Tag / Blessing

by Jennifer Wells

Lucy

Forgive me for being a little late writing this – the new baby haze is no joke. But we would like to introduce you to our new little girl, Lucy Taylor.

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We named Lucy after one of my favorite characters in literature, Lucy Pevensie, the little girl who walked through the wardrobe into Narnia and eventually became Queen Lucy the Valiant in C.S. Lewis’ Chronicles of Narnia series. Lucy was the first to recognize Aslan and faithfully follow his lead, and the person who most fervently believed in the good in people around her. It is our prayer that our Lucy will follow after Christ with that kind of sensitivity, passion, and devotion. Her name means light – and already this little girl has lit up our world.

“Aslan” said Lucy “you’re bigger”.
“That is because you are older, little one” answered he.
“Not because you are?”
“I am not. But every year you grow, you will find me bigger”.” ― C.S. Lewis, Prince Caspian: The Return to Narnia

We are very blessed, and very happy, to introduce her. Thank you for your prayers and your love, especially the last few weeks of my pregnancy when I was sick. We have been showered in every way – with prayers, gifts, meals, encouraging messages and visits. We are so grateful for the family and friends the Lord has given us who show us community and love.

Lucy is the easiest baby – she has a calm sweet demeanor, rarely cries, and doesn’t seem phased by the three-ring circus that is life at the Wells house. She fits in so well! The girls (and even the dog) adore her and race each other to meet her every need – and Justin and I are absolutely captivated. We basically sit around all day holding her and telling each other how beautiful she is and how much we love her – and we don’t plan to stop anytime soon.

Lucy is, like Grace and Rebekah, tangible evidence of God’s grace to us and we are so thankful for her.

For this child I prayed, and the LORD has granted me my petition that I made to him. 1 Samuel 1:27

by Jennifer Wells

Love and London

My friend Kate is a full-on Anglophile and it is one of the things I adore about her. She loves London, loves English history, and the more I’ve gotten to know her heart through the years, the more I’ve thought she truly belongs in another time.

This week, thanks to God’s blessing and my wonderful boss, I was able to do my first show in London. It’s been a dream of mine to visit Europe, so to get paid to be here is pretty amazing.

And being here – I understand Kate a little better. She completely fits here.

There is kindness and beauty here. Magic. Stepping off the plane and onto the train I felt transported into another era where life was more thoughtful and graceful.

I absolutely love it.

The diversity of people, the courtesy they demonstrate, the amalgamation of different languages and cultures, the history all around us (directly under my hotel window is a portion of the wall built by the romans in the 2nd century) – every part of it makes me slow down and look around in awe.

Being here this week has been a crazy, sweet, unexpected gift from the Lord. The only way it would be better is if my wonderful family and friends were here with me.

Yesterday afternoon I stood on the line that separates east from west at Greenwich observatory, and I was moved by the kindness of the Lord. I walked down the hill from the observatory praying and thanking the Lord for this chance, asking Him to lead us to raise our kids with a global consciousness and a heart for ministry all over the world.

Being here has demonstrated and strengthened my call to “go into all the world.” I am so grateful for the opportunity and for the reminder. London, I have been blessed by you.

I hope to be back soon and often.

by Jennifer Wells

Abundant Love

The Lord gave someone a vision two years ago to bless a family (us!), and last year the Lord gave them a vision to bless another family. Precious people jumped on board and gave sacrificially. This year, it grew and grew and people gave and gave and TWENTY families have been blessed so far.

This is the video from one of the blessings.

This is why I love the church.

This is what Christmas, and the gift of Jesus, is all about.

by Jennifer Wells

I Will Praise Him.

Something amazing happened this week. A friend reached out to me with a pretty strange request. She wanted to come meet with me and pray with me in our home. She knew the Lord was telling her to do this and when she called me, I knew the Lord was telling us to do this. I gathered my sister to join us, and called a couple of women around the country to join with us in spirit. We didn’t know what the Lord was going to do – but we knew He had something to do.

All day I felt a sense of anticipation and excitement.

We gathered and prayed – walking through our house. These precious women lifted each member of my family and our struggles to the Father as they walked. They prayed over our home, over our stuff, over where we sleep and eat and live each day.

In peace I will both lie down and sleep; for you alone, O LORD, make me dwell in safety. Psalm 4:8

We sang in gratitude. We cried in need of God. We spoke scriptures of truth and power over each area of our life and over the center of our home.

Every crevice of our need, and every inch of our house, was bathed in prayer and lifted before the Father.

It was powerful. It was grace. It was church.

This morning the grace continued. Our Pastor preached from Daniel on the story of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego (the three men who were told to worship a false God, but they refused because they were faithful, so they were thrown into a fiery furnace by an evil king. But the fire did not burn them, and when the king looked in to see why they did not burn, he saw a fourth man in the fire. The king pulled them out, repented, and worshipped God because of what he had seen). It was good to be reminded of the fourth man in the fire – Jesus Himself. Our Pastor wept before us as he talked about how near Jesus is to us when we are waiting, in the fire, for rescue.

God not only sees us in our pain, but he joins us there.

But now, this is what the LORD says— he who created you, Jacob, he who formed you, Israel: “Do not fear, for I have redeemed you; I have summoned you by name; you are mine. When you pass through the waters, I will be with you; and when you pass through the rivers, they will not sweep over you. When you walk through the fire, you will not be burned; the flames will not set you ablaze.  For I am the LORD your God, the Holy One of Israel, your Savior; I give Egypt for your ransom, Cush and Seba in your stead. Since you are precious and honored in my sight, and because I love you, I will give people in exchange for you, nations in exchange for your life. Do not be afraid, for I am with you; I will bring your children from the east and gather you from the west. I will say to the north, ‘Give them up!’ and to the south, ‘Do not hold them back.’ Bring my sons from afar and my daughters from the ends of the earth— everyone who is called by my name, whom I created for my glory, whom I formed and made.” Isaiah 43

Justin and I both were moved by the service. We can testify to this truth. We have waited, and while we have waited, Jesus has been near. This week, and that prayer time, was another example of His faithfulness and love for us.

I don’t know why this week is different, but I know it is.

I don’t know how it is a turning point, but I believe that it is.

And I don’t know what the Lord’s plans are for us, but I know they are good.

I know we are loved with an everlasting love.

I know we are free and we have power and grace available to us to have victory in what we are facing.

I will praise Him.

This is what the Lord, the God of Israel, says. “I will surely gather them from all the lands where I banished them in my furious anger and great wrath; I will bring them back to this place and let them live in safety. They will be my people, and I will be their God. I will give them singleness of heart and action, so the they will always fear me for their own good and the good of their children after them. I will make an everlasting covenant with them; I will never stop doing good to them, and I will inspire them to fear me, so that they will never turn away from me.  I will rejoice in doing them good and will assuredly plant them in this land with all my heart and soul.  Jeremiah 32: 37-43

by Jennifer Wells

One Thousand Gifts

I’ve started reading Ann Voscamp’s book, One Thousand Gifts. It is admittedly not the easiest read, but I’ve found it really powerful and inspiring.

The book is about the ingratitude inherent to our sinful human nature (evident from the beginning in the story of Adam and Eve) and how choosing to give thanks in our day-to-day lives is an act of deliberate redemption. Focusing in particular on the life of Christ, Ms. Voskamp demonstrates this idea by showing how often Jesus chose gratitude, particularly in challenging times, and how this was a part of His redemption of the world. She theorized that when we acknowledge the grace all around us and give thanks, we begin to see the Lord more fully. Just as ingratitude is inherent to our sinful nature, gratitude is a defining characteristic of the redeemed life.

In the book, she began keeping a journal of things she was grateful for, and it changed her. She kept in her purse a book full of micro-moments that proved to her that God was real and loved her completely. In the end, she had listed over 1000 things she was grateful for, and her attitude and countenance had shifted in the process.

“The greatest thing is to give thanks for everything. He who has learned this knows what it means to live..He has penetrated the whole mystery of life: giving thanks for everything.” – Albert Schweitzer

“The brave who focus on all things good and all things beautiful and all things true, even in the small, who give thanks for it and discover joy even in the here and now, they are the change agents who bring fullest Light to all the world.”

“We only enter into the full life if our faith gives thanks. Thanksgiving is the manifestation of our YES! to his grace. Thanksgiving is inherent to a true salvation experience; thanksgiving is necessary to live the well, whole, fullest life.”

Many women, myself included, have taken up the challenge to list our blessings. In doing this – I have found that my prayer life has definitely shifted. I have realized just how surrounded and covered I am by grace, all day everyday. My blessings will easily number in the thousands when I have finished listing them (if I ever really finish). In addition, I have begun to acknowledge, even in the challenging things in our life, that there is always a thread of grace and provision. Seeing those things with gratitude has begun to lift some of the weight of this past few years, and for that I am grateful.

I think there is definitely something to this book and this idea. I won’t share my 1000 gifts (although rest assured most of you number among them) because it is so personal to me – but I wanted to share about the book for anyone like me who needs to view life through a slightly different lens.

I’m grateful.

And I’ve realized that’s a pretty powerful thing.

(All of the quotes above come from One Thousand Gifts)

by Jennifer Wells

The Substitute.

I have a friend who is in the middle of a long, long, intense struggle. One that not many of us are strong enough to endure for a season, much less for years. My friend sees herself as weak, but I’ve watched her in this struggle, and I greatly admire her strength and courage in the face of difficulty.

But like all of us, she is human, and has days where her struggle seems overwhelming.

During one of her moments of weakness, another friend called her and gave her a simple yet profound offer…

She offered to hope for her for a while.  She offered to pray with faith and expectation about this struggle for my friend, as if the trial had just begun.

What an incredible offer.  It has impacted me for weeks as I’ve processed it.  What a gift.

Growing up, I was a soccer player (actually a pretty good one). And there were days, when I was playing someone extraordinarily fast, when I’d motion to my coach that I needed a sub. I loved the game, so I usually only came out when I was about to fall over, but when I was at the end of myself I would sub-out. And as I exited, someone, clothed in a fresh white uniform, well hydrated, with the energy that I had depleted 45 minutes ago, would pass by me, give me a high-five, take my position, and kick butt.

This is what this girl offered my friend.  A substitution.

If you’ve never faced a trial for a long time there is a truth you need to know:  Hope is hard to maintain.  At first, you have this shiny, beautiful hope. You hope for resolution, you hope for restoration, you hope for God to do the extraordinary before your eyes. You’re begging for miracles and you are ready because you know miracles are coming. So you wait and watch to see what God does, all the while praying about this situation that is truly difficult. And nothing happens. So you wait, and you pray, and you hope despite all evidence to the contrary. Over time, that hope can get tattered. Your eyes can get tired of watching (especially when the tears are pressing against them). Your heart can get weary of wanting something so bad you ache. It feels, on your weak days, like hope has betrayed you – like you are the most gullible chump on the planet for actually believing that good is still coming. Praying is hard in that place. You can manage “Jesus, please” a thousand times a day, but you don’t pray like you did at the beginning when you were confident that this was all going to turn out good. You are tired. Tired of feeling weak. Tired of disappointment. Tired of hope.

Now the super holy people will want to jump in here and say “Well, your hope clearly is in a thing and not in the Lord.” And they’d be cold and kinda self-righteous :), but partially right. On my bad days I’ll admit that some of my hope is misplaced, and I’m sure my friend would do the same. But Proverbs 13 says that “Hope deferred makes a heart sick, but a promise fulfilled is a tree of life.” We are made to hope. It is why we pray. It is why we strive. We are often called to so much more than our current situation holds and I think the Lord sometimes puts us in places where we need to rely on Him to rescue us.

So back to my friend. She has hoped and prayed for many years. And into this hurt and exhaustion comes this woman and she offers to, with faith that God can do what He’s said He will do, pray expectantly. She offers to sub-in for a while with fresh hope, fresh perspective, and fresh energy.

My friend was blessed. Heck – she was blown away.

It has really opened my eyes and showed me how much I can do this for people around me.

I want to be the substitute on the “playing field” of someone else’s struggle. I can believe for my friends. I can pray for their situations with hope and faith. I can come beside them when they feel like giving up and I can tell them that I still believe.

I can sub-in.

It has even stretched into my thoughts about finances. How can we sub-in for people in need? One of my Compassion kids suffers from a severe learning disability, and I recently found out that she cannot continue in school because she can’t keep up and her family can’t afford the special school she needs. She wrote me a letter apologizing for her failure (sweet girl – it broke my heart that she worried I’d be upset with her). What she didn’t know was that her letter wouldn’t find me disappointed in her or giving up on her – it would find me believing in her when she has given up on herself. I can sub-in on believing she is valuable. She lives in a slum in India, so money goes a long way there (much further than here in the States). So Justin and I, although we don’t have a ton, may have enough to sub-in for this family and help. So we prayerfully gave a gift and we are asking the Lord to multiply it and use it to substitute for her family to provide schooling for sweet Yohani. They have educated her for 13 years and taken care of her – with God’s grace we can step in for a bit and help take some pressure off. I can’t wait to see what the Lord does.

I love this idea. It excites me. It feels like the church being the family we were intended to be.  So if you are tired of waiting, tired of hoping, tired of praying – I want you to know that I am available as a substitute. It is so appropriate as we head into Easter this weekend.

Because that’s pretty much what this season is about – substitution. He took our pain, took our sin, took our death, and gave us His life. What a substitution. And because of that – we can love each other, hope for each other, pray for each other, and give to each other.

by Jennifer Wells

He Even Answers The Silly Prayers

This is a long story – but I have done my best to condense.

Every January, I get to produce a very large event in New York City.  This past year, about six weeks before the event, I was told that President Barack Obama had been invited to speak and that it was a distinct possibility he would accept the invitation.

So for several weeks, as we prepared for the event, I prayed and daydreamed about what I would say if I was granted 5 seconds, or 30 seconds, with arguably the most influential man in the world.

As the event neared, and the door remained open for him to come, my excitement rose, but with 48 hours remaining before the event, we were informed that he could not attend.

So fast forward to this week… I was catching a flight to DC for another event.  Because of an error in booking, I had to take a connecting flight out of Atlanta and was massively delayed because of a freak thunderstorm.  It was very frustrating, but during that delay, I got to know the person in the seat next to me.

She was a beautiful woman in her early 30s, very polished and polite, who had jumped on my plane in a last-ditch attempt to reach DC that night.  We talked about faith (she was reading a Christian book), and laughed at our shared entrapment in a tin can during a violent storm.  About 2 hours into our delay, when we had established a great rapport, I asked her what she did for a living.  She already had asked about me and knew I was from Dallas and that my husband was in ministry.  To answer my question, she very sheepishly told me she worked for the President’s Administration.

I smiled to encourage her and told her that I pray for our President and how proud I am of what they are doing to serve our country.  She seemed relieved and said she was very thankful to hear I supported them in prayer.

She opened up and told me about how she got the job, about prayer meetings they hold to pray for the President and Mrs. Obama, about the difficulty and excitement of the job.  It was amazing to hear her heart for serving our country and how she came to work there.

I told her about my thwarted possibility of meeting the President in January and laughed about how I had prayed about what I would say given the chance.

She asked me what I came up with.  I told her I had decided I would tell him I was proud he was our President, and that I loved his family, and that as a Believer in Christ I was praying for him.

She told me that she was good friends with the leader of the President’s Faith-Based Initiative and that she wanted to tell him that she had met a Christian from Dallas who supported them and prayed for them.  She then asked me if there was any advice I could give them to reach more people like me.

I almost teared up – what a question!  I told her that my personal issue – my heartbeat – is for the orphan.  About how God is moving people across the church to adopt and care for the orphan in a mighty movement to be Jesus to an entire generation of children who deserve all the love in the world.  I told her how the Adoption Tax Credit was a huge benefit to people like us wanting to reach out, and that I feared in all of these budget cuts that the credit would be allowed to expire, or be reduced or even cut out altogether.  I told her that in my personal opinion,  if they could advocate for that, working with church leaders, that together we could partner to care for “the least of these” and Christians would be able to be Jesus to thousands of kids.

She nodded and very seriously told me she would pass that idea on.  As we neared DC, I told her how glad I was to meet her and how I enjoyed talking to her.  I committed to pray for her and she sincerely thanked me.  The Lord really allowed us to connect and I felt like I was leaving a friend.

That night, as I reached my hotel room, I continued to think about my time with her.  I Googled her name and found out, to my great surprise, that she is a VERY senior staff member in the Commerce Department.  There are articles written about her  all over the internet.  I was not just chatting up an intern – as I assumed.  I was allowed, I believe by God, almost 6 hours to express my heart to a leader in our nation and a person very close to our President.

That night I laughed as I began to pray.  I have so little faith and the Lord continuously surprises me.  I had prayed for 5 or 30 seconds with the President, where I’d be nervous and watched by Secret Service, and instead He gave me six hours with a senior member of the President’s staff, where I was totally relaxed and unaware, during a crazy thunderstorm that had trapped us both on the same plane.

I got to advocate for the orphan, and I hope I was able to represent Christ well.

I know many of you disagree with our President, as do I on some major issues.  And I know many of you, given the chance, would have said something very different.  But I am so grateful for the chance I got to speak my heart to my friend.  I believe it was an answer to prayer, and I pray the Lord would use it for His great glory.