We pray you had a wonderful Easter weekend! Please join us for the linkup below.
Photo by eberhard grossgasteiger on Unsplash
Christ is Risen!
About GodSizedDreamers
Merry Christmas!
From all of us at God-sized Dreams, we wish you a Merry Christmas as you celebrate the birth of our Savior!
Meet Our New GSD Contributors!
Happy July Friends!
We can hardly believe that we are halfway through 2016! Where does time go these days? 🙂
We have an exciting announcement and can’t wait for you to meet some wonderful new dreamers that have committed to sharing their hearts with us here at God-sized Dreams. Each new writer comes with their own unique voice and story and we know that they will bless you with their words. Officially they will start posting a little later this month, but for now we wanted to share their lovely faces and their bios so that you could get to know them better! And if you haven’t checked out our Meet the Sailors page recently please do! Alecia has put countless hours (and maybe a few tears) into sprucing up our page for us and we love it!
Please join us in welcoming these dreamers to our team!
Laura Rath
Laura Rath writes to encourage women in their walk with Christ. She is a wife, mother, writer, blogger and works in the church ministry. Laura shares stories of her faith journey on her blog, Laura Rath ~ Journey in Faith, and recently experienced one of her God-sized dreams when she had the opportunity to speak at three women’s events, with another one planned for later this year.
Lovelle Gerth Myers
Lovelle Gerth-Myers is a writer, speaker, life coach, and encourager who has seen God do amazing things in the most impossible circumstances. She is passionate about helping others deepen their relationship with the Lord by using her story to help people truly see that we serve a limitless God. Lovelle lives with her husband David and her parents Holley and Mark Gerth in the South.
Natalie Joy
Natalie Joy currently lives in Atlanta, GA where she moved 5 years ago for warm weather and a cute boy (she married that cute boy a little over a year and a half ago). He has been her very best friend and biggest cheerleader pushing her daily to dream bigger and pursue her God-sized dreams. After 15 years in the corporate world coaching, speaking and training, Natalie took a leap of faith to start,Defining Your Joy. A company that works exclusively with women who have a dream but lack the motivation, accountability or strategy to make their dream a profitable reality. Her company comes along side these women daily through One-on-One coaching, Virtual Group Coaching, and Workshops. Natalie’s passion doesn’t stop there. A portion of every dollar brought into Defining Your Joy goes to help women that have overcome situations on trafficking all over the world. These incredible women are learning to dream again or maybe for the first time.
Karen Sipps
Karen Sipps has been in love with writing since she was a little girl. She is the creator of christianbedtimestories.com and the author of More Than Sales: Seeking God’s Heart for your Direct Sales Business. She encourages women and girls of all ages to love and embrace themselves exactly the way God created them — God-Sized Dreams and all! She blogs from the heart (and sometimes the funny bone) at Perhaps This.
Welcome sisters, we are so glad to have you here!
Graphic Courtesy of Holley Gerth
What Is Your Story?
Have you thought about sharing your story with us yet? If not, we would like to take a moment to encourage you to do just that.
You may think you don’t have a spectacular life and nothing wonderful share, but I bet you went through something today…last week… that could be an encouragement to someone out there right now.
The everyday mundane is often what makes up each day of our lives. Whatever your dream is, whatever your story is, we want to hear.
“Every day of her life and the years she had yet to live, people would be changed because of her story. Her life story.”
Karen Kingsbury, Remember Tuesday Morning
We are always so encouraged by reading about your journeys, and it is such a blessing to be able to share them with others.
So, tell us. What’s your story?
And if you take the time to share a piece of your story in the comments, we’ll enter you to win a free tank top or t-shirt from our God-sized Dreams Spring T-shirt Sale! We’d love to hear from you AND good luck!!! We’ll announce a winner on Wednesday. 🙂
It’s time to choose a random email subscriber to win a FREE print!! The winner is …dcjswalker@….Congratulations, and thank you for being a part of our community (Send us an email or reply to this post and we will send you a coupon code to redeem any print of your choosing).
P.S. We just launched our Spring t-shirt campaign! There are two designs and a variety of colors and styles to choose from. Don’t miss this sale…it won’t last long!
For Dream Chaser, click this link ==>https://teespring.com/GSD-dream-Chaser
For Dreamers Gonna Dream, click this link ==>https://teespring.com/GSD-dreamers-gonna-dream
(All proceeds go to fund the God-sized Dreams website; thank you for your purchase so that we may continue to encourage you as you set sail to your dreams!)
A Prayer for the New Year!
Heavenly Father, we come to you today with hearts of anticipation. For the dreamer in all of us the new year holds opportunities and new expectations. Guide us Lord in this new year. We pray that You would show us the path we are to go on for 2016. Give us a spirit of courage and wisdom to step out in faith for You. Help us to use the unique gifts You gave to each of us to be a light in the darkness. Thank you Lord for all of the ways you provided for us in 2015. We want to remember how we were challenged and stretched, we desire to seek You with our whole hearts as the new year begins. We are grateful Lord that You have been and always will be with us every step of the way. You created us with hearts that long to do more for You and so we stand ready to serve You well, Lord. No matter what this new year holds Father, we celebrate today the knowns and the unknowns, trusting that Your presence will be felt through it all. Thank you for Your love Lord. In Jesus name we pray, Amen.
Many blessings dream sisters as we look forward to all that 2016 will bring!
O Come Let Us Adore Him
Lord, we come to you today with hearts of gratitude. None of us fully understanding the sacrifice that the gift of Your only Son would be on that cold night in Bethlehem. We marvel at the faith of Mary and Joseph, the courage they had to accept this miracle child as their own. We read Your words in Luke and rejoice as the shepherds did at the wonder that was the promised Savior. Father, many of us approach this Christmas season filled with stress and things of this world, but today we pause. We pause and we remember the magnitude of what You gave to us that night. In a stable the Christ-child was born and that gift changed the world. Our thanks do not seem to be enough Lord, but we offer them with hearts full of adoration. Thank you for loving us so much that You sent Your only Son to earth to save all that would choose to believe. Oh come let us adore Him, Christ the Lord! In the blessed name of Jesus, Amen.
“O Come All Ye Faithful
Joyful and triumphant,
O come ye, O come ye to Bethlehem.
Come and behold Him,
Born the King of Angels;
O come, let us adore Him,
O come, let us adore Him,
O come, let us adore Him,
Christ the Lord.
O Sing, choirs of angels,
Sing in exultation,
Sing all that hear in heaven God’s holy word.
Give to our Father glory in the Highest;
O come, let us adore Him,
O come, let us adore Him,
O come, let us adore Him,
Christ the Lord.
All Hail! Lord, we greet Thee,
Born this happy morning,
O Jesus! for evermore be Thy name adored.
Word of the Father, now in flesh appearing;
O come, let us adore Him,
O come, let us adore Him,
O come, let us adore Him,
Christ the Lord.”
Merry Christmas from your sisters at God-sized Dreams!
Mission Moments: The Sisterhood We Must Not Ignore
The headline blared: Boko Haram Militants Raped Hundreds of Female Captives in Nigeria.
It was the above the fold story. The first thing I read in the paper that morning. The opening paragraph from the Times on May 18th screamed this indictment: Hundreds of women and girls captured by Boko Haram have been raped, many repeatedly, in what officials and relief workers describe as a deliberate strategy to dominate rural residents and possibly even create a new generation of Islamist militants in Nigeria.
The voice in my head screamed louder: HOOOOOOOOOWWWWWWW?
The how rapidly morphed into a howl: within the same 24 hours I read the gut-turning, mind-shattering story of the atrocities being committed by ISIS against NINE YEAR OLD girls over at Ann Voskamp’s corner:
Click away, turn the other way if you want, but those girls are wild to turn and escape — and they can’t. They are categorized. Stripped. And shipped naked. Examined and distributed. Sold and passed around like meat. Livestock. You can walk into any mall and buy a pair of NIKE running shoes for what they are buying a Christian or Yezidi girl from 1 – 9 years of age – $172 dollars. And she’s yours. For whatever you want, for as long as you want, to make do whatever you want. Sit with that. Yeah, we’re all done living in a world where a pair of shoes can last longer, have more worth, be treated with more value, than a fondled, raped and discarded 9 year-old-girl.
Dreamers, we CANNOT permit this to happen on our watch. These girls are our SISTERS. They are our daughters, our friends, our nieces, our cousins, and we will never forgive ourselves if we do not use every ounce of the God-given talent and vision we have to CHANGE THIS.
There is no other audience that would understand this. Everyone else would say, We can’t do anything? That’s well beyond our control.
But we here, this tribe of God-sized Dreamers, we believe in the impossible. God places us on the starting line AT impossible. {===> Click To Tweet} No is ammunition for us to prove them all wrong and show them all what a BIG GOD we serve.
THIS IS NOT BEYOND HIM. But we have to be willing to do something.
We have to do more than pray. We MUST act.
Here are some ways you can step out in faith and make a difference:
- Preemptive Love Coalition, which we previously introduced to you, has a new initiative to support the women and girls in crisis in Iraq. They are on the ground bringing a message of uniting not dividing and working across people groups and faith to bring healing. You can find out more about the Love First mission and how to give on the link.
- Doctors Without Borders/MSF – MSF is on the ground in Chad, on the border of Nigeria, helping the thousands of refugees fleeing Boko Haram. There are still some areas they can not get to because MSF is unarmed and the fighting is too dangerous in certain communities. DWB/MSF is in numerous such communities, not just supporting those suffering under Boko Haram attacks, but they are one of the few organizations actually supporting this particular region.
- Catholic Relief Services – This organization partners with local entities in both Iraq and Nigeria (as well as throughout the Middle East and Africa) and has long worked with governmental partners like UN to get relief to areas most under siege.
What shocked me more than anything in researching how we could specifically support our sisters in Iraq and Nigeria and the adjacent countries setting up recovery camps is how little specific relief efforts are underway. We should be able to change this. We have to stand up for these precious ones.
If you know of other organizations directly supporting girls and women that are recovering from ISIS and Boko Haram assaults, would you please share that information with us in the comments or on Facebook so we can update others? I believe this community wants to help. But that also requires letting everyone within our sphere of influence know what is going on. Let’s blanket our social media outlets with a cry to unite in supporting these sisters in the greatest need today.
Photo Credit: New York Times.
Mission Moments – Lulu Tree
“Speak up for those who cannot speak for themselves, for the rights of all who are destitute. Speak up and judge fairly; defend the rights of the poor and needy.” ~ Proverbs 31:8-9
She has a quiet way about her, speaking softly. But the volume of her voice doesn’t hold a candle to the volume of her heart. A woman with a passion to care for orphans and empower and equip women in Uganda, Emily started The Lulu Tree. An organization who’s mission it is to be “preventing tomorrow’s orphans by equipping today’s mothers.”
I met Emily in person for the first time on a shuttle from the airport in Greenville SC on our way to the Allume Conference in 2014. She was pregnant and just showing with her rainbow baby, a daughter given after a difficult loss. She was still dealing with some of the pregnancy sickness and looked a bit weary. But in the few minutes we had to visit, she pressed into the conversation. Her heart for others is evident from the moment you meet her. Grace-filled and transparent. She was leading one of the seminars and she was nervous. I told her that I would find her the morning of her talk and we would pray.
Sometimes that is all we can do – be a support and encouragement to one another and pray. The little things DO matter!
And Emily is doing just that in her work with The Lulu Tree.
After travelling to Uganda on a blogger’s trip, Emily came home and knew that she needed to do more. Finding employment is difficult for women, especially single women in Uganda. So often the only support they can get is if the child is sponsored by a program like Compassion. Wonderful programs yes, but how amazing would it be if these women were given the opportunity to find employment that would provide income and end the cycle of poverty in their families?!
And so through The Lulu Tree they are equipping women to chase dreams of their own. To train them in a trade of their liking…in Emily’s own words “Our ultimate goal is that these women become confident, joyful and self-sufficient.”
One of the things I love most about The Lulu Tree is that it is helping women chase their dreams. Dreams of being a tailor, a hairdresser or a seamstress. Dreams that seemed impossible but now are becoming a reality. We get that here don’t we?!
There are so many different ways that you can support The Lulu Tree. They have an Etsy shop with many beautiful items created out of African fabrics. 100% of the proceeds from the items sold benefit The Lulu Tree.
And they even have a sponsorship program. What I love most about this program is that with the funds the women are given the ability to better support their families and also taught budgeting and saving skills so that they continue to have a positive impact on their own community.
Women helping women, dreamers encouraging other dreamers…yes we CAN make a difference in the life of another. Will you join us?
If you want to know more about The Lulu Tree and other ways you can help, please check out all the information that they have here and help spread us the word about this wonderful organization!
And for helping us spread the word about The Lulu Tree today, Emily has graciously donated a copy of her book Atlas Girl! This is a beautiful book about finding home. Enter to win in the Rafflecopter below!
Firm and Secure Prayer
Lord we seek you this morning. Some of us are struggling right now Lord, and we cry out for help. But we are reminded in Your Word that You are our hope, an anchor for our soul. So Lord we ask that You renew us again with that hope. We thank You for loving us and for being our firm foundation. Regardless of what we might be facing today Lord may we remember that You are in control and You have us in the palm of Your hand. Today we rest in that. In the Almighty name of Jesus – AMEN.
Mission Moments – No. 41
Today I threw away more wasted food than I’d like to admit.
I stumbled over multiple pairs of shoes that cluttered up our entry way and grumbled to myself over the mess of it all.
And this morning I ordered a early Christmas gift for my daughter…granted I had a $10 off coupon, but I didn’t even stop to think if I should spend the $25 or not.
How often do we go through our days unaware of how good we have it? I know that money is sometimes tight, and we may have to stick to a budget…but if I am being honest I have not ever experienced a time in my life that could be classified as extreme poverty.
My kids always have shoes to put on when they need them, and their bellies are always full. They have never gone a day hungry, wishing for food.
And yet this is the reality for so many kids in third world countries today.
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In 2010 after a mission trip to Rwanda, Tara found herself broken for the people there and knew that she needed to do something. Not having a plan, but trusting God with His, she moved to Africa to work at an orphanage. It was here that God gave her a vision of what she might do to make a difference…one life at a time.
Recognizing that there was a deficiency in the provision of a school lunch program for the kids and also a need for better care of the “adult” orphans…No. 41 was born.
The idea started with providing these women sustainable employment. By teaching them how to make bags that would be sold to not only provide for them, but also to help feed children in the village.
In their own words: “When No.41 started, there were, roughly, 100 young adults over the age of 18 living in the Noel Orphanage. With no family and limited resources, the prospect of university or becoming gainfully employed was low. Along with that, confidence was low, dreams were small and hope was almost non-existent. It was important, not only to provide a means of sustainable employment doing a culturally relevant trade for these girls, but also to remind them that they were created for a great purpose, by an even greater God. We all have been given gifts and talents and, once realized, we should spend those helping others and that is where the feeding program came in.”
Today No. 41 employs several women who are helping to make a difference in their own community. They have also seen more women go off to University as well! God is working in these young women and it started with a “yes” from a young woman who knew she needed to do more.
In addition No. 41 has started a school lunch program. In the schools there, they have a 20 minute break for lunch where the children can leave to go and get food. Most of the children can’t afford food so they go hungry. For just $5 a month you can sponsor a child and feed them for an entire month!
Can you believe that?!
What can I sacrifice for $5 this month that would provide lunches every day for a child in Rwanda?
If you would like to know more about this amazing organization, cheek out their website!
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As a reminder, if you are interested you can join our Pure Charity Giving Circle. Each member that wants to participate will donate a minimum of $10 to Pure Charity. Please take a moment to check out our link: God Sized Dreamers. All donations are tax deductible and would be deducted on the 15th of each new month. At the end of the month, we will request that Pure Charity donate any funds raised this month to Preemptive Love! It is a simple way to give back and make a huge impact. We hope you will join us on this adventure.