Guest Posts

Interrupt Your Suffering by Serving Others

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{I am honored that Lauri Hogle agreed to co-author this week’s post, and I’m simply ecstatic to be able to offer you access to her weekly devotionals and playlists. Lauri is a Christian blogger and music therapist who writes about “singing Christ’s hope into your suffering.” I was introduced to Lauri and her posts as part of Flourish Writers and was instantly drawn to her use of music to interrupt our suffering with worship and focus instead on praising God. Each week, along with her devotional blog posts, she offers prayerfully selected playlists to encourage worshiping God even in our suffering. I hope you’ll take time to visit her site and sign up for her weekly emails. I know the scripture and song choices will bless you as they have me, and we can join together in interrupting our suffering by worshiping God}.

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I have a radical idea – what if we interrupt our suffering by worshiping God?

And what if that worship came in the form of serving others?

Totally crazy, right?

Maybe not.

What did Jesus tell us was the second most important commandment?  He said, “Love your neighbor as yourself.” (Matthew 22:39; Mark 12:31) 

The Greek word Jesus used for love was “agapao” – it’s a verb, an action, meaning you DO something.  You live out this love.

Let’s live out our love. Let’s interrupt our suffering by focusing on others.

Literally take our attention off our own challenges and struggles and focus on the needs of someone else.  This is a godly way to persevere through suffering.  This is also a way to worship God: love other people.  Meet their needs.  Be God’s hands and feet…even as we’re dealing with our own tests and trials.

Does serving others guarantee our pain will go away?

Unfortunately not.

Does putting the needs of others before our own needs exempt us from future suffering?

It doesn’t.

Then why should we do it?

Because God commanded us to, in Leviticus 19:18b, “…You shall love your neighbor as yourself; I am the LORD.”

Because Jesus echoed this command during his earthly ministry (Matthew 22:39; Mark 12:31).

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And because Jesus and other figures from the Bible lived this out.  They modeled for us how to serve others during a time of suffering.

Remember Jesus washing his disciples’ feet mere hours before his brutal death?  (See John 13:1-20)

Then, remember him making provisions with his disciple John for his mother, Mary’s long-term care even as Jesus was hanging on the cross?  (John 19:26-27)

The widow of Zarephath served the prophet Elijah even though she thought she and her son were starving to death during a drought.  The widow and her son were gathering sticks to make a fire to use the last flour and oil they had in their house to make bread.  When Elijah approached and asked for food, the widow told him that she planned to use up the remaining food in her house and then die with her son (she thought they would starve to death because there was a drought in the land and they had no way of getting more food).  Elijah gave her a word from the LORD: if she would serve Elijah during her suffering as God was calling her to, her flour and oil wouldn’t run out until God sent the rain. She submitted to God’s will and helped Elijah even as she and her son were starving.  (Read the whole story in 1 Kings 17:8-24) 

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Joseph’s story, in the book of Genesis, also illustrates interrupting personal suffering to meet the needs of other people.  As a youth, Joseph was sold into slavery by his brothers (Genesis 37:18-28).  He ended up in Egypt working in the house of a man named Potifar.  Because God was with Joseph, everything Joseph did was successful, so Potifar prospered as a result.  Unfortunately, the young man suffered again at the hands of his master’s wife who tried to seduce him then falsely accused him of attempted rape when he refused her advances.  His master believed his wife’s allegations and had Joseph thrown in jail (Genesis 39:1-23). While Joseph suffered under false imprisonment, he served others who were jailed with him by correctly interpreting their dreams; for one of his fellow inmates, he provided comfort in the knowledge that the man’s time in prison was about to end.  Joseph was still suffering in prison when he was asked to serve Pharoah . When Joseph correctly interpreting Pharoah’s dreams, Joseph won freedom from jail (Genesis 41:1-56).

The story of Ruth provides more proof that it is possible to serve others while you are experiencing pain and heartache of your own.  Even though Ruth’s husband died, she continued to care for her mother-in-law, Naomi, remaining in Naomi’s home rather than returning to her (Ruth’s) parents.  Eventually, Ruth moved with Naomi away from her (Ruth’s) homeland and returned to Naomi’s hometown (Ruth 1:1-19). There, Ruth continued to minister to her widowed mother-in-law by gathering grain from the fields in the area so she and Naomi would have food (Ruth 2:2-3).

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You see, God has already given us everything we need to pull ourselves out of our suffering: the mandate to love our neighbors as ourselves, and godly examples in His Word of people who served while they suffered, even His own Son, Jesus Christ.

Talk to God today about your suffering.  Ask Him to show you the needs of people around you, people who are hurting.  Ask Him to give you the strength to help those people even though you are also in need of help.  Ask Him to help you interrupt your suffering by serving Him.  He is faithful to hear you and to answer your prayers. 

Image Credit: Walk Upon Waters blog

To Heather’s words, I add this, as one who is so often physically ill and then riddled with feelings of guilt when I want to serve and help others but don’t have the physical capacity to care for others’ needs well. 

How can I wash the hands and feet of others if my body isn’t working? How can I keep going in moments when I’m physically weary from my current season of continual caregiving for others?

For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them (Eph. 2:10 ESV).

By His indwelling Spirit, we can walk in His perfectly planned good works, beloved. 

He answered my desperate prayers…with the answer of “prayer!” At my sickest, this flip calendar prayer helped me:

Deliver me Lord, from the snare of self-pity

the lie that I’m no longer a value

Remind me that when I’m unable to work,

I can still be of use …

I can pray … I can praise … I can be.

I can pray for my brothers and sisters in Christ continually, as serving the Lord:

keep alert with all perseverance, making supplication for all the saints (Eph. 6:18 ESV);

asking that you may be filled with the knowledge of his will in all spiritual wisdom and understanding (Col. 1:9 ESV).

I can pray for those who do not know Jesus or who are hurting me:

love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you (Mt. 5:44 ESV).

I can pray for this suffering to be a time of new learning and sharing the gospel with others:

but in your hearts honor Christ the Lord as holy, always being prepared to make a defense to anyone who asks you for a reason for the hope that is in you; yet do it with gentleness and respect (I Pet. 3:15 ESV).

Beloved in Christ, let’s all serve and honor our Lord, by loving others, in and through our suffering this week. How can we best do so? Let’s pray and ask Him to help us, the One who has already prepared us for good works during this time of suffering.

Rejoice always, pray without ceasing, give thanks in all circumstances; for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you (I Thess. 5: 16-18 ESV).

This week’s playlist gives us words to pray, as we seek the Lord’s help and wisdom about how to serve God, especially in today’s suffering. If praying through song would bless and help you, this playlist is for you. You can sign up to receive it in your email at https://laurihogle.com.

Tori Says It’s Hard Adulting when Your Child is Toddlering {A Blog Recommendation}

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“PS. She just walked in and is now crying because the sandal she took off is now off of her feet.”

This was the post-script at the end of my friend, Tori’s, blog post called, “The REAL Reasons My Toddler is Crying,” and when I got to this point, I couldn’t stop nodding to the computer screen in agreement.

This was the first post from her blog that I read after we met online in a writer’s group, and I have to tell you, it literally had me chuckling out loud and slapping my desk as I was reading.  I’ve reread it several times since, and it gets the same response each time.

Tori’s hilarious; I just adore her sense of humor, and it comes across in her writing.  But, more importantly, she’s totally on point as she discusses the real reason our toddlers cry.  So, I’m laughing, but then I’m also thinking back to when my own kids were toddlers, and I’m nodding my head because I.have.been.there.

Well, let me be honest: today, my kids are 9 and 5, and there are still moments when they get overwhelmed and don’t know how to deal and become emotional.

Many of us been there with a toddler crying over crazy stuff, right?

It’s #funnynotfunny, isn’t it?

I mean, you’re sitting there with this child, who just yesterday asked you to use the dinosaur cookie cutter to cut the buttered toast you gave him for breakfast, and he’s melting down today because you used the dinosaur cookie cutter to cut the buttered toast you gave him for breakfast.

What.in.the.world, son?

It’s easy to take it personally.  It’s easy to lash back at said child.  Especially if this is day 72 of such outbursts – and it’s probably gone on longer than that.

I couldn’t even put my finger on exactly what it was that was making my kids act so crazy until I read this post, but Tori’s nailed it.  It’s so simple, but it is so true.  You’ll see it, too.  Then, you’ll do a forehead slap like I did, and you’ll wish you could go back to every moment your kid cried over something insane, and you lost your temper (if you aren’t still in the throws of toddlerhood).  You’ll wish you could go back and “dig deep…and just sit with [your child] in her two-ness” as Tori suggests.

I’m trying to keep this in mind even now.  When I’m recalling all the blow ups I’ve had in response to the crying over crazy things.  When I feel like a terribly mommy.

When these feelings come up, I’m going to remind myself that “…’I am failing as a mom’ is not on the list of reasons my toddler is crying.”

Thanks, Tori.  I needed that 🙂

Read “The REAL Reasons My Toddler is Crying” and then visit Tori at A Wing and a Prayer where she blogs about parenting and Jesus and everything in between.  I know you’ll want to subscribe, just like I did, so you can get your own doses of Tori’s wit and wisdom sent straight to your inbox.

Tori is wife to Jeff and mom to a preschooler and a kindergartner. She loves Jesus, music, reading, watching #allthesports with her husband, drinking Jasmine tea, writing when she can find the time and connecting with other moms any chance she gets. Her dream is to see moms and women connected, empowered and encouraged; unburdened, unchained and unleashed.  In addition to writing on her own blog, Tori is a staff writer and the Community Coordinator for Project Mother where she gets the chance to help moms seek connection and create spaces of belonging for one another.

Connect with Tori on her blog, Instagram

What To Do If You Have a Critical Spirit

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You’re in for a treat today – our first guest post on Servant Girl Stories. I am honored to introduce my friend, Leigh, founder of Be Still Mama ministries at First Baptist Church of Indian Trail. Leigh and I met about 3 years ago when she and her husband, Brian, joined our life group at church. Since then, I have grown closer to her as a friend as our journeys as moms have merged. I also participate in Be Still Mama and enjoy working with her to encourage and love on the moms who also become involved in the ministry. She has such a heart for moms of young children and desires to pour into those moms and help lead them to the foot of the cross. Please welcome, Leigh Anderson!

By: Leigh Anderson

Growing up in the cul-de-sacs of a few big city suburbs, riding bikes and managing sticker collections, I didn’t have much to be critical about other than broken sidewalk chalk or a missing New Kids on the Block cassette tape. Or the fact that we got to pick out one “sugar cereal” per month and my brother would eat the entire box in one sitting as soon as we got home. Those were my critical moments, until my life changed one day in the formal sitting room in the front our house.

It was late afternoon, our friends were playing outside, and it was the first time I’d ever felt my chest tighten and my stomach go into a knot as the word “divorce” came out of my parents’ mouths to my brother and me. (Divorce is just as much a part of my parent’s story as it is of mine, so I share this milestone with the utmost respect for them but as a pivotal point of brokenness in my life).

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Photo Credit: Pinterest

The onslaught of changes was not gradual; it was abrupt, and life as we knew it was completely different for all 4 of us mere hours after that conversation happened. I experienced brokenness beyond what I’d ever experienced. And being so young, it was difficult to name it or understand it or tell anyone how I was feeling because I simply didn’t know.

We moved out of state shortly after that, and our new reality was unlike any I’d ever experienced. It presented more challenges than successes. That wasn’t only true for our family but also true within the new community where we’d moved.

Naturally, if people have something in common, that will be the subject of conversations. Our common thread was struggle, and it was mostly what anyone talked about. There weren’t people in our community coaching people to have positive attitudes, to talk highly of each other, to stop gossiping, to lift each other up, or to spur one another on. It was just natural to share the crappy thing that happened that day and who did it. Those were just the everyday subjects of conversations.

Slowly but surely as we lived our lives and grew up, that mentality of complaining or criticizing, something I viewed as normal and right, stuck with me. And I didn’t even realize it was something bad.

I didn’t realize all of this until a friend recently had the courage to shed light on this aspect of my personality and challenged me to really work on it. After talking with her and thinking about it for a while, a light went off in my head. I’ve known for a long time that I struggle with a critical spirit during particularly stressful seasons of my life, but now I know why. And now that I know why – because it’s been a part of my life for 30+ years – it’s time to make some changes.

In Be Still Mama, the ministry I lead, I’m passionate that we all find the root to the challenges we face. If we don’t dig straight for the root, treating the symptoms is a waste of time. When we focus on the bad in others, our circumstances, or ourselves we focus our eyes on brokenness, not wholeness. God’s will for us is wholeness, and we can only have that in relationship with Him. When we focus so much on brokenness, it’s what we ultimately become – broken in our relationship with Him – because we took our eyes off of Him and started staring at everything that’s wrong.

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We form and feed critical spirits within ourselves when we continue to focus on the flaws of our spouses, our children, our friends, or the people we resent. The resentment comes after they fail to meet the expectations we’ve set for them – my husband hasn’t lifted a finger around the house, my friend didn’t respond to my text for 12 hours, my kids won’t listen or obey and they fight all the time. It’s easier to tear down these people in an effort to feel better about ourselves than it is to compliment them on something they’ve done well or a character trait we really admire. When in reality the latter is the key.

My pre-programmed reaction for brokenness is to criticize and wrestle with how that circumstance or that person made ME feel. I made every encounter with brokenness about me, and that’s the total OPPOSITE of what we’re called to do with it. Big no no.

When we encounter brokenness, specifically in people, we have several choices. We can talk about them to others, we can criticize/judge them within our own hearts, or we can make the choice to see them exactly how Jesus sees them.

The reason God doesn’t want us judging each other so harshly is because we simply don’t know what we’re talking about. We see a sin; God sees the heart. We see an annoying behavior; God sees a stronghold. We see poor choices; God sees pain that they won’t let Him heal. Many of these instances naturally become a lot less personal because I’m making them more about God and less about me.

Learning this lately has been so refreshing. It also shined light on how damaging it was to my own heart to operate in a critical and negative way. And as a mom, if my heart’s damaged and I operate out of that place, there’s a high probability that I’m causing damage to my family.

Encourage someone today. Double points if it’s someone who’s recently really let you down. We encourage and uplift people as an act of obedience to God’s commandment for us to love our neighbor as ourselves. You need encouragement; you need forgiveness; you need to know you matter, so give that to someone else today. May we not love in an effort to see what we can get from other people; may we love other people because we love God – as simple as that.

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Photo Credit: Pinterest

Meet the Author: Leigh Anderson is a follower of Jesus, wife to Brian, and mom to two toddlers. She graduated from Newberry College with a degree in Communications and Sociology and went on to complete a Master of Fine Arts in Film/Television/Media Theory from Savannah College of Art and Design.

Although her plan was to sell everything and move to New York City to take a producer position at CBS News New York, God had other plans. Instead, she spent the last 14 years in professional ministry roles in communications and marketing. Most recently, she was the Director of Marketing and Community Engagement for the Christian radio station New Life 91.9.

After being laid off from New Life in 2014, she became a stay at home mom and through the inspiration and leadership of another Charlotte ministry leader, launched the ministry of Be Still Mama at First Baptist Church of Indian Trail.

You can find Leigh on Facebook at Leigh Baldwin Anderson and at the public group Be Still Mama.