Hope IS Alive!

Once a month, Deeper Wells and Holy Barre leaders get to connect with the ladies of Hope Is Alive, a faith-based sober living ministry, during their Sunday evening meeting. While we enjoy our opportunity to lead them through a time of worship, workout and wellness, we come away more full of love by our getting to experience this incredible group of faith-filled and freedom-fighting women.

You don’t have to be blooming to be growing. – Ruth Choe Simmons

At our most recent meeting, Candace shared a powerful reminder that ‘you don’t have to be blooming to be growing.’ This simple statement is from the book Now Not Yet: Pressing In When You’re Waiting, Wanting, and Restless for More by Ruth Chou Simons, and make sure to take a few minutes to read through the prayer at the bottom of this post. (A Deeper Wells’ Book Study with Candace will likely be coming as so many of us can relate to just that book title!)

I love and appreciate the emphasis on growth. Growth is challenging and tests our endurance and faith. It might not look as expected or produce the visible fruits as quickly as you’d like . . . but growth is good. And He is faithful.

So now wrap your heart tightly around the hope that lives within us, knowing that God always keeps his promises! Discover creative ways to encourage others and to motivate them toward acts of compassion, doing beautiful works as expressions of love. This is not the time to pull away and neglect meeting together, as some have formed the habit of doing. In fact, we should come together even more frequently, eager to encourage and urge each other onward as we anticipate that day dawning.

Hebrews 10:23-25 TPT

The ladies of Hope Is Alive are growing in their sobriety and recovery, yes, but more importantly they are growing as individuals just like anyone else desiring something more. The authenticity and encouragement of these women is second to none. I’ve never seen anything like it, and I will never be the same because of it. Hope IS ALIVE through these women!

I pray their individual stories get shared to the masses because while the details of their lives might look different than yours and mine, we ALL need healing and freedom. We ALL have methods of coping and numbing and hiding. We ALL have experienced pain and are doing whatever it takes to not feel the hurt deep within. While some protective behaviors are physically destructive, more socially acceptable protective behaviors are even praised and admired while being more emotionally destructive than we realize. Breaking free of these lies and stepping into Jesus’ pure truth of love and kindness is HARD! We ALL need Jesus.

But together, in authentic community, with brave and bold faith, we can discover the love of Jesus and live freely and lightly like He promised. (Matthew 11:30 MSG)

Yet rather than promoting His promises, I’m afraid our church culture (including my own efforts) at times can so quickly cause shame and judgment rather than freedom and hope. (And I’m afraid from my life-long church going experience, we as individuals at times can quickly internalize that same shame and judgement within ourselves rather than being kind to our own souls through His freedom and hope.) We can all too quickly ‘focus on the flaw in someone else’s life and fail to notice the glaring flaws of your own’ Matthew 7:3 TPT.

Years ago through my Central Team role at Life Church, I got to dive deeper into missions and the effective ways we can help our brothers and sisters in all walks of life. And in this, my perspective of poverty got expanded. While we so often jump to view poverty as one of not having material needs met, my heart got stirred by the reality of the relational poverty all around. The lack of true, deep friendships and grace-filled, come-as-you-are community. The ones whose conversations are full of more questions than answers and ones who create an environment of healing and hope rather than laws and lists or gossip and ‘I’m good’s.

“What happiness comes to you  when you feel your spiritual poverty!  For yours is the realm of heaven’s kingdom.

Matthew 5:3 TPT

While some of us may be relationally poor and others are materially poor, ultimately, we are ALL spiritually poor. We need our Savior’s love and compassion to heal our hearts and provide us with a constant stream of kindness. We’re all thirsty and need the Living Water so we thirst no more. We’ve all tried to quench our thirst with water from the shallow wells of this world. Yet we still end up thirsty and long for something deeper. We can step into this longing and reality together, knowing we need His love and we need each other.

I’m grateful to be surrounded by groups of women through Holy Barre, Deeper Wells, Hope Is Alive and beyond who view life as a journey together. I got to have lunch with a long-time friend today, and we cried and cussed and laughed and loved each other more supportively because of it. And when it comes to relational poverty, the women of Hope Is Alive might be the richest of them all!

While Holy Barre and Deeper Wells will encourage you to move your body for physical health, our desire is for mental, emotional and spiritual health to improve in deeper ways than you’ve ever experienced. When we invite Jesus in to ALL of us, when we worship in Spirit and in Truth in ALL we do, the journey gets way more fun and free! Come join us!

If you’d like to support Hope Is Alive, you can donate financially here or complete the form below to learn more about specific volunteer opportunities and ways to connect through Holy Barre’s partnership. Or if you have a family member or friend who’d like to be a resident, there’s a process for that too!

Would you describe yourself in this present season as relationally wealthy or relationally poor? What kinds of wells have you spent too much energy drinking from? In what ways would you like to grow? I bet all our answers to these questions are more similar than you’d think! Come discover deeper wells with us and burn brighter together!

A Liturgy for When You’re Waiting on Growth

I am not a Master Gardener. 

I don’t cause the rain to fall, or the sun to shine, or the seeds to germinate. 

Forgive me, O Lord, when I mistake the plow in my hand for a scepter that belongs only to you. 

Help me not to dismiss small beginnings. 

Teach me to be faithful in the seemingly fruitless tasks, and the every day mundane, and the hard soil of my life. When I’m eager to shortcut my ways to fruitfulness, remind me how sweet it is to remain on the vine, abiding in you. 

Apart from you, I can do nothing. 

Let me not miss the task before me today. 

Help me let go of my own ideas of what it means to be fruitful and instead look to you for the fruit only you can produce. 

The sink full of dirty dishes, the load of laundry, the meals to make, the hearts that need tending. 

You can and will use every simple act of faithfulness to sow fruitfulness into my life. 

Help me steward, what I have been given this day that you might grow me into your likeness, and what flourishes from this season will make much of your faithfulness and less of my fruitfulness. 

Amen. 

Taken from Now Not Yet: Pressing In When You’re Waiting, Wanting, and Restless for More – by Ruth Choe Simons