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February 14, 2013 by Tricia Goyer 2 Comments

The Romans Road

I first heard about the “Roman Road” when I was dating my then-boyfriend (but now-husband), John.

The Roman Road is a “path” of five Scripture verses through the book of Romans that you can use to explain the gift of salvation and lead someone to Christ.

Over the years, I’ve read Romans dozens and dozens of times, and each of my Bibles now highlights all the key verses. But then I decided to get prepared—really prepared.

I found the Roman Road, and I wrote the first verse, Romans 3:23, in the inside cover of my Bible. This verse was already underlined, but to make it easy to remember what was next, I wrote Romans 6:23 in the margin (right next to Romans 3:23). At Romans 6:23, I wrote Romans 5:8 in the margin. (Are you getting the picture?) At Romans 5:8, I wrote Romans 10:9-10. And at Romans 10:9-10, I drew an arrow down to Romans 10:13. How easy was that?

At Romans 10:13, I also wrote a summary of what all these passages mean. These are just a few words that will help me explain salvation to someone God will bring in my path.

So now I’m prepared. It seriously only took TWO minutes. But for someone that God leads into my life these verses could transform eternity!

So here is a summary of the verses, and a list of my key words I added to the margin of the last one. And, if I may be so bold, maybe you should prepare, too. What are you waiting for?

Romans 3:23

Romans 6:23

Romans 5:8

Romans 10:9-10

Romans 10:13

Key words:

—RECOGNIZE SIN

—REPENT

—ASK FOR GRACE

—TURN OVER YOUR LIFE

—LET JESUS BE LORD

*Photo credit: Image courtesy of Balaraman / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

January 30, 2013 by Tricia Goyer 8 Comments

My Story

When I was a young girl, I would dream of someday being a wife and mother. I would lie in bed at night and think of my future family. I wanted a big family. And a husband who loved me completely.

I would also lie there at night, thinking about the first time that I’d tell my future husband I was expecting. He would come home from a long day a work to a white house with green shutters. I’d have a candlelight dinner waiting. I even knew what I’d serve: baby back ribs, baby carrots and baby peas.

I would be glowing—not from the candlelight, but from the “joy of expectancy.” My husband would glance at me from across the table and cock one eyebrow. I would nod enthusiastically. We’d embrace, and then we’d head to J C Penny’s to pick out our first baby outfit! It would be perfect.

But what really happened, years later, was quite different. I was riding home from the doctor’s office with my mom. We were both silent. Tears stained her cheeks, and stained mine also. As we drove, I saw a familiar car heading in the other direction.

“There he is,” I said, pointing.

My mom turned the car around and we followed him to the McDonald’s parking lot. There was another girl in the car. I jumped out and motioned for him to join me. She looked the other way. He followed me toward the brown-topped, garbage can. This was the person who not long before had professed his love for me. Now his gaze was cold as ice. After dating for three years, things had not been going well lately. The girl in the car had something to do with that. But my own longings for “true, ever-lasting love” also made me unsatisfied.

“I’m pregnant,” I told him.

His expression didn’t change. “You’re lying. I don’t believe you.”

My hands protectively covered my stomach. “Fine, don’t believe me. I don’t want anything to do with you anyway. I don’t need you. This baby doesn’t need you.” That was one of the last times I talked to him.

I was seventeen. One day I was your typical high school senior. I was an honor student, a cheerleader, and a yearbook editor. I worked part time at McDonalds to pay for gas for my used Dodge Colt. The next day, I discovered I was a mother-to-be.

Read the rest of my story HERE!

*Photo credit: Image courtesy of maya picture / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

January 23, 2013 by Tricia Goyer 3 Comments

Be Encouraged Today

Are you discouraged today? Is your to-do list long enough to wrap around the state of Montana five times?

Do you feel slightly depressed that January is coming to a close and there is so much you hoped to accomplish, only have this year’s resolutions still clinging to your mind (just as that extra five pounds is clinging to your thighs)?

Hang in there. And know that God has a plan for you today. You are not behind. In fact, you are right on schedule. His schedule.

God has everything timed to the minute . . . no, wait, to the second. Just think how minutely planned things had to work out for baby Moses to be found within the bullrushes. Or for David to show up in order the slay Goliath. Your day—this moment—is not an accident.

I’m encouraging you has God has encouraged my heart this morning. This morning my spirit sings because the creator of the universe—THE CREATOR OF THE UNIVERSE—has planned this moment in history for me. This day is planned for my good and my growth.

And for yours.

*Photo credit: Image courtesy of Stuart Miles / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

January 21, 2013 by Tricia Goyer 3 Comments

Dreaming Big with God

I often ask the question, “If you could do anything and knew it would succeed, what would it be?” For many people something immediately comes to mind. But there are also many people who don’t know. They wonder all the time, what does God want from me?

I think one of the problems with the “dream big” idea is that we let our human minds measure what “big” is. We think it has to be fame or success or a ministry or a huge blog. But what is “big” to God? (I’ll come back to this in a minute.)

What we do need to remember is that God has gifted us all differently. My pastor, Dr. Mark DeYmaz, talked about this on Sunday. There are some people whom God uses to dream. Some people are to manage. And some people just want to do the daily task He’s given them . . . and there’s nothing wrong with that!

http://www.mosaicchurch.net/media-archives

State of the Church 2013 (Part 2) – Mark DeYmaz

I can’t remember Pastor Mark’s titles, but the divisions went something like this. In God’s body there are the:

Big Picture Dreamers
Managers
Workers

I’m a dreamer (as if you couldn’t guess that!), but my favorite people are those who can help me live out what I envision! When I started a pregnancy center—or now working with teen moms—I could not do what I do without those who come alongside me.

Sometimes the dream God gives you just may be to work alongside someone else. If you could connect with one ministry, what would that be? What could you do to support it? Why are you so passionate about it? What is God telling you concerning this ministry?

When you think about it, the “big” thing to God is obeying what He asks you to do. You could become famous, make it big, and become well-known—and it would amount to nothing. Or you can ask God what is BIG to him. You might be surprised.

In the world’s eyes my writing is the most important part, but as we just opened our home to two more kids through an adoption, there have been many moments during the day as I’m playing cars or have kids piled on my lap and I feel God saying, “This. This is exactly where you need to be right now.”

What bigger dream can you have than that? He sees the future. He knows whom those kids will become. He knows the transformation that happens in my heart as I serve them as a mom and servant. And His dream is for me to trust Him in the path He sets me on.

*Photo credit: Image courtesy of David Castillo Dominici / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

January 3, 2013 by Tricia Goyer 1 Comment

Take Time to Remember

For as long as I could remember, I collected memories. I have my second-grade report card, my junior high basketball schedule, my megaphone necklace from the cheerleading years, and the monogrammed napkin from my wedding. I collect small trinkets in shoeboxes, dresser drawers, and memory jars. In the 1970s and 1980s of my childhood, photographs meant having money for film and developing. Photos were only for special occasions, but trinkets could be slipped into one’s pocket and saved.

I wrote about collecting memories in my new novel, The Memory Jar, but I also realized that in addition to collecting trinkets I’ve also collected stories, prayers, and Scriptures. I’ve been journaling for twenty years. I have thoughts tucked inside spiral-bound notebooks, leather journals, and everything in between. I keep these journals in a few boxes under my bed, and I enjoy pulling them out. Many prayer requests fill their pages. I smile as I can see time and time again how God answered those prayers. Sometimes God didn’t answer like I expected . . .

Read the rest of this post I wrote over on Sherry Gore’s blog!

*Photo credit: Image courtesy of Suat Eman / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

December 22, 2012 by Tricia Goyer Leave a Comment

If You Only Do Two Things for Christmas, Pick These

There is a problem when my eighteen-year-old son has the cleanest room in the house. I’m not saying that because he’s a neat freak. I’m saying it because the rest of the house is a mess!

Even though I don’t forecast any snow storms here in Little Rock, the “to-dos and want-to-dos” have hit my home with blasts and dumps. The dining room table is stacked with presents that need to be wrapped and mailed to distant family members. The breakfast nook table is stacked with Christmas cards (because I’m sure my friends will not feel loved unless I send them my sentiments in a ninety-nine-cent greeting).

Whew. We’re more than halfway through December, and I’m ready to give myself a time out. Seriously. If there was a Naughty and Nice list, I’m finding myself trying too hard to be nice—to the determent of what this season is supposed to be about.

For a child is born to us, a son is given to us. The government will rest on his shoulders.

And he will be called: Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.

Isaiah 9:6

During these frantic holiday days I’ve already forgotten that the whole thing is supposed to be about the Prince of Peace. That title holds a lot of meaning.

Read the rest of this article on Allume, where it was originally posted.

December 21, 2012 by Tricia Goyer 1 Comment

He Gave Us Everything

What God wants from us is our everything,

and in exchange His gives us His everything.

For a child is born to us, a son is given to us. The government will rest on his shoulders.

And he will be called: Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God,

Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.

Isaiah 9:6

Behold, a virgin shall be with child, and shall bring forth a son, and they shall call his name Emmanuel, which being interpreted is, God with us.

Matthew 1:23 KJV

How has Jesus been your everything this year?

December 20, 2012 by Tricia Goyer 10 Comments

History Has a Way of Repeating Itself

Forty years ago a single, young woman was about to give birth. She didn’t know how she could afford a child without her parents’ help. She hadn’t talked to her former boyfriend in months. She had no idea how to reach him, how to tell him she was having his child.

This young woman attended church some, yet her dialogue with God was stilted. How could God let this happen to her? What would her life be like now?

A baby girl was born, and upon holding her child this young lady knew things would be okay. Perhaps this baby was a gift, not a burden as she supposed.

This woman raised her daughter the best she could, and while she wanted to give her child more than she had . . . history has a way of repeating itself. When the daughter became a young woman, she found herself in the same situation—living at home, pregnant and scared.

The daughter knew she could raise this child. After all, her mom had done it. But what would her life be like? How could God let this happen to her?

If you haven’t guessed already. I was the daughter born to a single mom and as a teenager became a single mom myself. At age 17, God gave me a son. My boyfriend was out of the picture, and I faced raising a child alone with little education, no money and, maybe according to the world, little hope for my future.

Now if you take this story at face value, I am nothing more than a statistic. According to government research, most daughters of young mothers will be teen mothers themselves. They face lives of hardship, living on welfare for the most part — becoming a burden rather than an asset to society.

Yet, I am not a statistic. Why? Because God doesn’t do them.

As a 17-year-old pregnant teenager I prayed a simple prayer, “God, I have messed up my life big time. If you can do anything with it, please do.” I dedicated my life and my heart to him and things changed. I had hope in my heart and I started walking God’s way. God brought an amazing, Christian man into my life. John was a wonderful husband and a father to my son. When had a daughter and another one on the way, God did something else unexpected. He gave me the desire to write books.

My friend Cindy and I heard about the Mt. Hermon Christian Writer’s Conference, and I saved my money for a year to go. I attended as a 22-year-old young woman pregnant with my third baby. If anyone was unlikely to become a Christian writer that was me. Yet God had different plans. I started writing small. I got a lot of rejections, but soon more articles found their ways into magazines, and eventually books onto store shelves. More than that, I have a weekly support group for young moms, telling them that God has good plans for them. Plans to give them a hope in their future. Hope in God.

This year my heart is filled with Thanksgiving. I’m thankful for my mother who chose life for me. I’m thankful that when I questioned my future, God gave me hope.

I’m also thankful because the story doesn’t stop there. Two years ago a young woman chose our family to adopt her daughter when she faced a crisis pregnancy. As we find joy in raising this little girl, it’s another reminder that every life is a gift—and God can use our brokenness just as He can use our talents.

History has a way of repeating itself in families, but even more important that our history of mess-ups is God’s history of setting things right.

God has a history of seeing something no one else does . . . like seeing a king in a shepherd boy named David, seeing an apostle in a young zealot named Paul, and seeing a mighty warrior in a frightened nobody named Gideon. God’s X-ray eyes see right through any outward characteristics or national statistics. His X-ray eyes scan down to the heart.

Where have you felt you’ve fallen short of God’s perfect plan? Trust that God’s dream is to turn a mess-up into a miracle.

He’s a BIG God with BIG dreams.

A God who has made an agreement with us that is eternal, final, and sealed.

A God who is strong in our weakness.

A God who sees the future, sees the past and has a perfect plan for me . . . and for you.

It’s something we can all be thankful for.

*Photo credit: Image courtesy of Simon Howden / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

December 17, 2012 by Tricia Goyer 3 Comments

God Gave Me the Gift of Women With a Similar Shape (and Sprinkles of Beauty, Too!)

I love Christmas gifts, but this year the greatest *new* gifts I received were given to me a few months before Christmas. For me 2012 was a year of connecting my heart with hundreds of other women with the same passion(s) as me: loving God, writing, and being a wife/mom.

I thought I was unique, but being around a group of amazing women at the Allume Conference, I turned to a friend and said, “I think I found my people.” When God formed me with His hands, He must have liked the cookie cutter He used . . . because I’ve met 100+ amazing women this year who appear to me to have a similar shape. And it impacted me greatly. It’s still impacting me greatly.

Here is my journal entry that I wrote on the return flight from the Allume conference:

I’m coming back from Allume spiritually charged. Why? Was it the speakers? Well, the keynotes and session talks that I attended were great, but that’s not the reason. It was the women. Heart-full-of-love women who have ministry hearts. Who believe they can make a difference. Who aren’t wrapped up in the publication process (not mostly) but who speak truth and encouragement to hearts on a daily basis.

These women are kindred spirits with Hudson Taylor, George Mueller and Amy Carmichael. Who want to share Jesus and help people . . . but they’re not packing up their bags and heading to Africa to do it. (Well, not always.) They’re sitting at home, pouring a cup of coffee, and then pouring out their hearts into blogs while their children play in the yard or tumble on the crumb-covered couch. (At least mine is crumb-covered.) A missionary heart is not hindered by ten loads of laundry, piano lessons, and a bad hair day.

These blogger mamas are concerned, too, about how the sacrifice for the call will affect their families. (Just like any missionary should be.) They’re concerned that their online ministry will ruin their kids. Concern is a good thing. It is evidence of their care. Concern turns them to God. Concern leads to prayer, which is exactly where they should be—on their knees.

But they should not be concerned about being a missionary mama. What better example can they provide for their kids? None. The missionary’s role is to share Jesus and truth with whomever God puts in their path. For missionary-blogger-mamas this starts with their kids.

Thank you, Jesus, for these kids—our kids. They are our first love and our first disciples. I also pray for for missionary-blogger-mamas, who give themselves for the glory of God. As they spread your Word, we trust that it will not return void and that both distant readers and close relatives will be touched, inspired, and forever changed.

And if you are a missionary-blogger-mama (like icing on a gingerbread man) here is God’s stamp of approval for you.

God says: “ You are beautiful, talented, highly favored, unique, planned, desired, known, loved, seen … MINE.”

December 14, 2012 by Tricia Goyer 4 Comments

When My Plans are Rewritten

Life wasn’t supposed to be like this.

At age fifteen I planned on going to college to be a school teacher. I planned on living in the same small California town I grew up in. After having Cory, getting married, and having more kids, I planned on settling down in the (somewhat) larger California town that we lived in. John would get a good job. We’d buy a nice house. I’d homeschool and write articles on the side . . . and maybe someday write a book. But nothing went as planned.

We felt God’s stirring to move to Montana. We moved, and God pointed me to stories that would be impossible to write in my own strength. The church He directed us to wasn’t one I’d pick (at first). The friendships He orchestrated took me out of my comfort zone. And getting involved in started a pregnancy center . . . that wasn’t in the plan at all.

At least we found a place to settle down for good. At least we had a nice house. Our house. We had our best friends close, a church we loved (after we realized we weren’t there to be served but to serve), ministries we believed in and enjoyed, money to meet all our needs. The plan then was for our children to finish school, get married, live close, and give us lots of grandkids I could spend time with. Then the plan changed. God made His plan known, which included moving to Little Rock, Arkansas. You’d think I’d get used to my plans being changed. I wasn’t.

My plan for our lives in this new city 2,000 miles away was to replace all we left behind, yet once God moves you out of your comfort zone, finding an “easy fit” doesn’t become an option any more. Even as I write this, my heart aches. It knows what it wants. “Let’s just make a plan. Let’s buy a house and unpack our things. Let’s get organized, set a schedule, and build a routine.” It’s the plan I think about every day. It’s the one I want most.

You’d think I’d learn by now not to focus too much on my plan. My plan is to make myself—my family—comfortable. God’s plan has always been to move me closer to the people who need help and hope. Closer to the issues that break His heart.

If I think about it, deep down—from a young age—I’ve had another plan, too: to make a difference in his world. Making a difference can only happen when I allow God’s plans to be worked out in my feeble body . . . as I take unsure steps. I look to God more and in turn depend on Him more. It reminds me of the verse I read this morning:

“God is good, a hiding place in tough times. He recognizes and welcomes anyone looking for help, no matter how desperate the trouble. But cozy islands of escape He wipes right off the map.” Nahum 1:7-8 The Message

It seems those cozy islands of escape have always been part of my plan. A nice house, a good family, friends and a church close by, work that’s fun and impacting (but not too challenging). Teaching Sunday school to three-year-olds is the type of ministry that’s right up my alley. I can do that with little effort and lots of rewards. But in the way God works, He’s led me to people, situations and even book projects that don’t come with an easy-to-follow curriculum guide. Instead of two pages of ideas and instructions, He’s the One I have to look to for help, strength and advice.

What it all comes down to is God putting me—and my family—in places where we must look to Him for help. That’s been His plan all along. That’s the only good plan for sinners in need of grace and servant-children who desire to be transformed into the image of His Son.

And should I really complain? God’s plan pulls me closer to the heart of the Creator of the universe who loves me completely and desires to give me a hope and a future. There can’t be any plan better than that. There isn’t any plan better. I just need to remind myself of that the next time my house, my work, and my life shout out, “We need to get a sense of order here!” Life will never be cozy, at peace, and organized when following Jesus is the most important thing. But the more I lean in, the more I discover that depending on Him is a good, good place to be.
*Photo credit: Image courtesy of David Castillo Dominici / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

November 29, 2012 by Tricia Goyer Leave a Comment

A Tambourine In Hand

Blogging for me today is my friend Beth Guckenberger. I’ll be chatting with her on Living Inspired later today! The full details are here, and I hope you’ll tune in!

“He is before all things and in Him, all things hold together.” Colossians 1:17

It was fifteen years ago this spring that we started to share with a few friends and family our whispercalling to move to Mexico. It was met with mixed reactions; some thought we were shortsighted or ill-equipped (they were right), some wondered why we didn’t have language training or Bible school (which all would have been helpful), but here’s what I know now. It wasn’t dependent on us. He had been working with orphans in Monterrey long before he invited us into that storyline, and it was always Him—not our plan, skills, gifts, resources, passion, or ideas—that held it all together. We can read in His book about hundreds of other ill-equipped characters . . . prophets who couldn’t speak clearly, kings who were mere boys, women with sordid pasts. He knew that they were the most likely to ask for help, to reach out because they knew they couldn’t do it alone.

He has gone before us, not just once, but every day and in every relationship and any holding it together we experience or eyewitness is done by Him.

I have been thinking this last year about Miriam, a Jewish woman whose story we can read in Exodus. She was a slave whose mother was a slave, whose mother was a slave, and so on. . . . She had no reason to believe anything different was ahead. And yet . . . after Moses’ famous confrontation with Pharaoh (“Let my people go!”) and plagues that would we can hardly imagine, Pharaoh, that evil captor, finally relented. Imagine how a message of that magnitude got out, in a world without texting or the Internet, or any way of mass communicating?

“We are free, we can go!”

It must have just looked like chaos, people running through the streets, shouting door to door. Somehow, Miriam heard that message and took off with her people to a place she couldn’t imagine, to a land she had never seen. She had no idea, couldn’t have fathomed yet how they were going to get through the enormous sea that separated her from the freedom they were hoping to taste. On her way out of the only dwelling she had ever known, what did she grab for this journey? If it had been me, I might have considered an extra pair of shoes, a family document, a kilo of flour, I don’t know.

How does one prepare for God-journey you can’t picture?

Miriam follows her people across the dry land of the split sea and when she arrives on the other side, Exodus 15:20 says, “And then Miriam, the prophetess, taking out her tambourine, leads the people in song. . . .”

What? A tambourine?

She thought to pack up a musical instrument in her rush to leave slavery? Why would she do that? Because she knew what I am desperate to believe, that in the midst of chaos, precisely in the center of a storyline I don’t understand, I can not only trust He has gone before me, I need to be prepared in a moment’s notice to praise Him when He holds it all together.

This year, we hold a tambourine in hand. We long to praise Him for our own stories of split seas and gifts of freedom. I want a frontrow seat to God’s goodness, his movement. I don’t want to watch my show anymore!

He writes far better stories.
*Tambourine photo credit: By frenciscobcn (Own work) [CC-BY-SA-1.0], via Wikimedia Commons

~~~

Beth and her husband, Todd, live with their family in Monterrey, Mexico where they serve with Back2Back Ministries, an international orphan care ministry headquartered in Cincinnati, Ohio . They both graduated from Indiana University with degrees in education and between biological, foster, and adopted, are raising nine children. Currently the ministry has operations on three different continents (Mexico, India, and Nigeria). The Guckenberger’s have lived in Monterrey since 1997 and in that time have hosted thousands of guests on the ministry campus.

Beth is the author of Reckless Faith (Zondervan, 2008),Relentless Hope (Standard Publishing, 2010), and Tales of the Not Forgotten (Standard Publishing, 2012). She travels and speaks regularly at women’s and missions conferences, youth gatherings and church services. Her topics include, but are not limited to, orphan care, missions, parenting, marriage/intimacy, and general faith. Her style is story-telling and she draws from her field experience as a missionary and parent of nine children for illustrations to biblical concepts.

Here is a link to her book “Tales of the Not Forgotten.”