Wow.  Nine weeks of the Word Wednesday Challenge, and we’re in I Samuel.  I’m having a blast learning everyone else’s favorite verses and hearing different points of view.  I especially love hearing what makes Bible verses I’ve read over and over again personal to everyone else.  God is so amazing!

I Samuel 17: 47–All those gathered here will know that it is not by sword or spear that the Lord saves; for the battle is the Lord’s and he will give all of you into our hands.

As a firm believer in spiritual warfare and Ephesians 6:12, I love this verse.  We are triumphant not because of anything we have done, but because of our God who saves.  We spend a whole lot of time trusting in our own personal strength when we struggle.  We trust in the strength of our military to protect us as a nation.  But who is really our strength and our protector?  God.

Some of you know I battled fear for years, but only God could save me.  Only God could deliver me.  Only God could defeat the enemy that had me tied up in chains.  That is why this verse grabs me by the heart and squeezes tight.  You cannot look at my life and claim any physical being healed me.  You can’t call it luck or timing or anything natural.  That battle was God’s, and He delivered the enemy into my hands.  We could all say the same about the sins for which we’ve been forgiven.  The Lord has delivered us.

Oh, that just pure ol’ excites me! Anybody want to have prayer meeting? 

Okay, your turn.  I Samuel.  What speaks to you?  Leave a comment here or blog about it and leave your address here.  Can’t wait to hear from you!

-JB

I left Indianapolis last week thinking about God.  I could not begin to tell you what He did for me at that conference.  He reinforced my healing.  He wowed me with the people He has placed in my life.  He lavished love on me.  And He showed me ways in which He is making my dreams come true.

What do you make of a God who gives you the fondest, most intimate, most humanly impossible desire of your heart?  A God who tilts your head so that the line of blessings He has given you suddenly comes into clear focus?  A God who gives and gives and keeps on giving out of nothing short of pure, unselfish, unconditional love?

The tears were already flowing when I thought about the weekend and I saw His hand moving.  Then Francesca Battistelli’s “Beautiful, Beautiful” came on the radio.  “Like sunlight burning at midnight, making my life something so beautiful, beautiful.”  My life is beautiful to God.  The Almighty looks at me and sees me as beautiful.  The Most Beautiful sees something beautiful in me.  Wait.  I can’t form the words.  I can’t grasp the concept.  He is making my life something beautiful.

That does more than floor me.  It transports me to a place past understanding.  I look at me and see who I used to be.  I see the massive, huge sin that shadowed my life and crippled me for so many years.  I see the sinner I still am today.  As I navigated the highway between Indy and Louisville, God opened my eyes and reminded me where the journey has taken me, of the words He poured out on the page through me as He healed me and forgave me for what I did.  He has taken something so unbelievably horrific and made it beautiful.

And then He opened His hand and said, “See?  I’m not done yet.  I’m making your dream come true.”  How can God look at a sinner like me and give a gift like that?  It wasn’t enough for Him to forgive me.  It wasn’t enough for Him to restore me.  Now He wants to go even further and bless me?  It defies logic.

Out of broken pieces… something beautiful.

-JB

This story starts two years ago, when I joined a critique group through ACFW.  Back then, you signed up and they matched you with people who write in your genre.  My crit group (lucky number 13) was one of the last to be formed that way.  But I’ll tell you something…  no human hand formed our group.  God alone did that.  We were a group of women scattered all over the country from a variety of backgrounds and with varied interests. Without this critique group and ACFW, we probably never would have met.  When we began, we had six active members.  We are now four active members (though our quiet ones are still in our number and our hearts).

I’ve met one of my crit partners before.  We had lunch together earlier this year when business brought her to my town.  It was awesome to see her in person.  See, this group has done more than read each other’s work.  We’ve prayed each other through major life decisions.  We’ve cried with each other when one of us grieves.  We’ve supported each other, laughed with (and at) each other.  I honestly think we share more with each other than we realize.

And last Friday, for the first time, our four active members were all together in the same room.  It was amazing, and that word is not enough.  I know for a fact two of us dropped bags and ran across a hotel lobby to get to each other.  (I was one of them…)  We spent the weekend at ACFW conference talking, laughing til we cried, and sometimes just plain crying.  We ate Chick-fil-a (some for the first time, if you can believe that) and laughed some more and shared the good, the bad, and the ugly of agent and editor appointments.  We got to celebrate together and pray together.  And all of it was in person.  I realized a couple of days ago what God had done.  When we all laid eyes on one another as a group for the first time, it was like we’d always shared the same space.  There was no awkwardness.  No worries about being accepted.

And that’s when I realized we had something special.  We accept each other.  We know the good of each other and the bad of each other.  (And now we’ve seen how obnoxious some of us–me–can be in person…) Yet we love each other.  I looked around that circle of faces and realized I have God-given sisters.  It amazes me the geographic and personality differences among us, but look what God did.  He created something beautiful.

Well, we’re now in Week 8 (I think?) of the Word Wednesday Challenge.  Ruth is a relatively short book, but it is such a beautiful story of faithfulness and of God’s  love for us.  Read it through–won’t take you long–and notice how tender and protective Boaz is.  To a romance writer, he’s downright sigh-worthy.  But, on to my favorite verse(s) from Ruth:

Ruth 1:14b-17–Then Orpah kissed her mother-in-law good-by, but Ruth clung to her.  “Look,” said Naomi, “your sister-in-law is going back to her people and her gods. Go back with her.”  But Ruth replied, “Don’t urge me to leave you or to turn back from you. Where you go I will go, and where you stay I will stay. Your people will be my people and your God my God. Where you die I will die, and there I will be buried. May the LORD deal with me, be it ever so severely, if anything but death separates you and me.”

Naomi has lost her husband and her sons.  As far as she is concerned, she has lost everything, and she tells everyone to call her Mara (which means bitter) instead of Naomi (which means pleasant).  Naomi bases her entire identity on her suffering.  (Hm.  That would make an interesting blog post…)   She even tells her daughters-in-law to leave her and go back to their people, because she has nothing to give them.  I honestly think Naomi wanted to wallow in a pity party and to show everyone that she truly had nothing left.

Orpah takes off for her family, but Ruth stays.  In fact, Ruth swears to stay with Naomi until the very end.  This is no offhand vow she makes.  Ruth essentially places her life on the line for her mother-in-law.  I find it wonderful that, just when Naomi thinks she has lost everything, she finds out she still has someone who will lay down everything for her.

Isn’t Jesus just like that?  When we are stripped of all that we hold dear, when we feel like we can’t take another blow, when it seems we are completely and utterly alone in the world… there is Jesus.  There is the One who laid down everything for us.    There is never an “alone.”  When we sink to the bottom, if we’ll just look up, we’ll find we have more than we ever dreamed.

-JB

Care to share your favorite Ruth verse or discuss the one above?  Leave a comment and join the conversation. If you’re blogging along with me, leave a link in the comments and give a link back here.  I’d love to hear what you have to say.

Right about now, I’m preparing to head home from the ACFW conference in Indianapolis, so here’s a repost from 2009.  Can’t wait to share conference adventures when I get back!

Got the Newsboys song “I Surrender All” running around in my head today.

Surrender. When I hear the word, I think of those old black and white movies where aliens invaded the earth. Aside from being taken to our leader, they typically wanted us to surrender. Don’t know why, but that’s the first thing that pops into my head.

Surrendering to aliens? That’s scary. Surrendering to God? That’s scarier. At least we could see the aliens with our eyes and, hey, typically, we knew exactly what they were up to.

It’s not so with God, is it? We don’t always know what He is doing. He doesn’t clue us in; He doesn’t have to clue us in. And that’s what makes the idea of surrender so scary. Believe me, the devil loves nothing more to manipulate that fear so that we try to handle everything in our lives right by ourselves instead of giving it over to God to take care of for us. The devil convinces us that we won’t like what God does, that if we surrender to God, He will take control and lead us down paths of destruction and pain.

I well remember the first time I faced surrender. I was 27 years old. It was just after September 11, 2001. Family life at Fort Bragg was really uncertain. Nobody knew who was leaving when or for where or for how long. Most of the Special Forces soldiers had already pulled a vanishing act, and it was anybody’s guess when the rest would be wheels up for parts unknown. Like most military wives, I wrapped my (literal and figurative) arms around my soldier and held on tight. My prayers were mostly me screaming at God to not send him anywhere, because I just couldn’t handle it. In my mind, a deployment was the absolute worst possible thing that could ever happen.  And in the midst of all of that, God started telling me to let go. In Bible study, we talked about surrender. It felt like every sermon I heard was about surrender. Every song on the radio? You got it… surrender. I am almost certain God would have resorted to billboards if I hadn’t gotten the picture.

Then came that pre-dawn October morning. To this day, I can see it, smell it, taste it, feel it… I was on my knees in our living room, staring at a crossroads. I knew with everything in my spirit that I had to place my life (including my husband) squarely in God’s hands and stop trying to do it myself. But my mind didn’t agree. The devil raged, telling me to hold on, that I couldn’t protect Paul if I let him go…

And that is when the devil went one step too far, because it hit me that I couldn’t protect my husband or myself at all. The fact was that I didn’t hold him anyway, even though I had this illusion that I did. I felt like Saul on the Damascus road, when the blinding light appeared. (Maybe it was just the lightbulb over my head?) God is the only one who is with me and with my husband–and now with our daughter—everywhere we go. As long as I was trying to hold on, God couldn’t. That was the scariest thought of all.

Right then and there, I literally shoved my hands out in front of me and said, “Take it. Take it all, take us all… I’m yours. Send me where you want. Send my husband where you want… because being out of Your will is the worst place to be of all.”

My husband did not go to Iraq until nearly five years later. And when he did, both of us were ready because God had made us ready. I thought it would be the worst thing that could ever happen, but to be quite honest it was one of the best. We’ve never walked closer to God or to each other than we have during or since that deployment. I didn’t say it was easy, but it sure was easier knowing that God had it.

And lest you think surrendering is a one-time thing… nope. Sometimes we take what we lay on God’s altar right back. We pick it up again. Sometimes, especially during deployment, I had to put myself and my husband back in God’s hands dozens of times a day. At one point, right after three of our soldiers disappeared, I nearly physically exhausted myself trying so hard to “keep him safe.” I got the idea that if I quit praying for an instant or he was off of my mind for an instant, I’d lose him. (I think we all know who that idea came from, huh?) It took me nearly a month to figure out that I was trying to protect him myself… an impossible task.

Surrender is something we all need to do. We all need to give our lives over to God and let Him have control. In all honesty, when we “give” our husbands or our children or our writing to Him, we are really giving over ourselves and our control over our lives. Tough but necessary and, in the end, easier.

It is all about trust. God says that He will never leave us or forsake us. He will never do anything to hurt us. Do we trust and believe that in our heart of hearts? Do we believe that no matter what—good or bad—God is always always always operating in our best interest? Failure to believe that is what makes surrender hard. No, life isn’t always easy or fair, and we don’t always get what we want. But God makes sure we always get what we need… if we let Him.

-JB

Having recently finished the Brides of Bonneterre series, I was thrilled to find out that Kaye Dacus had started a new contemporary series called “The Matchmakers.”  YES!

Love Remains is the first book in the series and tells the story of Zarah Mitchell and Bobby Patterson, who loved and lost one another because of someone else’s interference.  They’ve spent the past fourteen or so years believing they didn’t love each other and possibly thoroughly disliked each other… until God brings them back together.  There’s a complication, though.  Zarah doesn’ t know it, but she’s a suspect in a criminal investigation, and Bobby is the special agent in charge of digging into her life.  Can the two overcome the past–and the present–in order to fall in love again?

My favorite thing about Kaye Dacus is that she never fails to surprise me.  I always think I know where she’s going and that I’ve got the whole thing figured out when she zings me over in a totally different direction.  I really hate it when I’m reading a book, see a cliche’ coming, and basically tense up the whole time waiting for it.  Totally in love with the way the cliche’ never happens in Love Remains.

Zarah and Bobby lived and breathed for me.  It’s the way Kaye pays attention to tiny little details and off-hand comments that really draws you in.  Some writers will leave small, everyday details out because they’re looking for the big plot points that move the book forward.  But it’s those little things that make up real life, and enough of them are sprinkled through this book to almost make the characters step off the page and shake your hand in introduction.  For example, there is a point in the story where Bobby does something just a little south of of odd with his french fries, and Zarah remarks, “That’s new.”  Believe it or not, I read the few lines of that scene seven or eight times, because that one little line grabbed me right in the gut.  That tiny remark–which could easily be read over–spoke so much about their past and their relationship as it stood at that moment.  It made the scene come to life, and the whole book is full of those little details and moments that just make everything work.

I definitely recommend Love Remains.  Can’t wait to see what book two has in store!

It’s week seven of the Word Wednesday Challenge!  This week, we’re taking a look at Judges.  Start thinking about your favorite verse from Judges. Here’s mine:

Judges 6:12 (NIV)–When the angel of the LORD appeared to Gideon, he said, “The LORD is with you, mighty warrior.”

I’m sensing a theme, and if you’ve read the past couple of Word Wednesday verses, you’ve noticed it too.  I absolutely, positively love the fact that God is with us.

But there’s more to this one.  Gideon may well be my favorite person in the Old Testament.  If you’ve spent any time around this site, you know God delivered me from extreme fear.  I identify with Gideon.  When the angel of the Lord appeared to him, he was scared.  How do we know?  Because he made a ton of excuses, then he asked for proof not once, but twice.  And because God had to tell him (more than once) that He would go before him.  When I battled fear, I found comfort in Gideon’s story.  Gideon stood up and did what God told him to do fearlessly, and God did go with him.

Want to know my favorite part?  The very first time the angel of the Lord appeared to Gideon in Judges 12–before the excuses, before the testing, before the reassurances–he referred to Gideon as “mighty warrior.”  At that moment, Gideon was just about the farthest thing from a “mighty warrior,” but God looked at Gideon and saw who he would be, not just who he was.  That, my friends, is the awesomeness of God.

Have you got a favorite verse in Judges?  Tell us about it in the comments.  If you are blogging along with us, blog away, link back to us, and leave a link in the comments so everyone can check you out.  Then get ready!  Next week we look at Ruth.

-JB

Back in February, I had the privilege of reading Sarah Sundin’s first book in the Wings of Glory series, A Distant Melody. Book 2 hit my mailbox last week, and I devoured it in about 3 days.  (I’d have finished a lot faster if I wasn’t getting ready for ACFW conference.)  With A Memory Between Us, Sarah has done it to me all over again.  (Oh, and by the way?  I’m not sure I have ever seen a more perfectly titled book.)  When I started thinking of what I was going to say about this book, my first thought was that she completely made me sink into the story to the point I forgot I was reading a book.  Just now, when I went back to look up the address for my A Distant Melody review, I realized I said the exact same thing about that book too.  That tells me Sarah’s more than a one-shot deal.  She has something I just can’t define when it comes to writing.  I’ve gone back over a few chapters to try to pinpoint her technique, to see what makes her books sing, and I just can’t do it.  There’s not something there I can pick up and put my finger on, but her voice and her research and her story all combine to explode like fireworks on the page.  I don’t know how to describe it except to say it’s like watching a movie made up entirely of words.  Very few books make me tense up (and even tear up) with the characters, but she gets me every time.  I’m just going to have to get her on here for an interview and let her talk to y’all herself.  Maybe she can describe what she does.

Jack Novak is a bomber pilot who never failed to meet his goals.  Ruth Doherty is an Army nurse with a past she’d rather not discuss.  And when the two of them meet, Jack determines he’ll win her heart.  The biggest obstacle to his plan?  Ruth doesn’t want her heart to be won.  Is there a way for both of them to have what they want?  Or will they destroy all of their chances at happines in the process?

I love Ruth.  It’s hard to write a character who is real and broken, yet sympathetic and not whiny.  Sarah managed bring Ruth to life and made me pull for her, even as she operated under the flawed assumptions of her past.  There was never a point (like there is in some books) where I wanted to shake Ruth and yell, “Oh, come on!”  Her growth in the book was perfectly drawn and believable, and by the time she took control (or did she relinquish control?) and emerged on the other side, I wanted to hug that girl’s neck.  I thought I liked Ally in book one, and I did.  But Ruth?  Ruth rocks.

And then there’s Jack.  Brash, arrogant, take charge of it all Jack.  You have to love him.  He could have been a cliche’, but he’s certainly not.  His conflicts–both internal and external–are easily understood and painfully felt.  Watching him change through the course of the story made me get teary more than once.  And, again, there was nothing abrupt about his transformation.  Like real life, it unfolded gradually and made perfect sense when he got to where he was going.

Sarah’s rapidly knocking other books out of my top ten favorites.  I said A Distant Melody was on my top ten list.  Well, so is A Memory Between Us.  Sarah, girl, bring on book three.  I absolutely cannot wait.

I found this on Youtube over the weekend and could not resist sharing it. Since DC Talk is quite well-respected and Michael Tait is now singing lead for the Newsboys and, well, we all know my family and I LOVE Tobymac… This was simply too wonderful not to share.

DC Talk’s 1991 Music Video, I Luv Rap Music.  Please, relive some early nineties awesomeness with me…

Welcome to Week 6 of the Word Wednesday Challenge!  This week we’re in Joshua.

Joshua 1:9 (NIV)–Have I not commanded you? Be strong and courageous. Do not be terrified; do not be discouraged, for the LORD your God will be with you wherever you go.

Sounds a lot like last week’s verse, doesn’t it?  It almost makes you wonder why God repeats this particular truth so often.  The two times I’ve mentioned aren’t the only two times God said it (or something like it).  Why would he say the same thing over and over?  Shouldn’t once be enough?

I find comfort in the fact that God knows us humans very well.  And He knew when He inspired His Word that there would be certain things we’d be particularly thick about.  I think He knew all along we’d do a pretty bad job at resting in His presence and trusting in His calling.  Let’s face it… all of us have been led into some pretty frightening spots, whether they were physical, spiritual, or emotional.  And what does God ask of us?

Trust.

He wants us to trust that He is with us wherever, whatever, however, whoever…  It’s tough.  And it’s scary.  Which is why I’m pretty sure He added the part about not being afraid.  He knew this wouldn’t be easy.

Pretty cool of God to tell us not once, not twice, but dozens of times that it’s okay… He’s always going to be right here.

-JB