it is well with my soul

Surely you've heard the song. I can't tell you how many times i've been in church and the worship leader starts playing "It Is Well With My Soul" and my eyes well up with tears. Saying "it is well with my soul", no matter what the circumstances are in my life at the present moment, is something that is not easy all the time. When I first found out about the histroy behind this hymn I was in absolute awe. This man's faith is something that we should all look up to and remember in all seasons of life...

This hymn was written by a Chicago lawyer, Horatio G. Spafford. You might think to write a worship song titled,
'It is well with my soul', you would indeed have to be a rich, successful Chicago lawyer. But the words,
"When sorrows like sea billows roll ... It is well with my soul”, were not written during the happiest period of
Spafford's life. On the contrary, they came from a man who had suffered almost unimaginable personal tragedy.

Horatio G. Spafford and his wife, Anna, were pretty well-known in 1860’s Chicago. And this was not just because
of Horatio's legal career and business endeavors. The Spaffords were also prominent supporters and close
friends of D.L. Moody, the famous preacher. In 1870, however, things started to go wrong. The Spaffords' only
son was killed by scarlet fever at the age of four. A year later, it was fire rather than fever that struck. Horatio
had invested heavily in real estate on the shores of Lake Michigan. In 1871, every one of these holdings was
wiped out by the great Chicago Fire.

Aware of the toll that these disasters had taken on the family, Horatio decided to take his wife and four
daughters on a holiday to England. And, not only did they need the rest -- DL Moody needed the help. He was
traveling around Britain on one of his great evangelistic campaigns. Horatio and Anna planned to join Moody in
late 1873. And so, the Spaffords traveled to New York in November, from where they were to catch the French
steamer 'Ville de Havre' across the Atlantic. Yet just before they set sail, a last-minute business development
forced Horatio to delay. Not wanting to ruin the family holiday, Spafford persuaded his family to go as planned.
He would follow on later. With this decided, Anna and her four daughters sailed East to Europe while Spafford
returned West to Chicago. Just nine days later, Spafford received a telegram from his wife in Wales. It read:
"Saved alone."

On November 2nd 1873, the 'Ville de Havre' had collided with 'The Lochearn', an English vessel. It sank in only
12 minutes, claiming the lives of 226 people. Anna Spafford had stood bravely on the deck, with her daughters
Annie, Maggie, Bessie and Tanetta clinging desperately to her. Her last memory had been of her baby being
torn violently from her arms by the force of the waters. Anna was only saved from the fate of her daughters by a
plank which floated beneath her unconscious body and propped her up. When the survivors of the wreck had
been rescued, Mrs. Spafford's first reaction was one of complete despair. Then she heard a voice speak to her,
"You were spared for a purpose." And she immediately recalled the words of a friend, "It's easy to be grateful
and good when you have so much, but take care that you are not a fair-weather friend to God."

Upon hearing the terrible news, Horatio Spafford boarded the next ship out of New York to join his bereaved
wife. Bertha Spafford (the fifth daughter of Horatio and Anna born later) explained that during her father's
voyage, the captain of the ship had called him to the bridge. "A careful reckoning has been made", he said, "and
I believe we are now passing the place where the de Havre was wrecked. The water is three miles deep." Horatio
then returned to his cabin and penned the lyrics of his great hymn.

The words which Spafford wrote that day come from 2 Kings 4:26. They echo the response of the Shunammite
woman to the sudden death of her only child. Though we are told "her soul is vexed within her", she still
maintains that 'It is well." And Spafford's song reveals a man whose trust in the Lord is as unwavering as hers
was.

No matter what circumstances overtake us may we be able to say with Horatio Spafford...When peace like a river, attendeth my way,
When sorrows like sea billows roll;
Whatever my lot, Thou hast taught me to say,
It is well, it is well with my soul.

Though Satan should buffet, though trials should come,
Let this blest assurance control,
That Christ hath regarded my helpless estate,
And hath shed His own blood for my soul!

It is well ... with my soul!
It is well, it is well, with my soul.

What if the water that came out of the shower was treated with a chemical that responded to a combination of things, like your heartbeat, and your body temperature, and your brain waves, so that your skin changed color according to your mood? If you were extremely excited your skin would turn green, and if you were angry you’d turn red, obviously, and if you felt like shiitake you’d turn brown, and if you were blue you’d turn blue. Everyone could know what everyone else felt, and we could be more careful with each other, because you’d never want to tell a person whose skin was purple that you’re angry at her for being late, just like you would want to pat a pink person on the back and tell him, “Congratulations!”
Another reason it would be a good invention is that there are so many times when you know you’re feeling a lot of something, but you don’t know what the something is. /Am I frustrated? Am I actually just panicky?/ And that confusion changes your mood, it becomes your mood, and you become a confused, gray person. But with the special water, you could look at your orange hands and think, /I’m happy! That whole time I was actually happy! What a relief!

---	Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, Jonathan Safran Foer

the love test

“Love patiently and passionately bears with others for as long as patience is needed; Love doesn’t demand other to be like itself; rather, it is so focused on the needs of others that it bends over backwards to become what others need it to be; Love is not ambitious, self-centered, or so consumed with itself that it never thinks of the needs or desires that others posses; Love doesn’t go around talking about itself all the time, constantly exaggerating and embellishing the facts to make it look more important in the sight of others; Love does not behave in a prideful, arrogant, haughty, superior, snooty, snobbish, or clannish manner; Love is not rude and discourteous- it is not careless or thoughtless, nor does it carry on in a fashion that would be considered insensitive to others; Love does not manipulate situations or scheme and devise methods that will twist situations to its own advantage; Love does not deliberately keep records or wrongs or past mistakes; Love does not feel overjoyed when it sees an injustice done to someone else but is elated, thrilled, ecstatic, and overjoyed with the truth; Love protects, shields, guards, covers, conceals, and safeguards people from exposure; Love strains forward with all its might to believe the very best in every situation; Love always expects and anticipates the best in others and for others; Love never quits, never surrenders, never gives up; Love never disappoints, never fails, and never lets anyone down.”

-- An expanded interpretive translation of 1 Corinthians 13:4-8. Breathe it in deep!

you're more than a bird.

taken from onemoretomorrow.org

Take no thought for your life……

God will take care of you. Worry is a silent killer that whispers in our hearts and minds to bring doubt and despair. It wants us to think on the situation rather than on God and what He has promised us. Worry desires that we set our faith aside and wallow in the mess that life serves us as though we have no hope. Worry begins with just a small space in your mind and it continues on until it has consumed our hearts and pushed our faith right out the door. It causes us to look at what we can see rather than look to who we seek. Worry has a way of magnifying the problem, making it MUCH bigger than it is. It always assumes the worse before the best is even considered. It will have you believe a lie rather than the truth. Worry will steal your life if you let it. It is nothing more than the anticipation of trouble that most likely will never come your way. It has no substance and no power except in your mind.

“Look at the birds. They don’t plant or harvest or store food in barns, for your heavenly Father feeds them. And aren’t you far more valuable to him than they are?” Matt. 6:26(NLT)

God asks you to replace your worry with a firm trust in His love and concern for you. He knows all that is in your future, all of your needs, and He is committed to caring for you. God considers worry a negative commodity in your life because it takes the place of trust in His willingness and ability to take care of you. When worry visits your heart, move it out immediately by reminding yourself how completely God has taken care of you in the past. List the blessings in your life today that shout of His protection and love. Then entrust the future to this same God.

No longer should we allow worry to consume us to the point of doubt and disbelief. We must learn to hold on to what we believe and act on it in times of trouble. God never told us that trouble would not come to us. He did tell us that He would keep us in the midst of it. Hey, he takes cares of the birds. I’m quite sure He has a little time to look in on you each day. He knows who, what, where, how, and why. Just trust Him and kick worry out of your life forever. End that dead-end relationship today.

surrender.

Written by Andrea Lucado

How do we surrender and experience victory simultaneously? In our culture, surrender is equivalent with failure, right? Surrender is giving up. Surrender means we are not strong enough, not good enough, not something enough to complete the task at hand and come out on top. No, we are not anxious to wave our white flags of surrender. We clutch them tightly and keep them hidden behind our backs. We are not weak. Or at least we don’t want the enemy to think we are.

So then why, of all things, does God the almighty and victorious one call us to surrender?

He does it often. From the Old Testament when the Israelites were rebelling and refusing Babylonian captivity to the New Testament when Jesus upholds those who are meek and instructs us to “turn the other cheek.” God’s word urges his people to surrender from the battle within and from the battle around us. We often grow unaware of these battles, forgetting that our flesh is at constant war with our spirit and that good is at constant war with evil. These battles are too big and too important for us to fight on our own.

The battle occurring within each of us is dangerous to forget about. Our flesh leads us down paths of destruction: bitterness, jealousy, anger. Our flesh tries hard to achieve our worldly desires and goals. We work hard to save money, get a promotion, not let others hurt us, not let others hurt the ones we love, fix people’s problems. It is exhausting work. And lasts only until we hit a wall or rock bottom or completely fail, realizing we have nothing left to offer.

Rather than depending on ourselves until that point of defeat, God calls us to lay our weapons down at the start of battle, take a deep breath and resign to what we fear most—surrender. But God promises captivity is not what we will walk into if we raise our white flag. Actually, He promises the opposite will occur: “It is for freedom that Christ has set us free” (Gal. 5:1). When we choose Christ above our own ability, we find freedom from our struggle. In that sense, when we finally raise our white flag, we are actually raising up the cross. And in the cross is more power than we could ever have.

Paul tells us that His power is made perfect in our weakness (2 Cor. 12:9). When we are not able, He is able. Able to make pick us up so we can stand again (Rom. 14:4). Able to bless us abundantly (2 Cor. 9:8). Able to do immeasurably more than we could ever ask or imagine for our lives and for this world (Eph. 3:20). Able to make us wise (2 Tim. 3:16). Able to help us while we are being tempted (Heb. 2:18). Able to save us completely through Christ (Heb. 7:25). Able to keep us from stumbling and able to bring us into God’s presence (Jude 1:24).

He fought the battle a long time ago, on a cross, and “[t]his is the victory that has overcome the world” (1 John 5:4). Now he simply waits to see our white flags being raised one by one. As soon as we get out of the way and allow Christ to be our defender and victor, we are free and he in turn is enabled.

The battle raging around us is even bigger and more impossible to overcome than our internal battles. Evil seeking victory through human trafficking, child hunger, poverty and countries at war—these are much too huge for us to overcome on our own. We are not strong enough and never will be. But imagine if we stopped looking around at one another to fight these evils and started looking upward toward Christ. What a difference we could make, putting the one who defeated death in charge over ourselves. We may just accomplish something and accomplish it to His glory. We are not the answer; he is.

The idea is inverted and counter-cultural, as all aspects of the gospel are. Once we surrender, we are free. Once we succumb to our weakness, we are strong in Christ. Explaining this sounds a little insane, but experiencing it makes more sense than anything else in our lives. And once we grasp this biblical concept of surrender, our white flags are no longer a symbol of weakness but, instead, a gift we exchange for freedom.

being a good person doesn't really matter

Some would describe me as a good person. I try really hard to be kind, treat people well, and love others. I mediate situations, I go to church on a regular basis, and I have an annoying tendency to do the right thing.

But when I look at myself the mirror, I stare into the reality that I am not a good person.

I am an awful person. I am petty, jealous, bitter, perfectionistic, inadequate, angry, grumpy, proud, snide, manipulative, self-absorbed, evaluating, judgmental, selfish, incompetent, codependent, and many more adjectives that would describe the average awful human. So for most of my life, to maintain an image of being good, I would try harder to be kind, treat people even better, and love others as much as possible. I would prevent arguments and hold myself to a standard of perfection in every action.

But earlier this year, I woke up one day with a crazy notion: I worship a good God. And therefore me being a good person doesn’t really matter in the long run. Because that is not how God sees me.

One might assume that this sort of epiphany would bring freedom and joy and giggles because, hey, for any Christian it kind of makes sense. But for me, this notion rocked me to my core.

Did you ever put on those goggles at the police station when you were a kid? The ones that simulate drunk driving? I feel like I’ve been wearing those my entire life. And that morning that I woke up, I opened my eyes and found to my surprise that the Lord had taken those silly things off. And I freaked out.

There was nothing in my life that I recognized around me, and worst of all, I realized that the reflection I’ve been looking at for so long and have been so ashamed of is not the version of me that my Heavenly Father sees.

Because, you see, when Jesus died on the cross for our sins, He bore God’s wrath. And theologically that sounds nice, but in a more image-based description, what that really means is that Jesus was ugly. Like, really ugly. He was my kind of ugly. He put on my mask of being a good girl and carried my bitter, foul little heart around in His chest and hung on a cross. When He died, was buried, and then woke up and starting walking and talking again, all of my crap got left behind.

For people who grew up Christian, this is logical. We learn it in talks from our pastors, we read about in Christian books, we even skim the surface as we read Scripture. But for me, I was living with the distorted image of my good girl self and my broken little heart. I was still walking around carrying this picture of me as the little girl who believed she was to blame for the separation of her parents’ marriage, the child who thought she could somehow prove she was deserving of love and attention, the teen who believed that no one could see the food she refused, and the young woman who thought the only kind of love she deserved would always come with strings attached.

So when the goggles came off and I saw myself the way that God sees me, I was shocked to perceive that I am whole. I am perfect. There are no stains on my clothing, no blemish on my skin. A pleasing aroma comes from me, there are no tears on my cheeks or lurking in my eyes; there is no shame burdening my shoulders or pain creasing my brow. I am His. And I am perfect.

When Jesus died on the cross, He took our sin. That means that God doesn’t see it when He looks at each of us. This distorted image of myself that I had been carrying around was not in fact reality at all.

I had been deceived into believing that all my striving, all my attempts to live a good life would somehow continue to buy me God’s favor. That my outer goodness would somehow outweigh my inner garbage, that God would see my deeds even though He knows my heart and somehow maybe He would decide that they even out. My inner sense of brokenness drove me into a captivity of legalism. I started depending on myself and all the things I could do for God to get Him to accept me, to notice me, to heal me, to love me, instead of on Him.

But our God is better than that. He is a good God. He is a intentional God who works in all things for our good. He is a Shepherd who will not let us stray too far. He is a Father who welcomes us in with open arms. And so He took off my goggles and led me out of my Egypt, my slavery.

For so much of my life, the words I have said most frequently to the Lord have been “I’m sorry”. But in 2011, God showed me that it’s time to change that phrase to “Thank you”.

Ali Mason

A Letter To My Younger Self

Hey. Stop what you’re doing for a minute and listen. You aren’t going to believe everything I’m about to say, but I know you will understand it. I know you, and I know what you’re thinking. Maybe you will recognize me. Maybe you won’t.

First things first, you’re gorgeous. I know you don’t think that, and I know right now you’re smiling and inwardly negating my words; you do that a lot. Stop it. God made you. You don’t know Him that well yet, so you don’t understand this, but He formed every part of you. He molded your face, gave you that hair you try to cover up. He made you with hips (not the bad thing you think it is). And all those curves that make you feel disproportionate? He made those too. He made your nose and your eyes and he made you a little shy.

You feel cheated right now, wondering why the God of the universe didn’t make you alluring or talkative or anything like the girls you wish you were, but you’re wrong. You’re so wrong. Because, when God made you, he didn’t step back and look at the finished product and say, “good enough”. He didn’t grimace when he realized he made a few mistakes, but ushered you out into the world anyway. He didn’t even nod and think he had done pretty well. No. He saw you and he was enthralled. Girl, the king is enthralled with your beauty. Why? Because you – because the woman he made – was absolutely gorgeous.

I know you don’t feel that way, when the boys in the hallway try to rate your beauty on a scale of ten, when they make you feel unseen, unwanted. Don’t listen to them. Ignore them. For they are just boys and you are a woman – not one of their playthings. You surpass their scale; no one can assign your beauty a number, a rating, a degree. Those who try and do such things are mere fools, not worth being heard. Yeah, their opinion seems like the world to you now, and the things they say cut deep, but you’ll get through it and soon they will be as laughable to you as they are to me now.

You think your brain is your only redeeming quality; you feel threatened when people try to challenge that. You tell yourself that if you can’t be pretty, at least you can be smart, but that’s not true either. God made you beautiful and He made you smart, so stop putting yourself down, stop believing lies (you made most of them up anyway; in a few years, you will realize that). You feel like no one will ever understand you, and they probably won’t, but that’s part of what makes you beautiful. God made you mysterious. You wouldn’t be you if people entirely understood you.

You don’t believe me. I know that. You won’t understand for another few years. You’re asking yourself how anything I say can be true, when deep down you feel so small and unseen. You don’t feel beautiful or powerful or anything like a woman when you sit in the back of the class room silent, avoiding eye contact with the “pretty girls” and the teacher who knows that, though you won’t speak, you have so much to say. That’s right; you don’t fool me. I know how your mind is racing, how badly you yearn to be heard despite your fear of speaking. Your stutter really isn’t that bad.

Girl, things aren’t going to be easy, getting here. Sometimes it’s going to hurt – a lot. But some day you’ll understand what I’m saying. Some day you will come to terms with the truth that God made you beautiful, and the lies you once believed will enrage you. Some day you will be angry at the world that pressed those unhealthy expectations and feelings of failure onto your heart, and you’re going to fight. You’re going to make war on those lies – in your life and in the lives of others. That’s right. Some day there are going to be women who look up to you, and you’re going to understand the struggle in their eyes. You’re going to see in them the girl to whom I am writing this letter. It’s still going to be a struggle for you; it isn’t always going to be easy, but God is on your side.

And you will grow, step by step, day by day, as I am growing now, as you learn what it means to be a woman deeply loved by the Lord.

Listen to me. Please. You are beautiful, just how God made you. If nothing else, please understand that. Cling to it. Cling to the truth that God made you well.

And keep fighting. I’ll see you on the other side.

taken from goodwomenproject.com