Category: worship

July 23, 2017 belief, broken, Christ, Christian, church, church closing, death, doubt, dreams, dreams. disappointment, faith, grief, hope, johnnyswim, let it matter, loss, seasons, worship

Let it Matter

The best way over’s through…
Johnnyswim//Let it Matter
This line from a favorite song seemed to be on repeat in my mind last Sunday. While it primarily references the heartbreak and grief that come in loss of a relationship, it seems applicable. Because honestly, grief is grief. And, unfortunately, the only way over is through.
I laughed when I looked  up the rest of the rest of the lyrics–
Escape is a waste ain’t no use in hiding you know the best way over’s through If it matters let it matter If your heart’s breaking let it ache Catch those pieces as they scatter Know your hurt is not in vain Don’t hide yourself from the horror Hurt today here tomorrow If it’s fragile and it shatters Let it matter, let it matter


The irony of these lyrics paired with my day was not lost on me. You see, I spent the morning hiding in a church bathroom.
Because my heart is breaking.
Today was the first Sunday after our church’s final service. If you know me, you know that I’m a church girl through and through. So, I promised myself and Jesus that I’d be in a back pew somewhere this Sunday. I promised to show up through the pain. And I did.
But y’all. It was not easy.
A little vulnerability here– I was one traffic light away from the church about 15 minutes before service was going to start. I had high hopes of sneaking in and out of service unseen, unknown. I should have know what a lofty goal this was. First off, I’m a pastor’s kid. I don’t know how to be late for church. Unless, of course I am late, in which case I skip and go to the next service altogether because ain’t nobody got patience for the pastor’s daughter who can’t get to church on time. So, while 15 minutes early seemed late to me (surely chairs need to be set up and tech will need troubleshooting…it’s a hard habit to break y’all), this is in fact early, not late. Upon this realization, I naturally pulled in to the nearest parking lot and sat aimlessly for 12 minutes because every good church girl knows there is no such thing as sitting unseen in a church parking lot in the South. Nice try, honey… I naively assumed that leaving myself only 2 minutes before service would allow me to walk in through an empty hallway because clearly everyone would be seated. Bless. I made it to the church steps before the first person greeted me by name. By the time I had escaped to hide in a corner of the bathroom stall, I had been greeted exactly three times by name. Let me insert something here– this is exactly what church should be like. People should be all kinds of precious and hug and greet one another, remembering names and faces. In any other scenario, it would have been perfect. However, I was dead set on hiding, on remaining unseen. I didn’t think I could answer one more question about church and family and life. The small town encounters over lunch and in grocery store aisles that unintentionally forced me to explain our situation had drained my very last ounce of desire for conversation. So there I stood, hiding in the bathroom. Unfortunately, there is a limited time frame for which you can hide in a bathroom without incurring judgment. Especially if you happen to love shiny, easily identifiable, sparkly flip flops. Bathroom stall judgments are easily made when your shoes rat you out and I couldn’t have the woman next to me in service connecting those shoes with my face. While I didn’t want to face people, I also knew I’d reached my maximum safe time. So I stepped out, killed a few extra minutes by carefully applying chapstick in the mirror, and snuck into service.
I’m pretty aware that I haven’t grieved the loss of our church yet. The funny thing about grief is that we get absolutely zero control over the timetable. That’s why the tears streaming down my face during worship this morning caught me off guard. I wasn’t expecting them, but I couldn’t escape them as we sang words like “when there’s pain in the offering, blessed be your name.” Sometimes the offering, the showing up, it hurts like hell. But we show up anyways, even if it means we hide in the bathroom first.
I’ve grieved a lot of things in my short 23 years. Loss has sought to write its legacy all over my life, but Jesus has won. At times I’ve grieved well and at times my grief has looked like empty tequila bottles and razor blades to my wrist. So you could say, maybe, that I have a bit of street cred when it comes to grief. Here’s what I know to be true though. Johnnyswim was onto something… The only way over is through. So when the tears come, we push through. When we feel worn, we show up. When we’re not enough, the only one who ever could be comes through on our behalf.

April 4, 2016 believe, Christ, Christian, church, faith, grace, hope, justice, loved, messy grace, missions, prayer, radical, Sunday, worship

They Will Know Us by Our Love: A Prayer for the Church

The church has long held a special place in my heart. It’s never been because of her perfection, but perhaps, quite the opposite. At her best, church is simply a messy group of sinners striving to love a broken world. However, it is in her imperfect striving together that she radiates the love of Christ.

Love. That’s our real message. Let’s own it well. 

John 13:35 says in reference to the church, “By this all people will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.”

The Message translation puts it this way:
“Let me give you a new command: Love one another. In the same way I loved you, you love one another. This is how everyone will recognize that you are my disciples—when they see the love you have for each other.”

The premise is simple– the world will recognize God’s people by their radical love, both for each other and a hurting world around them.

I pray for a church known for our radical, selfless love. Let it be said of us… 

(adapted from 1 Corinthians 13)

May the church be known for her patience, for her kindness.
May we neither envy, nor boast; may our contentment preach to a hurting world.
God, let your church be known for her humility, rather than her pride.
May she be neither arrogant, nor rude.
Let your church not insist on her own way.
Let us reflect you well with neither irritability, nor resentment.
Rather, may we love the bride for which you laid down your life.
May we never rejoice over wrongdoing. 
Teach us to weep not just at the sins of our neighbors, but first at our own. 
God, teach us to rejoice in your truth. May we never take for granted its supreme value. 
May we bear all things in love, gladly bearing the burdens of our cities.
Together, let us come to believe your truths, find hope in all things, and endure all things in unity.

Our cities will know we were here. Our neighbors will feel our impact. 



What image of the church will be ingrained in their minds?

I pray that our communities would see a people in passionate pursuit of justice, radiating perfect love, and unfailing hope. 

Let them know us by our love.

April 15, 2015 beauty from ashes, believe, brokenness, Christ, Christian, church, faith, fear, God, grace, healing, messy grace, missions, prayer, redeemed, redemption, sacrifice, South Africa, trust, worship

When Fear and Faith Collide: And If Not, You are God, and You Are Good

Everything in my essence is naturally fearful.
I worry, I stress, I get anxious over every little thing.
I want more than anything to radically abandon fear and follow Jesus and yet, my worries overtake me.
My relationship with fear was particularly challenged when I felt called to Africa last summer. 
There, God called me far beyond my comfort zone.

I will never forget the day I printed the State Department packet. The government has a packet of information they recommend that you read specifically for each country before you travel there.

So, like any good student, I printed off my packet and got to reading.
Sharks, disease, car accidents, plane crashes, fatalities, muggings. It’s all there.
Every statistic that makes you cringe.

 None of those got me though.

Like any strong, independent woman, I had solutions, perfectly thought out explanations, for anyone who might suggest that traveling alone here might be dangerous. I just won’t swim, I thought. I’ll be walking everywhere, I won’t carry money and if I’m confronted, I’ll give them whatever I have.

Solutions, I thought,  it’s all under my control.

I flipped along through the pages with a joy that would have made you think I was naive. Until it happened, my biggest fear was written on the page right in front of me. “Johannesburg is often considered the rape capital. A woman is attacked approximately every 4 seconds according to statistics.” In a country where the HIV/AIDS crisis still runs rampant, more than 70 percent of women have been sexually assaulted.

It was the statistic that kept me up an extra hour researching, wondering, and questioning the call of God.

If you know anything about the journey God has brought me through, you’ll understand. If not, suffice it to say this stat hit way too close to home.

I ripped the back page off of the packet before handing it to my mother the next day, per her request, to read through. It wasn’t until later that she found the page I had been hiding.

It was this statistic that had my parents on their knees and forced them and me to trust God a little more than we had ever expected.

For every fear, I’d had a precaution, a solution. This was the only fear that made me feel vulnerable, exposed as a fraud, as someone who was never truly in control and had no real solutions.

There was no denying it. I am a woman through and through. More than that, I’d be a white, foreign woman with a southern accent that lingered through the air heavy as a boulder.


It was a few weeks later that I first began to openly express this fear to some of the people closest to me. Each of them reassured me, comforted me with scripture, and reminded me without a doubt that God would keep me safe. What got me, however, is that, without exception, all of them encouraged me with some essence of “that would never happen to you” or “God will protect you from things like that.” They all encouraged me to have faith by denying the possibility of the thing that I feared.

Preliminarily, this offered me a great deal of comfort. Surely, I thought, God wouldn’t call me to the other side of the world for something awful to happen. The will of God will never take you where the grace of God will not protect you. It was something I quoted to myself a hundred times during those months leading up to my trip.

Something inside of me never could get settled though. It wasn’t until the weeks right before my trip that I realized I was not exercising faith at all.

Faith is not the absence of fear.
When there is no real and present fear, no faith is required.
Faith looks fear right in the eyes and says you have no power here.

Our faith is one that can handle the hard, messy things. Faith doesn’t deny them, it looks death in the eyes and says where is your sting?

Faith does not say that will never happen.
Faith says even if. Even if  the waters come, you are still God and you are still good.
Even if every last fear is realized, even then, I will run to You.
I will cry, I will collapse, but even when I can’t run, I will fall on You God.

If You can get Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego through a fiery furnace without even smelling like the fire, then I trust that You can turn the bad for good in my life.

Because You are either all good all the time or You are not good at all. 
And oh God, I know You are good. You have proven faithful.

That’s what faith says. Faith doesn’t say God will protect me and mean He will never let the bad things happen. Faith doesn’t say God I trust you in all things and pray Keep me from all of the bad things.

Faith prays God, whatever Your will is. Even when it looks like hurt, even when it looks like pain, even if it looks like the one thing I fear the most, let it be God, let it be. Because I trust You.

I trust that You are God in the good and God in the bad.
I trust that You are the God of broken things and messy places, because You are a God that restores.
 I trust that when You are done with the brokenness, the product of redemption will look even more beautiful than the one never touched by hurt in the first place.
You are a God that makes broken things beautiful.
But you don’t stop there, you make our brokenness both beautiful and useful.

Never once did you heal someone for the simple sake of them basking in freedom and healing. Your command to every broken life restored is the same as to the man in John 5- get up and walk, for you have been made well. You make us well to walk out lives of freedom and restoration and to help others find healing.
I trust that even when the bad comes, you will make it both beautiful and useful God and I pray I would have the heart that not only allows you to, but begs you to.

I trust that you are unchanging and faithful and always, always good.
Even when my vision is too small to see or understand, may I always believe that You are good.

These days, I still pray a lot of times for things to go the way I want over the way God wants, but I’m learning to add these pivotal words to the end of my requests And if not, He is still good….

~Hannah~
Scroll to top