Amy J. Bennett

Extraordinary Faith for Everyday Life

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Archives for 2015

Feathers #008 with Donna Jones [Podcast]

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In this episode, I chat with Donna Jones.

Donna Jones is a national and international speaker who’s traveled from coast to coast and to four continents helping women find and follow God in their real, everyday lives. The author of four books, including Seek: A Woman’s Guide to Meeting God and Raising Kids with Good Manners, Donna has been featured in magazines such as Parents and Better Homes and Gardens as well as numerous radio and television shows, including an upcoming interview on Focus on the Family. Donna makes her home in southern California where she lives with her pastor hubby, JP. They have three wildly funny, passionate teenage/young adult kids who they love to pieces.

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In this episode, Donna and I open up the episode chatting about her daughter’s wedding and places to visit in California.

Donna then shares the story how her and her husband needed to make a job change and struggled to see the next steps. In the midst of this her husband began facing health issues. They had to seek God diligently and then face their fears and anxiety head on to follow in God’s calling.

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Connect with Donna

Connect with Donna on her blog Donna Jones.org, Twitter or Facebook

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I would love to connect more with you guys about the episode. Leave a comment here or we can chat about the episode on Facebook, Instagram or Twitter.

If you get a chance, please rate and review the episode on iTunes.  This *really* helps iTunes find us and most of all, helps spread this message of faith and hope.

Scripture

By faith Abraham, when called to go to a place he would later receive as his inheritance, obeyed and went, even though he did not know where he was going. Hebrews 11:8

EvenThough

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An Invitation to Increased Faith

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Increased Faith

 

I tossed and turned in bed last night. With eyes closed and mind busy, I sent prayers up for the families of the Christians executed in Libya. I sent prayers for more Christians who are facing the same fate. I prayed not that the persecution would subside but that their faith be emboldened to stand for Christ. That a weak faith would not deny his name and give in to these murderers. Because you know what happens when people’s faith is strong enough to withstand persecution? People believe. Others are emboldened. I am emboldened.

I want a faith that is so strong that can withstand persecution. Not so I can have the reward that God says is ours if we are, but so that others will join me. American Christians, we need this kind of faith. If we think this type of persecution isn’t coming for us, we are naive.

And this is why I am now seeing the importance and the purpose of Feathers. Guys, if we can’t trust God to talk to our neighbor or start a new job, how in the world are we going to have enough faith to face a sword? (Asking myself too) We need to practice our faith in the little things so we can have the faith in the big things. We need to hear others’ stories about how God was faithful to them. We need the encouragement of other believers.

To have that kind of faith, we need a track record of God being faithful in our lives and it starts with us hearing God’s voice and obeying every. single. day. Every time we do that, we trust God more and then we can say without reservation, “Yes, the God I know through Jesus Christ is the one true God. He is the way, the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through him.”

I believe God is inviting us on a journey to increased faith and it starts in the small. Won’t you join us every Tuesday on Feathers? Hear how God is faithful and know He can be the same for you.

 

Blessed are those who are persecuted because of righteousness,
    for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. 

Matthew 5:10

But whoever disowns me before others, I will disown before my Father in heaven.

Matthew 10:33

Feathers #007 with Natalie Snapp [Podcast]

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In this episode, I chat with Natalie Snapp.

Natalie Chambers Snapp is first and foremost a follower of Jesus, then wife to Jason, and mom to one spunky daughter and two spirited sons with a crazy amount of energy. Choosing to follow Jesus at 27, Natalie is passionate about sharing the grace, mercy, and truth of God’s love regardless of your track record. She lives in the Midwest with her crew and tries to keep it simple by writing about the faith found in the everyday mundane. The outpourings of her heart can be found at www.nataliesnapp.com in the fleeting moments between being a wife and mother. She is also a contributing writer for The Mothers of Boys Society, the Whatever Girls Ministry and Group Publishing. Her first book, Heart Sisters: Being the Friend You Want to Have, will be published by Abindgon Press on April 21, 2015.

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In this episode, Natalie and I open up the episode chatting about family and managing the friendships of our young daughters.

Natalie then shares her testimony, including bullying she suffered in school, how she became a believer at age 27, how God placed her as a leader of MOPS  and how all of this worked together to lead to her first book Heart Sisters. Heart Sisters is for women who want to both be and have better friends. Natalie uses her own and others’ stories of successes and failures to illustrate what she has learned about girlfriend relationships.

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Podcast: Play in new window | Download

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Connect with Natalie

Connect with Natalie on her blog NatalieSnapp.com.

Links from the Episode

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I would love to connect more with you guys about the episode. Leave a comment here or we can chat about the episode on Facebook, Instagram or Twitter.

If you get a chance, please rate and review the episode on iTunes.  This *really* helps iTunes find us and most of all, helps spread this message of faith and hope.

Scripture

For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the Lord, “plans to prosperyou and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future. Jeremiah 29:11

And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose. Romans 8:28

Isaiah 61

Therefore, I urge you, brothers and sisters, in view of God’s mercy, to offer your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God—this is your true and proper worship. Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is—his good, pleasing and perfect will. Romans 12:1-2

 

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Feathers #006 with Hannah Kallio [Podcast]

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In this episode, I chat with Hannah Kallio.

Hannah Kallio helps believers hone their ability to listen to God and to each other. In addition to being a wife and mom of five, she is a Certified Christian Coach. Hannah and her family experiment with simple, life giving ways to bring the kingdom into their daily lives. You can learn more about the life-changing power of listening at hannahkallio.org.

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In this episode, Hannah and I open up about having tweens and how this interview was an answered prayer.

Hannah then shares the story of how her family was called to missions in Italy. Just days after being there they found out they couldn’t legally live or work there.  A “simple” international relocation became an unexpected adventure. They moved 20 times in seven months, and set foot in six countries. Every step of the way, they trusted God, focused on listening to God’s voice as a family and going where He was leading.

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Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Listen and subscribe via iTunes | Stitcher

Connect with Hannah

Connect with Hannah on her blog HannahKallio.org

Links from the Episode

Share

I would love to connect more with you guys about the episode. Leave a comment here or we can chat about the episode on Facebook, Instagram or Twitter.

If you get a chance, please rate and review the episode on iTunes.  This *really* helps iTunes find us and most of all, helps spread this message of faith and hope.

Scripture

I will give you hidden treasures,
    riches stored in secret places,
so that you may know that I am the Lord,
    the God of Israel, who summons you by name. Isaiah 45:3

I will sing to the Lord,
    for he is highly exalted.
Both horse and driver
    he has hurled into the sea.

The Lord is my strength and my defense;
    he has become my salvation.
He is my God, and I will praise him,
    my father’s God, and I will exalt him. Exodus 15:1-2

  Isaiah453

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I'm not qualified to define success in my life other than success = obedience.

Easter 2015: Adoption, God’s Plans, and Our Identity

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My words have been mostly quiet here lately. I’ve sat down so many times to type out some words to you, but as I told someone recently, I feel as if God has frustrated my words. He has been whispering these past few months how he is doing something new. I don’t know if it’s so much of a circumstance or calling, but I feel newness deep inside. He is changing me. The words shared on Feathers are changing me. And it is today, on Easter when we are reminded of Jesus’s life, that I feel this new life the most.

He is indeed birthing something new in me. I am not sure I have the words for it yet, but it’s like a holy rumbling inside. I get the feeling it is new faith, a belief I’ve yet to experience. The more I walk in God’s path and let go more of my own, he replaces the empty spaces with Himself. Today doesn’t feel like a culmination of all his works, but perhaps a scenic pullover on this mountainous path.

I look back since last Easter and see that it isn’t just the deep in me that has changed, but our outside circumstances too. I sit here and write while I watch Jac0b play with the girls and Christ has never been more real to me. Do I need a Bible or an empty tomb to prove he is real? No, I have a little boy with blue eyes that tells me He’s real. It’s not to say I don’t love God’s word or believe in an empty tomb, but I just have this inkling that we can know that we know because of our experience with Him.

A third child was never in our plans. Our plans were for 2 kids, a dog and white picket fence. And then we started following his whispers, to be his hands and feet in this broken, broken world. We kept following the whispers until they were shouts. We couldn’t not adopt.

So we checked checkmarks and listened as friends told us we’d have a sandy haired boy. We doubted his call and waited and waited, and then, he was here. In the flesh. God’s call was no longer something written on paper or only of the soul, he was a little boy that moved in and took our last name. It is in this reality that I know Jesus was resurrected. This adoption was God’s idea, God’s path, God’s promise. All God. A dead God cannot do what He has done these past 5 years in our hearts and family. On our own, we would not have followed this path. But what a beautiful, redemptive path it has been.

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Last week we finally received Jac0b’s new birth certificate. We applied for and received his new social security card. If you look at both, it is as if the old Jac0b did not exist. He is now, and forever more, a Bennett. And yet, his past is still there. We can’t forget it or don’t want to. We honor the path he walked. It is because of that path that we more wholeheartedly celebrate and embrace ourselves as a new family. I look at him in our picture and see a little boy that was rescued from an uncertain future. He may have felt forgotten at times, but God was very busy at work to place Him into our family.

In the same way, I understand our adoption as children in Christ more this Easter. We have a past and it has gotten us where we are, but now we are part of a new family. We have a new identity. Because of His death and resurrection, our names are written in a book of Life that says we are His. We can embrace our past, but also fully live in the freedom of our present because of our salvation from that past. We can rest because he has redeemed and adopted us.

At times it may feel like He has forgotten us, but He has not. He is working all things together. We just can’t see it yet.

I look at our picture from last year and ask myself if I would rather have skipped all the hard parts and go back to where we were. Without hesitation, I would do this a thousand times over. This Easter, I believe God more, I understand my identity in Christ more and because of God’s resurrected son, I love a son that I never knew I’d have. And man, he’s pretty adorable, isn’t he?

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Feathers #005 with Amanda White [Podcast]

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In this episode, I chat with Amanda White.  Amanda is a stay-at-home mom of two who blogs at ohAmanda.com and is the author of Truth in the Tinsel: An Advent Experience for Little Hands. In her former life, Amanda was a Children’s Pastor — overseeing, organizing and developing ministry for kids in nursery through middle school, but now that she is a mom, her “skills” are used up on her kids!

 

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In this episode Amanda and I open up the episode with a chat about The Sisterhood of the Traveling Belt.

Amanda then shares the story of how she began with a desire to minister to children and had plans to become a traveling evangelist. Through a series of events, Amanda began blogging. God led her to take a leap and create an Advent eBook called Truth in the Tinsel where it found lots of success.  When she then planned the launch of her Easter eBook, she faced and overcame fears in order to be obedient in the call to publish Sense of the Resurrection, an Easter experience for the whole family.

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Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Listen and subscribe via iTunes | Stitcher

Connect with Amanda

Connect with Amanda on her blog ohAmanda.com, Twitter, Facebook or Pinterest

Links from the Episode

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I would love to connect more with you guys about the episode. Leave a comment here or we can chat about the episode on Facebook, Instagram or Twitter.

If you get a chance, please rate and review the episode on iTunes.  This *really* helps iTunes find us and most of all, helps spread this message of faith and hope.

Scripture

Let this be written for a future generation,
that a people not yet created may praise the Lord Psalm 102:18

 

Maybe success is measured bestBy nothing

NOTALL WHO WANDERARE LOST

“She turned to the sunlight    And shook

Feathers #004 with Jessica Leigh Hoover [Podcast]

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In this episode, I chat with Jessica Leigh Hoover.

Jessica Leigh Hoover is a wife, mama, writer and grace lover. Her family has a bit of wanderlust which has taken them all over the place including West Africa. Currently she is doing life in the hills of Western, North Carolina with her husband and 3 year old daughter. Her journey has been filled with loss, laughter and everything in between and she writes about it all on her blog JessicaLeighHoover.com

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In this episode Jess and I open up the episode with a chat about living in Charlotte and her new house.

Jess then shares the story of how her and husband were missionaries in West Africa three years ago. They came home before their term was up because Jess was pregnant. That sent them back into the professional world. After a year and a half in Charlotte they made a big leap to return to working with their sending agency stateside. After a year of raising financial support,  Jess’s husband was offered a job in his professional field again- completely out of the blue.

It was in this decision whether to remain with the agency or return to the professional field that God asked them to trust Him, even when the decision didn’t look like the presumed faithful thing to do. Jess shares how the story unfolded and the lessons they learned along the way.

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Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Listen and subscribe via iTunes | Stitcher

Connect with Jess

Connect with Jess on her blog JessicaLeighHoover.com, Twitter, Facebook or Pinterest

Links from the Episode

Share

I would love to connect more with you guys about the episode. Leave a comment here or we can chat about the episode on Facebook, Instagram or Twitter.

If you get a chance, please rate and review the episode on iTunes.  This *really* helps iTunes find us and most of all, helps spread this message of faith and hope.

Scripture

 The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases;
    his mercies never come to an end;
they are new every morning;
    great is your faithfulness.
“The Lord is my portion,” says my soul,
    “therefore I will hope in him.”
 The Lord is good to those who wait for him,
    to the soul who seeks him.

Lamentations 3:22-25

 

Sometimes God provides you in ways you (1)

NOTALL WHO WANDERARE LOST (5)

Feathers #003 with Crystal Stine [Podcast]

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In this episode, I chat with Crystal Stine.

Crystal is passionate about living authentically, chasing joy, and encouraging women to savor the season God has them in. She works full-time as the Editorial & Marketing Manager at (in)courage and shares encouragement at her blog, crystalstine.me.

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In this episode Crystal and I open up the episode with a chat about high school sweethearts, getting out for exercise and surviving cold weather.

Crystal then shares her blogging story and how years into it, God asked her to say no to many great opportunities that would continue to grow her platform and share the gospel.  She had to obey and trust that His plan for her was best.

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Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Listen and subscribe via iTunes | Stitcher

Connect with Crystal

Connect with Crystal on her blog CrystalStine.me, Instagram, Twitter, or Pinterest

Links from the Episode

BONUS!

If you’re at all interested in creating social media graphics, Crystal and I spent some extra time after the interview chatting graphic design and Crystal has agreed to share that as a bonus for you here.

Click play below for all Crystal’s graphic design secrets (ok, at least some of them)

 

If you loved that, be sure to check out Crystal’s new FREE 30 day graphic design course she’s offering in April.

Share

I would love to connect more with you guys about the episode. Leave a comment here or we can chat about the episode on Facebook, Instagram or Twitter.

If you get a chance, please rate and review the episode on iTunes.  This *really* helps iTunes find us and most of all, helps spread this message of faith and hope.

Scripture

And he said to all, “If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me. For whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will save it. For what does it profit a man if he gains the whole world and loses or forfeits himself? Luke 9:23-25

 

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