I came home from the writer’s conference in July knowing I needed to get focused.  I’ve spent the last two and a half months praying and thinking and scribbling notes and praying and thinking and scribbling some more, all to this end: determining just what it is, exactly, that I do.

Pages and pages of notes came out of this exercise.  What is my passion?  What do I desire to see happen in the lives of women?  Why?  How?  And how do I say it in a way that really means something, and isn’t just trite Christianese?

I wrestled with hard, fundamental questions, the answers to which I had never put words to before.  What does it mean to help women experience change in their lives?  To break free from the things that bind them?  To receive healing and hope?

How do I speak to the deepest issues of a woman’s heart?  Just what, precisely, are those issues?

And what does it really take to heal them?

Taking thoughts captive.  Breaking generational patterns.  Forgiveness.  Releasing judgments.  Changing dysfunctional behaviors.  Understanding sources of emotional upheaval.  They can bring change.  But they don’t always bring lasting healing.  Why not?

Here is the conclusion I have drawn over the last month:  the majority of women who sit in my office, myself included, have believed things that aren’t true about God.  About themselves.  About others.  About life in general.

They know in their minds what the Word says is true.  But they don’t always experience it as real in their lives.  This incongruity between what is “true” and what is “real” is at the heart of much of their struggle.

God is good.  Our sins are forgiven.  We can do all things through Christ’s strength.  He supplies all our needs.  His plan for our lives is perfect.  The desires of all living things are satisfied.  His Grace is sufficient.  We are a new creation.  We are accepted.  We are reconciled.  We are restored.

We are loved.

But do we believe it?

Perhaps you are single, and you long to be married.  Perhaps you are starving, and you long to be satisfied.  Perhaps you are anxious, and you long to be at peace.  Perhaps you are sick, and you long to be well.  Perhaps you are addicted, and you long to be set free.  Perhaps you are barren, and you long to bear fruit.  Perhaps you are ashamed, and you long to be accepted.

Perhaps you are like me, and you long to know true love.

David G. Benner writes, in The Gift of Being Yourself, “Knowing God’s love demands that we receive God’s love—experientially, not simply as a theory.  Personal knowledge is never simply a matter of the head.  Because it is rooted in experience, it is grounded in deep places in our being.  The things we know from experience we know beyond belief.” (Emphasis mine.)

This, I believe, is where healing takes place.  In the experience of God’s love, best expressed through the miraculous grace of the Cross.

This is what I want to facilitate in the hearts of women.

This is what drives what I do, and how I do it.

“Empowering and equipping women to experience the life-changing love of God.”

My mission.  In my life.  In your lives.  In the lives of women, everywhere.

It is time, my friends, to Live Like You’re Loved.

This changes everything.

I hope you’ll continue to join me.

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