The Return of That Thing I Do Now - Volume 116

Hey y'all! Happy Weekend!

Oh MY how I have missed you!  We took a little break (#wewereONaBreak!) for October due to #Write31Days but I missed all the hunting and gathering that this little post allows me to do, all in the name of 'work' or 'research'! 

Hopefully, we will ease right back in to a rhythm where I highlight some of my favorite blog posts found around the world wide web this week, just in case you missed them!

Grab yourself something to sip on and settle in to read the Gathering of Awesome that I have hand-picked from the interwebs this week... purely for your enjoyment and encouragement!

Featured posts by Jennie Allen, Alia Joy, Allison Vesterfelt, Amanda Hill, Jeanne Takenaka, Emily Freeman, plus a post from right here, the winner of the Giveaway announced, and - of course - a video to wrap it all up! 

Happy Reading! (Ya'll know to click on the authors' names below to read the entire post, yes?)

* This post by Jennie Allen with ONE LIE THAT WILL SHUT YOU DOWN...
"I have spent a lot of time around some fantastically creative, gifted people lately who do not have big platforms. They are in their spot using their gifts in incredible ways and it is changing people’s worlds. HOWEVER, in their honest moments they sort of wonder if they are measuring up or if their work really matters since their platform isn’t skyrocketing. WE MUST STOP this silly game of numbers and eyeballs.

The lie is this… If it isn’t big- it doesn’t matter. Then because we believe it.. we make influence the goal rather than loving God and people with all of our gifts and life.

If you make influence your goal,

…your work will become bland and unoriginal,

…your heart will become consumed with what the world thinks,

…you’ll miss the Holy Spirit’s incredible work right in front of you

…your soul will get so sick because it will never be satisfied,

and rather than give God away through your gifts, you will use Him to get somewhere."


* This post by Alia Joy over at Incourage with How Do I Actually Love My Neighbor As Myself? 
"When God scattered men like seeds riding the wind, with mixed tongues and confused speech, He always meant for the corners of the world to inhabit praise.

He always meant for His name to go far and wide.

I imagine the tower of Babel, the hands of men making their way to the heavens by sheer will and determination and no small measure of pride. The arrogance to stay huddled and similar when all along God commands our reach further than we’re comfortable. Genesis 11:1 says, “Now the whole earth had one language and the same words.”

But God dispersed them with tangled tongues.

Still, we find each other. The ones who are the same. The ones with the same stories, the same language, the same look. The ones who will help us build our kingdom just the way we like it.

Some days I look at the church and wonder if we’re not attempting to build towers of Babel once more. To align our speech and thoughts and works to try to reach our own heaven. To make a mighty name for ourselves. Because we often speak in like tongues, but it clangs against the speech of God.

We confuse unity and peace with uniformity and passivity. We stay clustered and similar, familiar and unchallenged.

We offer up words like colorblindness as a solution to the hard work of diversity. We mean well."

* This post from Allison Vesterfelt with The Trap of A Manipulator And The Only Way Out... 
"Manipulators may change, but we won’t be the ones to change them.

The only way to deal with a manipulator is to change ourselves. We have to be the kind of people who can’t be manipulated.

More about that in just a minute.

The Great Danger in Manipulation.

The real danger in manipulation, if you ask me, is that manipulators steal your ability to bring your unique beauty and gifts to this world.

They don’t do it because they’re terrible people, and they might not even do it on purpose, but that doesn’t make it any less of a tragedy. When you are in the grips of a manipulator, what we miss out on is you—all bright and shining and beautiful in this world. When I think back to all of the years of my life I wasted living for the purposes of other people, at the expense of my own passion and joy and creativity, I cringe. And when I see other people doing the same, I cringe again. We need you and your gifts. The world is a better place with you than without.

This is the real danger of manipulation. What a tragedy. I can think of few things more devastating..."

* This post by Amanda Hill with Let love prevail over religion…

“My first date with my boyfriend was late on a sultry hot New York night. He was there for business, me for no reason whatsoever except for it’s New York and sometimes I just go and walk down the avenues lined with trees. It was a non-date, due to the fact that I was so religious and all.

I don’t know what that means, really, that I’m religious. I know that word means an organized system of worship, and I do love me some hymns. I have sat on church pews my entire life, and when it’s warm you’ll find me on my rocking chair on the front porch with coffee, letting God just wash right through me. And in the quiet after the day has closed, I talk to the one who created me, like a child to a father, who in my mind is still always creating. I have had deep moments of gratitude for the blessings I do not deserve, and feelings of great peace. Sometimes I offer random prayers for people like buckshot. Other times I just curl up tight and say nothing. Does that make me religious? I really hope not. The religious are all making us look like idiots...”

* This post by Jeanne Takenaka with Weary: The Cure For Weary...
“I need to be intentional about incorporating rest into my daily life.

It’s HARD. I want to run at my crazy pace and accomplish lots each day.

But sometimes, we accomplish more when we give our bodies, our spirits, our minds a rest.

When we come away with Jesus for awhile.

When we choose stillness over productivity? That’s when refreshment comes.

Saying no to one more thing can be the most productive thing we do.

Talking with the Lord about this, I’m seeing that His edict for a Sabbath was pretty smart (imagine that).

He knew when He created us that our bodies required downtime.

When I don’t give myself downtime, or enough sleep, or mind-breaks during the day, I end up weary.”  



* This post from Emily Freeman with An Invitation to Healthy Busy... 
"It’s not really the airplane Wi-Fi that bothers me. It’s that headline – stay productive. Smart marketing people write headlines with a lot of thought. They choose things they know will appeal to us, will cause us to take some kind of action.

The thing is, I don’t need an airplane pamphlet to remind me of it. That mantra whispers in my head all day, every day. Stay productive.

I’ve been fighting back, but it’s a more formidable enemy than I once assumed. Not productivity itself – good work is good work. But it’s the busy to hurry to sick cycle that I’ve grown weary of.

“Stay productive” is starting to sound less like an invitation and more like a threat – like they’ve written or else in invisible ink beneath it.

I’m learning the difference between busy and hurry and it seems like my fear of being unproductive comes when I can’t tell the difference between the two.

Jesus Himself was busy in his ministry. I read it about it just last week in Luke 8. He woke up to crowds wanting to hear him, to see him, to talk with him.

Walking through the throngs of people with his disciples, he was interrupted on his way, not once but twice – first by the synagogue official, Jairus, whose daughter was dying. And second by a sick woman who had been bleeding for 12 years straight.

He was busy.

But he was not in a hurry." 



* This one from right HERE with Rest Your Weary Heart - A Five Minute Friday Post...
"Oh man... Weary.  That's a good word, right there! Well - not necessarily 'good' - but definitely timely and spot on for this season.

We can feel just the hint of it around all of our edges, right?
...and this is before the holidays even start!

Last week at the conference I attended, it came as no surprise that someone felt led to pray for those who had been battling an UNUSUAL sense of being weary and worn out. This was a conference for church leaders - of which I shockingly find myself to be now, and no one was shocked at the number of people who stood up for prayer.

I mean, we are tired, y'all.

It starts in our head... our thoughts are non-stop and exhausting and before we know it - it's our hearts that are worn out thin.

When weariness sets in, there is this haze that settles over our vision. It clouds our ambition and drive and it whisper-lies that everything is too hard and that nothing is possible.  It tells us over and over and over again that we just can't (even.)"

Also, there is this:

The WINNER of the Dayspring Giveaway

for a copy of Every Little Thing by Deidra Riggs

and an Everlasting Light "Shine" Necklace is:

Dianne Thornton

Congratulations, Diane!  Please send your mailing address to dkaggett (at) gmail (dot) com, and Dayspring will ship your prize out to you!

Lastly, we close This Thing up with a video each week and sometimes it is funny and sometimes it is worship... This time, it's --well, hopefully, the LAST word on the whole Starbucks Red Cup 'ordeal'... (Enough already, right?)

Happy Weekend, my friends!