Delighting in the Divine
Yes to freedom, yes to play and yes to celebrating the moment!
Delighting in the Divine
Yes to freedom, yes to play and yes to celebrating the moment!
All tagged faith
No one enters into the olympics without training. That training is faith in action. The athletes believe those who have gone before them and their trainers that they have what it takes to compete, if only they will faithfully commit to their training and keep going. Olympic competitors hope to win a medal, but until the line is crossed or the final whistle is blown, that hope is not confirmed. It doesn’t mean that hope is not a powerful force however...
How is your new year going? Does it feel like a new season? It is Summer right now in Peru and we are abiding as a community - spending lots of time resting, spending time together socially, sorting through things and preparing for the new school year which starts in March here. Having spent time resting over Christmas I feel excited and expectant about what God is going to do this year. Right now I am in a season of preparation and deepening roots...
Where are the faithful ones? Do you ever ask that question as a leader? It has been a cry in my heart at different stages in my life. I am currently so blessed to be surrounded by friends and co-workers who are faithful to God and to us but at times people who we spend lots of time investing in did not respond with faithfulness and it has been painful! ...
I remember waking up the first time I lost a baby a few days after the delivery. It was the middle of the night and I felt an extreme sense of joy welling up inside me - I could almost hear angels singing around me. It seemed so foreign and wrong to be feeling so joyful only a few days after losing a child. My first reaction was, ‘God, is this You?! How can it be You?!’ His reply came clear and strong: ‘the joy of the Lord is your strength.’ ...
Last night, a good friend and I sat and chatted in her new apartment until just past my bedtime.
The last week has been incredibly busy. A close friend and teammate has just had her first child and I accompanied her husband and her during the labour, birth and post birth which lasted 3 days. When I wasn’t with them at various clinics, I was trying to keep my children from writing too many letters or complaining too loudly in protest at my absence! (Yes, the first day I came home, I was faced with a paper stuck to the door reading ‘why do you love them more than us?’!) Sleep was not had and other responsibilities remained, even if homeschool did go out of the window for a few days (the boys got the holidays they'd been asking for!) ...
Some of my most embarrassing failures to hear God’s voice have been the greatest opportunities for learning to discern His voice. Learning to hear God’s voice is not a science. There are some keys that will help you, but ultimately, it is one of those things that you learn through experience. And failure. Learning to hear God when emotions are involved is especially difficult and where I find the most difficulty in discerning His voice. So, not surprising, it is in those emotion-charged situations where I have learned the hardest way...
Let me tell you a secret...
Last year, when I was nearing the end of my pregnancy with Kaleb, a C-section looked likely. He was breech and there is only one doctor I know here in Peru who would even consider a breech birth under certain conditions. When I had visited her when I was pregnant with Joel, our second child, we hadn’t seen eye to eye. But, feeling the leading of the Holy Spirit, I returned to see her 8 months pregnant, and this time we really connected. (The first time I had been to see her, I had been on the defensive and she had responded likewise to my lack of trust.)
I felt at ease with the doctor and when I went into labour, she did all she could to help me have a natural breech birth, but when Kaleb failed to descend, she felt that there was a reason why, and we should consider transferring to the hospital for a C-section...
