Posts
Hannah Morrell
Out With the Old, In With the New

In the work I do with pastoral counseling, we discuss the past and the way it has shaped our view of ourselves today, as well as our views of God. I do believe there is validity in doing this analysis to a degree, as it allows us to know why we do what we do presently, and also how to do something different as we move forward. So often we need to know the problem before we can allow God to heal the problem.

I do, however, believe that there is a limit to this, as continuing to go over and over the past ends up getting our eyes on the hurts and not on the way through. We must allow God to take the hurts of the past and replace it with our new identity. He has already done this, but we get to recognize how that plays out in our lives. Instead of continuing to believe we are worthless, shameful, unloved and unacceptable, we get to move into the reality that Jesus has made us worthy, shame-free, loved enormously, and acceptable completely. The more we focus on the past, the more stuck in it we become. So, it becomes a fine line between understanding the past and the effects on today and letting the past continue to control our present and future.

Mike Wells used to say that dwelling on the past and our pain for too long is incredibly boring. We get bored just over-analyzing all of it and getting nowhere. I want better, more and new. I don’t want to allow whoever hurt me to continue to control where I go now, both mentally and physically.

Out With the Old, In With the New
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Hannah Morrell
Praise and Anxiety

I have been intrigued by David and his life quite a lot this year, and have loved watching his emotion be expressed in so many of his psalms. He is angry, sad, depressed, confused—so many emotions we tend to stuff and pretend God doesn’t want to hear about. David is very honest about all of them, and I love that God receives it. The other thing I’ve noticed about David’s writings is how much He focuses on praising God, even in the middle of less than ideal circumstances.

This man had a rough life. He was running away from people who were trying to kill him often—sometimes they were enemy armies, and sometimes they were people who were supposed to be allies but betrayed him. His own son ended up making him run for his life. David made a lot of mistakes, and the Bible is very honest about too. We are never under any fantasies of David being perfect with a perfect life. But still he praised God, and thanked Him for His love and faithfulness.

I read recently that studies have shown that anxiety and gratitude cannot coexist in your brain. If we are focusing on gratitude and praising God, even in the middle of suffering and struggle, we don’t let the anxiety have the run of our brain. Praise actually becomes one of our greatest brain weapons. We are able, no matter the circumstance, to stop and praise God. We may not be thankful for the situation, but we can thank Him for His love and faithfulness just like David did. We may be in physical pain, in mental anguish or in emotional upheaval, but we can still worship Jesus and lift our spirits. I find it fascinating that Paul and Silas in Acts (***) were singing praise to God WHILE in prison. Yes, God busted them out, but they were singing before that happened!

Praise and Anxiety
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Hannah Morrell
Faithfulness Even Still

My friends in Haiti are isolated from the world again after the gangs fired on a commercial plane and the airport was closed this week. They were ousted from their homes for over a year while fighting raged around them and they went into hiding. They have shown up for teen and preteen kids who are watching their friends die, and who are still healing from their pasts. I am so blown away by their faithfulness.

I speak to several woman who are raising kids while dealing with debilitating illness and chronic pain in themselves. They show up for their families in the ways they can while desperately surviving their own health journeys. I know they often feel like they are failing, like they can’t do what other moms can do. But I stand in awe of their faithfulness to keep showing up.

Faithfulness Even Still
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Hannah Morrell
The Wilderness

Several years ago, my husband and I were camping in Moab, Utah with our one-year-old son. Camping is probably a generous term—we did have a pop-up camper and weren’t really roughing it. We did, however, drive about half an hour outside of town on a dirt road to the middle of nowhere, and then parked the camper at the top of a rocky hill. The views were spectacular, and we would only see another car on the dirt road about once every few hours. It was a little taste of the wilderness, with only us and our little camper. No cell service, no toilets, and no other people around.

This seemed like a fantastic experience until we decided the next day to head back into town to get a few groceries. After piling in the truck, my husband tried to start the vehicle, but it wouldn’t start. The truck’s battery was dead. And the wilderness experience that seemed like a lot of fun became quite scary.

I started to panic, wondering how we would ever get out of there. No cars came by on the road, and it was at least a day’s walk to get back into town with a one-year-old and only so much food for camping. Finally after a bit of worry, my husband brilliantly figured out that he could use the camper batteries to jump the truck battery, and we were finally moving again.

But what about the figurative wildernesses in which we find ourselves where we can’t figure a way out, and we sit and wait with no resources and no hope? Wildernesses are a real experience in life, and one which often catches us by surprise. I’m not sure why, as so many of the people in the Bible went through years and years of wilderness, sometimes figurative and sometimes quite literal. There are stories of prison, hardships, desert-living, wandering, frustration, hopelessness, disbursement and aching for home.

The Wilderness
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Hannah Morrell
Why I Choose Jesus

I get questions a lot of times about why I love and serve God even when He doesn’t always give me what I want. A lot of people wonder why I continue to pursue relationship with Jesus, and consider it old-fashioned or burdensome. So, I wanted to write a post about why I choose Jesus.

It’s definitely not because of the people who call themselves Christians—although some are a wonderful gift to me and I’m so grateful for them. But the people in the Church are messy just like everyone else, and when we expect them to be perfect or to never hurt or reject us, we will be disappointed. I know, though, that people who believe in Jesus recognize they need something other than themselves to do life. So, as they are dependent on Him, they love people well. When they are relying on their own self-righteousness or rule-following, they end up in a place of religion which is toxic and downright abusive sometimes. The word religion means to bind over and over again. When we bind ourselves up in trying to please God without the power He has given us to do so, we are in a bigger mess than if we deny Him entirely.

I also don’t pursue relationship with God because I was raised to believe Him and brainwashed into doing so. In fact, I have had many reason NOT to pursue relationship with Him over the years, and it would actually be easier for me and make more sense to drop the whole thing! I could make more money, have easier relationships and not experience nearly as much rejection.

Instead, I love Jesus because He loved me first, not when I met His standard or expectation. He reached out to me in love with no strings attached. I don’t have to accept His love, and He experiences rejection more than any other person I know as many refuse Him.

Why I Choose Jesus

fear

God of the Storm

God of the Storm

We had a crazy windstorm last week with almost 24 hours of intense wind gusts and the resulting damages—trees falling, fences knocked down, various lawn chairs and trampolines blown away. I’ve never been through a hurricane on the coast, and I realized what people talk about with the sheer noise wind can create. My husband had to wear earplugs to sleep, and the howling and crashing went on all night.

At some point during the night, I woke up and listened to the wind for a bit while lying in bed. It dawned on me that this was what the disciples felt when they were out in the boat with Jesus, except they were on a boat tossed by the waves rather than a warm bed in a safe house. I imagined the fear and panic that would govern in a situation like that. They were pretty sure they were going to die out there in that storm.

Jesus had been teaching about faith prior to this story told in Mark 4. When the storm comes up, he is SLEEPING. This makes no sense to us when we don’t realize that God is enough in a storm, but Jesus knew His Father was watching out for Him and didn’t need to worry or stress about anything.

Being a Snail

Being a Snail

I have been thinking about how cool it is that we take a safe place with us no matter where we go. We are similar to snails—they carry their home on their backs, ready to pull into a shell whenever things get scary. The difference is that our safe place is within, and we can access it any time without physically moving. God no longer dwells in a temple made with hands, but in His people. (1 Corinthians 6:19-20) He has given us His Spirit, and His very Life within.  

We are in Christ, and Christ is in us. We contain the wrap-around presence of God within us all the time. It’s kind of a cool picture, isn’t it? We carry Him, and He wraps around us and shelters us as well. So many things with God’s kingdom are both/and. His Life is in us, and we are in Him.

Simple & Humble

Simple & Humble

So many things over the last few months have felt complicated, stressful and downright scary. I find some humor in the fact that the answers God keeps giving me about each of these situations is very similar—keep it simple. I’m grateful He doesn’t add the “stupid” as some do, but He does remind me repeatedly that trying to figure out a way through these things on my own is only going to bring more headaches.

I don’t generally even pray for a word of the year as some do, but there is always a theme that starts to rise above the rest towards the end of one year into the beginning of the next. I welcome it now, as I realize God is giving me some insight into what He is growing in me. I love that this isn’t a task I’m supposed to complete or a lesson I’m supposed to learn well and check off. Instead, it is what His Life in me is going to achieve and guide me in to as we walk together.

Simplicity, I have noticed, is related to humility. If I feel I must know the way ahead and I can handle it on my own, I end up making things more complicated every time. Humility means that I recognize my lack of ability, and then faith allows me to rely completely on God’s ability within me. Corrie ten Boom said, “It is not my ability, but my response to God’s ability, that counts.”

Power Over Fear

Power Over Fear

I have spoken to many people recently who are dealing with fear, especially as world circumstances get crazy again. I, for one, often get stuck living in my own little peaceful bubble until that bubble gets popped by one thing or another. Then, it’s very easy for fear to take over. I remember when COVID started, standing in the middle of a grocery aisle trying to get air through a mask while I looked at empty shelf after empty shelf. The fear of not having enough was suffocating. These days, I can watch the news and have the same fear rise up in me, watching as people are murdered, tortured, raped, bombed. I ache with sadness for the loss, and run through all the worst-case scenarios of what is next.

I realized during COVID that I have no idea how to prepare for things, and it better be up to my kind Father to prepare me. Who would have thought that people would have been fighting for toilet paper? We often believe, though, that fear somehow prepares us for the unknown. Yet, it actually does nothing to make us ready.

God obviously knows we will struggle with fear, as He addresses it over and over throughout the Bible. Fear can be the most strangling distraction, as we obsess on so many things of which we can be afraid.

Don't Let Worry Be My Bread

Don't Let Worry Be My Bread

Don’t let worry be my bread today,
But let me, instead, feast on the delights of your love and faithfulness.
Take the care and burdens that weigh me down,
Leaving the lightness and the relief of freedom.
Pull the fires of rejection from my heart
Quenching them with Your tears and compassion for me.

Dismiss the distractions and confusion that fill my brain,
Replacing them with focus and peace no matter what is going on around me.
Take the cursing and the spewing that fill my mouth,
Giving blessing and hallelujah that only come from you.
Remove the discouragement and hopelessness,
Putting courage in me, restoring my soul with hope and sweetness in You.

Peace & Courage

Peace & Courage

We talk about peace a lot around Christmas. The Bible mentions peace even more often. Jesus is called the Prince of Peace. Peace is something that Jesus leaves with us. Peace is something that might not make sense as it surpasses all understanding.

“I leave the gift of peace with you—my peace. Not the kind of fragile peace given by the world, but my perfect peace. Don’t yield to fear or be troubled in your hearts—instead, be courageous! John 14:27

I believe Jesus left peace with us by leaving us Himself. Peace is not the absence of conflict or suffering, but a person. When I am in relationship with God (in other words, acknowledging His presence), I have peace. No matter what else is going on around me, I can have peace.

So often we want peace to be when everything is going “right” and we are enjoying green meadows and bubbling brooks. Even when we are surrounded by craziness, though, we can have peace because we always have Jesus. He promises to never leave us.

He Holds My Hand

He Holds My Hand

If your week looks anything like mine, you are running a little ragged. Yours might feel better or worse, but regardless there are so many days that I wake up telling God how I don’t have what I need for today at all. I don’t know how to do it. I can’t possibly have the strength or time to do it. I don’t even want to do it.

Sometimes the way ahead feels completely impossible. The mountain in front of you looks insurmountable. The feelings around you threaten to drown you, and you are convinced that there is no other way but to live in anxiety and constant hypervigilance.

I will tell you what God has been telling me. Not because I understand it completely, but because it is most comforting when you are facing a life that seems impossible.

God's Remedy for Fear

God's Remedy for Fear

Fear in our society has gone from being an obsession in our own private minds to a constant surrounding presence. Everywhere we look, someone is calling out another problem that should cause us to be afraid. Sometimes I feel like a pinball, bouncing from one thing to the next about which I am supposed to get worked up and live in constant fear. In fact, the prevailing opinion seems to be that if you do not live in anxiety all the time, something is wrong with you or you are being ignorant.

I find it interesting that God focuses on fear so much in the Bible. I have heard it said that some form of “do not be afraid” is in the Bible 365 times. I believe, though, that God always provides a different way. It is not just a condemnation of fear so that we man-handle ourselves into judgement so we don’t fear. Instead, God tells us don’t fear, instead pray, trust, believe. He gives us something to put our energy toward rather than just telling us not to be afraid.

I was looking at a few of the more common fears today, and looking at God’s remedy for each of them. I want to move past just telling myself not to be afraid and understand the way in which God has provided an escape or a safe place to deal with the fear.

One fear that is a struggle for many of us is the fear of inadequacy. What if we walk around our daily lives constantly feeling as though we are not enough. I hear a lot of people try to combat this feeling with a recitation that they are, in fact, enough. I don’t find this entirely helpful, though, as just saying something doesn’t make it true or believable. Instead, I think we have to push into the weakness, real or imagined, and admit where we are.

You Are a Mighty Warrior

You Are a Mighty Warrior

I am grateful there are people throughout the stories in the Bible who are cowardly, fearful, argumentative, and generally have a bad attitude. These stories remind me that it’s not about God having a really strong person in me, but my weakness allows His strength to be shown. Gideon is one of those people.

Gideon is scared, and not at all brave when it comes to tackling the idol worship going on in his camp. He doesn’t want to go fight Israel’s enemies and conquer them. He’d rather hide and hope everything comes out ok.

There are a lot of things I’m scared of, and if I get focused on them, they seem all-consuming. When God asks me to do something, I’m usually first to show Him all the reasons why that something isn’t a good idea. And why I’m not the woman for the job.

But just like He did with Gideon, God tells me that He will be enough for whatever I am facing. He says that with His presence, I have all I need.

I would rather He be a little more informative. I would like a bit more of the plan before I start. But often it is the simplicity of reminding me that His presence is what I have, and that is more than sufficient for whatever I face.

Fear and the Shepherd

Fear and the Shepherd

I’m afraid of so many things. Small, cramped spaces. Sending my kids to school. Rejection. Being left out. Home invasions. Doing or saying the wrong thing. Hurting someone. The list goes on and on. If I allow it to, fear can totally dictate every choice in my life, and keep me from so many things because of what might happen.

Something I’ve been learning, though, is that fear is a choice. Yes, some of us have trauma or training that would have us tend toward that choice. But we can slowly retrain that part of our brain that wants us to live in fear, and begin the process of becoming free.

I was reading Psalm 23 the other day and had a revelation—we can either follow fear or the Shepherd in decisions, but not both. It’s either attempting to protect ourselves and those around us (which really boils down to control), or entrusting ourselves and those we love to the Shepherd. We struggle with this because we have this illusion of control—we think we can control circumstances or people. But the reality is this is an illusion, and we are spinning our wheels trying to do something we have no actual power to do.

We have to recognize this lack of control and power, I think, before we are willing to trust the Shepherd. I have to acknowledge that I can’t protect myself or my family from every harm, that I can’t always avoid elevators or caves, that I can’t be likable enough to avoid all rejection or being left out, that I will hurt someone whether I mean to or not, and that I will definitely say the wrong thing sometimes. Usually when we start to get a glimpse of this, we shut down again and turn a blind eye—working harder to try to control something of which we have no actual control. However, we can also move into entrusting these worries and fears to the Shepherd.

The Weed of Fear

The Weed of Fear

I have a vine in my backyard that seems to be a parasite that can’t be stopped . I know I talk a lot about The Vine (Jesus in John 15:5), but this isn’t that kind of vine.

I first found evidence of it coming through the fence from my neighbor’s back yard into mine. I just cut off the branches coming through the fence, and thought I had it sorted. I found more a bit further into the yard, and started to wonder. Finally, some popped up right in the middle of my raised garden bed, meaning it had gone through the weed guard and all the soil and come up right in the middle of my vegetables.

This meant war. I started pulling the vine out, and it kept going. And going. I pulled up the weed guard a little to look underneath, and realized there was an immense system of vines growing all under it like it was a comfortable blanket rather than a method of keeping weeds out. I found it clear across on the other side of the yard, which means this vine system is now growing throughout my entire yard, underneath everything and lying in wait for whatever plant it can take over while I’m not watching.

Now, I realize I make it sound quite menacing, but honestly, this plant is trying to take over! But it got me thinking about the small things we allow to grow under the surface of our lives without checking them at the fence, and as they slowly spread and choke the life out of everything we have tended so carefully, we can wonder how they could have gotten there.

Waves Are Only Waves

Waves Are Only Waves

I was listening to the song “Peace, Be Still” sung by Hope Darst the other day, and thinking about when Jesus calmed the storm in Mark 4. The world right now often feels like we are in the middle of a storm, as it rages around us with all its fury and confusion. We can begin to feel as though everything is out of control, and we are just floating over each wave as we are pelted with rain.

Many of the disciples who were with Jesus were fisherman, so the sea was not a foreign place to them. They spent a large part of their lives understanding the weather, knowing when fishing was best and dealing with boats on the sea. This storm sent them all into a fright, which made me consider a couple of things.

Walking in Dependence

Walking in Dependence

My son and I were talking yesterday and I watched him finally confront the sadness that he had kept at bay for the last couple of weeks. He was sad he wasn’t going back to school for the foreseeable future, that he wouldn’t get to enjoy days with his great teacher and friends. And he asked me how long the sickness was going to last. And I don’t know. So, we talked about how we do hard things, and find the joy in them. And we talked about how it’s okay to be sad and miss things, and then also okay to enjoy the day in the way we could.

The reactions from many of the people I work with in counseling have been similar—how do we do this season when everything has been uprooted and made raw?

I was thinking through practical tools I’ve been giving people, which I will talk about later in this post. But first, God reminded me this morning we do this season of life just like we do every other season--in dependence on Jesus. Every morning we can wake up knowing that the day is too big for us, and ask Him to be all we need for it. That hasn’t changed with the magnitude of the situation, or the radical difference many of us feel in our lives. God hasn’t changed. He is still more than enough for all the pieces of our lives, even the ones that look like pandemic, shelter-at-home and remote everything.

Fear Doesn't Get To Be Your Boss

Fear Doesn't Get To Be Your Boss

Anybody else make decisions throughout their day struggling with fear? Could be anything from fear of death to fear of missing out, and everything in between. But fear becomes the boss of you. It tells you how to live and what to avoid. It makes you believe you are controlling your life by obeying it. But any control given to you by fear is an illusion.

So, if God doesn’t give you the spirit of fear (2 Timothy 1:7-8), how do you take fear out of the driver’s seat?

God's Enoughness

God's Enoughness

What do you need for today? Do you feel like you’ve been waiting so long for something that has yet to come? Do you feel a growing discouragement that it won’t ever come? Do you look at your day and feel it has already become too big for you to handle?

There are many things I have asked God for that He hasn’t brought yet. And there are things He has promised me that He hasn’t yet fulfilled. I was reading Genesis 17, which begins by telling us that Abram is now 99 years old. This man has been waiting on God’s promise of a son who will become a great nation for many, many years. I bet he’s been tempted to quit believing God’s promise many times. 

God's Blessing

God's Blessing

A friend of mine gave me the Passion translation of Genesis that just was released, and I was struck immediately in the introduction by something that was said about blessing. Genesis is full of talk of God’s blessing, and yet I realized I had a bad definition of blessing. I had always thought of it as the “good stuff” like riches, power, freedom, etc. You know, sort of like the opposite of a curse. 

When God's Plan Seems Crazy

When God's Plan Seems Crazy

I was listening to Lisa Jo Baker today as she talked about a story in 2 Chronicles in which God told King Jehoshaphat to do some crazy things when faced with enemies bent on the destruction of his people. God told him not to fear, to stand still and to watch the Lord fight for him. So, he sent the choir out front of the army and marched down to meet the other armies. The singers sang praise to God and as they did this, the Lord defeated the armies and had them kill each other. When the Israelites arrived on the scene, nothing was left but corpses. It made me laugh because of how often God asks us to do the thing that doesn’t make sense, that makes us feel or look like a fool, or that is the opposite of what we would think we should do. 

Sacred in the Mundane

Sacred in the Mundane

I need the revelation of the sacred in the mundane, the extraordinary in the everyday and the supernatural in the earthly sameness. I forget so easily, and go about my day with crazy drivers and bickering kids and toilets to clean. Maybe for you it’s the emptiness or sadness or stillness rather than the busy.

Floating not Drowning

Floating not Drowning

Sometimes it feels like drowning.Like the abyss is swallowing you up.Sometimes your feet find no foundationAnd your mind wanders in frantic search.The waves threaten to cover youLeaving no trace of life behindThe fear seems to choke youAs you wait for a rescue that seems far away.

Walking with the broken to find hope in Jesus