About Bronwen Steele

Bronwen is an introvert and over-thinker who grew up moving all over the UK. This creative and lover of beauty loves that God is faithful and gentle when she messes up but is in constant need of relearning the truth of God’s goodness. Deep conversations, ethical fashion and a good song (or just a cheesy one) are all things she’s down for. She laughs at her own jokes, drinks tea not coffee and thinks woolly jumpers are pretty much the best item of clothing out there.

December 15, 2016

Joy: Philippians 4:4

Rejoice in the Lord always. I will say it again: Rejoice!

Philippians 4:4

I was preparing to go and speak to someone about feeling miserable all the time. I was thinking something along the lines of “I don’t want to be told to choose to be grateful.” I’d seen several Instagram posts about the need to choose gratitude and, even though I knew it was true, it seemed like an annoying answer. I didn’t want to have choose gratitude.

I just wanted things to be fixed.

In a similar vein, I caught this post from Jordan Lee of SoulScripts the other day:

“I’m aware of the fact that lots of you wrestle with anxiety, depression, eating disorders, shame, and more. And I know that “choosing joy” is a cute thing to put on a coffee mug or on Pinterest but not all that simple to put into action in real life. When I walked through heartbreaks, grieved loss, hated my body and starved it in an effort to control SOMETHING in my life, I never once felt like I could simply choose joy. So I’m not going to challenge you to choose joy. I’m going to challenge you to choose Jesus. That doesn’t mean you’re going to become a perfect person in three easy steps. That doesn’t mean you’ll never feel icky or stuck or sad or frustrated. But it does mean your joy isn’t something you have to manufacture but something you are given. So if that’s the only choice we can really control, I think we oughtta make it in the middle of our mess.”

After talking through everything, this person set me the task of practicing gratitude and, coming from her, it felt like real advice (not just a cookie cutter answer).

Here’s the rub: it does change things.

It’s not about putting on a big smile and pretending everything’s fine. It can be about picking out the little slivers of light that you can in the moment and then saying thank-you.

Those little reminders of God’s goodness, and the way gratitude re-focuses on Him, bring breaths of joy.

Because while it is not easy to choose joy, it is possible to choose moments of rejoicing – whether those moments come out as a whimper or as a shout of joy! And it is possible to turn your eyes to Jesus.

Wherever you’re at, consider this your kick in the butt from a fellow struggler to do what you can in choosing gratitude.

Take a moment today to choose Jesus.

Choose to acknowledge the ways in which he is already blessing us. Cry out to him and surrender the parts of your life which feel joyless. Air your heart, take the dust-sheets off things you’ve been forgetting to enjoy, re-examine what you have and appreciate it once more, celebrating our good and generous God.

December 13, 2016

Joy: Isaiah 65:18

But be glad and rejoice forever
in what I will create,
for I will create Jerusalem to be a delight
and its people a joy.

Isaiah 65:18

If you’re anything like me, you might struggle with the idea that you’re allowed to enjoy things. We sometimes have this idea that Christians should have it all together and that anything too fun isn’t holy enough or a distraction.

It can be easy to think that we should be living a limited life which is low on delight.

I’m want to throw a few of the things that I’ve been learning out there to challenge that.

Our God is a generous and abundant God. When He fed the five thousand (Matthew 14:13-21), there were basketfuls left over. When He changed water into wine (John 2:1-11), the wine was the best wine at the wedding. God is a master craftsman who doesn’t hold back; just look at creation! He created a variety of different flavours and colors. He created things that don’t just work but work well and are beautiful.
“Those who follow Jesus do not have to live sad, austere and sour lives. In fact the opposite is true. Christ-followers experience the highest form of pleasure, laugh with depth and enjoy all of the goodness life has to offer… They trust in a good and beautiful God who has come not to rob them of joy but to bring them real and lasting joy, the kind found when moderation and boundaries are applied.” This quote is from James Bryan Smith, author of the Apprentice series (highly recommended). He talks about the fact that what we might see as rules put in place to spoil our enjoyment of life are actually a roadmap to living life at its best and fullest. God doesn’t give us guidelines because he likes to spoil peoples’ fun; they are guidelines to living a more deeply enjoyable and fulfilling life.
A friend of mind once quoted Foster the People’s song ‘Waste’ in a sermon. The lyrics (unintentionally) represent God’s heart toward us.
“And every day that you want to waste, you can
And every day that you want to wake up, you can…
I’ll help you see it through ’cause I just really want to be with you.”
The awesome thing is that God wants to waste time with us. We don’t have to be doing anything productive. We don’t have to be doing anything impressive. He just enjoys spending time with us because He loves us. And he wants us to just enjoy spending time with him.

Living a life of joy isn’t just important because God loves us and wants us to have joy, it’s important in the way we represent Him to other people.

How can we give others a taste of God and all he has to offer if we are living joyless lives?

That’s not to say that we need to paste on a smile and pretend everything is fine when it’s not (vulnerability is great!). And it’s not to say that we should expect everything to go right in our lives. It is to say that we have freedom to enjoy what life has to offer (with moderation and boundaries applied).

Immanuel, one of the names of Jesus, means God-with-us.

I think God-with-us is the crazy, wonderful reality of God loving us so much that He became human in Jesus and it’s also God-with-us in the small stuff. It’s God-who-wants-to-waste-time-with-us, God-who-wants-to-enjoy-life-with-us and it’s Jesus coming for us.

Let’s praise him and ask him for joy.

Let’s accept his invitation and have fun with him.

December 2, 2016

Hope: Lamentations 3:21-23

Yet this I call to mind
and therefore I have hope:

Because of the Lord’s great love we are not consumed,
for his compassions never fail.
They are new every morning;
great is your faithfulness.

Lamentations 3:21-23

A few weeks ago, Holy Yoga, a Christian yoga organization, posted this caption on Instagram:

“Do you know there are two types of hope, and each are incredibly different? There is “worldly hope”, the kind of heart and mind that says, “I hope this works out”, or “I hope He comes through”. And then there is “Biblical hope”, the kind of hope found throughout God’s Word that calls the believer to steadfast and unwavering faith in God and His promises. This is the hope that says, ‘I know in whom my hope lies and I know He is coming through for me.'”

Yes! I love this because it’s so true and it’s so important to have these distinct definitions. The way we talk about hope is often more about wishing. It expresses our feelings about something, not the reality of what actually is. This is not the type of hope God offers us!

When we talk about putting our hope in God, we’re not talking about wishing He’ll come through for us, we’re talking about knowing that he will. And how do we know? There’s a quote that I love from Thomas Smail about Jesus praying in the Garden of Gethsemane before his crucifixion. He says, “The Father that Jesus address in the garden is the one that he has known all his life and found to be bountiful in his provision, reliable in his promises and utterly faithful in his love. He can obey the will that sends him to the cross, with hope and expectation because it is the will of Abba whose love has been so proved that it can now be trusted so fully by being obeyed so completely. This is not legal obedience driven by commandment, but trusting response to known love.”

Similarly, the hope we have in God is a “response to known love”.

It’s a response to his faithfulness. I mess up a lot. But I can put my hope in God because time and time again I have seen him not give up on me, and love me and use me anyway. I can start to trust Him because His love is something proven, it’s something known. He is faithful, even when we are not.

Notice that God’s proven love doesn’t lead to a plan with no suffering in it; for Jesus, it lead to the cross. Suffering doesn’t negate God’s goodness. But because we have seen God’s goodness in the past, we can have confidence (i.e. hope!) that His plan will ultimately be for good. God is utterly faithful.

The other day I was blindsided by some difficult bible verses which made me question things. Suddenly, I lost hope. But this quote by Elisabeth Elliot came up; “Of one thing I am perfectly sure: God’s story never ends with ‘ashes.’” We may not know what the future looks like, but we can know the God in charge of it and He doesn’t do ending with ashes.

Let’s practice gratitude (even if we aren’t very good at it). If we don’t remind ourselves of God’s love and faithfulness, we can easily forget that that we’ve even experienced them. And without this certainty of God’s character, our hope can grow thin. If it already has, then remember Romans 5:8 – God loved us so much while we were still sinners that he died for us.

Are we putting our hope in stuff other than God, wishing for it to give us what we need, instead of putting our hope in God, knowing He will come through?

November 29, 2016

Hope: Isaiah 9:2-7

The people walking in darkness
    have seen a great light;
on those living in the land of deep darkness
    a light has dawned.
You have enlarged the nation
    and increased their joy;
they rejoice before you
    as people rejoice at the harvest,
as warriors rejoice
    when dividing the plunder.
For as in the day of Midian’s defeat,
    you have shattered
the yoke that burdens them,
    the bar across their shoulders,
    the rod of their oppressor.
Every warrior’s boot used in battle
    and every garment rolled in blood
will be destined for burning,
    will be fuel for the fire.

For to us a child is born,
    to us a son is given,
    and the government will be on his shoulders.
And he will be called
    Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God,
    Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.
Of the greatness of his government and peace
    there will be no end.
He will reign on David’s throne
    and over his kingdom,
establishing and upholding it
    with justice and righteousness
    from that time on and forever.
The zeal of the Lord Almighty
    will accomplish this.
Isaiah 9: 2-7

In times like this, when politics inside and outside the church are turbulent, when leaders don’t seem like people we can trust, when elections and referendums divide nations against themselves, when we’re involved in war, when conflict splinters apart leadership structures, when riots and revolutions take place, when we find ourselves in conflict with our neighbours over how we voted, it can be easy to get caught up in it all. It can be easy to give in to anger and bitterness, and to fear over what will happen and what the future will look like. It can be easy to lose hope.

But here’s the thing.

We live in the hope of the ‘now and not yet’.

Our reading today talks about both. The ‘not yet’ hope is the knowledge that things will not always be like this. Isaiah’s prophecy speaks of God’s promise that Jesus will one day reign over a kingdom of justice, joy, freedom and peace; the things used in battle will be burnt up, no longer needed. While things may look very different today, we have the sure hope of a better future.

But we don’t just have hope for the future.

There’s also a ‘now’ hope.

Isaiah’s prophecy doesn’t just look to Jesus’ return, it looks to Jesus’ birth and life (700 years in the future for Isaiah). Jesus healed the sick, set people free, and provided for people. The Holy Spirit is at work right now doing the same. Our God is able to miraculously intervene – and we should expect and pray that He will. However, He doesn’t always do so.

Our ‘now’ hope includes this possibility of divine provision and protection, but it doesn’t depend on it. While God does have His hand on our lives, on countries and churches, it is also true that things don’t always seem to work out perfectly. (Though, for the record, let me say that God uses these things for His glory despite and through the brokenness).

Our hope is not in what Jesus can do for us, it is in Jesus himself; He is the prize and the destination.

When we turn our eyes upon Jesus and seek him, our situation may not change, our politicians may not reform and our governments may not make good and godly decisions, but we will have an unshakeable and certain hope. Let us remember that, while it is good to take all this other stuff seriously because it is important, putting our hope in it can lead to disappointment and fear, allowing it to become all-consuming can prevent us loving our neighbours who have different opinions.

This season of advent, as we prepare our hearts for Jesus, are there areas of worry and fear which we need to trust God with? Are there people we need to forgive and love, no matter what we think of their stance on something?

Take heart, dear one, we have unshakeable hope in Jesus despite the world, the relationships, the health statuses which rock around us.

He is sufficient.

He is more than enough.

Sometimes turning your eyes to Jesus might be a you-can-barely-turn-your-head-you’re-so-hurt-or-angry or a running-full-tilt-at-him but, no matter how small the step, know that as you look to Him, He meets you with deep love and sees the deep places of your heart.