by | Faith Lived Out, Guest Posts
It was December 2005. My parents came for a Christmas visit and wanted to visit a church. They had become believers two months prior. I hadn’t yet made the decision to surrender my life to a guy named Jesus I barely knew anything about. I was, however, willing to go to church.
photo credit: whfc
As far as I was concerned, I was a Christian. I didn’t need a church to confirm that. Being a Christian meant saying your prayers every night, saying sorry to God when you had a hangover the next day, and praying fervently when a loved one was dying.
I wore a cross necklace everyday, so that meant I was a Christian, too.
We walked into this giant purple castle inside of a theme park. There was loud music playing, kids running around, and people smiling. It seemed cool so far. Then my life was changed forever.
I’m featured over at Prodigal Magazine today.
by | Faith Lived Out
Change is consistent. It’s the one thing you can always count on. As Country singer Tracy Lawrence sings, “The only thing that stays the same is everything changes.”
photo credit: shirokazan (creative commons)
Change is all around us. Starbucks changed their logo. Facebook is consistently changing something. Your latest and most up-to-date technology changes in an instant.
What does that do you for you? For me, it rocks my security boat. It takes me out of the control of my own situation and I start to get nervous. It rocked Peter’s security boat too. As the disciples stared at Jesus walking on the water their immediate reaction was “It’s a ghost!”
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by | Faith Lived Out, Guest Posts
This is a guest post by Allison Vesterfelt. Allison is a writer, managing editor of Prodigal Magazine and author of Packing Light: Thoughts on Living Life with Less Baggage (Moody, 2013). She lives in Minneapolis, Minnesota with her husband Darrell. You can follow her daily on Twitter or Facebook.
My best friend in college lost her dad when we were juniors. He was struck by cancer for the second time around Halloween that year. I still remember getting the call. We were in the kitchen making sandwiches and I had just reached in the fridge for a Diet Coke, when our home phone rang, back when home phones were a thing. I only heard her end of the conversation but I knew right away something was wrong.
The Cancer was back.
Hopes were high. He’d beat it once before, and everyone knew he could do it again. But his body must have been tired this time around because, by Christmas, he was gone.
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by | Faith Lived Out
photo credit: trevor coultart (creative commons)
How do you handle change? What happens when God calls you out of your comfort zone into the uncomfortable?
That’s exactly what happened to me almost two years go.
I used to serve every Sunday morning in the media booth at church. I was that person that made sure you could follow along with the words to the songs. I picked out backgrounds, fonts, videos, etc. I always had to be one step ahead of the worship band, which meant I actually had to keep a beat.
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by | Faith Lived Out, Life Application
Dear Mr. Obama,
Thank you for being willing to serve our country. I can’t imagine all the job entails, and it’s certainly not something I would want to do. The challenging tasks on your plate daily must be incredibly crazy to balance.
photo credit: mashable
I’ve been studying the topic of honor with my small group and that’s what led me to write this letter to you. John Bevere talks about honoring people, including our civil leaders and those in authority over us, in the study Honor’s Reward.
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by | Book Reviews, Faith Lived Out
Who are you?
Fill in the blank: I Am ______________________.
photo credit: pastormark.tv
Are you the woman who was sexually abused? Are you the guy who’s mother abandoned you at eight years old? Are you the overweight girl who refuses to go out in public because people will laugh? Are you the teenager wearing a pair of shoes from a garage sale and fear others finding out because you’ll be made fun of?
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