God, Will You Ever Use Me?
February 3, 2011
Do you read about the amazing things other women have done with a sinking heart? “Why can’t I do something like that?” “She’s obviously got more faith, talents or opportunities than me.”
The truth is that each of us has a unique life and God opens different doors for us all. Remember Psalm 139 that says, “For you created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother’s womb” …and again, “All the days ordained for me were written in your book before one of them came to be.” Corrie ten Boom once said that “the experiences of our lives, when we let God use them, become the perfect preparation for the work he has called us to do.” Things we regret, or wished we could have avoided, often become the very things that open our eyes to needs that we now truly understand and feel deeply about. It is so easy to underestimate God’s redemptive hand in our lives.
Purpose in pain
My mother had a friend whose son was profoundly deaf and this led her into a fruitful life of working for that cause. She was dismayed when she first heard the news about her son, and could never have anticipated the twists and turns her life would take after that, but it was not long before she was attending conferences, chairing committees and lobbying the government on their behalf.
“The experiences of our lives, when we let God use them, become the perfect preparation for the work he has called us to do.” – Corrie ten Boom
Carol Kent, our 2008 Beauty for Ashes Women’s Conference speaker, started a ministry to prison inmates and their families when her twenty-five year old son, Jason Paul Kent, shot and killed his wife’s ex-husband and was jailed for life without the possibility of parole. In the devastation that followed, Carol could not have imagined that she would come to have such a love for prison inmates. From standing in queues with the families of other prisoners at visiting times, she also became aware of their needs and so a ministry was born out of her pain and anguish.
God works in seasons
Does this mean that God can only use us if we have had a huge misfortune in our lives? Not at all. Sometimes we just need to wait for the right season while God gives us the necessary experience for our future work. He is always at work in our present, though. Having small children, caring for an invalid, or a host of other things, can sometimes be the season when we are not free to do much else. God knows and understands your season and this does not mean that he is not at work in your life. While David was out in the fields looking after his father’s sheep, he was learning how to use his sling with the deadly accuracy that would one day bring Goliath down. He may have thought that his life was constricted and confining (after all he didn’t even get to choose to be a shepherd), but God knew exactly where he was and had his loving eye on him. (Without those years we would probably never have had Psalm 23 – imagine that!)
What to do when you are waiting
The main thing to do during those ‘waiting’ years is to develop your relationship with God, to learn to trust his leading, to learn obedience, and above all to be faithful with the smaller things he has given you to do. David faithfully looked after and protected his father’s sheep. It is God’s job to open doors for you – and he will! A faithful heart will always find lots to do for the Lord! Remember that…a noble life is not a blaze of sudden glory won, but just an adding up of days in which good work is done…and God ordained each of those days for you.
This article by Aldyth Thomson first appeared in the December 2010 issue of JOY! magazine. Used with permission.
Jennifer Rothschild On The Billy Graham Prime Time Special
January 13, 2011
Dear God, They Say It’s Cancer!
December 7, 2010
I have lived in Ghana, West Africa, for the past five years, until May 2010 when we moved to Zambia. We moved to Ghana because my husband accepted a position with a company there. Because we were going to Ghana, I went for a full medical check-up, which included a mammogram. To my horror, I found out that I had stage 2 breast cancer and was facing surgery, chemotherapy and radiation! By this time it was only about two weeks before Ian was due to leave for Ghana. He would be with me when I had the surgery, but it was with a sinking heart that I realised that I would have to go through the chemotherapy and radiation without him.
Afraid and alone
I would love to tell you that I was very brave and ‘just knew’ that God was going to come through for me, but I can’t. When I sat with Ian in the oncologist’s office 10 days after the surgery, and she started to go through the list of side effects my chemo would have, I started to cry, and cried on and off for two days. I couldn’t believe this was happening to me! Other people got cancer…not me…but then I remember thinking, “Why not me? Why should it happen to other people and not me?” I was even in too much of a state to be grateful to God at that point that the good news was that the cancer hadn’t spread to the lymphatic system. In fact, if we hadn’t been going to Ghana, I don’t think that I’d have gone for a mammogram at that time and I only had about six months, maximum, before it spread under my arm to the lymph glands.
God works all things for good
What was even more remarkable was that Ian had been retrenched six months previously, and unless he’d been retrenched, we wouldn’t have gone to Ghana, and therefore had those medical tests. It’s been absolutely amazing to me how God works all things together for good to those who love Him (Romans 8:28).
The cloud of chemotherapy
What scared me the most was the chemo, almost more than the thought of death. I couldn’t sleep, and my last thought at night and my first thought upon waking, was “chemo”…like a huge, black cloud pressing down on me. I don’t think I’ve ever felt so isolated before. I have a very caring family and wonderful friends, but the more they tried to encourage me and say that it would all be okay, the more desperate I felt, because how did they know I was going to be okay? They weren’t the ones facing chemo! And what did any of them know about cancer anyway?
Finding comfort from the Lord
Sometimes, I’ve found, you just have to hear from God for yourself, as nothing else can bring you any comfort and peace…the kind described in Philippians 4:7 where it says, “And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard (garrison) your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus” (NIV).
One of the things that really concerned me was the fact that my oncologist had told me that 10% of people who had my type of chemo were left with permanent heart damage. She said that they didn’t know why and had no way of predicting which patients would be affected in this way. In desperation, two days before Ian was due to leave for Ghana, and four days before I was due to start chemotherapy, I shut myself in my bedroom, knelt next to my bed with my Bible open, and begged God to speak to me. My eye fell on Psalm 121:7, “The Lord will keep you from all harm – he will watch over your life.” The words leapt off the page – I just knew that God was telling me that my heart would be okay and wouldn’t suffer any adverse effects from the chemotherapy! God’s comfort and peace was so real and His voice so clear, that my tears dried…for good.
Not ready for the change
Although I knew my heart would be okay, I was still desperately afraid of the actual chemotherapy and wondered anxiously exactly how sick I would be. I had heard such stories and was actually quite unable to look up or read anything about cancer on the internet. People told me to read Lance Armstrong’s book, It’s Not About the Bike, but every time I peeped nervously into it at one of the bookshops, I’d slam it shut thinking, “I’m not ready for this…too much information!” I did read it a year or two later and really enjoyed it.
The night before my first chemo and the day after Ian had left for Ghana, I went into my bedroom and again asked God to speak to me and help me deal with my fear. This time my eye fell on Isaiah 41:13 “For I am the Lord, your God, who takes hold of your right hand and says to you, do not fear; I will help you.” What I didn’t know that night, was that the needle used to administer the chemo would always go into the back of my right hand! This time that overwhelming feeling of fear and helplessness lifted and for the first time I felt able to cope.
God takes detailed care
I was also reminded of God’s loving care more than once during the months that followed. On one occasion during the radiation treatment I’d been really scared by a particularly gruesome cancer story that someone in the waiting-room had thoughtlessly told me. For the first time since I’d started treatment, I felt weepy and terrified again. While I was driving home from the hospital that day, my cell phone rang. It was my father, phoning to find out how I was. I knew he had enough on his plate worrying about my ailing mother, so as usual I told him that I was just fine. “No, Aldyth,” he said, “I was praying for you today and I felt compelled to spend some extra time in prayer for you. Something is wrong and I want to know what it is.” Can you believe that during all those months he should have made that phone call at that precise moment? Well, of course, I burst into tears and told him what had happened and he prayed with me right there and then – the fear lifted and I felt comforted.
My life today
It’s now five and a half years since my cancer diagnosis. My heart is fine and my health is good. The years in Ghana were some of the happiest of my life, and I was able to really rest and recover there, in a way I wouldn’t have done if I’d still been teaching in Johannesburg. God had known what was coming and had lovingly arranged the circumstances of my life for the good. And the wonderful thing to remember is that there are no favourites with God – he cares about the circumstances of your life too!
This article, written by Aldyth Thomson, was originally published in the September 2010 issue of JOY! magazine. Used with permission.
Watch Kim Hill & Angela Thomas On One Gospel TV
June 9, 2010
Kim Hill and Angela Thomas will be on My Top 10 SA which is on One Gospel, channel 331, DSTV, on Friday 11th June @ 21.00. Repeats will be on Saturday 12th @ 13.00 & 23.00; Friday 18th @ 08.00; Tuesday 22nd @ 20.00.
They will be talking about their 10 favourite music videos & why they like them. Great interviews with them, not to be missed! They are pictured here with Nomvula Sibeko of One Gospel TV.
Watch Kim & Angela On One Gospel TV
May 28, 2010
Kim Hill & Angela Thomas will be on MyTop10SA which is on One Gospel, channel 331, DSTV, at 21.00 on Friday 11th June. They will be introducing their 10 favourite Christian music videos and explaining why they like them. Each music video will then be shown. Great interviews with them, not to be missed!
After You Have Suffered
May 23, 2010
Many people have asked, “How did you get into the kind of ministry you are in?” For those of you who don’t know what I do, perhaps I should explain that I am a conference speaker, an author, and a radio broadcaster. The truth is that this is the last thing on earth I ever thought I would be doing!
Deep Waters
In college, I was studying for a career as an English teacher, until God intervened and took me on a different path. I never looked for a ministry, or sought a place to minister. I simply followed the progressive revelation of God’s will in my life. But I have found that every time God gets ready to move me to a broader scope of ministry, He usually takes me through some deep waters where I would declare that I would surely drown if He had not been there!
Growing Deeper
I love the story that G. Campbell Morgan tells: “A young fellow entered the ministry, and had remarkable success, and great blessing has attended his life and work. At the time he was a young man fresh from college, a brilliant preacher even then. He preached in my church in Birmingham, and I went home after the sermon and said to Mrs. Morgan, “Was that not wonderful?” She quietly remarked, “Yes, but it will be more wonderful when he has suffered.”
I have discovered that through the years and with the experiences of suffering God has allowed, my own ministry had deepened and grown “more wonderful.”
Steadfast
Peter must have had something like this in mind when he wrote:
“The God of all grace, who called you to his eternal glory in Christ, after you have suffered a little while, will himself restore you and make you strong, firm and steadfast” (1 Peter 5:10).
Over a year ago I received a note in the mail from a person I don’t even know. On a crudely trimmed piece of paper were these words by Chuck Swindoll: “You who have endured the stinging experiences make the choicest counsellors God can use.” I framed that quote and it is in my office where every day I can be reminded that the “stinging experiences” only make me more valuable to the One I long to serve.
Better Not bitter
Corrie ten Boom has said, “When we deepen our message, then God will expand our ministry.” It’s as simple as that. A heart for God must be broken before it really beats for Him.
If you long to be used and wonder why others seem to be God’s chosen instruments, maybe you need to stop and consider how you have responded to the “stinging experiences.” Do you fight them? Have you allowed them to make you bitter? Do you feel life is unfair? If so, you are undoubtedly sitting on the sidelines of ministry.
But if you have embraced your struggles as friends and your trials as trainers, then you know the joy of a deepening ministry. You can take comfort in the fact that the suffering lasts only “a little while,” before the God of all grace Himself will restore you, and make you strong and steadfast!
From: The 5-minute Devotional – Meditations for the Busy Woman by Jan Silvious, Zondervan, 1991 – used with the author’s permission. This article was also in the March 2010 issue of JOY! magazine.
Angela Thomas In JOY! Magazine
May 11, 2010
In case you missed JOY! magazine’s cover story on Angela Thomas last August (2009) just click on the link below (PS There are some great wedding photo’s there): http://storage.cloversites.com/brandwavesllc/documents/AT%20Cover%20Joy%20Magazine%20Full%20Final_3.pdf
Popular worship leader and single mom Kim Hill offers insight into the chaotic single-parent life. Kim is a Grammy-nominated, multiple-Dove award winning singer/songwriter. She is also the frazzled, joyful single mother of two boys.
Last Monday morning I was cajoling my boys, Graham and Benjamin (15 and 11), to hurry up and come downstairs. Suddenly it occurred to me that I’d forgotten to work out the carpool schedule. Then I accidentally dropped a bowl of oatmeal on my freshly mopped floors. I can promise you, a worship song wasn’t the first thing that popped into my head! What came to mind was How in the world do other single moms run an efficient household without saying bad words before breakfast?
It’s all too much
Maybe you aren’t frazzled from trying to raise two kids by yourself, but nearly every woman I’ve connected with at Christian conferences talks of being overwhelmed. They’re exhausted from staying up all night with a new baby or stretching too little money over too many bills. Most of the women I rub shoulders with are worn out from trying to juggle too much.
This juggling-mama-mania is why I think it’s so important to recognize our absolute dependency on God. We have to admit we can’t possibly manage all the details of our families without divine help.
Personally, I also suffer from spiritual amnesia—a point Graham recently brought to my attention. He had committed a minor infraction, and I had responded with a major tongue-lashing. I quickly realized I should apologize for my grumpy overreaction, so I said, “Honey, I’m sorry for getting mad at you. What you did wasn’t a big deal. I’m just stressed out because it’s been a really hard season.”
Graham paused for a few seconds then replied cautiously, “Mom, I don’t mean to be disrespectful, but you’ve been saying that for a long time.” Yikes, talk about hitting the bull’s-eye!
The Lord has provided for the boys and me in tangible, miraculous ways the past seven years that I’ve been a single mom, yet I still struggle with anxiety. As a Christian, I know better than to worry about tomorrow’s troubles, but I still do. I often look past the compassionate gaze of my Redeemer and get distracted by mortgage payments and the craziness of my calendar. I lose sleep over how to provide for our little family and how to protect their tender hearts from the ugly wounds that accompany divorce.
Leaning into faith
Thankfully, in spite of my tenuous trust, every time I pick up my Bible, God turns my face toward Him with themes like: “Trust in the Lord forever, for the Lord, the Lord, is the Rock eternal” (Isaiah 26:4); “Under his wings you will find refuge” (Psalm 91:4); “His divine power has given us everything we need for life and godliness” (2 Peter 1:3); and “My God will meet all your needs according to his glorious riches in Christ Jesus” (Philippians 4:19).
Through the Bible, prayer, music and gorgeous Tennessee sunsets, God reminds me that He will never abandon us to stumble through life on our own. He gently comforts me with the fact that my love for Graham and Benjamin pales next to His perfect love for them. God assures me that His affection will never fade or fail, whether I keep all my balls in the air or I drop one or two or 12 in moments of weakness. And my heavenly Father sweetly sings mercy over me on those nights when I’m too tired to sing my own precious children to sleep.
Rest in Him
The realities and responsibilities of life can definitely knock the wind – and the worship – right out of us. So I encourage you to carve out a few minutes today and marinate in this wonderful, paraphrased promise of Jesus from The Message:
“Are you tired? Worn out? Burned out on religion? Come to me. Get away with me and you’ll recover your life. I’ll show you how to take a real rest. Walk with me and work with me—watch how I do it. Learn the unforced rhythms of grace. I won’t lay anything heavy or ill-fitting on you. Keep company with me and you’ll learn to live freely and lightly.” (Matthew 11:28-30)
(This article first appeared in Focus on the Family magazine, November 2008.)
Interview With Liz Curtis Higgs
April 17, 2010
The hilarious author of Bad Girls of the Bible is back with a new novel based on the first chapter of the book of Ruth.
When I first heard Liz Curtis Higgs speak fourteen years ago, she was virtually unknown. Some things have changed, while others have remained the same. In 1995, I remember laughing until I cried as she shared personal stories and spiritual truths with a down-to-earth hilarity, and Liz is just as delightfully funny now as she was then. All those years ago, her most well-known book Bad Girls of the Bible was still in the making. Now the author of 26 books for adults and children alike, Liz celebrated the release of book number 27 in March. Recently, she spoke with HOPE about this latest project and the message she wants to share, no matter the venue.
Can you share how you became a Christian?
LIZ: I spent a decade out there doing all the things we pray our kids never do: it was sex, it was drugs, it was rock and roll, it was pot, it was cocaine, it was booze, and it was men, men, men. Foolishly, I looked in all those places for joy and settled for fun. God is so faithful in that He never lost sight of me. In fact, now I realize that He was literally with me through it all. However deep my pit got, He was down there with me. He was waiting for me to be ready to hit bottom. When you hit that low point, it’s actually good news because when you hit bottom, you’re already halfway to the top again—there’s nowhere else to go. In my case, I just looked up into the eyes of my Savior. Two dear people that I worked with were brand new believers, and I’ve often thought that they must have looked at me and thought, “Wow—here’s a project!” But they didn’t treat me like one. These people loved me in the name of Jesus—because they loved God and God loved them. I was certainly willing to listen to a God who would love such a broken woman.
How then did you get into writing for and speaking to Christian women?
LIZ: After I came to know Christ, I stayed in secular radio for another 5 years until God led me into speaking and then into writing. But if you’d told me in February 1982 that I was going to be a Christian writer and speaker, I would have laughed out loud! It seemed ludicrous with my background. But God uses everything, and He certainly used my “bad girl” decade to give me a heart for women who are still there but also the passion to get the news out, one way or the other—fiction, non-fiction, speaking, whatever God wants me to do.
As you’ve become more well-known, has there been a funny moment when you knew you had become a public figure?
LIZ: I remember being in Paris, of all places, at the airport with my then 15-year-old daughter in 2004. The trip was my 50th birthday gift to both of us. One of the challenges over the years for my kids has been having to “share” me. Whenever we go out in a public way, there’s always somebody who knows you. But I said, “We’re going to Europe; nobody will know me there!” So we had just gotten off the plane, we’re walking through the concourse at Charles de Gaulle airport, and a woman calls out, “Look! It’s Liz Curtis Higgs!” She was an American who was over there too, so I don’t think that makes me any more famous. But it was funny, and of course, my daughter just rolled her eyes.
Your writing covers so many different genres. Is there one in particular that you favour?
LIZ: Fifteen years ago, I was doing mostly humor. I was teaching the Bible but doing it with a strong emphasis on humor. By the time Bad Girls of the Bible came out eleven years ago, I didn’t stop being funny—I can’t help it! But I was moving more into teaching God’s Word. In doing the Bad Girls books, I was studying all these women of the Bible, and I came across some women who would not have qualified for Bad Girls of the Bible but whose stories were still fascinating to me.
So I began on this journey with fiction—biblical characters but moving the story to another time and place. I make no judgment on what other writers do, but for me, I felt uncomfortable putting words into the voices of actual Biblical characters. So picking the story up and moving it to another time and place gave me the freedom to ask the hard questions: What was going on here? What were these people thinking? What was their motivation for doing this? Those kinds of questions are not always answered in scripture, but I as a storyteller want to know! By exploring their stories in another place, I think we take that heightened awareness of their humanness back to the Biblical story so that when you read it, they become the real people they really were. They were flesh and blood, and we need to see them that way.
Tell me a little about your latest project, Here Burns My Candle.
LIZ: The candle has been burning for a very long time! This book took longer than any book I’ve ever written. It’s my 27th, and it has been a challenge and a joy. Here Burns My Candle is the story of Ruth and Naomi, just the first chapter of the book of Ruth. The second book in this two-book deal will cover the rest of Ruth. We really get to know Naomi because if you look at Ruth 1, it’s as much about Naomi as it is about Ruth. There’s so much that happens: Ruth 1 covers a 10-year span. Things happen and people come and go in one verse! That’s the exploring part for me: Who were these young men who were married to Ruth and Orpah? What might they have been like? Why did what happened to them happen? And of course, Ruth is a Moabite—a pagan, people the Israelites never wanted to associate with. So I think I’m going to be presenting to people perhaps a different Ruth than they might be imagining and maybe a different Naomi too. And that’s exciting!
You do so many different things. Regardless of the form or audience, what’s the primary message you hope to communicate?
LIZ: It’s always the same message: God’s love for us. I love to communicate in as many ways as possible that we are loved because of His goodness and not because of our goodness. The Scriptures say, “In this is love, not that we loved God but that He loved us and gave His Son as a propitiation for our sins” [1 John 4:10]. That’s the story: we are loved because we’re His, not because we’re good. None of us could ever be good enough. Jesus Himself said that no one is good but God alone. So I want to set people free from being “good”—from trying to be worthy of God. It’s never going to happen. What you have to do is embrace who God actually is—one greater than you who loves you.
For more information about Liz visit her on the web at www.lizcurtishiggs.com.
This article by Melissa Simpson first appeared in HOPE magazine, http://hopeforwomenmag.com/women-we-love/liz-curtis-higgs and is posted here with their permission.
