At Home With Sally

Faith requires a listening heart. God is so willing to use normal people—who are listening, willing to obey. What risk will you take, by faith, to live a story that others will tell for generations to come?

Today, my forever friend, Jacqui and I speak of friend formation, and tell of our intentional and purpose driven fun times and how it has shaped us. Such fun. Hope it encourages you.

Nothing quite prepared me, as an untrained young woman, to know how to bear all of the stresses we would face by being a family. And yet, I had been taught to seek God’s word, to pray and to obey and live in wisdom.

This week, I am asking myself what I need to do to prepare my heart to be present to my people, ready to serve and to determine not to give into the weariness or demands.

In my life as a mom, there have been countless times, I felt like I was not accomplishing anything productive from day to day. Five scriptures have been especially helpful to me when I am overwhelmed.

To me, Thanksgiving is the entry way to preparing my heart to be filled and renewed with a love for Christ. I need child-like excitement and gratitude to fill my heart again, so that I might bring light into my year ahead.

Giving thanks starts with a humble heart, one that does not demand but receives the gifts of everyday moments with joy. A grateful heart sees the fingerprints of God in normal every day circumstances, a lens through which we see life, people, simple pleasures as a gift.

When we read in the Word, “Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good,” this is a call out of passivity to action, to engaging, to spreading the moral excellence through each aspect of our lives that God has called us to. Today, I discuss what that has meant to me lately. I hope it will encourage you.

Stories have the power to change and inspire us in ways nothing else does. I hope you'll join us in this journey of bringing a good story to life that just might be the thing to help a world in need.

I have come to realize that embracing God's call to the duties of motherhood doesn't diminish my abilities to use my gifts, strength, and training, but fulfills a part of God's design.

What if someone could read your thoughts—would you like what they see? Worship the Lord Your God with all of your mind, we are told. I call it “minding your mind” because thinking, learning, understanding, creating—so many things we do with our minds, are to be a focus of our worship of God. Worshipping God with our mind requires a focus, intentionality, effort, a plan.

Whatever season you find yourself in is eventually going to pass. God is aware of your season and He will give you wisdom, strength, grace to walk through the seasons with Him by your side to provide you with insight and understanding into the ways he is working in the world.

When the places inside home are intentionally crafted, these seasons can become the places where memories can be shaped and stored forever.

There are many gifts of aging, gaining experience. It comes from waiting, learning, storing up experience and understanding.

As I watch the leaves rain softly to the ground, and the colors give their last bit of glory before disappearing into a pile on the ground, I am reminded that my own life is reflecting seasons. I want to take advantage of this time to its fullest that I may have been a good soldier in this battle between darkness and light and left a bit of the glory and light I have known.

Freedom in a biblical sense means: emancipation, the state of not being imprisoned or enslaved. We do not have to be slaves to our shame, our failures, our weakness. We have been emancipated, let out of guilty land, because of His work.

Today, Giving Your Words is officially out in the world. Many of you have asked Clay to join me in an interview about our book. So today, we have a special podcast for you about how Giving Your Words came about—from his perspective.

Our hope is that parents all over the world will become even more skillful at leaving their children a legacy of words and messages giving hope, foundational faith, unconditional love.

Today I speak of choral music, tastes of French food, adventures in a flower farm cafe, the best bread, finding light in the darkest clouds of life, Jacqui adventures, and more.

Last week’s adventures took me on journeys fun and mysterious. Join me for another fun podcast of Tea Time Tuesday!