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For each of of the next 21 days, I will be sharing specific ways believers can set themselves apart for Christ through prayer, fasting, and intentional focus. Yesterday was “despite a lack of time,” and today is “despite your failures.”

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For each of of the next 21 days, I will be sharing specific ways believers can set themselves apart for Christ through prayer, fasting, and intentional focus. Today is day 3 of “Setting Ourselves Apart IN…” Day 1 was in work, day 2 was in words, and day 3 was in relationships. Today begins “Setting Ourselves Apart Despite…”, and it’s a doozy – despite a lack of time.

This week, my calendar and my to-do list have combined forces and renamed themselves “Can We Break Her.”

They’re pretty close.

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Honestly, I can only remember one other season of my life where I felt this much pressure. I don’t know why, but there are a zillion things I must do and far fewer than a zillion minutes in which to do them. And I’m not talking about getting my nails painted or a new novel read. I’m talking about things that really matter. Things that must be done or else.

Last night I did 4.5 hours of work after work. It’s not a complaint, just a fact. I am overwhelmed and under-resourced. And I’m confident I’m not the only one who feels this way, bearing a load that seems unbearable.

Our time is spoken for, and often we’re not the ones speaking for it. When that’s the case, what do we do? We speak to the Time-Maker. We relinquish our schedules and lists and back-breaking burdens to the only One capable of making it all work.

The truth is that unless we make time for God before all the rest AND in all the rest, then the rest will consume and debilitate us. He might not take the to-do’s away, and you might not get that nap, but He will give you rest. He says to His children, “Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest” (Matthew 11:28). In the rest of what you have to do, He will be your rest. He says that his yoke is easy and his burden light. Don’t we all want – and desperately need – that?

Today, in it all, invite Him in. Ask Him to be your portion, because He will never run out.

Today’s Prayer: “Jesus, we are tired. Our lists keep growing, and our time keeps ticking, and we just don’t know what to do. Show us what matters, help us subtract the unimportant, and remind us that in it all You will provide what we need. We seek Your face before the rest, and we ask you to give us rest.”

For each of of the next 21 days, I will be sharing specific ways believers can set themselves apart for Christ through prayer, fasting, and intentional focus. Today is day 3 of “Setting Ourselves Apart IN…” Day 1 was in work and day 2 was in words.

It’s taken me a long time to come to grips with the fact that relationships are just plain hard.

from Huffingtonpost.com

We all have bonds with people who are different than we are, and sometimes those differences cause conflicts that seem insurmountable. That doesn’t mean that relating to people who are like us is any easier, though. We can share common interests, work, and even a common faith and still run into trouble.

When was the last time you saw your relationships as a way to worship? A way to glorify the God you profess?

Truthfully, it’s hard for me to answer that question. Too often, I see my relationships as a way to get something for myself – a way to bring myself satisfaction rather than a way to serve. But God’s plan for the way we relate to others is so much more, and, of course, so much better.

Like it or not, our relationships with people reflect our relationship with God.

If I were to list words describing how I’ve treated others just this week, it would look something like this:

Impatient.

Bossy.

Demanding.

Critical.

Unsympathetic.

Dismissive.

Those words don’t just describe my behavior. They describe me. My actions reveal my heart, and my relationships are the truest test of my real character.

When God’s Word says things like, “Be completely humble and gentle; be patient, bearing with one another in love,” (Eph. 4:2), I am convicted to my core. My failure to do these things is a failure to obey my Lord.

My failure to treat the people bearing God’s image as image-bearers is a message to the watching world, and it’s not the message I want them to see. It’s not the presentation of a gospel-changed life that they need.

Not only do I hurt other people in this way, but also God Himself. He grieves both for the people I hurt and for me. His plan for me involves growth in righteousness, and when I behave selfishly and rudely, righteousness could not be farther away.

Right treatment of others is worship to God, plain and simple. May we choose – daily – to let our relationships reflect His love.

Today’s Prayer: “Father, it is so easy to take our frustrations out on people, both those we know and those we don’t. Before we react, help us reflect. Before we speak, help us stop. Before we lash out, help us listen. Our own determination won’t be enough. We need Your Spirit in us to do what we can’t.”

For each of of the next 21 days, I will be sharing specific ways believers can set themselves apart for Christ through prayer, fasting, and intentional focus. Today is day 2 of “Setting Ourselves Apart IN…” Day 1 was …in work. 

As soon as they left my lips, my words hit their target. The heart of a person I love.

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Sundays at church, I feel on top of the world. I raise my hands in worship and get together with my people, and I feel like I can do anything. The coming week looks like a rose-colored world of possibilities, and I gaze with optimism at the days to come. I just know that I’m meant to make a difference come Monday morning.

Tomorrow morning, I will begin a 21 day fast along with other members of my church. We are choosing to abstain from something (food, social media, etc) in order to set ourselves apart and purposely pursue God.

For each of the next 21 days, I will be posting about the fast and 21 different ways in which we as believers can set ourselves apart. (I will be doing the Daniel Fast, in case you’re curious or need a place to start.)

I invite you to join us and deliberately walk away from something that draws your heart, time, and attention away from God. We’re believing the Lord will do amazing things through our decisions to focus solely on Him. We’d love to have you join us!

Surprised by Motherhood: Everything I Never Expected about Being a Mom by Lisa-Jo Baker

I love books that make me underline thoughts. I adore books that make me cry. When I’m underlining as I cry, I know I’ve hit the mother lode.

Lisa-Jo Baker was a speaker at a conference I recently attended, and while I knew of her, I had never read her book Surprised by Motherhood. The conference was selling copies, so I bought one – and consumed it in a day.

Throughout the book, Baker traces her journey to motherhood (which she never thought she’d take) and recounts hilarious and poignant stories of mothering. She also writes of her own mother who died when Baker was still a teenager and how her experiences without a mother have shaped her as an adult.

If you have children, you need to read this book. She writes about how “…you continue to labor long after the baby is born,” and I’m not sure truer words have ever been typed. This passage, I adore: “There is no part of our everyday, wash-and-repeat routine of kids and laundry and life and fights and worries and playdates and aching budgets and preschool orientations and work and marriage and love and new life and bedtime marathons that Jesus doesn’t look deep into and say, ‘That is Mine.’” What a great reminder!

Click here to purchase from Amazon

Wild in the Hollow: On Chasing Desire & Finding the Broken Way Home by Amber C. Haines

This book is one I happened to stumble on, and it is excruciatingly honest and beautifully written. Holding nothing back, Haines (a writer I was not already familiar with) describes her wanderings in her youth, looking to drugs, fun, and sex for answers. She also writes of her dramatic conversion and hard-fought faith. Her book reads like poetry, so I’ll just leave you with her words.

“What I remember of that rebellion is that so many of us never had a space to work through difficult circumstances. There was no open culture to discuss pain or injustice. For many families, God was the answer, and he was a God who thought up good youth group T-shirt slogans, who said, “If you just believe hard enough, you’ll not suffer anymore.” Look around at the cinder-block houses and the kids whose feet grow holes in their shoes. Look around at the beautiful clothes on the girl whose daddy finds her at night. The God of the bumper stickers doesn’t add up here.

“So much hammered doctrine was an effort to control, as if it were our own job to uphold the morality standards of Jesus for the world, rather than to be embodied by the actual Spirit of the living God.”

Click here to purchase from Amazon

“I whitewashed my story and lived like beauty was the point, to be unbroken.”

“Know that when you meet someone working hard to be outwardly beautiful and fit for consumption, inside they may be wasting away.”

I would not say that this is an easy book to read, but it is lovely. Sometimes I just needed to put the book to the side and digest what she was saying, perhaps wrestling with my own thoughts a bit. So many truths spoke directly to my heart, and that’s the value of this book. Her story is very different from my own, yet it was eerily familiar.

So there you have it – two more great books that are worth the time and money. Happy reading!

When was the last time your faith was anything more than ordinary?

This Sunday, Pastor Dean of 5 Point Church challenged me by showing me myself – an American Christian whose faith is often not obvious to those around me and often not bold enough to believe God for something crazy.

We use the word “crazy” to identify people who appear absurdly out of place: the teenager with rainbow colored hair, the person whose outfits do not meet “acceptable fashion,’ people who say things no one else would utter. “Crazy” really should describe anyone who follows Christ. When we trust and follow Him, our citizenship belongs to heaven, and as a result, we are aliens and strangers in this world. We should appear crazy because we are no longer of this world. Our behavior should be obviously different from everyone else’s. We should stand out, but far too many of us are consumed with anything other than Jesus.

Crazy faith is what I say with my mouth that I want, but it is something I rarely step into. I realized Sunday that I rarely do anything that requires crazy faith because I am afraid. I am afraid of what people will think, afraid that maybe I’m just acting selfishly, afraid that God really won’t come through… Fear cancels out faith. I’ve seen it in my own life, and I’ve seen it in others’.

When Jesus’ disciples could not drive demons out of a young boy in Matthew 17, Jesus clearly said it was because they had so little faith. Do we believe God or just believe in God? There’s a huge difference, the difference between faith that changes nothing and faith that changes everything.

Here’s the challenge – examine your life and what it is you need to believe God for. What circumstances hinge on your ability to believe, and what fears are you allowing to suppress the faith God wants you to have? God is honored by our bold prayers and crazy faith, and He is waiting on us to step out and just believe Him. Believe He is good, believe He hears you, and let nothing alter that belief. We will be amazed what happens when we have the faith of a mustard seed. The mountains in our lives will move, and we’ll never be the same.

Fat pigs.

Dogs.

Slobs.

Disgusting animals.

These are some of the names that a man who desires to lead our country has called women. As he was asked about it, there were boisterous laughs and cheers from the crowd as he made it into a joke. There were more cheers when his answer was that a big problem in this country is being “politically correct.”

It’s the year 2015, and a Presidential candidate – in the United States in 2015 – suggests that it’s acceptable to use these names for women because he doesn’t have time for “total political correctness.” Sure, because it takes a lot of time to be respectful to other human beings, and it’s only about political correctness.

He said during the debate, “What I say is what I say, and honestly… if you don’t like it, I’m sorry.”

Well, I don’t like it, Mr. Trump, and neither do the millions of women who have been called such names and live today trying to forget how it made them feel. You said it was fun and kidding, “having a good time.” So you’d be ok with a man laughingly saying that your daughters and wife are fat pigs? You’d let someone call your little girl a disgusting animal? Somehow, I think not.

The bottom line here is that in so many ways in our society, females simply are not respected as valuable human beings. We are seen as inferior, treated as unintelligent, and given value only for sexual appeal.

Look, I know that I am not the names I have been called – and I have been called several. I know that I have more worth than my looks. But to be looked down on, critiqued, and publicly shamed in large part because of one’s gender is simply unacceptable.

I feel confident that Mr. Trump does not represent the majority of men in this country, thank goodness. But the sad truth is that he represents many, and judging by the laughs he received during this exchange, the issue isn’t taken seriously by many more. Powerful men berating women. Is this seriously ok?

Further, are we as a society willing to overlook a Presidential candidate’s lack of self-control in the words he uses? It’s not a matter of time to be politically correct; it’s an issue of self-control. It’s an issue of respect. It’s an issue of dignity. It’s an issue in the inherent lack of equality given to females. It’s an issue, all right, and it’s one that needs to be taken head-on and unapologetically.

I couldn’t care less who you vote for and who you don’t. What I do care about is women standing alongside men saying, “We won’t stand for this. We won’t laugh when any human is berated and treated as less-than, and we certainly won’t accept it from anyone in leadership.”

We’re better than this, America. It’s time we prove it.