Welcome to Litsy!

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This little devotional came into my hands at such a perfect time.I found it at the store after getting past carpal tunnel surgery and I needed to restart pretty much all things in life.

I can totally see how God has worked through these last few months committing to this devotional for a few minutes each day.

Some days were more impactful than others, but the lessons learned from these pages are ones that won‘t be soon forgotten.

And today I pray peace for you. And joy. And hope. And courage—the deep, deep kind that changes the way you live.

Your life is Jesus‘ reward for His suffering—your brave yeses, your courageous noes, hanging on, letting go, going there, staying here, all of it.

Making brave choices in your life is going to change the world. At the least, it will change your world.

Your courage affects other people, and it‘s just like that confetti popper. When you pull that string off with courage and you celebrate with sparkles, other people will feel like they can get confetti all over the place too.

All glory for any bravery we exhibit goes straight to Jesus. He is the brave One. He made us. He created and modeled brave.

Your brave choices have ripple effects. Brave people inspire those around them to be brave.

You can be brave during all the changes of life. You can be brave in the face of pain. You can be brave with your health. Brave with your money. Brave wherever you are!

Courage isn‘t just for mighty warriors. It‘s for you (because you are becoming courageous). It‘s for your relationship with God. It‘s for your dreams and your calling and your work. It‘s for your relationships with fellow humans.

He deeply loves you and deeply knows you and is doing the hard work of forgiving and forgiving and forgiving again and again. Jesus is brave, and He made you to be brave too.

Brave choices always have ripple effects.

Prayer is our most direct connection to God—your voice to His ear.

You need to see that the world is big and diverse, and maybe God doesn‘t look or sound the way you always thought He did because the world has a lot of different-looking and different-sounding people, all of whom are made in His image.

If we want to see God glorified all over the world, we need to be brave enough to see courage in all its forms.

The day after 45 was elected I had a college church group meetup.

I had a hard time with this narrative after 45 was elected and I still have a problem with it now...being an activist against wrongdoing is in my blood, and I haven‘t been able to keep quiet, respect authority, and accept that prayer is the only thing I should be doing in response to 45.

Anybody else get uncomfortable with this message?

Very possibly the #1 way I have not been brave this year.

I haven‘t done this for any of my actual neighbors within my apartment complex (yet) but I can tell you at least three times this week that I‘ve gotten a chance to live this out for people in my social circle as well as a stranger. It‘s worth it to consider who you see as your neighbor and ask yourself what you could do to help and be generous to them.

God loves us so much that He gave us His everything, and He asks us to love others the way He loves us. Loving others means being present with them in their pain, being present with them in their joy. It means being all there.

“Wherever you are, be all there.” ~Jim Elliot~

Brave people are intentional people, and you‘ve got to be intentional about your time with the Lord. You can‘t expect to be brave without spending time with Him-which is the whole reason you can be brave.

As I‘m about to get ready to meet a friend I haven‘t seen in about 9 years for dinner, reading this passage in my devotional was super convicting.

I‘ve previously mentioned my struggle w/ depression & anxiety & one of the ways that manifests for me is messy, unorganized home spaces.

While these struggles are very real, when you spin it this way, working on those struggles to be able to invite other people in, that‘s something I can get behind.

“...be brave enough to love the people around you, even if it could look like sacrifice and could feel like loss.”

Be different in a world that uses words to hurt. Use your words to heal, and use them often. Give those words of life, the words found in Scripture, to as many people as you can.

I hope that you will stand up for people who can‘t stand up for themselves. And I hope that you think before you speak, choosing words that are gifts of light, not ones that cause death.

God makes us new, again and again, and we can be intentional and generous with our words to ourselves, to each other, and to God.

Brave people take God‘s Word and speak love into lives of others. Brave people let God love them and know they are equipped for all the ways to use their words to speak love.

I hope you remember this: the road to courage is lit by God‘s wisdom. His Word in the Bible and through the Holy Spirit to you and through others is how you see that road.

So you always have something to offer. Are you brave enough to believe that? Brave enough to share your wisdom?

Never forget as you step forward with your life that you are a trailblazer.

You get the chance to live courageously. You were meant for it. You were born for it. It never feels easy, and it is never free. But it is what we want more than anything else.

Brave people don‘t just pour into their own hopes and dreams. They pour their wisdom and time and love into others.

Do you love yourself? Do you see yourself the way God sees you? Do you recognize how absolutely lovable you are? Because when you do, when you see all that truth, you can‘t help loving your neighbor.

Brave people use their words to heal. Speaking with kindness about other people‘s hearts and minds and bodies can go a long way to heal. Brave people let God‘s Word and the words of the wise bring healing to their own hearts. May you see the healing, feel the healing, that comes from the tongue of the wise.

Guys and gals, she‘s one of us.
I don‘t think I‘ve ever felt more understood by an author. 👏🏻💯🙌🏻

You can stop viewing your body as a thing you want to be smaller or bigger or this or that and start viewing it as a temple of God that you get to spend your life caring for and using for His glory.

God has put us on this planet to spread His love, to be His love to the people around us, and He‘s given us these amazing bodies to get us from point A to point B.

“.....if we don‘t take care of our bodies, we are limiting to do His work. Seriously. If we aren‘t kind to our bodies, if we aren‘t treating our bodies well, we are shortening our impact on the planet.”

Your body needs to be honored and treated well. Your body was meant to move; it was not meant to be still. You need your muscles and your bones to be strong enough to do all the things you were called to do for as many years as you were meant to be here.

Brave people know that it is not just okay to play. It‘s healthy. This day that you‘re in? This is the day that the Lord has made. You can rejoice and be glad in it. You can have fun and laugh and be peaceful about your to-do list because God is in control, and you can have total peace in Him.

Being disciplined and being brave are not easy tasks. If you don‘t make space in your life for play, you will burn out. You will be in that spot where you are fighting for brave because you are feeling failure well up and fears arrive uninvited and there will be no healthy release. So play.

A refreshing, new perspective/ definition of play that I was not expecting to get from this devotional!

Your discipline, the rhythm that makes you the best you—whether it‘s training your body, your mind, or your spirit—shows up when it‘s time to say the right thing, do the right thing, be the brave person you want to be. It‘s practice that makes perfect, and the practice that makes you brave.

Brave people look at the bodies they are in and choose to see them for what they are—vessels that hold a mighty God.

God has a purpose for your body—with all its imperfections and sicknesses.

We cannot see the future. We do not know what‘s best for us. We make mistakes. We say things we regret. We do things with impure motives. We live in a broken world. But God is our healer. He loves us. And we can be brave in the brokenness and pain and spiritual surgery because we know that God is good.

When we remember we‘re sins in need of Jesus, we can trust our Great Physician. Jesus reminded us that are sick people who need a doctor.

There are times when God is going to take you through surgery, not because He wants to hurt you, but because He loves you and wants to heal you.