Merry Christmas from the Hemphills

What an amazing year...2007. Around this time last year, God stirred in our hearts that 2007 would be the "year of movement". And it certainly proved to be that. God moved us to Birmingham this summer to help develop Encounter as a freedom movement and birth MarriageEncouter to fight for couples' hearts. And God stills moves as we reach out to couples for the purpose of building dangerous families for the Kingdom. In recent days, God has stirred another word about 2008...the "year of restoration". He repeatedly took us to Joel chapter 2 and confirmed that He would "restore what the locusts had eaten". Lots of ways that He may choose to do this. No matter what...this coming year is destined to be one filled with adventure, battle, victory, brokenness, healing, and RESTORATION. Get ready!!!!!!!!!!!
Thanks for standing with us and fighting for us...
Randy, Melody, Caleb, and Brennan

Full-Length Mirror

"One of the best wedding gifts God gave you was a full-length mirror called your spouse. Had there been a card attached, it would have said, "Here's to helping you discover what you're really like!"
--Gary and Betsy Ricucci

Mannequins

What if, most of who I am today, is a loosely bound package of manufactured selves? Crafted over the years to hide my pain and wipe away my tears. This glued-together self has gotten me stuck in a self-destructive cycle. To the point that the image I convey is a mannequin with lungs. The capacity to breathe...but not to live. Fixated on building the plastic image in the window, I only exist for the gaze of the shopper passing by. See me. Buy me. Value me.

Today, I face the mannequin in the window. As I press my face against the window, I fall through into the arms of myself...my mannequin. It tumbles to the ground and falls to pieces. I am surrounded by plastic arms, legs, torso, head, and clothes. Is this really me?? All that I've been working on comes down to this...scattered, plastic limbs and high-dollar clothes. Is this all that my grasping/living has come to??

Do I pick up the limbs and start all over again? Brush off the clothes and dress up the plastic image? Prop it up in front of the window. Makes me weary just thinking about it. Pieced together...posing forever. The window beckons me...come, pose, be seen, be valued. The shoppers need you. You need you.

Broken, shattered, laying on the floor...in need of restoration. I call out to You. God, deliver me from myself. Take the mannequin I've manufactured and burn it up, destroy it. Pull me from the prostituting window of posing and press me deeply into the wonder of Your love and acceptance.

Being present in the present

A word from a present-day sage, Brennan Manning...
"The music of what is happening can be heard only in the present moment, right now, right here. Now/here spells nowhere. To be fully present to whoever or whatever is immediately before us is to pitch a tent in the wilderness of Nowhere. It is an act of radical trust--trust that God can be encountered at no other time and in no other place than the present moment. Being fully present in the now is perhaps the premier skill of the spiritual life.
More often than not, I do not hear the music of what is happening now because my mind ricochets between the past and the future."
(quoted from Ruthless Trust)

To be fully alive is to be fully present in the present. Amazing, how much i focus on the past and have anxiety toward the future. In doing so, I miss out on the moments before me. I miss out on opportunities to receive compassion and extend compassion. Manning says that the primary fruit of living in the present is compassion. Wow, what a strong word. Present-tense living gives me the perspective to extend compassion to myself and then to others.

So, today I face a choice. Past-tense. Future-tense. Present-tense. What tense will my life speak in today?

Marriage: a safe harbor??

Follow the quote below...

"We must never be naive enough to think of marriage as a safe harbor from the Fall...The deepest struggles of life will occur in the most primary relationship affected by the Fall: marriage."
--Dan Allender and Tremper Longman III

So, there is a battle taking place today for the heart of our marriages. There is someone who does not want your family and marriage to make it. Satan, the enemy who masquerades as an angel of light, is deceptively working to take us out. He does not care about us or our families...He wants what we have...we are image-bearers.

Reflecting the image of God in our marriages is one of the greatest ways to bring God glory. So, what exactly does it mean to reflect the image of God in a marriage?? something to think on...