June, 2013

Summer Study

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First, as important as this post is to me, this is still not the big announcement that is coming. Very soon. I promise we are all working hard to get it ready to share with you.

A few years ago I was invited into the enormous board room at the headquarters of a publisher. I didn’t have a brilliant proposal or a big platform and yet dozens of important people stood around the room to consider partnering with a girl nobody knew, who had never published a book. God brought me there that day and gave me unearned favor- not so I could get published, not so I could build a big ministry, but so that He could have one more way to get to his people.

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16

April, 2013

13 Comments

Unsafe and Unafraid

I was very pregnant with my second child when CNN correspondents wondered aloud if it might be wise for people to invest in gas masks to protect in the case of bio-terrorism. The masks would really only be helpful if you were wearing them the exact moment the attack happened… so everyone passed on the purchase.

It was October 2001 and 9/11 had just changed the world and we all wondered if it would ever be the same again.

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10

April, 2013

145 Comments

On Jumping Scared

Recently, we launched a vision that has haunted me for over 7 years. It is an embarrassingly large preposterous vision. Only someone stupid or possessed by God would dare to dream of what we are about to do. I know you are good and curious right now… and we will fill you in soon. In the meantime- I am afraid and that must be common to other humans so let’s talk about it.

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08

April, 2013

18 Comments

No one is the Same

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Today Sarah visited home for the first time since the stroke. If you are not familiar with Sarah’s story read here and here.

I plopped down beside her and I watched her eyes dart back and forth, they always seem shockingly peaceful. She seemed settled in the place she had last felt normal. Her feet kicked up on her coffee table and her kids running around laughing and wrestling, completely at ease with the new normal, their silent present mom and her wheel chair off to the side.

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14

January, 2013

38 Comments

Receiving Our Lives

In his great mercy he has given us new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ…In all this you greatly rejoice, though now for a little while you may have had to suffer grief in all kinds of trials. ^{1 Peter 1}

It’s been a few weeks since I said goodbye to my friend. I sucked in all the grief to hide it away and I squeezed her hand and whispered,

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02

November, 2012

27 Comments

Beautiful Disagreement

I cannot remember what everyone is fighting about.

My theology may be conservative but my “camp” is not. My “camp” holds friends
that believe all kinds of different from me… some more conservative and some more liberal… but my camp is anyone who loves the name of Jesus. My camp (my friends) – do not divide over issues because in real life we deeply LOVE each other and I love considering that I may not be right, that I may need my mind expanded and they may be the ones to do that. We all only know what we know.

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26

October, 2012

10 Comments

Pretend Control

I hate this ball. It’s kind of cute and makes Cooper happy but unless you put that ball in a box on a shelf, it will not be controlled. The ball escapes my son’s hand nearly every 5 seconds and causes us both angst, somehow we wind up running through parking lots, risking our lives for this little 25 cent inch of rubber multiple times a day.

I hate things I cannot control.

And honestly, God has been shining big and bright from that category as of late. He’s laughing as I write this because He’s thinking, “FYI... I live in that category, Jennie. I am never in your control.” I know... my theology knows... but my heart doesn’t always.

Because sometimes I want to believe I can control the outcomes of life. I want a formula. I want God to work with formulas. If I have enough faith, obey enough, pray enough then He will move.

Yesterday I got off the phone with a friend whose sister has been fighting brain cancer and no doctors gave her a chance. But against every odd she has rallied and will likely go on to live a long life. I will never forget what my friend said next....

“Jennie, our faith didn’t include crazy healing. We didn’t pray this up- we weren’t brave enough to pray this. God just healed her in spite of us.”

And something in me got mad... I wasn’t mad that God healed my friend’s sister, but I was mad that my God can not be manipulated- I got mad that others in my life are praying with seemingly mammoth faith and they aren’t healed. I got mad that such big things feel like His whim.

God- I love you- don’t smite me yet. You’re probably thinking something like...

What is man that I am mindful of you... or who draws a line and tells oceans to stop and stores warehouses of snow...???

YOU DO. I shudder at the thought of your vastness and my smallness.

I just want to voice that I am scared of You sometimes.... and now I want to say:

You still have me. You have me because where else would I go?

I have utterly enslaved myself to you in public and private ways and you have me.

But I do feel like I have strapped myself to this ball and some days that is exciting and some days it is terrifying and I think I may die. But I love you and I know that You love me and that floors me- so I will have faith and obey and pray anyway... not to control You but to be near to You- the God of the Universe.... because I can and that is better than my pretend control.

Have Your way with me. Your kingdom come. Your will be done.

What are you wishing you could control right now?

24

October, 2012

24 Comments

Ruined Together

Everything caved in last Thursday. It’s hard to be ruined.

I am beat down- 4 weeks of speaking to a dad-gum lot of people, with Haiti in the midst, and dreaming about a future project in Nashville thrown in.

The fall out was intense enough that I wanted to run from every calling I have. I wanted shallow small things to still distract me, like they did back when I was not all ruined.

I had a weird few weeks- from Christian rockstar land to Haiti… people asking me to sign their bibles or their arm with a sharpie (I did neither) to children begging for food in tent city, Haiti.

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24

May, 2012

12 Comments

The Implications of God

Series of dominoes lined up in s shape

Face in my hands. Elbows on the table. My husband was sitting across the table at our lovely unsuspecting Italian restaurant, he pushed in close but I didn’t have words to define the tears hitting the table. He knew. More than 2 years ago we prayed a prayer and it’s repercussions were everywhere.

“God- we will do anything.”

Our anythings…. seem to be costing us everything. Nothing about our previously sane lives are the same. In the last year we have given up all control and God has taken us up on those simple naive little words.

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22

February, 2012

6 Comments

To the generation above us…..

I know we seem hard to reach, distracted and often arrogant and honestly, sometimes we are. But maybe you can appreciate some of what gets our attention. We are a reckless passionate generation, who longs to know Jesus and change the world.

Our Generation longs for…..

Honesty.
We would rather you be a wreck and honest than polished and plastic feeling. Be a broken sinner and we will forgive you and like you better for it.

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Category Archives: God

Summer Study

Unsafe and Unafraid

On Jumping Scared

No one is the Same

Receiving Our Lives

Beautiful Disagreement

Pretend Control

Ruined Together

The Implications of God

To the generation above us…..