His Beloved

Jesus pursues His beloved bride and fights for her. Jesus paid the untimate price for her and He is coming again.

This is a prayer from Captivating by John & Stasi Eldredge from chapter 11 Warrior Princess.

I now put on with thanks the armor which You have provided for me-girding myself with the belt of truth; first my need to be pursued and fought for. Thank You for daily pursuing me and fighting for me as well.

I also gird up my desire to be irreplaceable in a grand scheme of Yours. You have placed this desire within me and I wrap Your truth around it, in hope of what You will do. Grant me eyes to see each day in light of Your activity, to live in the big-ness of Your story.

I gird up my desire to offer life through my gifting, the beauty You have bestowed on me. I ask You to continue to reveal and confirm what You desire to do through me and all You have given me. I trust that You have called me by name and have given me a love, a beauty, a gift to pour out on my family, my friends, and those You bring to me. May this day be an offering of love poured out before You on the alter of my life."

Chapter 8
Chapter 7
Chapter 6
Chapter 5
Chapter 4
Chapter 3
Chapter 2b
Chapter 2
Chapter 1
Introduction

Frugal Friday Find

Will's Quill by Don Freeman

I found this wonderful children's book at a discount store for under $3. The pictures are beautiful.

It is a cute story about a lost goose named Will who finds a friend and wants to give something back in return for a kind act. The friend is William Shakespeare.

We happen to be studying this time peroid in history. This book gives us a glimpse of what life in London might have looked like during this period.

Learning with Joy

The kids will learn more from this "living book" than from many pages of a history text. Children will enjoy reading this book over and over again.

What is a Living Book?

A living book is a book written in story form with pictures and information accurate to the time period and subject. These books draw a child into the story and capture their interest. If after the first page the child pleads to hear more then you know you have a "living book."

I learned about Living Books from Charlotte Mason's books. For a shorter version of Charlotte Mason's works - A Charlotte Mason Companion: Personal Reflections on The Gentle Art of Learning by Karen Andreola

For more about raising children Nourish Your Children

Summer Reading - Captivating - Chapter 8

Welcome back to summer reading book club Captivating: Unveiling the Mystery of a Woman’s Soul by John & Stasi Eldredge. This week we are finishing Chapter 8
Beauty to Unveil.

The author’s say that “the essence of a man is Strength” in the image of our Warrior God. The essence of Woman is Beauty in the image of a Captivating God.

“Every woman possesses a captivating beauty.” Woman are not problems to be solved but mysteries to be enjoyed.

Beauty Flows from a Heart at Rest
True beauty is a woman at rest. He will quiet you with His love. Zeph. 3:17 Trusting in God calms her and those around her. She gives a gift of her presence releasing tension and pressure.

Keep asking Jesus to show you your beauty and what He thinks of you as a woman.

Beauty is Inviting
Proverbs talks about two women – Lady Folly and Lady Wisdom. Both are lovely and inviting. One is the door to death and the other is the way to Life and peace.

A woman striving invites other to strive. A woman hiding pushes others away. A controlling woman makes others feel unsafe in their presence.

Offer Beauty
To be vulnerable might not feel safe but it will deepen your relationships. Share yourself and be enjoyed. Offer mercy.

In repentance and rest is your salvation, in quietness and trust is your strength. Isa. 30:15

As women we have been through some things. Our hearts have enlarged by suffering. Like David, we can go through a desolate valley and find the place of springs. Ps 84:6

Cultivating Beauty
A gardens beauty does not diminish with age, neither does a woman’s. Tend your garden. Songs 1:6 Take time to grow in relationship with Jesus. Take time to be at rest.

“Beauty is a quality of the soul that expresses itself in the visible world.”

Summer Reading - Captivating - Chapter 7

Romanced

I have loved you with an everlasting love; therefore with lovingkindness I have drawn you. Jeremiah 31:3

What kind of relationship are you looking for with God? What kind of relationship is He looking for with you?

The Bible talks about several metaphors – He is the potter, we are the clay.
He is the Shepherd, we described are sheep. Master/servant, father/child.
All these are stepping up into greater intimacy to Bridegroom.

What does the bridegroom paradigm make you think?

Romance, giving yourself completely to the one you love?

He has been wooing us all along.

Summer Reading - Captivating - Chapter 6

Healing the Wound
This chapter from the book Captivating: Unveiling the Mysteries of a Woman's Soul goes through steps to bring healing.

Jesus wants you to be totally free and healed. Jesus came to heal the brokenhearted, free the captives, comfort all who mourn, and provide for those who grieve. That includes you. You matter.

Let Him be your defender. You don’t have to defend yourself.

Turn from the Ways You’ve Sought to Save Yourself.
We have put up wall and barriers to protect ourselves from further hurt. Don’t keep out the One who wants to save you.

Invite Him In
Behold, I stand at the door, and knock. If anyone hears My voice, and opens the door, I will come in… Rev. 3:20 NKJV He waits for you.

Renounce the Agreements You’ve Made
We have believed lies. Those messages felt true when inflicted with pain. We must release them and unlock the door to Jesus.

Cry It Out
Women spend so much energy trying to “keep it together”. No wonder we are exhausted. Crying is a release.

Forgive – It’s a choice, not a feeling.
Forgiveness does not say that the wounding was okay. The hurt was wrong. You release that person over to God.

Ask Jesus to Heal You
He can release your heart from captivity.

Let Him Father You and Answer Your Questions
The Lord delights in you. Begin a new relationship with Him.

Summer Reading - Captivating - Chapter 5

Welcome back to our summer book reading of Captivating: Unveiling the Mystery of a Woman’s Soul by John & Stasi Eldredge. This week we are discussing chapter 5 titled
A Special Hatred. Feel free to read and comment, even if you don’t have the book.

In this chapter Stasi tells her own painful story. She was wounded by her father and turned to alcohol, drugs, and men to fill the empty space. This path brought only more wounding, reinforcing the messages from her childhood.

“Hide your heart. You are a disappointment. You are worthless. No one cares. No one wants to care. You are alone.”

Do any of these messages ring true in your heart and mind?

Beauty is dangerous
So many women have been assaulted, beaten, raped, controlled. Young woman being sold into sex slavery. Baby girls being left to die.

Where does such hatred come from?

“Eph 6:12 For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places.”

Lucifer was created beautiful. In his own beauty, pride entered in. Now the Evil One hates beauty and tries to destroy it – especially Eve and her daughters.

“You won’t understand your life as a woman until you understand this:

You are passionately loved by the God of the universe.
You are passionately hated by His Enemy.

…for there is One greater than your Enemy. One who has sought you out from the beginning of time. He has come to heal your broken heart and restore your feminine soul.”

My thoughts
My youthful beauty was dangerous because I was so naive. And I was assaulted. I cried through this chapter. It never occurred to me the spiritual battle of the Devil trying to destroy femininity. His lies and deceit like Wormtongue.

God has been in the process of healing my heart all these years. It has been one layer after another, reaffirming His perfect love for me.


Your Turn
Where has your emptiness and longing led you?
What has God rescued you from?

Summer Reading - Captivating - Chapter 4

Wounded

These words are razors to my wounded heart. – William Shakespeare

Since we live in a fallen world, every person has some sort of wounding. There are no perfect parents. Some have been hurt more than others. When a person responds out of a place of wounding, it hurts others. It can be a devastating blow from generation to generation. A destructive cycle of wounding.

Wounded hearts can allow shame to enter. Shame that causes us to look away or to hide. A feeling that if someone really knew us, we would be abandoned.

Hurt causes people to make vows that wall us off from love and trust in order to protect ourselves from further wounding. This is an unholy alliance with pain that keeps us from perfect love. Perfect love is from God.

1Jn 4:18 There is no fear in love; but perfect love casteth out fear: because fear hath torment. He that feareth is not made perfect in love.
1Jn 4:19 We love him, because he first loved us.

What vows have you made to protect yourself?
Are you repeating a destructive pattern of thinking?

God is greater than any pain, wound, or hurt. God is longing to love you more perfectly. Let Him in.

Summer Reading - Captivating - Chapter 3

Haunted By A Question

Eve – What Happened?
All that beauty, romance, and adventure sounds interesting but most of us are piled under loads of laundry. Real life is more like routine, chores, and screaming kids. Diets, busyness, self-improvement, activities. We hide or give up.

Our husbands are hiding in their cave wondering. Do I have what it takes?

The question girls ask is – Am I lovely? Girls want to be loved, delighted in. Sadly, many have given up.

Dominating women
Some women choose to dominate their world and control it, refusing to be vulnerable.

Desolate women
Some women are far too vulnerable, desolate and needy.

Whatever path you have chosen to fill the empty space, the ache, the loneness, only God can satisfy. Nothing on earth can take the place of relationship with our Heavenly Father. No amount of money, food, new clothes, friends, a new guy, whatever the world has to offer will never resolve the deeper issues of our souls.

Find your rest in God.

Summer Reading – Captivating – Chapter 2b

Beauty

God’s creation is beautiful. Look at the flowers and trees, mountains and valleys, sunrises and sunsets.

The apostle John describes the beauty he sees around the throne in Revelation.

Rev 4:3 And he that sat was to look upon like a jasper and a sardine stone: and there was a rainbow round about the throne, in sight like unto an emerald.
Rev 4:6 And before the throne there was a sea of glass like unto crystal…….

The beauty of God’s creation speaks. When my father passed away, we happened to be visiting at the ocean. In my sadness, I sat and took in the beauty and vastness of God’s ocean. It spoke to me that God was so much bigger than me or my grief. I was comforted.

A Mystery

Every woman has a beauty to unveil because you were created in the image of God. This kind of beauty you cannot find in a salon or in plastic surgery because it is the essence of who you are. Unique only to you, remaining a mystery until sought out.

Pro 25:2 It is the glory of God to conceal a thing: but the honour of kings is to search out a matter.

The Gory of God

“Beauty says, There is glory calling to you. And if there is glory, then there is a source of glory. What great goodness could possibly have created this?...Beauty draws us to God.”

Not the world’s plastic beauty. But the experience of who you are. What makes you laugh or smile, your thoughts, your heart, the way you move, your ideals, the sparkle in your eyes…

When I look in the mirror I see wrinkles, bulges, and an old hairstyle. When my children look at me they see the mother who loves them. When my husband looks at me he sees years of intimacy and togetherness, trials and triumphs. When my friends look at me they see a shared secret or memory.

“There is something uniquely magnificent and powerful about a woman. We tried to reveal the immeasurable dignity, the holiness of your feminine heart by showing that it is God who longs for Romance; it is God who longs to be our ezer; it is God who reveals beauty essential to life. You are the image bearer of this God. That is why you long for these things too.”

Summer Reading - Captivating - Chapter 2

What Eve Alone Can Tell

God created the earth in a crescendo. Earth, plants, animals, man. Then the bible says that something is not good. Everything before was good.

Gen 2:18 "...It is not good that man should be alone; I will make him an help meet for him."

Creation was not finished without Eve. Woman fills a place that nothing else can fill. What does that tell us about the nature of God?

Loneliness

Women are relational. God yearns for a relationship with us.

Isa 49:14 But Zion said, The LORD hath forsaken me, and my Lord hath forgotten me.
Isa 49:15 Can a woman forget her sucking child, that she should not have compassion on the son of her womb? yea, they may forget, yet will I not forget thee.Jer 24:7 And I will give them an heart to know me, that I am the LORD: and they shall be my people, and I will be their God: for they shall return unto me with their whole heart.

Consider how fiercely devoted a mother is to her children. God loves us all the more. Women are tender, inviting, passionate, alluring. This is what God is speaking to His creation through women.

Summer Reading - Captivating - Chapter 1

The Heart of a Woman

This book begins with an adventure. The authors think that in a woman’s heart she would like to be “an irreplaceable role in a great adventure”. I wasn’t sure that I felt that way. Maybe I was "adventured out" before I got married and was ready to settle down. Or maybe since I have 5 children everyday seems like an adventure to me.

Then they listed some adventures – “horses or white water rafting, going to a foreign country, performing on stage, having children, starting a business, or diving ever more deeply into the heart of God” Okay, now I get it. Canoeing did not sound like an adventure to me. Diving ever more deeply into the heart of God – yes, that sounds exciting to me. Are you wanting adventure in your life?

Quote

“God created man in his own image…male and female he created them” (Gen 1:27)
Whatever it means to bear God’s image, you do it as a woman. Female. That’s how and where you bear his image. Your feminine heart has been created…as a reflection of God’s own heart.


That changes the way I feel about myself as a woman. I ask myself - Do I reflect God's heart? I want to. He made me to.

Summer Reading - Captivating - Introduction

This book Captivating reaches into the mystery of the feminine heart, the deep waters of a woman’s soul, and the treasure in the heart. These are the reasons that you are captivating. Each woman is individual and precious like a rare jewel. One thing that makes a woman so valuable is her uniqueness. So when you read this book it might hit you totally different than someone else and that’s okay. God is so incredible that way – He knows every detail of our heart, He loves us anyway, and He deals with us in a personal and loving manner.

Just look at the sunsets. The sky is different every morning and every evening everywhere in the world. And wherever you stand, it is beautiful and magnificent boasting His undeniable greatness and glory.

God also made woman a beauty in His creation. Not just in outward appearance but in the inward beauty of who you are.

This book will help you see yourself as God sees you. And realize that you are worth finding out the treasures of your heart and worth fixing the hurts.

…I have loved thee with an everlasting love: therefore with lovingkindness have I drawn thee. Jeremiah 31:3

The Lord is drawing you unto Himself. God wants to take your sorrows and give you the oil of gladness.

Summer Reading

This Summer we are reading the book Captivating: Unveiling the Mystery of a Women's Soul by John & Stasi Eldredge. Just the name alone encourages me. And I find that my sisters in Christ are captivating, when I take the time to get to know them.

So follow along if you dare, dive deep into the heart of woman - God's beautiful creation.

Have you already read this book? Let us know what you think!