Heaven On Wheels
June 1, 2010
The knock at my door was soft, apologetic. I soon discovered a bouquet of anxious faces clustered in the hallway of the hotel where I was speaking for a women’s weekend retreat. “A situation has come up,” Jill, the retreat committee chairman, explained, keeping her voice low.
Uh-oh. Ten minutes later—hair combed, lipstick in place, tummy a-twitter—I was ushered into Retreat Central.
Jill exchanged glances with the others. “Several women have come to us—”
“No, a lot of women,” insisted a feisty brunette. “You should have heard them all at our lunch table.”
“Right.” Jill nodded emphatically. “Anyway, they all want…more.”
Clearly my morning presentation wasn’t strong enough. “More…what?” More funny stories? More chocolate for dessert?
“More of your teaching, Liz. They don’t want to play games after dinner. They want…well, they want to hear more about the Bible.”
“You’re kidding!” My chin dropped in amazement. “At a fancy resort like this? I thought they came to soak in the hot tub.”
“Maybe that’s why they came, but now that they’ve heard the Word of God, that’s all they’re talking about. Would you mind…I mean, could you speak again tonight after dinner?”
My heart was pounding in my chest. Imagine, a group of women gathering at a spa—a spa!—and choosing Bible study instead of a massage. No question, their change of heart had nothing to do with me; and had everything to do with God.
In that moment, the Lord spoke to my heart, telling me these precious women needed to learn how to take their needs to him directly. “After my presentation tonight, is there somewhere I could sit and pray privately with each of them?”
Jill shook her head. “Not in that tiny room.” She was right. We were sitting buns-to-buns without an inch to spare.
“I know!” The feisty brunette again. “One of the girls has a big van we can park right outside the door.”
“A van?” I said weakly. It was raining. It was chilly. It was a van. Did people pray in vans? Front seat or back? If the engine was running, would they fear being kidnapped? If it wasn’t running, would we get a ticket for parking in a No-Prayer zone?
“A van,” I said again, trying to convince myself it wouldn’t be too weird. I’ve heard of altar calls…why not an Aerostar call? Probably not what Ford had in mind, but I was determined to follow the Lord’s lead, and the committee was in total agreement.
By six o’clock that night, I was having second thoughts. By eight o’clock, I was having seventh thoughts. Until I saw their faces—open, eager to learn, thirsty for God’s truth. Suddenly, a van-shaped prayer closet seemed like the best idea on wheels.
After sharing my message about Mary Magdalene’s encounter with the risen Christ, I announced, “Now it’s time for you to meet with God. I’ll be outside in a … well, a van. Please join me so we can pray together.” I said it with a straight face, but they laughed anyway. “Okay, it’s a crazy idea, but it’s God’s idea. I’ll be waiting.”
I didn’t wait long. My first brave soul climbed into the backseat, wide-eyed and uncertain. Seconds after she pulled the door closed, the overhead light faded to black and we were cloaked in a cozy darkness. “Is this when the soft music starts playing?” she whispered, and we giggled like teenagers.
Things got serious soon enough. We prayed together—oh, how we prayed!—one woman after another. We prayed for wayward husbands and lost children. For difficult jobs and joyless situations. For forgiveness and for lives newly dedicated to Christ. The minutes slipped by unnoticed. When a distant church bell chimed the hour—3:00 a.m.—the Lord nudged me off to bed, thirty-six sisters’ prayers tucked safely inside my heart.
“It’s not a Ford Aerostar anymore,” Jill informed me over breakfast, her eyes bleary but her smile ear-to-ear. “We’re calling it the Holy Van.”
From that sacred night we were changed—all of us. I was changed by simply being obedient, even when it felt scary and out of my comfort zone. And the women were changed by trusting God and speaking their hearts out loud. We all felt the sheer joy of releasing our burdens to God, knowing those burdens traveled much further than the dashboard.
When God says pray, pray. Anywhere, anytime, any van.
Liz Curtis Higgs is an international speaker, a Beauty for Ashes speaker (twice, 2005 and 2009), and best-selling author with three million books in print, including Bad Girls of the Bible and Thorn in My Heart (WaterBrook Press). Her latest book is a novel about the first chapter of the Book of Ruth, set in 17th century Scotland, called Here Burns My Candle. You will find two reviews of this book on this blog. This article first appeared in the January/February 2002 issue of Today’s Christian Woman. Copyright © 2002, 2010 Liz Curtis Higgs. All Rights Reserved. Used with permission.
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.
Liz Curtis Higgs: Here Burns My Candle
March 24, 2010
Do you remember that when Liz Curtis Higgs was with us in South Africa in May 2009 she spoke on the Book of Ruth? Well, while she was with us, she was busy writing “Here Burns My Candle,” a novel set in 18th century Scotland based on the first chapter of Ruth. There will be a sequel based on the rest of Ruth out in 2011. The back cover says: “A timeless story of love and betrayal, loss and redemption, flickering against the vivid backdrop of eighteenth-century Scotland, Here Burns My Candle illumines the dark side of human nature, even as hope, the brightest of tapers, lights the way home.” The book is a real page turner and it is absolutely amazing how Liz weaves the Bible story into this setting! I couldn’t put it down! Watch out for it as it will soon be in our stores.
Book Reviews
”…stunning in its prose and its historical accuracy. The author transports the reader to another time and place while paralleling the book of Ruth.” Romantic Times TOP PICK
“…a compelling tale of love, loss, faith, and forgiveness that is certain to please both inspirational readers and fans of well-crafted historical fiction.” Booklist
“The historical context is fascinating and the characters are gripping. The story is well written and greatly anticipated…” CBA Retailers + Resources
“The characters are remarkably flawed… Higgs is a stickler for period authenticity and has done her homework on history and dialect. Fans have been waiting five years for this novel and will not be disappointed.” Publishers Weekly
