It’s been an amazing week here at Simple Felicity. Thank you so much to those of you who have been reading along, sharing posts, and commenting as I’ve relaunched my series on singleness and the church this week. I truly appreciate your support! (If you’re new to Simple Felicity, and that topic sounds interesting, you can learn more about it (and how to subscribe to posts) here.
I’m not the only one writing about singleness this month: Relevant Magazine published an article by Paul Maxwell this week entitled Things It’s OK to Feel When You’re Single. I really appreciated Maxwell’s straight-forward and practical advice to singles on how to handle it when people give us advice. Which they will. Whether we want it or not. Truthfully… I kind of wish I’d thought about writing something like that. (Instead, I wrote a preachy an informative article directed to advice givers about what not to say…)
Another resource not to be missed is a podcast with Kate Hurley on the Debbie Chavez show, on making sense of the unintended single life. Kate’s book on singleness, entitled Cupid Is A Procrastinator, was published this week, and you don’t want to miss that either. (You can check out my review of it here!)
On a more personal note, those of you who have been following my blog for awhile know that I’ve been in a difficult and unexpected transition for a few weeks now. Today I talked to someone (whom I expect may turn out to be a wonderful friend) about an opportunity for a fresh start. It isn’t what I was looking for, and it would be a leap of faith – but sometimes those are the exact two things that are evidence of God’s direction. If you think of it, please pray for us over the next few days as we seek Him about it.
Speaking of things I wasn’t looking for… yesterday I thought, “I should watch this online conference” and then the Holy Spirit spoke exactly the words I needed to hear within the first 10 minutes of the conference. It wasn’t even in a session – it was just part of the opening prayer at the IF:Gathering – but the chutzpah in Bianca Olthoff’s prayer struck a chord with me:
“We have come too far; we’ve invested too much to receive nothing…”
I’ve always felt a little uncomfortable with the idea of asking God to “pay us back” for anything. Well… actually, upon further reflection, I’ve never had a problem praying that for someone else, because I think other people should be rewarded for their hard work – I’ve just had a problem praying it for myself, and gotten a little squirmy when people have prayed it over me. I should probably dig into the theology/psychology of this at some point…
But in the meantime – when Bianca prayed that tonight – it stirred something up in my soul. While things with my blog have been going well, much of this actual week didn’t go well at all, and I was starting to lose heart and hope and courage. Bianca’s words reminded me that God sees me; He knows what I’ve invested in His kingdom, and what I still have to give.
photo courtesy of ©Depositphotos.com / Iakov
And then she said this: “We have come too far to quit now; there is far too much to be done.”
Yes.
Onward, then.
By the way – the IF:Gathering will be streaming live tomorrow for 2 sessions, and all the sessions will be archived on their site just for this weekend. If you need an encouraging word from God, you will probably find it in their content.
Have a great weekend!
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