Words of faith

This speech was originally given at the Portsmouth United Methodist Church by me on June 25, 2011 as part of our church's Faith in Action series. I give a speech every month about practical ways you can share your faith with others. If you ever have a suggestion, please let me know in the comments!

As some of you may know, I have a fascination with words. I love to read, love to write and words are such a part of my being that it's difficult not to pay attention to a word when it jumps out at me. Earlier this year, I came across a website, MyOneWord.org. This website's goal is to encourage people to choose one word that the person will use to form their entire year around. The idea is that instead of a New Year's Resolution, you choose one word and use that word to change the world around you. Being a word-lover, this really appealed to me. And so I started searching for my own word. At first, I thought my word would be something fun like "Family" or something important like "Peace". Maybe even, being the mother of a newborn, "Sleep". But none of those words would stay with me. All this time, God kept pointing me toward another word: forgiveness. Now, I'll admit, I kept thinking "I really don't want that word! That's too hard. I want something fun, like KNIT! or PARTY!" So I sort of ignored Him and tried to find another word. A few weeks later, still word-less, I saw an announcement in the church bulletin for a Bible study group focused on, you guessed it, forgiveness and I said "All right, all right, I get it, that's my word!"

Now, I wasn't looking forward to owning this word. See, for me, and I'm sure many of you feel the same way, forgiveness isn't an easy word and it isn't a fun word, but I knew that it was the word He wanted me to have. So, for the past six months, I have been owning this word. You would be amazed how often a word comes up in your life once you pay attention to it. I find that it creeps into my world in little ways; in songs, in conversations, it's everywhere. Last week, my husband and I were having a tense night. The kids were tired and pushing buttons left and right and by the end of the night, I was grumbling at my husband and we close to not speaking. As I was walking upstairs to get ready for bed, my husband was sitting on the couch. As I passed by him, God said to me in this soft voice "How can you treat someone you love like this?" And there it was again, that word: forgiveness. I'll tell you I felt about two inches high for the rest of the night.

I can hear you thinking, what does this have to do with faith? To quote Matthew, 6:14, "For if you forgive men their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you. But if you do not forgive men their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses."

I learned quite a few things about forgiveness during that Bible Study. For me, the major theme was that it's very difficult to really extend forgiveness without having faith. When you're confronted with forgiveness, whether it's forgiveness you're extending or you're hoping someone will extend to you, faith allows you to understand the meaning of forgiveness. When we are the ones extending the forgiveness, our belief in the Lord gives us the capacity to understand how we have been forgiven and sometimes that understanding makes the forgiveness just a bit easier to extend. I won't say that forgiveness is easy; sometimes it's simpler to stay mad or in other cases to not ask for forgiveness. But in almost every case, if you are able to keep in mind what your faith has taught you, that you are already forgiven by a God who loves you and gave His only son for you, it is becomes possible to move toward forgiveness.

Faith in a box

This speech was originally given at the Portsmouth United Methodist Church by me on March 26, 2011 as part of our church's Faith in Action series. I give a speech every month about practical ways you can share your faith with others. If you ever have a suggestion, please let me know in the comments!

A few weeks ago my older sister, who lives in California posted a link on her Facebook page. My sister has been a professional belly dancer for over 10 years now.  The link she posted wasn't her usual information about upcoming dance classes or hand-made costumes for sale.  It was a collection of photos of a burned-out apartment.  The photos were striking.  Most of them looked as though they'd been shot in black and white due to the amount of smoke and soot damage the apartment sustained.  One of the most memorable photos, for me, was of a child's bedroom. The only recognizable thing in the photo was a charred changing table standing alone in the middle of the room. 


The woman who lived in the apartment was a friend of my sisters.  Actually, to say she was a friend is probably an understatement. I've never met the woman, but I know that she has had a profound impact on my sister's life.  She was a driving force behind my sister becoming a professional belly dancer and instructor and throughout the years, my sister has mentioned this dance teacher many times, always with reverence and awe.  She had influence in my sister's life far greater than I can imagine.  So seeing those photos and knowing that they had impacted my sister gave me pause.  But it was seeing that photo of that baby's changing table that brought tears to my eyes.

God was watching that family on the night of their fire.  I never heard the full details, but I know that everyone involved escaped physical harm.  From what I understand, the family was getting ready for a blessing, reading the Koran and smelled smoke or heard a fire alarm.  They got out in time, but subsequently lost practically everything.  Like me, she has a little boy and I couldn't imagine how difficult it must have been to see all her baby's belongings destroyed.  I thought about what it must be like to have to care for that baby while trying to rebuild a life around him.

So, I did the only thing I could think of to help: I sent a box of clothes to her.  
Now, just as an aside, I have to thank my lucky stars that I have the smart husband I do because otherwise I would have sent the boy a shirt with a fire truck on it.  That's probably not what the mother was in the mood to see.  Along with the clothing, I sent a short hand-written note telling her that my prayers would be with her and her family. 

When Pastor asked me to start a monthly series about ways to share your faith and speak to the congregation, I was nervous about accepting.  Pastor had no way of knowing, but a few days earlier I had been having one of those conversations with God where you ask Him what He wants you to do with your faith.  I always dread asking those sorts of questions because most of the time, He answers pretty quickly and sometimes it isn't what I want to hear.  But I knew that Pastor approaching me was part of the answer I'd been asking for and so I accepted whole-heartedly. Sharing your faith isn't always easy and it isn't always obvious.  It can be something as small as sending a box of clothes (without a fire-truck shirt) to a stranger who's lost everything.  Or it can be something bigger.  My hope is that over the next few months, I help you explore ways to share your own faith so that you can grow in God and perhaps help others to do the same.

Opening more doors, faithfully

This speech was originally given at the Portsmouth United Methodist Church by me on May 29, 2011 as part of our church's Faith in Action series. I give a speech every month about practical ways you can share your faith with others. If you ever have a suggestion, please let me know in the comments!


A few weeks ago I attended an event to listen to an author talk about his recent book.  During the question and answer period, someone asked the author how his faith had impacted his life thus far and I think that his answer really spoke volumes about the process of sharing faith.  He said, and excuse me for paraphrasing, that as you grow in your own faith, you transform from a person who is concerned with your own world to a person who is concerned with the world around you. If you follow the author's way of thinking, then the first step in the faith-sharing process is a personal one.  By examining your own faith, you start on the path from inward to outward-thinking and over time, I believe that this causes you to grow in faith.  I never thought about the progression of faith in that way before, but I think it's very true.  If I think about how my own faith has grown, I certainly see the parallel to what the author was talking about.  As I understood more about my faith in God and what it meant to follow His word, I inevitably changed my way of thinking.  I became a person who wanted to be more Christ-like, and when that happened, I found that I became a more outward-focused person in my actions as well as my thoughts.  That's what I want to talk about today.  

I whole-heartedly believe that God gave us His Word, He gave us the gift to read and hear and learn his Word to help us grow in faith.  Once you have that faith, that gift of belief, the only thing you CAN do is share it.  But how?  Although there are many ways of sharing your faith, it all starts with YOU.  See, when you allow yourself to grow in your own faith, it's almost impossible to keep it to yourself; you want to SHARE it. And that's the point, isn't it?  Sometimes the specifics of sharing faith are difficult.  People become afraid of evangelizing and pushing their beliefs on others and in that fear, they keep their faith to themselves.  I will say that for me, the easiest way to share my faith has to been to surround myself with God, to allow Him into all parts of my life whenever possible.  I frequently tell people I'm praying for them, and then I do.  I share with others what I'm doing here at our church.  I talk with my Christian friends and my non-Christian friends about what it means to have faith.  I talk and I talk and I talk.  But above all else, I listen.  You've heard me talk about how faith can open doors, and about how when you least expect it, God will make Himself known and shine His light into your world.  When you take the time to examine your own faith and allow yourself to grow in your belief, in your faith, you'll start to see opportunities that you didn't realize where there.  You will start to see those doors opening for you.

Sharing your faith, through doors and windows

This speech was originally given at the Portsmouth United Methodist Church by me on April 22, 2011 as part of our church's Faith in Action series. I give a speech every month about practical ways you can share your faith with others. If you ever have a suggestion, please let me know in the comments!

I learned this week of the Pascal Greeting tradition. I wondered out loud to my husband when the tradition fell out of favor, if it indeed had.  I haven't heard of it and don't think anyone has ever greeted me with "He is risen!" to which I should have replied "Truly, He is risen!"  This greeting is a wonderful reminder of the joy that Jesus brings and personally, it makes my heart sing to say it.  He is risen, he is risen indeed!

Today I wanted to talk to you about doors, specifically opening doors.  The process of sharing your faith is a lot like learning to open doors.  When you start to open those doors, you start on a path that leads you and others around you, to God.  But even getting that door open can seem like a daunting task sometimes.  I'm not always good at opening doors.  I tend to stay in my own little room, oblivious to those around me, to their joy, their pain, their questions. 

A few years ago, I found myself in a situation I never thought I would be in: sitting in a courthouse, waiting for my divorce attorney to meet me.  It was not a high-point in my life.  My world had been disrupted in a way I couldn't imagine and yet, here I sat in this cold, hard building with a bunch of strangers bustling about all probably feeling the same thing.  Maybe it's my heightened sense of literary drama, but it always seems to me you can feel the pain in those places.  Courthouses usually mean nothing but pain and anger and distrust. There are so many emotions on display, right out there, raw and uncensored.  Being the closed-door kind of person I am, that makes it all the more uncomfortable to me.  But, there I sat, by myself, watching so many dramas unfold and feeling utterly alone.  I had brought a book to read, knowing that I would probably have some time to kill, but I couldn't read it.  Nerves, anxiety, whatever it was, I couldn't concentrate so I just sat there. Close by, there was a women sitting on a bench, intently staring at an index card.  Now, as I said before, I'm a closed-door person; I have a very hard time talking to strangers (I think my parents were probably a little too successful with that whole stranger-danger lesson), but something moved in me to speak to this woman. So, I asked her what was on her card.  I can't remember if she read it aloud or just handed it to me, but this is what it said "Are not five sparrows sold for just 2 pennies?  And yet, not one of them is forgotten or uncared for in the presence of God.  But the very hairs of your head are all numbered... Do not be struck with fear or seized with alarm; you are of greater worth than many flocks of sparrows." 

That verse from Luke spoke to me.  In a time of my life where I felt alone, that I had made some terrible mistakes and had no worth in God's eyes, a stranger shared God's word with me, she shared her faith. She didn't know that some stranger was going to ask her about the card in her hand when she wrote it; she carried it for herself, for her own comfort.  But her faith came through on that card and in the end, she passed it onto me.  We talked for a while and I learned that she too, was in the middle of a terrible divorce.  She too was worried about the impact on her family, she too was worried about what people would think of her.  But that card, that verse from Luke, reminded her that we are never forgotten.  I never asked her name and I probably will never see her again in this life, but the gift of faith that she gave me that day won't ever leave me.  I cherish that card and it's message.

Sharing your faith is like opening a door.  And sometimes, a stranger will see that open door and walk through it.

Sharing your faith, one life at a time

This speech was originally given at the Portsmouth United Methodist Church by me on July 31, 2011 as part of our church's Faith in Action series. I give a speech every month about practical ways you can share your faith with others. If you ever have a suggestion, please let me know in the comments!

Do any of us really know what a hug is worth?  I'm not sure you can assign a monetary value to it, but have you ever thought about it?  What does it cost to give one?  What does it cost to receive just a hug?  I know it seems like a silly question, but if you ever find yourself wondering what it costs you or what one hug is worth, I'd like you to think of the story I'm about to tell you.

Before our son G was born, my husband Michael and I were pregnant with our first child.  After having been told that I would have a 1% chance of conceiving a child naturally, this baby was truly our little miracle.  Sadly, 10 weeks into our pregnancy, God called our baby home.  We never got to meet that child and as you can imagine, we were crushed by the loss.  At the time, Michael and I were living in separate cities, so we didn't have the ability to comfort each other and the only consolation to offer each other was through long-distance phone calls.  I can't tell you how many tears we cried to each other on the phone.  It was a terribly lonely time for both of us.  A few days after our baby had passed, I was in a local drug store.  I'm sure I looked a wreck after not having slept well for days, weeping an endless river of tears and barely able to speak without crying.  While in line to purchase whatever it was I was at the drugstore for, the cashier looked up from her register and gasped when she saw me.  She was a young woman, probably not older than 20 and although I had lived in the neighborhood for 10 years, I had never seen her there before.  I was at the point where I didn't care what I looked like or what a stranger thought of me.  I wanted nothing more than to get back to my house and drown in my tears.  Yet, this cashier, seeing me in this state, gasped and said "Oh, honey, are you ok?"  I looked up and couldn't say a word to her; it took all my strength just to nod my head.  Seeing the tears in my eyes, she came out from behind the counter and she said "Can I give you a hug?"  She wrapped her arms around me and the tears started again.  While she held me I sobbed, saying that we had just lost our baby.  She said "Oh dear Jesus.  Let me pray for you" and right there, in that line with probably ten other people looking on, she prayed to Jesus, asking him to take my pain away and to watch over our little one in heaven.

When asked the question "Do you share your faith with others?" most people have said to me that they try, but that it's uncomfortable or that they're afraid of being rejected. I can completely understand that.  It's not fun to be rejected and I'll admit that I worry about talking about my faith sometimes too. But what if you don't have to talk much at all?  What if the cost of sharing your faith is one hug?  Could you afford that?  That cashier's hug meant more to me than I can tell you.  Michael was 1,000 miles away from me and having someone physically console me and even more, to pray over me in my time of need truly made me feel like Jesus was by my side.  Even in that terrible time, in my grief, I knew that God had sent that stranger to give me one hug, to let me know that He was there.  One hug.  It really doesn't cost that much.