would find sometimes that I wouldn't go work in the yard because I was already clean for the day, so I started putting off showers. (Preacher man still doesn't go for this!) Now I can work in the yard whenever, or at least until I take a shower.


My thinking on this is we have become so good at making our own list's that we don't leave any room for the Holy Spirit to move. This happens in a lot of churches too cuz we got to have a 2.3 minute prayer and the song has to be 5.3 minutes, the sermon needs to be cut short cuz the song ran long and no one will make it to Sunday school on time. In those churches, I think the Holy Spirit just waits to see if He's missed.

We leave tomorrow for the Woman's Walk to Emmaus, which on Mother's day in 2000, changed my whole life. This walk is at Mount Sequoyah in Fayetteville. We won't come off that mountain until Sunday afternoon and I pray that we as a team will make time for the Holy Spirit to order our day's. I have my list, my talk and prop's are ready to go, I'm packing this afternoon and I'm in a constant state of prayer, which is how God likes it.  

Ten Things

Ten things I want to teen young girls, ladies, women

1.  If you choose to wear shirts that show off your boobs, you will attract boys. To be more specific, you will attract the kind of boys that like to look down girls’ shirts.  If you want to date a guy who likes to look at other girls’ boobs and chase skirts, then great job; keep it up.  If you don’t want to date a guy who ogles at the breasts of other women, then maybe you should stop offering your own breasts up for the ogling.  All attention is not equal.  You think you want attention, but you don’t.  You want respect.  All attention is not equal.

2. Don’t go to the tanning bed.  You’ll thank me when you go to your high school reunion and you look like you’ve been airbrushed and then photoshopped compared to the tanning bed train wrecks formerly known as classmates – well, at least next to the ones that haven’t died from skin cancer.

3.  When you talk about your friends “anonymously” on Facebook, we  know exactly who you’re talking about.  People are smarter than you think they are.  Stop posting passive-aggressive statuses about the myriad of ways your friends disappoint you.

4. Newsflash: the number of times you say “I hate drama” is a pretty good indicator of how much you love drama.  Non-dramatic people don’t feel the need to discuss all the drama they didn’t start and aren’t involved in.

5.  “Follow your heart” is probably the worst advice ever. 

6. Never let a man make you feel weak or inferior because you are an emotional being.  Emotion is good; it is nothing to be ashamed of.  Emotion makes us better – so long as it remains in it’s proper place: subject to truth and reason.

7.  Smoking is not cool.

8.  Stop saying things like, “I don’t care what anyone thinks about me.”  First of all, that’s not true.  And second of all, if it is true, you need a perspective shift.  Your reputation matters – greatly.  You should care what people think of you.

9. Don’t play coy or stupid or helpless to get attention.  Don’t pretend something is too heavy so that a boy will carry it for you.  Don’t play dumb to stroke someone’s ego.  Don’t bat your eyelashes in exchange for attention and expect to be taken seriously, ever.  You can’t have it both ways.  Either you show the world that you have a brain and passions and skills, or you don’t.  There are no damsels in distress managing corporations, running countries, or managing households.  The minute you start batting eyelashes, eyelashes is all you’ve got.

10.  You are beautiful.  You are enough.  The world we live in is twisted and broken and for your entire life you will be subjected to all kinds of lies that tell you that you are not enough.  You are not thin enough.  You are not tan enough.  You are not smooth, soft, shiny, firm, tight, fit, silky, blonde, hairless enough.  Your teeth are not white enough.  Your legs are not long enough.  Your clothes are not stylish enough.  You are not educated enough.  You don’t have enough experience.  You are not creative enough.

There is a beauty industry, a fashion industry, a television industry, (and most unfortunately) a pornography industry: and all of these have unique ways of communicating to bright young women: you are not beautiful, sexy, smart or valuable enough.

You must have the clarity and common sense to know that none of that is true. None of it.

You were created for a purpose, exactly so.  You have innate value.  You are loved more than you could ever comprehend; it is mind-boggling how much you are adored.  There has never been, and there will never be another you.  Therefore, you have unique thoughts to offer the world.  They are only yours, and we all lose out if you are too fearful to share them.

You are beautiful.  You are valuable.  You are enough.

This is by Kate Elizabeth Conner,she is amazing! On top of that she speaks truth and I love it!

The Creek!

When it's time to walk away and do what your being called to do in a bigger way, it's always hard to go. Or at least it is for me and in all honesty, that's the way it should be. I have had jobs that I've been "let go" from, asked to leave without the words being spoken, never fired, even though I tried really hard. the hardest to leave are the ones that you leave when your heart wants to stay. That's where I am right now!


In a way, my heart is lighter because now I can give time to doing what I know needs to be done in the next few months. I have decisions to make and plans to lay down to prepare for what's next. I need rest, refilling and rejuvenation. Oh and I need to run. (What's with the words beginning with r?) My very first job is to take care of Preacher man and this needs to be done in a way that working doesn't let me do. Will I be going crazy in a month or 2? Probably, cuz that's how I'm put together, thinking I get my worth from what I do. My true self knows better than that and it's time to live into it.


The way this job is coming to an end is different and I needed it to be in the worst way. In fact, I needed it more than I thought I did. It's hard for women to work well with women, but this job has been different. When your boss get's as choked up as you do, and you walk away knowing your still friends, it's special.


Me working at Coldwater Creek was never about me selling clothes! It was so much more than that. It was a heart connection that somewhere along the way we have forgotten about. It's more than selling clothes, it's about ministering to the heart of a woman where she is the most venerable, at her self worth. I never told a woman she looked good in something when she didn't. I always told them when their butts looked good, and let me tell you a 70 year old woman needs to hear that every now and then! It was about having fun and making people laugh while doing a good job.


I love my friends at the Creek! They will always be my sisters from a different mother.    

Women's Ministry!

Dear Women's Ministry:

The world can give me cute cupcake designs and decorating tips, scrapbooking parties, casserole recipes, and other ways to pass the time. But truly, with my respect and love, may I be honest? If I wanted to learn how to decorate cupcakes, I would take a class in it. If I wanted to be educated on strategies for decorating my home inexpensively from Winners, I would just, you know, go to Winners. Or Pinterest.

But I'm here with you now because I want what the world cannot give me. We're choking on cutesy things and crafty bits, safe lady topics, and if one more person says that modest is hottest with a straight face, I may throw up. We are hungry for authenticity and vulnerability, not churchified life hacks from lady magazines. Some of us are drowning, suffocating, dying of thirst for want of the cold water of real community. We're trying really hard--after all, we keep showing up to your lady events, and we leave feeling just a bit empty. It's just more of the same every time.
The women of our world aren't looking for a safe place to cry about housework and ooh-and-ahhh over centerpieces. We're not all mothers, some of us work outside the home, some of us have kids, and others don't or won't or can't. Is womanhood only about wifehood and motherhood? What about those among us that are not wives and mothers? We're not all in the same season of life. We are - or should be - diverse image bearers of a Divine God.
We need Jesus. We are seeking deep spirituality. We are seeking fellow travelers. We are hungry for true community, a place to tell our stories and listen to another, to love well. But above all, point me to Jesus--not to the sale at the mall.

You know what I would have liked instead of decorating tips or a new recipe? I would have liked to pray together. I would have liked the women of the church to share their stories or wisdom with one another, no more celebrity speakers, please just hand the microphone to that lady over there that brought the apples. I would love to wrestle with some questions that don't have a one-paragraph answer in your study guide. I would like to do a Bible study that does not have pink or flowers on the cover. I would have liked to sign up to bring a meal for our elderly or drop off some clothes for a new baby or be informed about issues in our city where we can make space for God. I would like to organize and prioritize, to rabble-rouse and disturb the peace of the rest of the world on behalf of justice, truth, beauty, and love. I'd love to hear the prophetic voice of women in our church.

Please, may we be the place to detox from the world - its values, its entertainment, its priorities, its focus on appearances and materialism and consumerism?

So here is my suggestion: Please stop treating women's ministry like a Safe Club for the Little Ladies to Play Church.

We are smart. We are brave. We want to change the world. We run marathons to benefit our sisters, not so that we can lose weight. We have more to offer to the church than our mad decorating skills. I look around, and I can see that these women can offer strategic leadership, wisdom, counsel, and even, yes, teaching. We want to give and serve and make a difference. We want to be challenged. We want to read books and talk politics, theology, and current events. We want to wrestle through our theology. We want to listen to each other. We want to worship, we want to intercede for our sisters and weep with those who weep, rejoice with those that rejoice, to create life and art and justice with intention.

Let's be a community of women, gathered together to live more whole-heartedly, to sharpen, challenge, love, and inspire one another to then scatter back out to our worlds bearing the mandate to be women that love. Idelette McVicker wrote: 

Let us RISE to the questions of our time.

Let us SPEAK to the injustices in our world.

Let us MOVE the mountains of fear and intimidation.

Let us SHOUT down the walls that separate and divide.

Let us FILL the Earth with the fragrance of Love.

Let us be women who Love.

I'll bring the cupcakes next time (although they likely won't look as cute).

This was written by Sarah Bessey!