Monthly Archives: January 2021

Erasing God from My Story

(This post contains affiliate links. Read my full disclosure HERE.)

Our Harrowing Experience Last Night

Have you ever had an experience where you just knew God had his hand on you and protected you? That happened to our family last night.

Last night, we were driving home from our date night. Matt’s parents watch the kids on Thursday nights, so Matt and I can go on a date. We picked the kids up and began driving home. Matt was driving, going about 70 mph on the highway. I was looking at my phone, telling Matt about a text I had just received when he suddenly jerked the car hard to the left, swerving into the other lane. My head jerked, and I caught the flash of a car that had already passed us.

It happened so fast, I barely saw the car. I watched as it flew down the highway and weaved in and out of traffic. We drive on this particular highway quite often, and there are always people driving too fast. But this one takes the cake. I have no idea how fast the car was going, but it was fast!

My heart racing, I glanced over at Matt. “Good reflexes. You okay?”

“Yeah, I saw him in the rear view mirror,” Matt said.

The kids were all quiet for a moment; then Maggie asked, “What happened?”

“Somebody was driving way too fast,” I said.

It took several moments for my heart rate to slow down. That had been too close. I have no idea what that driver was thinking. We were just driving in our lane. If Matt hadn’t moved when he did… it wouldn’t have been good. I spent a moment in quiet, thanking God for His protection of our family.

Seeing God’s Hand of Protection

There are times like that when you can easily look back and know with all certainty that God was protecting you and working in your life. I wonder how many times, though, God is working in and through our lives, and we have no idea. We just don’t see it because it’s not as obvious.

We’ve been so conditioned to just write God out of the story of our lives. We don’t even realize that we are erasing God from our lives.

Studying the Book of Jonah

I’m reading the book of Jonah right now in my morning time, and we’re also doing Jonah in our small group study on Tuesday nights. On Tuesday, we were talking about all the times God showed up directly in Jonah’s life. Matt asked the question, “What would happen if we just erased God from Jonah’s story?”

It really made me think. Honestly, it wouldn’t be that hard to do. Let’s look at the story of Jonah and God’s involvement in his life.

Seeing God’s Hand in Jonah’s Life

There are nine times we see God work directly in Jonah’s life. The book of Jonah is only four chapters long. It’s short, yet we see God acting over and over again in this small book.

Look at the nine times God directly does something.

God tells Jonah to go to Nineveh 1:2
God sent a storm 1:4
God prepares a fish to swallow Jonah 1:17
God tells the fish to spit Jonah out 2:10
God tells Jonah a second time to go to Nineveh 3:2
God grows a small tree to give Jonah shade 4:6
God creates a worm that destroys the tree 4:7
God causes a hot wind 4:8
God rebukes Jonah 4:9

Erasing God from Jonah’s Story

What would it look like if we totally erased God from the story of Jonah? We would have a very different story to tell. Yet, we could easily do it. Jonah could just have as easily done that. Here’s how Jonah could have seen it.

Jonah gets a feeling he should go to Nineveh.
A storm comes up while he’s out at sea
He gets thrown in the water, but a fish happened to be swimming nearby and swallows him
A few days later, the fish spits him out
He decides maybe he should go to Nineveh after all
He finds a small tree to give him shade
A worm comes and destroys his tree
A hot wind develops
He feels badly about how he acted

Erasing God in Our Own Lives

Do you see how easy it was to replace God in Jonah’s story? It’s pretty easy to take each of the times God directly acted in Jonah’s life and replace it with just life or circumstances.

It makes me wonder, how many times have I removed God from my story? How many times have I “rewritten” my story, erasing God from the picture. Things happen, and I just chalk it up to “life happening.”

Looking For God’s Hand

Jonah’s story encourages me because it makes me believe that God is more actively involved in my life than I give Him credit for. I believe if we really understood God, we would see His hand a whole lot more in our lives.

Let’s choose to actively seek God in the mundane of our ordinary day. I believe if we start searching for His involvement, we will end up seeing it so much more.

Then when you do see Him at work in your life, write it down so you don’t forget. I think we will begin to understand that God is alive and at work more in our lives than we ever realized.

For More Encouragement

For more encouragement on this topic, read When You Can’t See God Working in Your Life. If life looks different than you thought it would, and you’re having a hard time seeing God working in your own life, two books to encourage you would be It’s Not Supposed to Be This Way: Finding Unexpected Strength When Disappointments Leave You Shattered by Lysa TerKeurst or my book, The Hidden Pain: When You Fear God is No Longer Blessing Your Life.

A Virtual Hug from Me to You

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(This post contains an affiliate link. Read my full disclosure HERE.)

A Virtual Hug

I can’t believe we’re already halfway through January. While some people are off to an amazing start and crushing it with accomplishing their goals, others are struggling big time. I’ve had conversations with three different women over the course of the last week all of whom are struggling. They feel like life is crushing them. Each of them is in different circumstances, and each of their stories is different. Yet, I found myself saying the same thing to each of them—There is nothing wrong with you.

I don’t know if you’re struggling right now. I have no idea what you’re going through, but I know we can all find encouragement in being reminded that we are valued. If I could, I would give you a hug. But since I’m not near you and the whole hugging thing is kind of nixed right now because of Covid, I want to give you a virtual hug.

So consider this a hug from me as I remind you of a few simple truths today.

1. Your value is not in what you can do, it’s in who you are.

Too many of us focus on what we do. We feel we are only valuable when we put something out into the world or accomplish something great. Yet, that’s not true at all. If you never accomplished anything else for the rest of your life, you would still be of value simply because you are you.

Are not two sparrows sold for a farthing? and one of them shall not fall on the ground without your Father. But the very hairs of your head are all numbered. Fear ye not therefore, ye are of more value than many sparrows.
Matthew 10:29-31

2. You can not do anything to make God love you any more; neither can you do anything to make Him love you any less.

Sometimes we forget that Jesus’ love for us has no boundaries or conditions. We get so hard on ourselves. I feel like that’s our specialty as women—being hard on ourselves. We need to let go of the expectations we have for ourselves and simply rest in the knowledge that God loves us just as we are, and that’s enough.

Observe how Christ loved us. His love was not cautious but extravagant. He didn’t love in order to get something from us but to give everything of himself to us. Love like that.
Ephesians 5:2 MSG

3. There is nothing wrong with you.

You were lovingly crafted by a perfect Creator. To criticize yourself is to criticize the Creator. He made you exactly as He wanted you to be. So take comfort and joy in that. Be who God made you to be without apologizing for it.

That means we will not compare ourselves with each other as if one of us were better and another worse. We have far more interesting things to do with our lives. Each of us is an original.
Galatians 5:26 MSG

Wherever you are today, I wish I could reach out and hug you and share these truths personally. Instead, let this be your virtual hug as I remind you that you are valuable, God loves you just as you are, and there is nothing wrong with you.

For more encouragement, read Encouragement for the Weary Soul.

A great book to make you laugh is Have More Fun: How to be Remarkable, Stop Feeling Stuck, and Start Enjoying Life by Mandy Arioto.

Finding Free- Coming Soon!

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Finding Free

I am so excited about my new book coming out in just a few weeks—Finding Free: 5 Simple Steps to a More Peaceful, Content, and Happy You. To give you an idea of what the book is about, continue reading below. This is the introduction to my book.

Introduction

If you had told me years ago that I would write a book on finding free, I would have laughed. I was the least free person I knew! My life felt out of control; I lived a frustrated life, one in which I was just existing. I didn’t wake up each day excited about the possibilities life had to offer. I didn’t know who I was or what God wanted me to do with my life. I was merely being carried along by other people’s desires and plans for my life.

The process of getting to where I am today was not by my own planning or choosing. Actually, it was quite the opposite. God turned my life completely upside down and changed everything for me. I didn’t realize it at the time because so many changes were coming at me hard and fast. But I realize now, looking back, that God was turning my life right side up. He was changing everything around me and subsequently changing me as well.

I talk to so many women who are lost, confused, frustrated, lonely, fearful, and feel like they have lost sight of who they are. That was me. If you feel like there must be a better way to live, that God has something more for you, then this book is for you.

What Finding Free Isn’t

Before I explain what finding free is, I want to start by telling you what it isn’t. Finding free is not a problem-free life. If you picked this book up with that in mind, you’re going to be sorely disappointed. Jesus himself told us that this life is not going to be easy. He tells us in John 18:33 that in this world, we will experience tribulation. We could just stop there. Life is hard—end of story. Thankfully, Jesus doesn’t stop there with those hopeless words! He continues with five hope-filled words: “I have overcome the world.” He didn’t leave us to try to figure things out on our own. He promised he would never leave us nor forsake us in this world full of hardships (Hebrews 13:5).

Our life is not going to be problem-free just because we find free. My life is probably more problem-filled than it’s ever been, but here’s the key: I have incredible peace and am so content with where God has me despite the messy life around me.

So many women I talk to are not happy, not content. They are stuck in jobs they can’t stand or are at home living lives that are empty and unfulfilling. We want more, want to experience more; we crave finding what will truly make us happy and content. Yet, we are utterly clueless about how to find it or even know what it is we’re searching for.

Finding More

I felt so trapped in the life I was living for so long. I spent so many years spinning in circles, trying to find what I was missing and what I was supposed to do with my life, trying to figure out why things weren’t working out and why I wasn’t fulfilled. I knew God had more for my life, but I didn’t know how to find it.

God created us to experience an abundant life, not a mediocre, okay life. He said in John 10:10, “I am come that they might have life, and that they might have it more abundantly.” That doesn’t sound like a boring life. It doesn’t sound stressful or empty. It sounds like what finding free looks like.

What Finding Free Is

Finding free is about discovering who God created you to be and being completely okay with that. It’s about finding what God has created you to do and chasing after it with your whole heart. It’s about learning to turn a deaf ear to critics and people who don’t want you to succeed. It’s about learning to abandon people-pleasing, about realizing that you will never please everybody.

It’s about learning to step into the life God wants you to live. It’s about leaving behind busy and pursuing peace. It’s about pushing perfectionism out of your life and accepting the messiness of your life. It’s doing more of what fills you up and less of what drains you. It’s about creating a life you love. It’s about letting go of the secret rules you have that are holding you back. It’s about finding momentum and moving forward. It’s about letting go of shame and comparison. It’s about finding total freedom. It’s about finding the love you’ve always wanted but don’t know how to have. Finding free is about all of this and more.

I have broken down finding free into five simple steps. We’ll spend several chapters on each step so we can really delve into them:

Understand Your Personality
Discover Your Purpose
Create a Life You Love
Allow God to Redirect You
Release the Shame

Finding Free is a Journey

I’m going to warn you: finding free is a journey. You aren’t going to find it in a day, and you won’t find it a week from now. It’s going to take time. It took me years to get to where I am today. But don’t let that discourage you. There’s a secret that every traveler knows, and it’s this: there’s joy found in the journey, not just the destination.

Throughout this book, I’ll share parts of my story of finding free to help you get your journey of finding free started. After that, it will be up to you to continue your own journey. The key is not quitting until you have found your freedom. As Tony Robbins says, “The only impossible journey is the one you never take.”1

Don’t get discouraged and quit halfway through this book or halfway through your own journey. You won’t ever find free.

It may feel at times that you’re better off just staying where you are in life. There may come a time when it feels like it’s too hard to create your own version of free. Don’t believe the lie! It will be work, and it will be difficult. There will be decisions you have to make, people you have to leave behind, and things you must release from your life. However, if you stick with it, I promise you will come out on the other side living your own version of free, and you’ll be so grateful you didn’t throw in the towel.

Why I Wrote this Book

The life I am living now can simply be summed up as finding free. I spent my entire life trying to live a certain way, be a certain kind of person, and letting others dictate my life for me. Now I am content in who I am and what God has me doing.

It’s taken a lot of years, a lot of purposeful decisions. Our family has made a lot of changes over the years. We’ve made sacrifices to live the life we are living now. But I can say without a doubt that we are peaceful, content, and happy with the life we have created.

I decided to write this book for this very reason. So many people I talk to are not free. They aren’t living a life they love. More than that, they are miserable. They don’t know who they are or what they’re supposed to do in life. They feel empty, like they are missing something. They feel like they are a mistake or not good enough.

This book is for them. If you feel any of those things, this book is for you. I want you to find your own version of free. I don’t want you to struggle like I did for so many years. I want you to learn from my mistakes so you don’t have to make them yourself.

Using This Book

If you want to find freedom, then use this book as a manual. Keep a pen and a highlighter handy. Underline things, cross out what doesn’t work for you, highlight what helps you. Mark this book up. Digest it; let it change you. The best books I’ve read are marked up because I don’t want to forget what I learned from somebody else. I want to learn from their failures so I don’t have to experience them myself. I want to learn from their successes so I can experience those successes myself.

When you’ve finished this book, pass it on to somebody else. We all need to find free in our lives. Are you ready to get started? Are you ready to begin your journey of finding free? Grab a pen and get ready. Finding free begins now.

*Be sure to follow Faithfully Stepping on both Facebook and Instagram for a release date. While you’re waiting for Finding Free to release, check out my other book, The Hidden Pain: When You Fear God is No Longer Blessing Your Life. You can read about that book in The Hidden Pain: A Peek into the Book I’m Writing.

Discouraged? 12 Ideas to Try

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A Bad Start to A New Year

It’s been a week! We started out the new year ready to let go of 2020 and all the negativity that came with it. Yet, here we are, just days into the new year and it’s a mess again. As a result, you are probably feeling as hopeless and discouraged as I am.

Our Reminder

However, I listened to a message by Rick Warren that reminded that Jesus’ kingdom is not of this world. Jesus told us repeatedly that He was not of this world and that his kingdom was not of this world. When it was time to go to the cross, Jesus rebuked Peter when he tried to fight off the guards who were preparing to take Jesus away. He looked at Peter and said, “If I wanted to fight, I could call legions of angels at this very moment.” But that was not God’s plan.

God’s plan has never been to make this earth perfect. He told us in John 16:32, that in this world we will have tribulation. That’s because this world is full of sinful people. We live in a broken, sinful world. We can focus on that and be discouraged, or we can focus on the fact that this isn’t our home.

Jesus reminds us in the book of John that He was not of this world, just as we are not of this world.

I have given them thy word; and the world hath hated them, because they are not of the world, even as I am not of the world.
John 17:14 KJV

They are no more defined by the world
Than I am defined by the world.
John 17:14 MSG

This World Doesn’t Define Me

When we get discouraged and disillusioned by all that’s going on around us, we need to remind ourselves with this truth— this world doesn’t define us. This world of sin, brokenness, and hatred does not define us.

We need to take our eyes off of our circumstances and everything going on around us and look up. Remember where our kingdom is. We are part of a heavenly kingdom, a place where there is no sin.

So, what do we do in the meantime until we get to that heavenly kingdom? Because right now we’re stuck in a world of hatred and hurt. Here are twelve ideas to try when you are discouraged to get your mind off of things around you.

Twelve Ways to Be Filled Up

Find encouragement and strength by starting your mornings with God. Start a morning time routine.
Read inspirational and encouraging books that help you focus on the good in life and not all that’s taking place around us. Check out Manney Resources for books to encourage your heart.
Listen to uplifting, God-centered music. Try these 3 Songs to Encourage Your Heart.
Spend time with friends or family. Sometimes just being around people that love you and that aren’t going to drag you down can really help at times like these.
Don’t look at social media or watch the news. Take a break from all the negativity.
Plan a fun night with your family— a movie night, a game night… something to get your mind off all the negativity around you.
Take a nap. Getting extra rest can be really helpful to take away the feeling of helplessness or depressing thoughts.
Buy one thing that brings you joy. Buy some fresh flowers for your table, a candle that you love, a puzzle to work on, some new nail polish, a new pair of earrings, a new book… something that brings you joy.
Bake some cookies to take to your neighbors or take a meal to someone who is having a hard time.
Drive somewhere new and explore the area. Find a new restaurant or coffee shop to try.
Get a craft kit and create something or try your hand at something new like sewing, knitting, painting, etc.
Pick one drawer, closet, or space in your home that you want to organize and feel good about it when it’s done.

Remember…

These are just some simple ideas to help get our focus off of everything around us. The most important thing to remember is that we are not defined by this world, just as Jesus wasn’t defined by this world. Let that thought encourage you today.

A New Year! 3 Steps to Take to Have Your Best Year Yet!

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365 New Mornings

It’s a beautiful new year. There’s something about the beauty of a new year. It’s empty and full of so many possibilities. Because my passion is mornings, I see 365 mornings stretched out before me. I see 365 new mornings and new mercies.

It is of the Lord’s mercies that we are not consumed, because his compassions fail not. They are new every morning: great is thy faithfulness.
Lamentations 3:22,23 KJV

God’s compassion starts fresh every morning. He gives us a fresh supply of mercy and compassion each morning. That’s the most encouraging thought as we face a brand new year.

Facing this New Year with Confidence

While everybody around us may face this new year with fear, trepidation, and uncertainty, we can step into this year with confidence in a God who has not forsaken us, in a God who gives us a clean slate every day.

Just as we can be sure that the sun will rise every day this year, we can be equally sure that God will walk alongside us every day in this new year.

If you want this year to be better than any other year so far, I believe it begins with three simple steps. If you want to have the best year yet, start with these three steps.

1. Write Down Your Goals and Dreams for this Year

You May Say I'm a Dreamer Journal — My Dream Journal

If you want to accomplish something great, it starts with writing it down. Take the time in these first few days of the new year to write down all the dreams you have for this year and what you want to accomplish.

open journal with the words 2021 goals and dreams written — Inside my Dream Journal before I wrote down my goals for the year

If you don’t write it down, you probably won’t accomplish it. Every year, I take the time to write down what I want to accomplish. Those goals range from books I want to write, projects I want to complete, vacations I want to take, places I want to visit, things I want to do, goals personally, and more.

“Setting goals is the first step in turning the invisible into the visible.”
Tony Robbins

“People with clear, written goals, accomplish far more in a shorter period of time than people without them could ever imagine.”
Brian Tracy

2. Get Up Early

If you want to accomplish great things for God this year, it starts with getting up earlier. When Matt and got really serious about our mornings and got up earlier than we ever had before and started doing it on a consistent basis, our creativity and productivity grew in leaps and bounds.

If you want to find extra time in your day to begin to accomplish your dreams, I believe it can be found in getting up earlier and starting your day with God, then moving on to what He has for you for the day. There’s so many wasted hours waiting to be claimed in the early morning hours.

“The difference between rising at five and seven o’clock in the morning, for 40 years, supposed a man to go to bed at the same hour at night, is nearly equivalent to the addition of ten years to a man’s life.”
Philip Doddridge

3. Develop a Morning Time Routine

After you set goals and determine to get up earlier, the third step is to develop a consistent morning time routine. This is the routine you do every morning that sets you up for success for the rest of your day. My morning time routine starts with making a cup of coffee and lighting a candle. Then I begin my time with God. Reading my Bible, journaling, and doing my prayer time. For more details about my morning time routine, read Creating a Morning Time Routine You Love.

Matt and I have created a system we call 30 to THRIVE. It consists of reading your Bible or doing a devotional for 10 minutes, journaling for ten minutes, and reading a book for ten minutes. You can find out more at Manney Resources where you can download a free Morning Time Guide to help you get started on your journey,

Matt and I believe that if you can change your morning, you can grow your faith and change your life, and you do that best by developing a morning time routine.

2021

2021 can be your best year yet! Start with writing down your goals for the year, then figure out how to get up earlier consistently. Lastly, implement a morning time routine and see if that doesn’t make this year your best one yet!