Today's inspiration comes from:
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Today's inspiration comes from:
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Editor’s Note: Ann Voskamp shares with us in WayMaker and the story of the Exodus that there is a Red Sea Road through every impossible situation. God is creating a Way through all our hard places. Jesus, the Waymaker Himself, “never, ever, ever, ever stops making a way to be closer to you.” Enjoy this excerpt.
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The sweetest joys and delights I have experienced, have not been those that have arisen from a hope of my own good estate, but in a direct view of the glorious things of the gospel... I felt an ardency of soul to be, what I know not otherwise how to express... to be full of Christ alone; to love Him with a holy and pure love; to trust in Him; to live upon Him; to serve and follow Him.
~ Jonathan Edwards
She comes running through the door for me first, like she’s some prodigal’s father, widely wasteful with lavish love. “Your heart brave, too, Mama? Your heart brave like mine?”
Shiloh’s crawling up in the bed to kiss me, hiking up her t-shirt for me to see the raised scar from her heart surgery that parts her chest like a Red Sea Road, scars always a memory made into skin, a memory you can touch.
“Ah, baby girl, Mama doesn’t have a brave heart or scar like yours.” I’m smiling, but my eyes are searching the face of her papa coming in tentatively behind her. He’s the one who bears all my scars. I want to trace every one of the scars I’ve made, whisper sorry, beg mercy.
“But Mama? You got heart lines though, Mama, see?” Shiloh’s tracing lines and leads from screens to my chest.
“Shiloh? What’s Mama’s heart always tied to?”
And in one supernova explosion, Shiloh breaks into this dazzling smile, like she’s a morning star rising after a glacial dark. “I knowwwww, Mama, I always know.” And she dances her fingers on her chest and then flings both her hands toward me. And I’m laughing, mirroring her, fingers dancing on chest, then stretching both hands toward her, she and I both saying it in unison, same rhythm, same heartbeat: “My heart is always tied to your heart.”
She throws back her head and laughs, like she is soft light dancing over a singing brook, and I’m drenched in the loveliness of her. Hearts tied, hers and mine.
Attached, we are free to love.
“Darryl?” I stretch my arm out toward him standing in the doorway... pat the side of the hospital bed. “My heart is tied to yours too... my heart is yours too.”
My heart for yours, my walk with yours,
my life bound to yours,
till my last breath, then always and forever.
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The pathway of least resistance leads to the least life. It’s the narrow pathway of great resistance that leads to the great life.
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The pathway of least resistance leads to the least life. It’s the narrow pathway of great resistance that leads to the great life.
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He shakes his head slowly, his eyes desperately sad, wounded. Shiloh’s pulling out books and crayons from her backpack, half-singing to herself, her half a heart beating steady between surgeries. My heart is in all kinds of failure. Darryl’s standing here, the way a man can, though his heart’s breaking slow.
“I’m sorry. I am unspeakably sorry.” I can feel it, embodied in me, with the weight of my pneumonia lungs and how hard it is to breathe: “Wide is the gate and broad is the road that leads to destruction,” says the Word,1 destruction literally meaning narrowness, while straight is the gate and narrow is the way that leads to the expansive life. The way of sin is wide-open and easy, but it narrows until life becomes crushed. The way of life is narrow, but “it broadens out into the spaciousness of life.”2
- The pathway of least resistance leads to the least life. It’s the narrow pathway of great resistance that leads to the great life.
What can I even stammer but this: “I have sinned against Heaven and you. I am unspeakably sorry for all the ways I’ve turned my own way, gone my own way, failed in all kinds of heartbreaking ways. Ways that kinda actually broke your heart.”
“Oh, Ann.” He sits down on the edge of the bed. “You’re not alone... every single one of us has wanted our own way, gone our own way, in different ways.”
I drop my head to his chest. And I break, a dam, and everything runs liquid, free.
I’ve been addicted to me.
My addiction is to self. It is an excruciatingly painful thing to cut open your heart and see: My addiction is me.
I have committed idolatry.
I have broken the first commandment:
I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of Egypt, out of the land of slavery. You shall have no other gods before me. — Exodus 20:2–3
Instead of laying myself down on the altar as a living sacrifice before God, I’ve put myself, my needs, my wants, my dreams, before God, before Darryl, before my love-covenant to both. Instead of trusting God to take care of me, I have turned and gone looking for all the lying ways of this hurting old world to comfort me. Instead of entering into the sufferings of Christ, who keeps His covenant to suffer with us, I have kept looking for the way out, any way out, always looking for an exodus out of pain. And where we keep looking for a way out of our heartbreak, we only drag a whole lot of beautiful souls into more heartbreak.
I bear heartbreaking witness to the way of my ways: Nothing destroys a life like idolatry. Nothing destabilizes a life like centering self. Nothing will turn your life into a colossal mess like turning inward. All your incurvatus in se will leave you begging for a cure.
Though the roads will look different for each of us, always: The only way out and through is to enter into the sufferings of Christ. Only the One who keeps His covenant to suffer with you can carry you the whole way through.
Continue reading on our blog
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1.Matthew 7:13.
2.G. Campbell Morgan, Hosea: The Heart and Holiness of God (Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock,
1998), 19.
3.John Flavel, Keeping the Heart: How to Maintain Your Love for God (Fearn, Scotland:
Christian Heritage, 2012), 57.
4.Robert Alter, The Hebrew Bible: A Translation with Commentary (New York: W. W. Norton
& Company, 2018), Hosea 6:6.
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Excerpted with permission from WayMaker by Ann Voskamp, copyright Ann Morton Voskamp.
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Have you been addicted to self, too? Have you crawled off the altar instead of being a living sacrifice? Christians are those who turn. We are faithful followers who keep turning and turning, to be the faithful trusters. ~ Devotionals Daily
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God always makes a path through the impossible
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WayMaker: Finding the Way to the Life You’ve Always Dreamed Of
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+ FREE shipping on all orders over $35
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Are you facing repeated roadblocks or feeling life shift in ways you never expected? Bestselling author Ann Voskamp offers the hope-giving message that God always makes a path through the impossible—no matter the obstacle. Encounter the WayMaker in surprising places and watch him pen poetry out of pain.
It's true: heartache, grief, suffering, and obstacles—they all come in waves. There is no controlling life's storms; there is only learning the way to walk through the waves.
In WayMaker, bestselling author Ann Voskamp hands us a map that makes meaning of life and shows the way through to the places we've only dreamed of reaching. In the face of suffering through seemingly unbearable situations, we can rest in the fact that we are not alone.
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What our readers are saying
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"What a great book. I have enjoyed each portion of this edible text. Louie has been able to help me digest the Bible in small easy to read meals." — John M.
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"This book is helping me daily to understand who I am in Jesus Christ and to lay it all at the foot of the cross and going to the throne room every day because Jesus loves me and not to be afraid to tell him about everything" — Pam W.
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"This is an excellent devotional. It’s an easy read, with a great depth of teaching. It propels me into digging deeper into the love God has for each of us. I highly recommend it." — Margaret S.
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In her signature captivating poetic style, Ann reveals how God is present in the totality of our lives, making a way for the:
- Marriage that seems impossible
- Woman who longs for a child of her own
- Parents who ache for the return of their prodigal
- Sojourner caught between a rock and a hard place
- Wayfarer who feels as though there is no way through to her dreams
Deeply personal, Ann shares the moments of her life where the WayMaker transformed brokenness into beauty. Learn to encounter the WayMaker in surprising ways in your own life and begin to see Him working in every miraculous detail. Even now, the Way is making the way to walk through waves and into a life more deeply fulfilling than your wildest dreams.
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Pre-order The SACRED Habit Bible Study Guide!
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For every time you've ever asked, "Where are you God?"
When the story of our lives, the expectations of our one and only life, hasn't turned out to be quite what we always dreamed of, life can feel disorienting, as if we are being tossed and thrown by incoming waves and there's no way through. How do you navigate through the pounding storms of life with an internal calm and peace that is anchored and unwavering?
Join New York Times bestselling author Ann Voskamp as she teaches you S.A.C.R.E.D., a daily habit, a rule of life, a way of life, that will reorient your soul in relation to God through Scripture and prayer and study. This powerful spiritual practice that Ann unpacks in this study will become your directing compass through the hard seasons where it feels like there is no way—only to find you have a WayMaker making an unexpected way into the life you only dreamed of.
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One Thousand Gifts Devotional
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Unbreakable Courage Online Bible Study
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If you've ever felt overwhelmed, exhausted, or ready to give up, this is the Bible study for you!
In Max Lucado's newest book & Bible study, Unbreakable Courage, we'll discover how God replaces fear with faith, steadies anxious hearts, and gives us the courage to face whatever comes next.
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