Your Invitation to IF:Gathering 2016

I want you to close your eyes and imagine some scenarios with me.  You are a mom. Walk through your day. Start with this morning. What all took place so that you could exit the house with both yourself and your children fed and clothed? Today is a Sunday for me. I am a pastor's wife, so my morning including some of the following: some crying, some arguing, some negotiating, some bribing. You too perhaps experienced some of these? Maybe also some sighs…some coddling of faces and warm snuggles after waking from bed?
 
As a mom, what all did you do in the last four hours to care for, nurture and love your child? Can you even count them? Now multiply those acts of caring, love, consoling and teaching you have lead in your home by a thousand and maybe you are close to what happens in a month or two in your home.
 
It is exhausting, heart-breaking, rewarding and full of a passion to do this mom thing well, right? We all just so deeply want to care for and love our children, to raise them well. To see them grow. To provide opportunities for them to mature, learn and love…to become the best person they can possibly be. So even though the days are long and years are short, we spend our moments giving of ourselves to this mission of motherhood.
 
And this is good. We were made for this. As women, we were built for this compassionate, passionate, caring, desire-filled, creative, innovative, multi-tasking, love-making, child-bearing, dream-equipping, soul-soothing, kind of life.
 
But sometimes in our rush to meet the needs of crying babes, tantrum throwing toddlers, question-asking school children, and sassy teenagers we forget we have a caregiver too. We forget that when life feels cold and confusing there is someone waiting to wrap us up in peace and hope. We forget that when we are crying out in emotional, spiritual or sleep-deprived hunger pains, there is someone who desperately desires for us to turn to him to meet our needs. We forget that there is someone offering us healing when we are sick and tired of being sick and tired. We forget to believe that we have a caregiver who sees us—who pulls us to himself, just as a mother puts a bottle to her babe’s mouth or pulls an infant to her breast to provide comfort, nourishment and attachment. We forget that when we fall down and scrape our knee and are screaming to have someone come and fix us up, that we are heard. We are loved. We are seen in the moments we feel low to the ground, exhausted and worn from loving our hearts out of our chest.
 
And this caregiver, this Abba father, he loves us even more than we can love those we have birthed or brought into our homes through the pregnancy of hope, love and compassion. This care-giver never sleeps, he is not awakened by our crying. Instead, is always attentive to it, prepared and ready to be our steady-rock when all we seem to do is rock back-and-forth, back-and-forth, back-and-forth. This care-giver gives us the love and life we need to be the women he has designed us to be, but we often forget to believe he is there. We forget to believe we are cared for, sought after, loved beyond measure. We forget to believe that just as we dream big dreams for our children, he dreams big dreams for us.
 
Why do we forget to believe? How do we forget to believe?
 
There are likely thousands of answers to these questions—as many as the unique tangents that make up the culminating stories of our lives.  And I am willing to bet that if you took some time to reflect on why or how you forget, your list would look both similar and different to mine.
 
Here are a few of mine:

• Life is busy
• Kids are needy
• The house is a mess
• Facebook distracted me
• I believe I have got this all under control
• I am hurt and lonely
• I don’t hear God or see God in the trials of my life
• I don’t spend time with God’s word
• I don’t take time to pray
• I forget to fill my mind with music that praises God’s name
• My dreams seem squashed
• My place seems small and irrelevant
• I forget to have meaningful conversations with others that center on Jesus—ones about knowing him and bringing him out in our daily lives
• I forget to serve him through serving with a good attitude those who are most in need of seeing Jesus through me
• I forget who Jesus is to me…that he is for me

 
Did any of these resonate with you? Maybe you have a more unique list. Maybe you have never consider this idea of forgetting to believe that you are cared for and loved by a God who knows you and has big dreams for you. Or maybe you knew at one time but somehow life has taken over and you have forgotten--not on purpose, it just happened somehow. 
 
Regardless, of why or how, I am here to let you know God came down to earth as a man named Jesus. He walked on this dirty ground and spent his life and poured out his blood to make sure you knew He cared for you. But he didn’t stop caring for you on that day. He wasn’t born and then put to death just to get you into heaven--He came to redeem every corner of your life, every part of your story, every moment you feel failed or experience thoughts of inadequacy because he is in love with you. He does not forget you even if you feel forget to abide in his love and presence.
 
And while Jesus was here, he showed us what love looked like in human form and human action. He showed us what it meant to give compassion, to find peace, to seek to remember to live like heaven actually sees earth. Through stories and miracles Jesus also taught us to see God as one who cares for us more deeply than we can imagine or understand, and to love others the same.  To believe the promises of God and know that we each have a big-dreamer God making purposeful and perfect plans for our futures.
 
What IF we sought to not forget our care-giver God’s presence in our daily lives? What IF we chose to remind ourselves daily of the life of Jesus? To study it, know it, believe it and walk it?

What IF in our remembering we chose to live like Jesus, believing that we are loved and nurtured by a God who gets us?
 
What IF we believed that God loves and cares for us even more than we have the capacity to love and care for our children?
 
What IF we allow him to meet our needs, letting those who disappoint or fail us off the hook, and instead securing our hearts to the only steady, unfailing, perfect one—Jesus? 
 
I believe we would live radically different lives: Maybe not on the outside, but for sure in our minds and hearts.
 
It might be worth finding out, don’t you think?

I would love it if you could join us for IF:Local, Alexandria in February. To register, click on this link: ​https://ifgathering.com/gather/local/attend/
Some details you may want to know:

• Friday: doors open at 2pm, begin at 3pm. Saturday: doors open at 8:30, begin at 9am
• This experience will be most impactful if you can come for the entire event. If you cannot, please email me to let me know which portions you will be missing (this will help us with seating). 
• This is a cross-denominational, cross-generational women's conference and completely funded by the donations you give. We meet at New Testament Church, but are not an extension of the church. Various churches are represented on our leadership team. 
• All meals are provided--a free-will donation will be taken at the door to cover these costs.  
• If you are coming with a small group or a group of friends, please email me so we can have a table reserved for your group.
• If you would like to help us prepare for the event, we are having a work-day on Saturday, January 9th from 8am-5pm at New Testament church. Come and go as you please. Contact me with questions. 
• We hope to provide scholarships to anyone needing to pay for childcare in order to attend the conference. More details coming in January. 
• The sooner you register, the easier it makes it for us to plan appropriately. So, sign up as soon as you can. 
• Don't hesitate to contact me with questions or to request more information. 
• Keep up to date with all that is happening with IF:Local Alexandria on our Facebook page

To read more about my personal journey to IF and how it has impacted my life and community, click on the "Read More" button below  --------------------------------------------------------------V

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