by Sam | Mar 21, 2017 | Guest Blogger, Inspiration, Reflection
Photo by Jesse Rinka Photography I entered a period shortly after having kids where I felt like I was wandering in the desert. I had my first daughter at 24 – much earlier than my husband and I had planned for. I quit teaching to stay at home with my two little ones. I battled discouragement and despair while doing ministry in the small church God had called my husband and me to serve. And I had very little community to process, grow, and do life with. I prayed that God would move with the same power I saw Him display all throughout the Bible. And in the secret place, I found hope in His promises over my life. But many times as I waited for fulfillment, it seemed as though He was working wonders everywhere except in my own life, church, and relationships. I stumbled over the temptation to envy others’ blessings, and fell deep into the rabbit hole of questioning His goodness and my identity in Him. It was after years of wrestling through cycles of promise and disappointment that He turned my attention to the Israelites’ exodus from Egypt. The Israelites directly witnessed miracle after miracle, provision after provision, yet “…they forgot the many times God showed them His love…” (Psalm 106:7). Their journey should have only taken 11 days, but by the time they reached the Promised Land, they lacked the faith to claim it, and instead an entire generation wandered in the wilderness I realized I was looking into a mirror. I was just as forgetful and “stiff-necked” as the Israelites, forgetting His great...
by Sam | Mar 14, 2017 | Guest Blogger, Inspiration, Reflection
When I first became a Christian the Word of God became the Living Word (Heb 4:12-13). There is no other way to explain it than God’s Word became words of life. Every time I opened the Bible, the words would jump off the pages and stirred a fire in my heart (Jer 20: 9, Lk 24:32). I had never experienced anything like that before. In fact, I had to stop reading the Bible a few hours before I slept because it would keep me up all night. My heart would be so convicted and filled with wonder that it would keep me up for hours. The stories of the Bible would replay over and over in my mind, and my heart would burn with so much passion that I had to pray, “God, please help me sleep! I need to sleep to go to school, so please shut my mind off!” So after a few months, I learned that I had to read the Bible earlier in the day so I could get some sleep at night. Sometimes during school, I couldn’t wait until class would end so that I could run home to open the Bible and meet with God. That was it. I realize now what made reading God’s Word so intimate, powerful and life changing was that I read God’s Word to meet with Him. Not to know more about Him or to gain more knowledge to teach others, but literally to meet with Him. What made reading God’s Word so intimate was that I read to meet with Him Click To Tweet I wasn’t reading...
by Sam | Jan 18, 2017 | Guest Blogger, Inspiration, Reflection
When I first started pursuing God I thought I would find Him in a big event. I started my journey with God about 12 years ago at the ripe age of 16. Since I was an atheist up until that point in my life (and didn’t have a satisfactory encounter with God up until then), I figured that God is probably somewhere out there and I have to find Him. I felt a need to put forth a good deal of effort in order to find Him and figured that encountering God would probably happen in some big way: some big ministry event/conference, some big missions movement, and something emotionally or intellectually stirring. I read dozens of books of philosophy and theology, attended every Christian conference I found, prayed between 1-3 hours a day, and participated in outreaches on the streets. A 2 month short term-missions trip in Cambodia during 2013 topped off my collection of encounters with God. In Cambodia, we witnessed people who had never heard of the name of Jesus encounter God through supernatural healing, dreams and visions. We witnessed a prison of 200 prisoners turn itself into a church as each prisoner encountered God, was baptized in the prison, and started a bible study in every prison cell. After a series of adventures, I realize that while God may have been a part of those big events He wasn’t in them. As I take a minute to reflect on life and dream of what may be ahead, I find that I’m not looking for my next missions trip, ministry opportunity, outreach or power encounter. I...
by Sam | Nov 3, 2016 | Guest Blogger, Inspiration, Reflection
There’s a song from a modern day prophet that goes a little something like this: “Baby, I’m just gonna shake, shake, shake, shake, shake. I shake it off, I shake it off.” I’m pretty sure T-swift was quoting the Bible. And I’m pretty sure those words are more relevant to us than we realize. There’s a story in Acts 18:1-6 about a dude named Paul. You may have heard of him. It says that every Sabbath, Paul was in the synagogues preaching to the Jews and Greeks. He spent ALL his time preaching the Word. And of course, the Jewish peeps oppose and insult him. In response, it says that Paul shook the dust from his clothes. In Matthew 10:14, Jesus sends his disciples out to minister and he tells them, “If anyone does not welcome you, shake the dust off your feet.” Shake off the dust. I love the picture this paints. The implication is that when we live a life of obedience – a life of saying yes to God – there will be difficult moments. That’s pretty much a fact. If you haven’t faced hard things, that means one of two things. Either you’re extremely blessed, or quite possibly you’re playing it too safe. When we begin to say yes to God, there will inevitably be disappointments, failure, rejection, opposition, discouragement, you name it. In other words, there will be dust and we have to learn how to shake it off. If you haven’t faced hard things, quite possibly you’re playing it too safe. Click To Tweet The issue is that there are far too many...
by Sam | Mar 7, 2016 | Guest Blogger, Inspiration, Reflection
I think most of us, including me, summarize perseverance by the simple mantra: “Don’t give up!” Perseverance is often measured by years, the amount of time invested, the number of sick days not taken. But I think “not-giving-up” can become an easy front. Plenty of people show up to work for years, to their churches and marriages and children for decades, and can look like they’re reliable. Except inside, they’re not there. Plenty of us can quit without physically quitting. We can live this way for years, thinking that “showing up” is enough and we can skate by on the bare minimum. In other words, perseverance is not just staying in, but being in. It’s being present and engaged. It’s not that we don’t have it in us to persevere. It’s that all of us wasn’t in the task at hand. Even a person who gets to the finish-line, who didn’t put their all into it, hasn’t really persevered. I do this, too. I can be there but not there. And I’m learning that being disengaged begins with my expectations. When our plans don’t turn out the way we want to, we tend to check out. Disengagement is a way of protecting ourselves from disappointment. This isn’t to judge anyone, because perseverance is hard. But I think it’s made harder because of the way we’ve been trained. Some of us have bought into an overly romanticized narrative. We get excited and inspired to do stuff, but the second we do stuff, it’s nothing like those first emotions that got us there. Here’s what I mean. I get really inspired...
by Sam | Jul 15, 2015 | Guest Blogger, Inspiration, Reflection
The Beauty of Grieving by Catherine Cha One of the most valuable things I learned during my years at Alliance Theological Seminary was the discipline of grieving the seasons of my life. I’ve always been prone to melancholy and nostalgia, but never had words to adequately convey or coherently cry out what I was feeling, and why. I never knew what to do about the pulsating weights that would press on my heart and my gut every now and then. I never knew how to dissolve the lumps that would form at the back of my throat, or reverse the downward trajectory of the corners of my lips on those days when all I wanted to do was pout and whimper. I never knew why everyone around me was so happily looking forward to the next day, the next year, the next step, the next change, and I was the only one looking backwards and longing for what once was and never will be again. I never knew that I could grieve these things – these never-again moments – and give them a proper send-off so that I could say “hello” to the new. Learning to grieve the passing seasons of my life – and thus, strangely, becoming more able to celebrate the wonderful and not-so-wonderful days that were flowing by – has made me more self-aware, and more grateful, having more capacity to honor the One who gives them to me in the first place. June 8, 2015, was the 365th day that my daughter Sasha has been with us. On June 9, 2015, she turned 1 year old,...
