“I Will Save You” — How God Fights Our Battles for Us and Delivers Us from Fear

24 August, 201923 August, 2019Marissa

What does your heart feel like? If it’s hurried and anxious, as mine often is, then you’re not alone. Our world pushes us to hurry, to perform, to keep up appearances. It’s exhausting. But scripture has encouragement for us.

“Strengthen the weak hands and make the staggering knees firm. Say to those who are hasty of heart, ‘Be strong; you must not fear! Look! your God will come with vengeance, with divine retribution. He is the one who will come and save you.’” (Is. 35:3-4, LEB)

Many translations begin verse four with the phrase “fearful heart” but “hasty” is closer to the Hebrew. Mahar (H4116) means “to be hurried, be anxious … hasty, precipitate, impetuous” (Brown-Driver-Briggs Lexicon). And doesn’t that describe the state that so many of our hearts are in? We’re constantly pressured to hit deadlines, be somewhere, meet somebody, manage time, and forget nothing. It’s no wonder anxiety disorders affect 18.1% of the U.S. population every year and our stress levels are significantly higher than the global average.

In the midst of all that, faith offers us an oasis of calm. God gives us a new perspective on reality that brings joy, hope, and peace to our hearts. There are times, though, when we’ll still feel hurried, attacked, and afraid. When that happens, there is a specific promise we can turn to. Read more →

How to “Be Yourself” as a Christian (and Figure out Who “Yourself” Really Is)

19 August, 201918 August, 2019Marissa

Today’s post is inspired by two comments I saw/heard last week. The first was a quote shared in a Christian group on Facebook. The quote is from Dale Partridge and it goes like this: “The motto ‘be yourself’ has become Satan’s counterfeit to God’s ‘be holy as I am holy’.”

Since the tagline for my blog is “Finding our true selves in the people God created us to be,” I don’t think it will surprise any of you that I have a different take on the advice to be yourself. Before we dive into that, though, I want to tell you about the other thing that prompted this post.

I listened to episode 45 of the Awaken With JP Sears Show, titled “Radical Self-Discovery with Jator Pierre.” In this episode, one of the key topics they discussed is the importance of being able to speak “your truth” and the dangers that PC culture poses to that idea. “Your truth” is part of who you are and what you have to offer the world. It’s neither healthy nor socially desirable to have people silence that.

While I loved the discussion, the idea of “your truth” is a bit problematic for Christians because it implies multiple versions of truth whereas God is very clear that He is the only source of truth. But when someone talks about the idea of having “your truth” as part of being an authentic weirdo is that really something followers of Jesus Christ should freak out about? Perhaps there is a way to be yourself and be an authentic Christian as well. Read more →

We Rejoice In Hope

17 August, 201916 August, 2019Marissa

Last week, we talked about learning to rejoice always because we know our God holds us (and everything else) in His hands. Shifting our focus to Him gives us the perspective we need to have true, lasting joy. It also gives us something else.

I quoted a definition of joy in last week’s post (titled “The Joy of the Lord”) that stated it is “acquired by the anticipation, acquisition or even the expectation of something great or wonderful.” We could further simplify this definition by saying joy is a result of hope.

Hope in the Bible isn’t just a vague sense of wanting something with no guarantee it will happen, the way we often use it today when we say things like “I hope I win the lottery” or “I hope this new superhero movie is good.” Rather, it’s about an expectation that you can count on being fulfilled. It’s intimately connected to salvation (Rom. 8:24; 1 Thes. 5:8), provides comfort in sorrow (1 Thes. 4:13), and is used as a title for God (Jer. 17:13; Rom. 15:13). And it’s essential to joy.

Hope, Suffering, and Joy

Being therefore justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ; through whom we also have our access by faith into this grace in which we stand. We rejoice in hope of the glory of God. (Rom. 5:1-2, WEB)

“We rejoice in hope,” partly because, as Paul says later in this letter “we were saved in hope” (Rom. 8:24). Our hope and rejoicing are connected with faith and grace, as well as the glory of God. Though we don’t yet see the end result of our salvation, we hope for it and we have joy in that expectation. But that’s not all we rejoice in. Read more →

“Always” and “Evermore” — New Fairy Tale Stories from Jody Hedlund

14 August, 201914 August, 2019Marissa

I recently had the opportunity to join Jody Hedlund’s release crew for her newest Young Adult books. Always is the prequel novella for the new Lost Princesses series, which kicks-off with Evermore. If you like sweet, YA romances with Christian themes and a fairy tale setting then I think you’d enjoy these books.

Unlike Jody Hedlund’s other medieval romances, these two are more fairy tale than historical fiction. The fairy-tale quality is fairly subtle, with hints of whimsy and magic slipping through the pages but never fully realized. She has said the final two books in this series will be even more fairy-tale like, and since I love fairy tales I’m very much looking forward to those.

Mild spoiler warning: I’m not going to disclose any major plot points but if you don’t want to know anything about the plot and character relationships before reading the books then you’ll want to skip my post for now.

Always

This lovely little novella follows the story of lady-in-waiting Felicia and elite king’s guard Lance as they race to save the lives of three young princesses. With the invading King Ethelwulf hot on their heels, Felicia and Lance are the only things standing between death and the orphaned, 3-year-old crown princess and her newborn twin sisters. Read more →

Personality Type Myth-Busting: Are There Sensitive Extroverts?

12 August, 20199 August, 2019Marissa

Back in 1991, Dr. Elaine N. Aron began researching high sensitivity and discovered a trait she calls Sensory-Processing Sensitivity. You might have heard of it by the more popular term used describe those with this trait, Highly Sensitive Person (HSP).

This trait is not well understood by the majority of people. Dr. Aron says that it is “often mislabeled as” shyness or “introversion. It has also been called inhibitedness, fearfulness, or neuroticism.” HSPs can be like that, but it’s not part of the basic trait.

Even with discussion of HSPs becoming more mainstream this trait is still often lumped in with introversion. Couple that with descriptions of introverts as sensitive, thoughtful people who don’t need much outside stimulation and you can be forgiven for thinking that all HSPs are also introverts.

Almost 1/3 of HSPs Are Extroverts

I’ve written a couple articles for HSP introverts. “These Aren’t My Feelings: Absorbing Emotions as an INFJ” is focused on empathic, sensitive INFJs. “An Open Letter To Socially Timid Highly Sensitive People” is for my fellow HSPs who are both introverted and shy. They’re decent articles, but they ignore a good percentage of the highly sensitive population.

Sensory processing sensitivity is found in 15 to 20% of the total population (that’s about 1.4 billion highly sensitive people). Of that group, 30% are extroverts. This means that almost 1/3 of all the HSPs Dr. Aron has studied are not introverts after all. Read more →

The Joy Of The Lord

10 August, 20199 August, 2019Marissa

I think most of us have learned there are multiple words for love in the Greek language. With seven words devoted to this concept, we assume it must be important. But did you know something similar is going on with the word “joy”?

In the New Testament the primary Greek word for joy is chara or its root chario. The Greek parts of the Bible also use agalliao, euphrosure, and (more rarely) skirtao and apolausis. Hebrew has even more words for joy. The primary one is samach and its close relatives simcha and sameach. Other words for joy include chadah, sus, alats, giyl, and alaz. The words for “shout” like ranan and rua also carry a joyful meaning in certain contexts. That adds up to more than a dozen words in the Bible to describe joy!

Clearly, joy is an important concept for Biblical writers and for the cultures they lived in. This type of joy isn’t just a happy feeling, though. It’s a state of being that we can have as a result of being in relationship with God. As a fruit of the spirit, joy is present in all spirit-led Christians. This joy can be bubbly, enthusiastic, and happy (and often is), but it can also be a quiet, enduring outlook that flourishes inside us even when we don’t feel outwardly merry.

Joy Is More Than Happiness

To those in less than pleasant circumstances, commands to rejoice (like Deut. 26:11: 1 Thes 5:16) often feel insensitive. “If you knew what I was going through,” we might say, “you wouldn’t tell me to feel happy.” Nevertheless, joy is something God expects and commands from His people.

It’s a similar situation as what happens with love. God is love, and He commands us to love others even when it doesn’t make sense from a human perspective. Biblical love is also something more than our modern concept of warm feelings toward someone. It’s much deeper. In much the same way, joy goes deeper than feelings of happiness. Read more →