Posts
Hannah Morrell
Will You Jump?

Our dreams as children of being athletes, astronauts, doctors, superheroes or princesses seem to hit a giant wall somewhere in adolescence as we are told they are impossible, require too much money, require too much school or aren’t going to lead us to a successful life (whatever that is defined by someone who is older and wiser at the time). Instead of paying attention to what these dreams tell us about ourselves, we shut them down and tell ourselves to toe the line and be conformed to the formula of what our culture dictates is our future. That might mean making lots of money, having a marriage and family, being powerful in society, or any other number of definitions that spell success in our culture’s eyes.

I wonder, though, where we listen to God in all of this. The Bible is full of stories of people who were given an identity by God but didn’t believe it. They tried to fit into the identity that society was giving them, which really was just believing the fear when it told them they couldn’t make it. I know that sometimes I get stuck listening to the “wisdom” of the world and dismissing any thoughts of following some of the crazy things God might be calling me to do.

Will You Jump?
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Hannah Morrell
Be Still

When the world is spinning and feels like you are in a tornado,
When the stress ramps up and starts to choke you.
When the pain of loss and grief threatens to drown you in tears.
When the overwhelm and anxiety threaten stagnate you in everything today.

Be still. Know that I am God.

When I can’t figure a way out of the mess I’ve created.
When rejection is close and the fear of more governs my relationships.
When my finances are bleak and the outlook bleaker.
When I watch my loved ones hurt and hurt each other. 

Be still. Know that I am God.

When I feel like I’m moving through mud as everything is in slow motion.
When I can’t make things stop as they spiral and whir by my eyes.
When all of the plans I had made fall apart and wither away.
When I can’t see a future or a hope, and feel that the painful present is all there is. 

Be still. Know that I am God.

Be Still
Posts
Hannah Morrell
God's Great Reversals

What do we do with pain? I really believe we only have two options, although the way these present can look different. The first option is to allow it to control us, whether by trying to deny or ignore it, or by focusing on it entirely and allowing it to tell us who we are. The second option is to allow God to bring life from death, creating the Great Reversal in our lives.

When we decide that we are no more than our pain, it controls us. It tells us we are worthless, rejected and hopeless. We believe it, and receive messages from whoever caused this pain in our lives. We basically allow these people who have done damage to completely define us, and thus continue to have power over us. We may be in complete denial of the way the pain has affected us, but it still controls us. It’s sort of like a dry drunk—instead of continuing to focus on alcohol by drinking it, the focus is on alcohol but abstaining from it instead. The obsession is still there, and the addiction still controls.

If we are trying to explain away our pain or pretend it’s not there, we live as a distortion of ourselves. We want to believe that we are free, but having never faced the pain and pushed through it, we continue to be controlled in a different way. I can tell you how many people I talk to who still believe messages that were given to them by rejecting or abusive people 30, 40 or 50 years ago. If we never recognize who is speaking these lies, we assume they might be true because they are in our heads and run freely in our thoughts.

God's Great Reversals
Posts
Hannah Morrell
A Posture of Receiving

Many times in circles of Christ-followers, we obsess on what we are doing “for” God and how much we are producing, trying desperately to make Him happy with us. I find this stems from an incorrect concept of God, one who is angry and sets unrealistic standards for us, waiting to punish us when we don’t measure up. This is not the God I see in Scripture, as He pursues people constantly to lead them to repentance. Repentance is a change of mind, a turning that leads behavior. God is always walking with you, but repentance means you recognize it and ask Him for His perspective. Sin is separation from God. As Mike Wells used to say, “You fall out with God before you ever fall into sin.” But we obsess on sin as the problem, rather than a break in relationship with Jesus being the problem.

If we are constantly trying to measure up to whatever standards and expectations we believe are important, we basically become just like the religious leaders of Jesus’ day, whom He warned against often. They ended up demonstrating their hatred for God when they crucified Him. They would not be led to a change of mind, but were determined to follow the rules they had set for themselves and to judge everyone around them who was not measuring up in their view. It became a competition among the religious leaders to see who could be more religious. Interesting, isn’t it, when we sometimes do the same thing in the body of Christ?

Over and over again, Jesus told people that He had come as the Savior because we all needed one. That means that we couldn’t save ourselves. We couldn’t come to relationship with the Trinity because we kept trying to achieve and appease instead of receive. We often continue to make it about behavior rather than heart.

A Posture of Receiving
Posts
Hannah Morrell
Bringing Fear to the Light

I have been reading a book recently that has made me think deeply about my greatest fears. (It’s Living Fearless by Jamie Winship in case you want to read it. I highly recommend!) Most of the time in the past, I try to push fear away, just telling myself to deny it and move on anyway. I think it’s sort of like when you are a child and you hide under the covers from the monsters in your closet—we believe that will keep us safe from the things we fear. Denial becomes the bed covers, and we keep hiding under it hoping that the fear will go away.

Instead of this, though, Jamie recommends confessing fear to Jesus and letting Him free us from it. I have to be honest, when I first read this, I still really struggled with the idea. I don’t want to talk about my fears. But then I also realized that God already knows my fears, so it’s no surprise or disappointment to Him. I haven’t achieved anything in terms of being free of fear by ignoring or denying them. Instead, I spend a lot of time trying to stomp them down again, hoping they will go away if I just muscle them into submission.

So, I was walking and thinking about this, and I finally took the mental barrier down to really bring my fears out and discuss them with Jesus. And in the spirit of vulnerability opening up vulnerability in others, I’m sharing them with you too.

Bringing Fear to the Light

conqueror

A New Perspective

A New Perspective

One of the things I’ve always loved about traveling is how my perspective shifts. I get outside my comfort zone and walk in someone else’s path—not their shoes, but at least I see a different way of living or thinking. I don’t want to lose that willingness to shift perspective and listen long enough to at least have a small understanding of someone else’s way of doing life.

I am realizing that a lot of our relationship with God is about changing our perspective as well, and starting to receive God’s instead. I think prayer is entering into a conversation with God and allowing Him to shift our perspective—to think differently about whatever situation is in front of us, and to accept that what we can see may not be the whole picture. We are invited into life that surpasses anything we could have imagined.

This is why when we try to anticipate beauty from ashes, or all things being worked together for good, we get a little stuck. We can’t see how its possible because we don’t have the perspective that God does. I love that not one thing in this world can defeat what God is doing in us. I meet so many people who feel they can never amount to anything because of what has happened in their lives or what they have chosen. Yet that is never God’s perspective. He sees who you are the whole time, and nothing can change or alter that. He is making you to become who you already are, which means your identity is already true, and there is also a process of revelation as He shows you who He is through you more and more.

Walking Like a Superhero

Walking Like a Superhero

There’s a little boy I see every morning when I’m dropping my daughter off at school. He comes to help drop off his older brother, and always shows up in his Superman pajamas complete with cape. The thing that always strikes me as hilarious is how he walks next to his dad. He’s this tiny little man, but walks like he is 10 feet tall—he definitely has the superhero walk down. His cape flows behind him, and he takes large, commanding steps no matter where he is going.

I love watching him and it makes me giggle a little to watch him stride through the parking lot. This morning, though, God spoke and asked me how I would walk if I knew and believed the super power that dwells within me? That caught me off guard. You see, I used to always walk with my eyes on my shoes (which might explain some of my clumsiness). I didn’t feel that I had worth, and I walked like it. I didn’t understand Who I had, or who I was.

You see, when you have Christ’s Life within you, you have the power of the Living God walking around with you. He says He will be everything you need, and we have all of Him to meet all of our problems, dilemmas and circumstances. I think when I realize that I am the chosen dwelling place of God Himself (1 Corinthians 6:19), and that makes me His.

Failure

Failure

How many times have you found yourself stewing on all the failures of your day, or your life? This obsessing on stupid decisions, words spoken and actions left undone, will lead us eventually to feeling as though we are failures. There is a big difference between failing sometimes and being a failure. And I haven’t found that beating ourselves up is the answer to that distinction.

Walking with the broken to find hope in Jesus