everything He gives

Hello, 2015!

January 1, 2015January 1, 2015 MarthaKimball3 Comments

Welcome to a new year, folks! How have you been spending New Years Day? After almost rushing to the ER this morning with a rambunctious boy that seemed to have a possible broken arm, it’s been an otherwise usual Thursday. No time off around here. I’ve been begrudgingly taking down Christmas from around the house, while listening to more Christmas music. That’s ok, right??

Meanwhile my little ones have been doing this sort of stuff:

It was a late and exhausting night for my husband and I both last night and there was No. WAY. we were staying up till midnight voluntarily. I mean, when you have a newborn… WHO DOES THAT?! Who volunteers for less sleep? Not us.

We tucked the kids in bed at usual bedtime, made chocolate chip cookies, snuggled by the fire and watched “Life Below Zero,” our latest hulu addiction. I awoke startled to a ruckus at 12:03 am, realized it was fireworks, rolled over and said “Happy New Year, babe” to Brandon, and back to sleep I went. So that was that.

I fully intend to spend a chunk of time, when I have one (a girl can dream, right?) journaling about this past year and looking forward to what I sense God is up to in 2015. Some goal setting will happen then. I have already had quite a few goals rumbling around in my heart but I need to sift through and see what is reasonable to pursue this year, and what is just going to make me feel like a big fat failure.

For the past number of years I have asked God to give me a word for the year, a focus for He and I. Last year (2014.. last year? that feels weird to say already) was the “feast of grace” year. I feel like for the past year or two God has been taking me back to the very basics of our faith.. the Gospel. Grace. And as I’ve been trying to listen to the Lord in the busy work of this season, bustling around, asking Him for a word for this year, all I can think is: JESUS. I just want Jesus. I want to know Him better. I want to adore Him more. I want to see His glory every day. I want Him in the worst way. Desperate for Him.

Motherhood has a way of paring you down, paring life down to the essentials. The basics. The absolute necessities.

Motherhood has a way of making you desperate for Jesus. Maybe I’m the only one.

I don’t know if that’s my “word” yet, I’m still sitting on it and laying it before the Lord. But I can tell you that I will be placing myself deeply in the Word with renewed efforts this year. The first number of weeks with a newborn interrupt our routines in the best of ways, but my soul has been starving for deep and prolonged time in God’s Word. I’ve been carving time out for that this past week and already the soul-numbness and apathy that creeps in when I neglect time in God’s Word is being replaced with sweet hunger.

A friend wrote me today asking about some ideas/ways to stay in God’s Word right now, and it made me think. I want to share these simple ideas + tools with any one else out there like me who is hungry for more of Jesus in 2015.

1. Timothy Willard recently published a book called Longing for More (which I am actually reviewing on the blog sometime this week hopefully).

This would be a wonderful tool, with daily readings for the entire year, organized around the seasons and rhythms of daily life. More on this book to come in the next few days, but for now, I recommend it to you as a devotional-type read with scriptures, prayers and meditations.

2. I’ve recently begun following along with the lovely “She Reads Truth” community during the Advent season. They are starting a study of the Gospel of John as of today and you can follow along for free on their blog here or through their app!

If you’re looking for an online community of women who want to be in the Word and are looking for kinship and accountability in it, this is a great resource! I plan to follow along as I can. If you want to dig deeper into John, they also offer an optional/additional study pack here.

3. The best years are the years when I’m committed to a year of Scripture memory. Anyone else? It’s hard to commit at the outset of the year, but those are the years when I have drawn the closest to the Lord and seen the greatest fruit. I’m nervous, as usual, to commit this year with all that I’m juggling, but if I don’t have time to meditate on God’s Word, some other things are going to have to be eliminated.

I have journeyed with Beth Moore’s blog community (called “Siesta Scripture Memory Team”) every year since she began it (she usually offers it every other year). It is a very doable amount of memorization, two verses a month, on the 1st and 15th of the month. Beth posts the verse she is memorizing on the 1st and 15th of each month, and you go and post your own or borrow hers if you need inspiration. She shares a whole lot more about it on her blog, and the very first post is up today!

Of course, there are a lot of lovely bible studies available out there as well!

What are you doing to keep in the Word this 2015? I’d love to hear what you’re studying or what resources you may have to share! Let’s encourage one another in this great and beautiful pursuit of Jesus.

Remember the War

December 31, 2014 MarthaKimball2 Comments

One of the books that kept company with me during the Advent season was Piper’s “Good News of Great Joy.” It was a sweet guide prompting me to see and to savor Jesus’ glory specifically in His incarnation. Piper is clear that observing the Advent season + traditions is not a biblical mandate but is simply a tool for meditating on the wonders of the incarnation, God coming to earth in human form, and thereby increasing our worship and enjoyment of Jesus.

I loved how Piper argued for the benefit of observing Advent, even though it is not required, at the outset of his book, and finished it with an exhortation not to worship the tradition of Advent itself. He reminds that keeping a tradition such as Advent is a religious ritual that was meant to be a shadow pointing us to the substance. It serves a purpose but ultimately we must set our gaze not on the religious ritual itself, but on the person of Jesus. See, we are creatures who are bent toward worship, and easily we begin to worship the means of worship, the traditions themselves, instead of the Object.

I love the sharp, quiet, and simple exhortation at the end of Piper’s Advent readings:

“Religious ritual is like a shadow of a great and glorious Person. Let us turn from the shadow and look the Person in the face (2 Corinthians 4:6). My little children, keep yourselves from (religious) idols (1 John 5:21).”

* * * * *

There is a war of feelings in me as we close the year, the end of a beautiful and hard year. As I look at Christmas decorations and begin to tuck them away; as we find our souls missing the habit of Advent readings and longings. As December closes, I find my soul weary from the constant beckoning of materialism and the endless marketing campaigns to “buy more” and “not to miss this sale.” My soul is weary from the shallow, empty promises this world gives to satisfy.

I love this quote a fellow blogger shared earlier this week:

“I am wired by nature to love the same toys that the world loves. I start to fit in. I start to love what others love. I start to call earth ‘home.’ Before you know it, I am calling luxuries ‘needs’ and using my money just the way unbelievers do. I begin to forget the war. I don’t think much about people perishing. Missions and unreached people drop out of my mind. I stop dreaming about the triumphs of grace. I sink into a secular mindset that looks first to what man can do, not what God can do. It is a terrible sickness. And I thank God for those who have forced me again and again toward a wartime mindset.”

{Piper, Don’t Waste Your Life}

As we turn toward January, toward a New Year, our hearts are full of resolutions and goals, hopes and dreams. Let us engage in the work of examination, looking for ways we have grown addicted to the world and to our own flesh, and for ways we can forsake these sins and grow in holiness as blood-bought children of God. Let’s remember the war we are in, and armor up for it once again.

Every Bitter Thing is Sweet

December 30, 2014January 2, 2015 MarthaKimballLeave a comment

The book drew me, beckoned to me, really, from the bookshelves at Barnes + Noble. I was looking for a gift for my sister, and it wasn’t what I was searching for. But something about it spoke to me. Maybe because the title and theme speaks to something I continue to struggle with and seem to learn over and over again with God: Every Bitter Thing is Sweet.

How can every bitter thing be sweet? Truly, can we say every bitter thing? Can we really taste the goodness of God in our darkest of days and trials? Will God hold up under the weight of that, under the weight of our darkest questions and scrutiny?

Sara Hagerty is familiar with bitter trial and circumstance. In this precious book, she explains some of her story, her struggles in early marriage, her struggles for many years with infertility. Her struggle with a God who spoke to her and gave her a vision of a child toddling across her bedspread, and then closed her womb to this possiblity. The struggles through multiple foreign adoptions and the seemingly endless setbacks and disappointments. And all the way, she traces the glory of God shining brilliant in these darkest moments.

In her book she reveals how God took her, a child who believed in a God whose love was best displayed in blessing, and transformed her into a desperately hungry soul. She writes her story of encountering a God who cares to carve out spaces in the soul, empty, hungering spaces that He can fill.

“A satisfied soul loathes the honeycomb,
But to a hungry soul every bitter thing is sweet.”
{Proverbs 27:7}

What if our places of discontent and brokenheartedness, what if we discovered that these places are the very holy + sacred ground of God’s deepest riches, the “treasure of darkness” that Isaiah 45:3 talks about?

Here’s a little excerpt from the first chapter:

“The Bible resting on my chair showed wear–how could it not? My friend, my best friend in this hour, was the Author. The book I’d once used to plan youth ministry talks, the book I’d once used to quote pithy sayings and to confirm opinions I’d already formed, that book had found its way into my deep.

The God behind it was proving Himself to be fundamentally different than what I’d supposed for at least a decade, maybe more. But I was finding Him. In the places I had feared most and spent a lifetime avoiding, He was meeting me. My worst, my very worst moments were getting rewritten without circumstances changing. I was getting acquainted with the kind of deep satisfaction that bad news can’t shake. He was showing me Himself as strong enough. He was letting me hide in Him, letting me find a safe place.

And so I cradled my midnight questions while mamas cradled their babies, and I let God’s psalms tell me He cradled the answer in Himself. I felt forgotten, but I heard God speak that He had not left me. I felt weak, but I heard Him promise an overshadowing. I felt anxious that my constant fumblings would annoy Him, but I heard Him say He delighted in me.

And I felt hungry.

I wasn’t this hungry when God was a distant coach, forcing me to perform.
I wasn’t this hungry when I had a life easily explained, easily predicted.
I wasn’t this hungry when everyone understood me.

Pain had created space. Space to want more. Space to taste a sense of being alive. An alive that would grow to be my favorite kind of alive: secret, hidden to all eyes but mine and those nearest to me.

This had to be the hope of a lifetime, Him and Him alone.”

If you’ve ever wondered about this God, this mysterious God who both gives and takes away, and how anyone can love a God who gives the strange gifts of hardship and hunger at times, you would be helped to read Sara’s story.

If you’ve ever battled fiercely with hard circumstances and painful seasons and have wondered how to make sense of it all, you would be helped to read Sara’s story.

Essentially, if you’ve ever lived the human experience, you would find sweet company in Sara’s poetic prose.

Triumphant, encouraging, beautifully crafted. Sara Hagerty not only shares with you her journey to a deeper hunger for God, she stirs up your own hunger, too. I highly recommend it!

* * * * *

Book Look Bloggers sent me a complimentary copy of this book in exchange for my honest review. I am not required to give a favorable review and the opinions expressed are my own.

And She’s Four!!

December 23, 2014December 23, 2014 MarthaKimballLeave a comment

My darling little girl
Look at you here, four weeks old:

We had no idea the joy in store for us when we would hold you for the first time, when God would deliver you to us. How wise He was, how kind He was, to give us you, sweet girl. What a bright light you’ve been in our lives. So full of joy, so hilarious and so dang smart and so strong-willed! We pray that God gets a hold of your strong will and uses it mightily for His glory, as you have such strength to offer already, in your tiny little precious heart. You tell me all the time that you love God and that He lives in your heart. I hope you know how precious that is to your mommy, who wants so much for you to receive the very best in this life, and the very best you can receive is JESUS. He will make all the good things come true and all the bad things come untrue, as we read so frequently in your little story bible.

This year with you has been a blast. You’ve been the biggest joy and help to momma during my pregnancy with your little sister, and what a happy big sister you are! It makes me so happy to see the way you adore your little siblings and take such care with them. You’ve fallen in love with all things girly and fancy, and I don’t know a single other little girl who is fancier than you right now, other than fancy Nancy herself! You change outfits approximately 17 times a day, which can sure make me crazy sometimes, but when I stop and just take it in I have to laugh at your creativity and zest. I’m so glad that you see being a woman, womanhood, and being a momma as something precious and to be treasured and enjoyed, and I hope that doesn’t change! I love your imagination and your excitement over the smallest and simplest things in life. I love our snuggles in the morning when you run down the hall to find me on the couch with coffee. I love dancing with you and twirling you. I love your love for books (may it never end!) and that we can share in the fun of losing ourselves in a big stack of library books.

You are so special to me. Even when you are crazy and naughty, which is inevitable given the two parents you came from, I adore you. I’ll never stop loving you, no matter what, with an always and forever, never stoping, never giving up, unbreakable love. That’s what it’s like to be a momma.

Happy 4th birthday my little mupsel.
Love,
Mommy

He’s Two!

December 19, 2014December 20, 2014 MarthaKimball2 Comments

My sweet little man

How are you two already?? This year with you has been the MOST fun. You learned to walk this year. You said your first words, now your first sentences. You’ve begun to reveal more of your little character, your sweet personality. What a thing it is to have a little man-child.. a little dude who notices every truck, motorcycle, or digger. You’ve begun to be captured by books this year. You love being outside and you’re so brave at the park, trying things all by yourself. You had your first big move to a new house. You discovered swimming and riding “kykles” this year. You love helping momma in the kitchen whenever you can (“get the tool (stool) momma?”). You live to pull all the pillows off the couch and play “jumpey-jump.” Anytime I say, “It’s so scary, Noah!” you say “s-okay momma!” If you hear baby girl crying, you run to kiss her and tell her it’s okay. You became a big brother this year! And you’re such a good big brother, so careful and tender with your little sis. You’re still trying to figure out which parts on your body are your ears and which are your eyes. Every night when we pray, you tell us you’re thankful for Jesus and your favorite songs to sing are “Jesus” (Jesus loves me) and “Zacchaeus.”

You’re growing so fast and so big and you’re such a happy little guy. Momma and Daddy love you so much and we are so very proud of you.

Happy 2nd birthday Noey

Love
Mommie

Lately

December 10, 2014 MarthaKimball2 Comments

So, life has been a little busy lately.

We are all sorts of tired over here, back in the midst of the beautiful crazy that a newborn brings. The holiday season is upon us, and two of my favorite little people have birthdays coming up the week of Christmas, too. It’s the best (and busiest) time of year!

We’ve been doing lots and lots of this lately:

This time around, I know how quickly that little newborn will morph into a toddler. How soon her little baby fuzz will fall off and these sleepy days will become wakeful (and more rest-less). I’m being more intentional this time around to just spend time holding and savoring this little one while she’s this little.

A few days after our littlest was born, Thanksgiving was upon us. Though we really probably shouldn’t have been out with her yet, we couldn’t resist the Thanksgiving feast with our sweet family nearby. (I told Brandon later, I truly don’t know anyone who cooks as well as my parents do. We often are treated to dinner at their house, and it is hands down better than any restaurant I’ve ever been to!)

One of our favorite Christmas traditions is finding a little local Christmas tree farm and chopping down our own tree (see last year’s endeavor here). Since I was just days out of the hospital, we didn’t feel like we could risk traipsing around with a newborn in December looking for a tree so we went to our favorite nursery nearby to pick it out. It was still fun! It is what you make it, right? 🙂

(the kids decorated their own tiny tree for their room)

It gets more and more fun every year to celebrate the Christmas season, building memories and our own little traditions and seeing these little ones come alive to the wonder of the season. It truly is the most wonderful time of the year!

I’d love to hear your favorite traditions and memories surrounding Christmas! Hope your holiday season is full with all the fun things that draw families together and make for a warm home, and full of what draws our hearts to Christ and to remember the beauty of His incarnation.

Look + Live

December 5, 2014 MarthaKimball2 Comments

“The love of God and the love of the world, are two affections, not merely in a state of rivalship, but in a state of enmity—and that so irreconcilable, that they cannot dwell together in the same bosom. We have already affirmed how impossible it were for the heart, by any innate elasticity of its own, to cast the world away from it, and thus reduce itself to a wilderness. The heart is not so constituted; and the only way to dispossess it of an old affection, is by the expulsive power of a new one.”

{Thomas Chalmers}

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This book is about glory. About the glory of God that we must fight daily to see, in order to live. We were made to behold His glory, to fix our eyes on His incomparable beauty, and a vision of anything less will rot our soul. Papa’s profound book has forever changed the word “glory” for me and it made my heart sing.

I was drawn to this book immediately simply based on the subtitle: Behold the Soul-thrilling, Sin-destroying Glory of Christ. Anyone who has struggled with “besetting sins” finds a breath of relief and hope in such words. I was not familiar with Matt Papa before reading this book, but immediately found kinship with him in the earliest pages of his book. In his acknowledgments, he gives credit to some of the great thinkers and communicators of our faith (Jonathan Edwards, John Piper, Tim Keller, J.D. Greear), claiming that his book owes its very existence to their teaching and influence. His book continues to quote heavily from great theologians and minds such as G. K. Chesterton, A. W. Tozer, C. S. Lewis, and Blaise Pascal. His writing is thus deeply rooted in solid biblical theology, and at the same time is delightful and fresh read.

In Look and Live, Papa, a worship leader + minister, calls us back to true worship. He reminds that we are all expert worshippers, created to worship and craving objects of worship. It is our sinful bent away from God that causes us to worship lesser things. This craving to worship combined with our fallen sinful nature leads us to addiction to these lesser gods. How do we then live? How do we then worship rightly?

Look and live, Papa says. He recalls the passage in Numbers 21 where God’s people, newly rescued from the bonds of slavery in Egypt and now wandering in the desert, became indignant against God, ungrateful for His provision of mere manna for their food. God disciplined them by sending poisonous snakes into the camp. The people immediately returned to God, pleading for relief and healing. God’s response was to instruct Moses to make a fiery serpent on a standard (a snake on a pole) and whoever was bitten by a snake must look at it, and he would live. Christ later offered the ultimate insight into this passage when He said,

“As Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of Man be lifted up; so that whoever believes in Him will have eternal life” (John 3:14-15).

As Matt Papa says:

“God, the Father and Master-Teacher, orchestrated that moment in history–a true historical parable–to show us what the cross is about and what faith is like.

Faith is a looking.

It is the serious looking of sin-stricken, snake-bitten people toward God’s peculiar and radical display of mercy…the crucified, bloody, exalted Son of God…

To live is to behold Him…

My call is not ‘Look and get a better life’ or ‘Look and get a warm fuzzy.’

From one who bears the fang-shaped scar, my call to you is: Behold the anti-venom of the soul: the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ. Look and live.” (p. 16-17)

Papa shows how God’s call to us in scripture is not primarily “Behave!” but “Behold!” As he says, “Christianity is the hard, joyful journey of beholding Jesus by faith until the day you behold Him by sight.” The rest of his book continues to unpack and reveal the centrality of 2 Corinthians 3:18:

“But we all, with unveiled face, beholding in a mirror the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory, just as from the Lord, the Spirit.”

Papa goes on to prove that we can only burn as we behold Him, and that our “true worship begins with gospel and ends in the mission. It is a rhythm of revelation and response: beholding the wondrous mystery and declaring that mystery to others” (p.11). And so we see how truly gazing on the glory of God sets our souls ablaze, culminating in the proclamation of that glory to hungering souls.

Matt Papa’s way with words is that of an artist. Not only does he write sound biblical, depthy, soul-reviving words, but his construction and development often erupts into the lyrical. (He wrote an accompanying worship album also entitled “Look and Live.”) Prose breaks forth into praise, into pure poetry. Highly readable and enjoyable while being profound. I found myself underlining and exalting over every page. It will be a book I will return to again and again, basic and essential to the Christian faith. Real help and healing for the weary and sin-sick soul.

* * * * *

Bethany House Publishers sent me a complimentary copy of this book in exchange for my honest review. I am not required to write a favorable review, and the opinions expressed are my own.

Welcome, Baby

December 2, 2014 MarthaKimballLeave a comment

The blog’s been quiet lately, but our home has been busy! This little one finally arrived on November 22nd and we’ve been busy loving on and snuggling her ever since:

She was about a week late, so we are especially overjoyed to finally have her in our arms. Big brother and sister are thrilled to meet her after waiting so long to get their hands on her.

Newborns are just the best, eh? The snuggles and sweet smells and first smiles sure do make up for the sleepless nights and nursing woes.

Welcome, sweet girl! We’re so glad you’re here, and we all A D O R E you so much. You’re the perfect addition to our little family.

The Way to End Idolatry: Look Through

November 10, 2014November 10, 2014 MarthaKimball2 Comments

“This is how our souls climb out of their weariness toward You and cease to lean on those things which You have created. We pass through them to You, Lord God, who created them in a marvelous way.”

Augustine

“The enjoyment of God is the only happiness with which our souls can be satisfied. To go to heaven, fully to enjoy God, is infinitely better than the most pleasant accommodations here. Fathers and mothers, husbands, wives, or children, or the company of earthly friends, are but shadows; but God is the substance. These are but scattered beams, but God is the sun. These are but streams. But God is the ocean.”

Jonathan Edwards

“Christianity is not religious escapism, nor is it overindulgent secularism. It is not escapism — we do not run from the world, for God has given us all things for our enjoyment (1 Tim. 4:4). The creation is ‘scattered beams’ — God’s artwork, full of glory and dignity.

But Christianity is also not secularism — we do not run to the world. We don’t feast upon the world for its own sake, because these are just ‘scattered beams.’ They are not the sun, and thereby are unable to bear the full weight of our worship and interest.

To be a Christian means we don’t look from the world, and we don’t look to the world. To be a Christian means we look through the world. Idolatry looks at the world in amazement. Worship, true worship, looks through it in amazement. To its source. To the One who is infinitely more amazing. More interesting. These things God has made — these shadows, these scattered beams, these shallow streams — are good. And God is better. This is what the universe is all about. This is the end of idolatry. This is the glory of God.”

Matt Papa, Look + Live

Happy 1st Birthday to the Blog!

November 5, 2014November 5, 2014 MarthaKimball1 Comment

Just a quiet little celebration over here to one year of blogging!

Thanks to all of you who read along and share in the journey with me of reveling in all the good gifts God gives!

xo
Martha

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