The Captivating Woman

Designed with purpose.

Rooted – The Hidden Places Where God Develops You. Book Review AND Giveaway.

My Pastor asked us to pray and ask God where in our lives it was unhealthy. I felt God say, “Sarah, it’s your roots.” Ouch. I felt like I was starting back at square one. Roots? Really? Isn’t that what you should work on when you’re a baby Christian?

Oh, the Lord sure did humble me.

A few weeks later I got the book “Rooted – The Hidden Places Where God Develops” by Banning Liebscher in the mail. We have had the privilege to be a part of their launch team, but I knew that God was going to use this book to really speak into me and to my lack of roots. I felt like my roots were damaged – poisoned at times.

Growth would begin and the roots would spread, but once I let a lie into my life and believed it fully, it was like I was sprinkling poison right on the spot. I haven’t always been confident in who I was in Christ. I have not always been confident in scripture. A lot of the time, I am not believing God at His Word.

Banning talks about our root system in his book.

“Your heart is your point of connection with Jesus – the place where you become rooted in your relationship with Him. He wants to develop His heart-to-heart connection with you to the point where you become fully united with Him, where you think like He thinks, want what He wants, speak like He speaks, and do what He does.” p. 4

I feel like this quote just sets up the whole book. How is your connection Him? How has my connection with Him? Am I thinking like Him? Speaking like Him?

Grace covered my thoughts and guilt when I knew that my connection wasn’t as great as I wanted it to be. Banning uses David to share how it took almost two decades for him to stand on the throne. During those years up until his reign, David spent many intimate moments with the Lord which developed his root system. I think as believers we feel that it should take us a few years in prayer and quality time with the Lord, and then we are ready to go do whatever God has planned. But as Banning explains using David, Moses, and Abraham…it took years.

Years.

Banning also writes about 3 types of soil that will with interact with to help with our rooting process: intimacy, serving, & community.

“A thriving root system is built on trust and truth, which grow strong in our lives as we come to know God through His Word and through personal encounters with Him. However, in order to build our roots in truth , God needs to plant our lives in various soils where we gain specific nutrients for growth…God’s process in David’s life placed him into three different soils that developed the different dimensions of trust and truth in his life…each of these soils teaches us how to align our lives with God’s truth and leads us to encounter God in different ways.” p. 98

He defines these soils deeper, with great stories and backs up everything with scripture. That’s what I really enjoyed about the book – the scripture he uses. As much as I love stories, and Banning uses great God stories throughout, scripture is so important with me. I want to know exactly what God has to say about building my root system.

With all that saying, I would recommend reading this book. If you feel like you’re in a dry season or you just don’t know how to start to establish your roots, this is your book. It’s easy to read, but impacted with truth. I would read a chapter, highlight, annotate, and sit with it for the night. This is a book for new believers and for those who have loved the Lord for many years. I never walked away feeling like being rooted would be difficult. I felt encouraged and challenged.

Find it here on Amazon – click here.

We are also giving away a free copy of Rooted to one of our readers! Enter the giveaway below!

*winner of giveaway was Mackenzie Lynn Beaty*

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Sufficient Grace

I have a confession to make: I am terrible at grace. 

Terrible at accepting it, terrible at resting in it, terrible at trusting that it really is sufficient, terrible at being quick to extend it to others.

I don’t know that I struggle with anything in the Christian sphere like I do grace. How much is enough, how generous with it do I really have to be? At what point is the God of the Old Testament going to make the ground open up and swallow the crazies? At what point am I going to fail for the thousand and 1th time and discover that grace was sufficient up until a point, but I have officially used all of my life. At what point should we be calling people out on their sin and bad choices because Romans is pretty explicit about the fact that we shouldn’t continue to sin so that grace may abound all that much more freely.

I want to expect perfection from myself. I want to be known for always getting the job done, exactly right, and on time. I want to have perfect grades so people will love me and look at my academic career with a little bit of awe and jealousy. I want to always be right in my interactions with people. I want to feel like the righteous one, who doesn’t really need grace, because grace makes me uncomfortable.

It’s the blank check that leaves way too much unanswered. I need boundaries. I need an end to how much forgiveness I can expect, so I can make sure to always stay just this side of the okay line. I need to be able to tailor my behavior enough that I don’t accidentally wander out of the fold. I need control. And grace takes every bit of the control I crave, and responds with:

“My grace is sufficient for you, and my power is made perfect in your weakness.”

It doesn’t give me a free pass to do whatever I want with no repercussions. Laws of nature still exist, laws of the land still exist. I can (and do) still hurt people with my words and behaviors when I focus too much on what I want, need and am trying to accomplish. Grace instead looks at me and says, “That was a crappy thing to do. The honorable thing to do would be to make it right, and not do it again – but regardless of what you do next: you are more loved and treasured than you can even begin to understand or calculate.”

It’s the reminder, when I’m the woman who meets Jesus at the well thinking I’ve done a really good job at hiding the shameful things, that I’m seen and truly known – and the One who sees and truly knows still wants me. That One is still claiming me, for the world to see, even when I’m the prostitute washing His feet with my tears and drying it with my hair. That One who heard me loudly exclaim that I would never deny Him, only to then listen to me deny Him not once but three times, still places a call, that is infinitely bigger and more wonderful than I deserve, firmly upon my life.

It’s the knowledge that on my own, I am entirely capable of being selfish, arrogant, prideful, lustful, jealous, quick to anger, spiteful, unforgiving, unkind and vengeful – and am still somehow found worthy of love. And because I have been given worth and identity that far exceeds what I deserve, I am not defined by or stuck in any of those things.

It’s the gentle nudge, when my first instinct is to be angered or disappointed that someone let me down, that they are doing the best they can and deserve just as much grace as I do. The small voice that reminds me that I can’t begin to give enough grace to others until I can trust that there is more than enough for me. That reminds me that to love like Jesus means to go to my grave giving so much more of grace away than anyone can expect. And is quick to remind me that when I fail at that, over and over, I am still called worthy and loved by the Creator of the Universe. By grace embodied. By the One who coaxes me up from each and every fall, every face plant into the dirt, with gentle words that comfort me and remind me that this is not the end of my story. Who waits patiently with me while I get up and brush off the dust, before encouraging me to try again, to keep going.

It’s the driving force behind any ability of mine to be gracious, kind, patient, forgiving, selfless, honorable and loving when it isn’t easy or convenient to feel that way. It models what true, real, lasting love looks like. Because I was first so loved, I too can love. It strips the power from the fear that wants to swoop in, because I am firm on my foundation and sure of my worth and value.

I may fail, I may fall, I may lose respect, esteem and the popular opinion – but I cannot lose grace. I cannot fall too fast or too far to be outside of His reach, or beyond what grace can redeem.

Steady Heart

All of us, everyday, come to put our faith, our worth, our trust, our hope, in something, or someone. For many of us, that may look like a significant other, a parent, a close friend, and at times, God. I want to challenge you with a thought today- if God was the only person you had left to put these in- Would you be okay? Would it rock your entire world?

Well, if that thought scares you; that’s understandable. Yet it’s a very real reality each of us may face one day, and we need to come to terms with it.

For me, being a believer, I strongly felt that the place I put all of my faith was in God. Until the day I lost my Dad.

My Dad and I had a relationship where basically anytime my life was falling apart, he’d fix it. I called him for everything. “Dad my car is making a strange noise!!” Or “Dad this guy was so mean to me today and I got a parking ticket and I have no money and had the worst week ever!” Whatever it was, my Dad always made it better. “Sweetie it’s okay, don’t worry. Just pray. You’re beautiful. I’ll fix it. I’ll pay for it.” And he called me and texted me all the time, always encouraging even when I was annoyed and never responded. Most of the time I took his ever presence in my life for granted and just thought to myself “he’ll always love me and he’ll always be there.” Although that was true, it wasn’t in the way I imagined it to be.

February 11th was like most days. My Grandpa had passed away a few days before so my Dad was a little more pushy with texts than normal. But I was being short with him because I missed my Grandpa. He wanted me to call that morning so he could record something for the funeral, but being my 22 stressed out college student self, I said “Dad!!! Can I please just call tomorrow?!” He finally agreed. I figured it wasn’t a big deal, since I was seeing him that weekend anyways and I had a huge midterm due later so it was understandable. Tragically, that weekend never came. And tomorrow morning would be too late.

I finished my final and as I drove home that night, I received a phone call that my Dad had a heart attack. He took his last breath at 8:20pm.

This reality sank in hard. Everything was gone in just a moment. Every opportunity I thought I had to tell him I loved him. To give him the picture I painted for his birthday. To thank him for always being there. Gone. And the scariest part was the reality that I was now alone. The person who was always there to fix everything, that made everything better, is gone, and isn’t coming back.
As painful as this was to realize, and as heartbroken as I am, there is something profound that has come out of losing my Dad. God has brought me to fully put everything in him, and in return has given me a steady heart.

Now, when I feel broken, when I’m scared, when I feel unworthy, I call upon Jesus. Yes, it is hard not having my Dad, but I learned an invaluable lesson on where my faith needs to be. Where my hope and my trust should be placed. And it’s fully in the hands of God.

I’m not saying don’t love your loved ones, or rely on them. Because God put them in your life for a reason. But realize it is Gods love you should rely on ultimately. Don’t lose sight of the SOURCE of the love that you feel. Keep your relationship with God a top priority and don’t take it for granted. God has innumerable strength; and unending, unwavering love. Lean into it. Abide in it.
When you put your hope in things of the world, your heart will feel uneasy. So instead, put your trust, hope, faith, and worth in God and He will give you in return a steady heart.

“The LORD will work out his plans for my life–for your faithful love, O LORD, endures forever. Don’t abandon me, for you made me.” -Psalm 138:8

Proper Wound Care

My uncle was recently diagnosed with cancer late last year. My happy, hilarious, story telling uncle was going through the worst thing possible, yet he praised God and told me that it was the best thing that could ever happen to him.

He went through an outrageous surgery to take the cancer out of his body. He spent weeks laying in his hospital bed to recover. He asked for darkness and quiet so that he could spend time with the Lord. Just imagining what he had to endure makes me want to cry. His surgery caused massive scars on his body; scars which were black and ugly. But these scars told a story.

My uncles home nurse showed up to take care of his wounds one day after breakfast. She spent more than an hour with him, making sure that he got the proper treatment. She reminded him to continue to rest, to not lift anything heavy and that she would be back the next week. Though I wasn’t in the room with them, I knew she wasn’t putting a new Barbie bandaid and Neosporin on the wounds. His wound care was critical and important.

I’ve never had a major surgery. Getting a filling in my tooth is the extent of “pain” for me. I did fall off my bike when I was 10 or 11. I landed on the asphalt, hard. My body had scratches from head to toe, but they healed in proper time.

I’ve been scared from words. I’ve been scared from heartbreak. Lies. Fear.

When I’ve been hurt in the past & people want to bring it up, they’ll use the phrase “I don’t want to open up any wounds.” The thought of the past has felt like opening up a wound. I’ll get upset again. I’ll focus on it in a unhealthy way. But after thinking of my uncle and his proper wound care, those wounds will not open up again. If they have been treated professionally, the treatment and body will heal.

When I haven’t allowed God to heal me, my wounds open up. My emotions are raw. My guard goes up. The memory of the pain isn’t fun to experience, again.

Even when I have wanted Him to heal, I wanted instant healing. I want the pain to go away by the next day. But just like my uncle’s nurse, she was going to be back. It was going to take more than one treatment.

This is where proper wound care comes in. God is going back again and again to treat the wound. He is also going to ask us to not pick our wounds (I know, gross visual). It’s easy to lift the bandaid and check to see the progress, but He asks us to let it be.

It may take time. We may feel frustrated. The pain may feel like it’s never going to end. But it will.

I said that my uncle’s scars told a story. The scars we have received tell a story as well, but they are no longer scars. My Pastor shared this word in church: The scars healed by Jesus on earth, bring beauty marks to Heaven. See these scars tell a story to others. They show that God showed up and did something. They show of a Heavenly Father who cares for us with unconditional love. Our scars become beauty marks.

Let God properly treat you. It might look like allowing trusted people to come in and help with the process. It might look like spending hours in prayer. It might look like deactivating your Facebook or Instagram profile to help heal the pain, whatever the situation.

Let us trust in the Lord that He will come in and treat our wounds properly. Let us trust in the Lord that He wants us to be happy again. Let us trust in the Lord that we will walk away with joy, knowing that our Healer has touched our body.

“‘Lord, help!’ they cried in their troubles, and he saved them in their distress. He sent out his word and healed them, snatching them from the door of death. Let them praise the Lord for his great love and for the wonder things he has done for them.” – Psalm 107: 19-21 NLT

“O Lord my God, I cried to you for help, and you restored my health.” -Psalm 30:2 NLT

“Let all that I am praise the Lord; may I never forget the good things he does for me. He forgives all my sins and heals all my diseases. He redeems me from death and crowns me with love and tender mercies.” -Psalm 103:2-4

Bored in Church

There is an epidemic among millennial Christians (speaking as one of them) that doesn’t make any sense. We are bored out of our minds in church. Am I the only one who think that’s strange? Our generation has many characteristics that would make practicing Christianity appealing to us. We are cause-driven, extremely passionate, creative, connected and flexible. We love to work, probably too much, and we have a strong desire to take part in something greater than ourselves.

In addition, church itself has evolved significantly in form and tradition in the past 20-30 years. Even small churches are using technology to create an atmosphere more appealing to the younger generations – lighting, staging, use of artistic media, modern music, and creative illustrations. Some larger churches more closely resemble a concert venue than a church on purpose!

Now you might think I’m about to criticize those churches, but you’d be wrong. Using bright lights, fog machines, and artistic presentation isn’t a sin. But what I am going to suggest, is that those things have no impact on how interested millennials are in church. Here are three things I’d like to challenge you to think on…

#1 – The opposite of boredom isn’t entertainment, it’s engagement!

The church doesn’t exist to entertain, nor should it. While being entertained isn’t a sin, it also isn’t a purpose. The church in it’s purest form is saved-by-grace believers, fulfilling the calling of Jesus together. So the effort shouldn’t be trying to engage in a service, the effort should be trying to engage with Jesus… which is a lifestyle, not an activity.

#2 – Sometimes the service won’t be for you.

There are lots of methods that can keep people’s attention. But God doesn’t anoint methods, He anoints people.

If a Pastor is preaching the Word, there are times when people will refuse to engage with it… or even listen to it at all! Jesus experienced it (John 6:60-71). You can describe this behavior all kinds of ways… but I have to keep it real. It’s called disobedience. If disobedience goes on long enough in our lives, the inevitable result will be boredom. Because we won’t be walking out the reason we exist. Romans 12:2-3 tells us that it is when we offer ourselves to God as a living sacrifice that we will be given the ability to discern His will. I guess I just want churchgoers to understand that if church is boring to them, it doesn’t necessarily mean the church isn’t doing what it’s supposed to do.

Have some grace with the Pastor who isn’t speaking directly into your life every time. Keeping you in the seat (bored) isn’t the highest goal, winning you to Christ is… Plus, who knows who else is in the room that needs to hear it?

# 3 – Sunday mornings are important, but they are a very small part of the Christian walk.

Can I be real with you for a minute? I’ve been in a relationship with Jesus for almost ten years and sometimes I think church services are boring. Sometimes the worship drags on. Sometimes the preaching is redundant. Sometimes I don’t want to go. (Gasp! And I’m a Pastor’s wife!)

Well-meaning people have given me advice that sounds like this:

“Try taking notes. That will help you stay focused.”

“Oh, come on now. The Christian life isn’t boring. You must not be trying hard enough.”

“What if you made more suggestions to the Pastor about topics that interest you?”

“It could be your church, have you tried this other church? They have better services.”

I’ve never found peace in that advice because 1) it’s not Biblical and 2) it implies that with Christian maturity, you’ll outgrow boredom. But I don’t believe you outgrow boredom, I think you overcome boredom.

All this to say, being bored doesn’t rattle me anymore. I’ve learned that Sunday morning isn’t the standard by which I measure my faith. Worship, study of the Word, and devotion to Jesus is a 24/7 walk. What does my faith look like on the other six and a half days of the week? When my Pastor is talking the paint off the walls, I can rest in the fact that my relationship with Jesus is bigger. Maybe I’m not engaged by a sermon or a song, but I am engaged with my Jesus. He has given me a love for His church, and a reason to be there.

Originally posted on Hannah’s site – http://youcanspellitbackwards.com.

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