My Ramblings on Life, Literature, and Faith
Today, I’d like to take a moment and highlight my youngest sister’s blog, Hope for the Animals. She tirelessly researches and posts her findings about animal care, and has a passion for God’s creation that is unrivaled.
Continue reading “Blog Spotlight: Hope for the Animals”
I am SUPER excited about today’s guest blogger! She holds a special place in my heart, as she is my youngest sister. She is mature beyond her years and I love seeing her grow and serving God alongside her. Recently, God downloaded a word into her about her identity, and it is so powerful! She let me post it today because she believes that this word is not just for her; it’s for all Christians. This is who God says we are! After you’re done reading, please be sure to check out her blog, which is all about making sure pets are receiving proper care. She does lots of research to post every week, and is passionate in her love for animals.
Continue reading “Guest Post: Hope from Hope for the Animals”
Together Forever by Jody Hedlund is the second book in the Orphan Train series, the sequel to With You Always, which you can find my review of here. While I suppose this book could work as a stand-alone, it will make more sense if you read book 1 to get background on the characters: who they are and how they came to be where they are at the start of book 2.
Marianne Neumann works with the Children’s Aid Society placing orphans from the streets of New York with families out west. While she works, she looks for records of her younger sister Sophie who disappeared in book 1. In doing so, she befriends another placing out agent, Andrew Brady, and the two of them travel out on the orphan train with a group of kids and the two of them learn to love and let go along the way. Continue reading “Together Forever”
In the theme of getting to know me better, I wanted to share some of my favorite songs. These songs are ones that encourage me, get stuck in my head, comfort me, but that I haven’t heard often in church, so I wanted to share them with you. Continue reading “Some of My Favorite Songs”
If you’ve been following my blog for a little while now you’ll remember that I was able to attend Passion Conference 2018, and it was phenomenal! I loved the music and the speakers from the conference, and if you weren’t able to attend, the sessions are on YouTube and you can purchase this album of live music that was recorded at the conference.
When I was offered the opportunity to receive and review the “Whole Heart” album, I jumped at the chance. This was my opportunity to re-live the conference and sing the same songs we sang there! This album is just as full of surprise special guests as the conference itself was! Check out the list of songs and artists below:
Isn’t that awesome?! My favorite songs are Reckless Love and All My Hope, but they are all so good! This is a MUST for anyone who was at the conference or who wishes they were! The variety of artists really lends a versatility to the music; there are slow songs and get up and twirl around songs. 🙂 I highly recommend this!
Thank you to FlyBy Promotions for providing me with a copy of this CD to review, as well as a copy to give away here on my blog. All opinions are my own.
Also, if you’ve read this far, I’m hosting a giveaway for all my followers. The first follower to leave a comment on this post (who lives in the continental U.S.) wins a copy of this CD! Giveaway ends one week from today, February 20th, at 9 am EST.
“Disclosure (in accordance with the FTC’s 16 CFR, Part 255: “Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising”): Many thanks to Propeller Consulting, LLC for providing this prize for the giveaway. Choice of winners and opinions are 100% my own and NOT influenced by monetary compensation. I did receive a sample of the product in exchange for this review and post.
Only one entrant per mailing address, per giveaway. If you have won a prize from our sponsor Propeller/FlyBy Promotions in the last 30 days on the same blog, you are not eligible to win. Or if you have won the same prize on another blog, you are not eligible to win it again. Winner is subject to eligibility verification.
Okay, so if you’ve been following my blog for the past couple of months you may notice a theme keep popping up: being called by name. In part 1 of this mini-series, I talked about being called, and in part 2, about names. Well, here we are in part 3 and I’m still caught up on this idea that names are really important.
I went to Passion Conference for the first three days of this new year and one of the things that really struck me was how many people attended. We filled three huge arenas across the Southeast with students, and had more people streaming the conference online. The magnitude of people coming together in agreement to worship with one heart and one mind was staggering. I went with my best friend and her church, which meant I only knew two people out of all those thousands of students. Getting lost would have been so easy! The crowds could get chaotic what with all the going through security, finding seats for everyone, and just trying to stick together. The amount of groups trying to stay together naturally created hustle and bustle that comes along with crowds of that size.
Our group would always plan to stick together through the lines of people, but getting separated from the group would happen naturally if you didn’t purpose to keep an eye on the group leader. Even if you got lost, there was still hope. We always sat in the same area together, so if you lost sight of the leader along the way, you knew to go to the place where you were sure to meet with him again. You could listen for the people in your group to call your name as they searched for you. Whether you intentionally got separated from the group to go off and look at what people were selling at the conference, or unintentionally lost sight of the leader, there was hope that you would be found again.
But with the hope came responsibility. If you became lost, it now depended on you to listen for the voice of your leader calling your name, or to go to the place where you would sit and wait for him to join you.
And right there, in the middle of the chaos and joy of the Passion Conference, it struck me how that parallels to our spiritual life. We are going through life following God, hopefully with other people alongside us, in the confidence that soon we will reach Heaven, a place filled with countless people who are all worshipping God. Sometimes along the way, we get our eyes off of our leader; sometimes we get distracted by what the world is selling us and walk away, but sometimes somebody just bumps into us and we lose sight of Him. Getting our eyes back on God isn’t a hopeless endeavor. We just have to listen for Him calling our name, and sometimes that means going and sitting in the place where He has promised to meet us.
But how often do we get distracted by the things of the world and then think there is no hope for us? How often do we get our eyes off our Father when someone else bumps into us and our focus shifts to them? We blame and fight with others and let our focus go to those who have “bumped into our happy”, as Lysa TerKerust puts it, and then we are so focused on their offense we lose sight of where God was leading us. We may even follow after voices calling names at us, thinking that responding to whatever names we hear will lead us back to the One Who Named Us.
Have you lost sight of God and been responding to the first names you hear? Worthless, unqualified, unloved, rejected, lost, hopeless? That’s not your name! If you respond to and follow the wrong names you’ll go to the wrong place. God is calling you to Himself and He’s calling out to you by name (Is. 43:1)
If you’ve lost sight of God and can’t hear Him calling your name, you can still go to the place where He’s promised to meet you. Get away from the crowds and go to your secret place (Ps. 91:1; 81:7). Make a point to get away from the crowd and chaos and go to meet with God.
He hasn’t left you. If circumstances, people, or things have gotten in the way and you can’t hear God calling your name anymore, there is still hope. Like I said earlier though, that hope comes with responsibility. You’ve got to seek God out, but rest assured, God promises that when you seek Him, you will find Him, when you seek Him with all your heart (Jer. 29:13). He’s not hiding from you!
Isaiah 45:3, “I will give you the treasures of darkness and the hidden riches of the secret place, that you may know that I, the Lord, who calls you by your name, am the God of Israel.”
