A Love Bigger Than This

Posted on by
There Is A Love Bigger Than This

There Is A Love Bigger Than This

I love this photo of my granddaughter with her Daddy! I can hear her laugh and squeal with delight when her Daddy grabs her close and lays a big smack of a kiss on her plump little cheek. She loves her Daddy so much!  He opens his arms wide when she runs toward him. He picks her up and lifts her high into the air, safely catching to cradle her close. Such a sweet image of magnificent love this little one has for her father. Love with abandon.

The father loves her more…so much more.

There is a love bigger than this.

God, the father, loves me, his child. I like what Francis Chan wrote in his book, Crazy Love…

All my life I’ve heard people say, “God loves you.” It’s probably the most insane statement you could make to say that the eternal Creator of this universe is in love with me. There is a response that ought to take place in believers, a crazy reaction to that love. Do you really understand what God has done for you? [1]

My granddaughter’s expression of love for her father and her immense joy to be with him is the most amazing thing. For him, nothing compares to being truly, exuberantly wanted by his child. He loves his daughter so much it hurts. [2]

There is a love bigger than this.

Open your eyes to how much God desires and loves us. A father’s love for his daughter is only a faint echo of God’s great love for me and every person He made.

John 3:16 says, God so loved the world He gave…

Salvation means that the Spirit of God has brought me into touch with God’s personality, and I am thrilled with something infinitely greater than myself, I am caught up into the abandonment of God. Abandonment never produces the consciousness of its own effort, because the whole life is taken up with the One to Whom we abandon. Beware of talking about abandonment if you know nothing about it, and you will never know anything about it until you have realized that John 3:16 means that God gave Himself absolutely. In our abandonment we give ourselves over to God just as God gave Himself for us. [3]

Live life experiencing a love bigger than you can possibly fathom!

Your love
Brighter than the sun
More beautiful than words could ever say
This endless light
Shining over all
It leads me to Your glory everlasting

–Hillsong United: Zion, Nothing Like Your Love

[1] Francis Chan, Crazy Love (Colorado, CO: David C. Cook, 2008), 179.

[2] Francis Chan, Crazy Love (Colorado, CO: David C. Cook, 2008), 55, a paraphrase.

[3] Oswald Chambers, My Utmost for His Highest, March 13

The Saturday Assortment #7

Posted on by

The Saturday Assortment

The Saturday Assortment is a collection of unrelated and random things that I find interesting, challenging, motivating and sometimes quite out of the ordinary. It’s an assortment of things that caught my attention throughout the week. I bet you will find them equally engaging. Enjoy!

Family Devotion Ideas – threethirtyministries

Free! Easy! Fun! Family Devotion Ideas! You’ll find FUN theme ideas like Toothpaste Squeeze, Spoon Catapults and Izzy Dizzy Walking Wobble that will keep your kids wanting more family time! All devotions are based on a passage of scripture. You’ll discover clever ways to teach timeless truths in a relevant way.

Top 200 ministry blogs – Kent Shaffer 

Kent Shaffer and the team at Church Relevance has released their latest ranking of the Top 200 Ministry Blogs.

Self-Care or Self-Medication: Which path are you on? – Carey Nieuwhof 

When stress and life overwhelm you, you will either choose to respond to it in a healthy way (self-care) or an unhealthy way (self-medication).  Carey Nieuwhof shares five ways Christian leaders self-medicate and Ten healthy options for self-care.

Page CXVI

Page CXVI is a project started with the idea to make hymns accessible and known again. To celebrate their 7 year anniversary of making music, Page CXVI is giving away their entire catalog of music for the month of March. 11 albums, 74 songs, 2 bands. Go to http://www.pagecxvi.com/jubilee and get your FREE music!

Another Front Door to Home

Posted on by

Another Front Door Fall

The welcome mat, with faded hues of color from years of collecting sunshine and enduring the scuffing of shoes is there, in front of a threshold. Another front door to home. A new home. A wonderful home.

Whenever I think about “home,” I have a visual reminder of the many places we have lived and recall the hundreds of times we have opened the front door to our home to welcome new friends, first time guests, and family members that have traveled long distances to visit with us.

Home is here. This is where we are. wherever we live, we purposefully say the words, “This is home.”  It’s not a house where we live. We are home.

Do we miss the place where our family first began? Of course! Does my heart long to go back to that place where I feel most connected? Yes, I feel the tug.

But I don’t call the place that tugs on my heart as “home.” It is a place I visit.

Where I live now is home. This is the right place for us to find community.

Our home is filled with peace, love, security. A place to escape and retreat from the chaos of work and conflicts. Home is the place to meet Jesus. Home is a place to write memories and journal the adventures. This home is where God has us.

If only a welcome mat could talk!

I treasure home. I love thinking about the many times our front door has opened. I love experiencing a new community of friends and especially experiencing God’s love and His incredible plan for us to have another front door…to home!

Confessions of an Evernote Junkie

Posted on by
Free Digital Photos.net ID-10088169

FreeDigitalPhotos.net

I confess, I’m an Evernote junkie!  The more I learn how to use this productivity tool, the more I like it.  Here are a few reasons why:

Evernote is like a digital file drawer where I can store anything and find it almost instantly. I’m a creative thinker and a collector of information. With the “Evernote Web Clipper” I  can clip an article and  save it to a designated notebook (folder) and also tag the article into a category. For example, I often read web articles and a variety of blogs on the topic of  leadership. With the web clipper, I am able to save the entire article or a section of the post to my leadership notebook and use a tag that best describes the content of the article, such as team.

My family has the kitchen table back.  I am an “unorganized perfectionist” meaning I keep everything in order except the top of my desk and the kitchen table. There is a paper trail of meeting notes or copies of articles out of magazines and added to that are splashes of color from neon colored post-it notes. To help clear this paper trail,  I’m now scanning documents and saving as a PDF to Evernote. And for all of those ideas I’ve written on post-it-notes,  I grouped the notes in the shape of a square, I took a photo of the notes, dragged it from my desktop into Evernote and saved it to bright ideas. I’m amazed by the search function that even picks up words within pictures!

Important emails can be easily retrieved.  With the unique Evernote email address, I am able to forward important emails to my Evernote  account by adding the name of the notebook I want the email saved in and including a tag to the subject line of the email. To specify the destination notebook, append the subject line with the symbol “@” followed by the name of an existing notebook; to add a tag, include “#” followed by an existing tag.  This has been great to use, especially for saving flight reservations, hotel bookings, or receipts.

Keeping up with notes and reminders has never been easier. I am a note taker. I always write notes in meetings, or when I attend a conference plus I’m constantly writing reminders for myself.  I have always used the note pad on my iPhone or iPad. What has been frustrating is that I am unable to access the notes from my Mac.  There are times when I don’t have my iPad handy or it takes too long to find the notes on my iPhone. I now use the Evernote app for note taking and because Evernote syncs remotely in the “cloud,” I can access the same notes anywhere, regardless of the device I am using.

Having quick access to highlights and notes from books on Kindle. I recently discovered through my Amazon Kindle account that I can access all of the highlights and notes I’ve made while reading. I select the book, search for the highlighted notes, use the Evernote web clipper and save to the booknotes notebook with the name of the author as the tag.

I realize there is much more to learn about Evernote and I’ve just begun to scratch the surface of this amazing tool that will help me stay organized and more productive. What do you think? What have you discovered that helps you stay organized or more productive?

Helpful link:

Michael Hyatt (Intentional Leadership) provides a handy index to all of his Evernote posts.

Sunday Stillness

Posted on by
be still

Photography by Donna Harris ❘ Remember the Year

Now to him who is able to keep you from stumbling and to present you blameless before the presence of his glory with great joy, to the only God, our Savior, through Jesus Christ our Lord, be glory, majesty, dominion, and authority, before all time and now and forever. Amen.

(Jude 1:24-25 ESV)

Ordinary Things

Posted on by

 

Photography by Donna Harris
Photography by Donna Harris
Photography by Donna Harris
Photography by Donna Harris
Photography by Donna Harris
Photography by Donna Harris
Photography by Donna Harris
Photography by Donna Harris
Photography by Donna Harris
Photography by Donna Harris
Photography by Donna Harris
Photography by Donna Harris
Photography by Donna Harris
Photography by Donna Harris
Photography by Donna Harris

 

Photography by Donna Harris ❘ Remember the Year

I’m remembering a wonderful weekend in Charleston, SC, one of the loveliest cities I’ve visited. I was enthralled by the pristine architecture of steeples reaching toward heaven and of course the wrought iron sculptures, which are truly works of art that grace the simplest to the grandest of homes. After driving on the Cooper River Bridge, I wanted to lace up my running shoes and experience the elegant symmetry of that engineering masterpiece up close.

But it’s the ordinary things that I remember the most. A hot and humid stroll through an old cemetery, reading stories of lives passed… etched on concrete monuments and then happen to spy a few sparrows cooling their feathers with a splash of water from a concrete bird bath.

Dodging people in the Straw Market just to get a closer look at overpriced stuff and then notice an elderly lady sitting in a shady corner where a cool breeze is felt, her hands moving swiftly, gathering straw to weave the next basket. I think she has been sitting in that chair for a long time, everyday weaving her baskets. She looked weary, yet driven to finish that basket. When she finishes weaving the basket, it will be tossed in the pile of more baskets.

I remember the joy of chatting with friends while casually touring the city streets. Waiting (somewhat) patiently while she searched for the perfect water-color painting to grace her home, or the oldest tin ceiling tile that communicated the most character and then celebrating the find together. Watching her take pictures of a lamppost or an old window shutter and thankful for her inspiration. Laughing so much that it brought tears to our eyes.

It’s the ordinary things that God used to communicate His presence–He cares for the sparrow and He knows the needs of the weary basket weaver. He will love me no matter what and gives me friends that remind me of that.

 Five Minute Friday
Linking up with everyone for Five Minute Friday, where a remarkably encouraging and loving  community gathers to write for five minutes. This week’s prompt is: ORDINARY.

Don’t Just Show Up–Grow Up!

Posted on by

How many times in our children’s ministry has the story of the Good Samaritan been told? Numerous and countless times. We are able to recite the story from memory and most likely the children in our classes can do the same. Often times in our haste to prepare a lesson for children, we read the bible passage from the mindset of a child. Often times, we quickly skim through the words in God’s book, overlooking the depth and power of timeless truths. Many times we are guilty of not even reading the bible before Sunday morning simply because we are “just teaching children” and so we show up in the classroom and wing in.

I know all about that. I can show up unprepared, retell a bible story, tell kids the facts and hope they experience the love of Jesus in the words I tell them. By doing this, I have lowered the bar of teaching with excellence, decreased the value of God’s timeless truths for children (as well as for myself), and I’ve muddied the beauty and dulled the passion of  glorious grace.

I realize that God can still use my lame-duck teaching efforts to work his glory into the hearts of children but now I’m beginning to see how frequently I miss the mark and I am repenting more so.  I am more and more convicted of my sin with taking for granted the word of God.

Children’s ministry can become a wasteland of morality training instead of a culture of gospel transformation. Having a passion for children’s ministry is having a passion for gospel transformation in the hearts of children…as well as in the hearts of those that teach them.

I pray that we who lead children don’t just show up but we grow up and own this: the grand story of Scripture!

The Saturday Assortment #6

Posted on by

The Saturday Assortment

The Saturday Assortment is a collection of unrelated and random things that I find interesting, challenging, motivating and sometimes quite out of the ordinary. It’s an assortment of things that caught my attention throughout the week. I bet you will find them equally engaging. Enjoy!

7 Common Energy and Time Wasters for Leaders —Ron Edmonson Staying on task is critical to being a good leader. Here are seven time and energy wasters to avoid.

Actually, it goes the other way. Wouldn’t it be great to be gifted? In fact... Always a good word from Seth Godin

Rebuilding With a Prayer Community —Jared Musgrove (The Village Church) With the ups and downs and stress of any job, in particular a church ministry, learn to pray, listen, and intercede with other. You need community.

How Andy Stanley and Tim Keller Preach with Non-Believers in Mind –Trevin Wax There’s no denying the significant differences between Andy Stanley and Tim Keller when it comes to theology and ministry. But we can learn from them both in how to respectfully engage the unsaved people in our midst.