Sometimes equating our personal worth with our work is so ingrained in us it feels wrong NOT to - like we're skipping out on some required part of being an adult. Newsflash: God wants us to be virtuous, He wants us to grow, He wants us to take responsibility, but really is not calling us to look like your standard-issue, overly-self-reliant adult. I don't if I ever put that thought together totally prior to right now, but here's why I think it holds up: Being a "responsible adult" is so often viewed as a function of having a certain level...

If you've ever had an in-person conversation with me there's about a 50/50 chance I got off on talking about charisms (also called spiritual gifts) in the course of it. It's kind of my soapbox thing. I am wildly passionate about equipping people to discern their spiritual gifts because it's some of the most tangible, actionable information we get from the Holy Spirit about exactly how God is calling us to plug in to the church and help it GROW. Because we all want to help grow the church, right? But so often our desires to help and serve the...

I am so, so thankful to have been born in the United States in the 20th Century. I am so, so thankful to be alive at a time when the Holy Spirit is so present throughout the world - revealing Himself to be moving hearts and changing minds every day. I am so, so thankful to have been born in a country that not only allows women to start and own businesses, but encourages it's citizens to go after new ideas, fill needs, and solve problems. I am so, so thankful to be not just a business owner, but a...

So what exactly does it look like to love yourself the way God loves you? If you’re already squirming at that question, hang in there. Let’s go back to what we know about God: God is good, God is truth itself, God knows us inside and out, and God made us. So when we look at ourselves the way that God looks at us it’s with real, actual 2020 vision. God knows all your faults, all your sins, all the things that are less than awesome about you. But as the saying goes, God knows your sin but He calls...

Just like we talked about last month in our discussion about community, many wounds affects our self-worth. These wounds come about when our mind is shaped by our own perceptions of ourselves in comparison to the rest of the world or as a result of the way that we are treated by others who do not view us in alignment with the truth. And these are the places that the Lord is gently asking: will you let me in? If you were bullied, if you were belittled, if you were called names, if you were made to feel less than...

Do you ever feel like you just want God to tell you what he wants you to do? What would you say if I told you that that was a lot more possible than you might imagine? I have had mentors teach me how to listen to the voice of God in my life and in my prayer time, and it has radically changed my life. Today I am sharing with you a virtual, on-demand workshop that I created to help you start to do the same. This is not magic, this is not coercing God into doing something he...

Oh self-worth. Such a fun and contentious topic both in and outside the church. I think conversations about self-worth can get a bad rap in the church because of confusion about the nature of pride and humility, so I think that’s where we need to start this month. What is pride and what is it not? What is humility and what is it not? Pride is the root from which so many sins grow, and essentially it stems from a faulty sense that we are above God – that we do not need him and are self-sufficient, deserving praise ourselves...

We've been talking all month about healing wounds that can come with community, but I think there's also a virtue that we need to dedicate some space to: courage. A lot of time people think of something like patience or trust as the core virtue we need to step into community, but I think for a lot of us, especially those of us with wounds (that is, ahem, all of us) courage is actually the core virtue we need to step out again in community. And you know what? I think you are way braver than you think you are....

FYI: God doesn’t want you to be miserable in community. Sticking it out through awful, harmful, potentially damaging community situations is not what God intends for you when we extol the virtues of community. I think this is where so many of us get it wrong. We know that a thing is good, we know that God desires us to partake in it, and so we gut it out, hoping that someday we will be able to see where the good was. Now I don’t want to devalue doing hard things and persevering and beautiful virtue building experiences like that,...

Last week I shared a simple process to start looking at really why there are lies and issues around community and your own heart in life with the help of Jesus is all knowing gaze. Today I want to help you embrace that process even more through our prayer episode of the podcast. I’m going to keep this reflection quite short because I really want to stress the importance of taking that time with the Lord - and I definitely invite you to do that with the podcast but if you prefer to pray on your own, please do that....

Last week we started chatting about the wounds and traumas that we may have had in community and why it’s worth it to work on those things so that we can embrace the good and the joy that God wants to give us through community. Today I want to give you some more tools to help you uncover the roots of any issues you might have with community so that you can bring those origin stories to the Lord for him to speak into. Sound good? Amazing. (This is really a preview of what we’ll be doing next week in...

Today begins our month fighting the lie that we will always be lonely. Although I think a lot of us don’t believe that this is necessarily the “truth“ or even something that we would say that we believe, I think we subtly act on this lie in a lot of ways. So many wounds can feed into this: feeling like we don’t fit in, feeling like our input or voice is not valued, specific people that have hurt us in community, and even just our own desire to self protect from future wounds we see being an inherent part of...