Living, Loving, Leading

What's the spiritual temperature of your home?

"As for me and my house, we will serve the Lord," thundered Joshua centuries ago. We hear his words, applaud them, and long to follow in his footsteps. So why is it that thousands of us seem so disatisfied with the spiritual condition of our own homes?

Part of our problem, says David and Karen Mains, is that we're not sure what spiritual leadership looks like. We have problems fleshing it out because we can't see it.

Living, Loving, Leading, offers a tangible, "seeable" model for encouraging your family's spiritual development. Join David and Karen as they suggest some helpful, biblical ideas for raising the spiritual temperature of your home. Walk with them as they describe their own struggles and triumphs, and as they search for workable solutions to the crucial question, "How can we become the spiritual leaders of our family that God wants us to be?" Can you afford to wait any longer?

The Christmas Touch: Making Christlike Connections during the Holidays

God reached out in love to the world at Christmas. It would be good if we could learn to connect with people in a similar fashion. That's what this Advent series is all about - extending a Christlike "touch" so this holiday season others can experience Christ anew. This series lays out a course of action that will enhance your holiday experience through looking at six characters in the Christmas story. They will teach you how to make meaningful connections with God and others though December.

Friends and Strangers

Friends and Strangers chronicles the beginning of the journey into self-knowledge, a painful odyssey particular to the work of the middle years. This narrative focuses on the ages from 38-45. Each of us has hidden areas, lies we tell to ourselves that we don’t know we are telling. The work of the Holy Spirit is to continually bring us into truth. In this book I begin to look at truth through encounters with strangers, people I meet along the way, brought to me by God, who have rich gifts to give that shake my smug thinking. I am convinced that no encounter is casual, as each has the potential to move the ground beneath our feet, which is never as solid as we like to think.

Lonely No More

Lonely No More looks those lies finally in the eye and begins to deal with them honestly. "If my marriage is as perfect as I say it is, why am I so lonely?" "What are these dreams, these painful emotions, these attractions pointing to?" This book was extremely controversial in certain sections of ultra-conservative Christianity so I warn you, read it carefully. I stand behind every word, despite the controversy. It may even shake the ground beneath your feet. I will probably never write anything this well again. But I have certainly paid for the effort to be excellent, to be lovingly truthful, to want God. Covers age 45-52.

Any Help to Do God’s Work in the World

Have you ever gone on a God Hunt? A God Hunt begins when you teach yourself to look for God’s hand at work in the every day occurrences of your life. Here’s one of my personal God Hunt Sightings: I recently flew home from a ten-day trip overseas with one week to put the final details together for an Advent Retreat of Silence for thirty-some women. So much needed to be done, and even though our staff was in a highly busy space themselves, they assisted me in putting the final touches on the Advent Retreat with willingness, without complaint, and with a spirit that brought great kindness and grace to my jet-lagging physiology.Someone on the staff designed name cards (someone else found leftover nametags). Another individual pulled a list of alphabetized names together, showing who had paid and who was rooming with whom. A check was totaled and funds transferred so I could pay the retreat center. Handouts were copied and collated. Flyers were designed to list coming events. Every time I turned around, another task was done. I went to the Advent Retreat with everything organized, no last-minute panic, and with an hour or two to compose myself before the participants arrived. And yes, we all experienced a powerful time together waiting on God for the healing power of silence.One of my tasks at Mainstay Ministries is to write or gather the ideas for our monthly fund appeal. Since I have been raising funds for nonprofit organizations since the age of 18, this frequently becomes a tiresome process for me. Some days I would give anything for someone to step into our organization, tap me on the shoulder and take this whole load off my back. If I were not so certain about God’s help to do His work in the world, I would give it up. But, so frequently, there is the right idea, and the right quote, and the right photograph just when I need it most. Thus, I am encouraged by the reality that this is a collaborative process, one in which I am not working all alone.Other tasks, particularly the teaching tasks, are different for me. When I am putting together a teaching ministry, God frequently uses anything and everything to teach me. While developing a teaching program that used the metaphor of dance to show how to “step in time to God’s sacred rhythms,” it seemed as though all my spiritual reading, the conversations I had with friends, and the films, books, and magazine articles from popular culture gave me examples of this concept.Even better, during this period of time I was the plenary speaker at a women’s conference where one of the workshops was being taught by a professor from a Christian college who was head of the dance minor. I attended, took copies of all her scriptural notes, and in a half-hour she had us all improvising worship dance. It was delightful!I needed help to do God’s work in this world. Help arrived. I spy God!

Annual Advent Retreat This December 2011

Few weeks from now, we will be celebrating Thanksgiving and Christmas. Today is the best time to reflect as we prepare ourselves to celebrate the most joyous season of the year, the season of giving and sharing.

We would like to invite you once again to participate on the Annual Advent Retreat of Silence this coming Dec. 1 to Dec. 2, 2011 which will be held at the Bishop Lane Retreat House, Rockford, IL. Sibyl Towner (author, Listen to Your Life) and I will be facilitating, and we look forward to entering into this time of corporate silence as a powerful way to begin the Advent Season. There are only 50 spaces available, and this retreat does fill up, so please let me know if you would like to attend. You can go to this link ==> http://www.breathingspaceorg.com/tiffany/wp-content/uploads/2011/08/Advent-Retreat-Registration.pdf to register.

We look forward to seeing many of you again this year! Blessings on each of you this day. Wishing you a blissful Thanksgiving and Christmas this 2011.

Plant A Tree For Charity

Nowadays, green living has been a practice for most of us. Trees gives us shelter and beautifies Mother Earth. On Sept. 9-10, 2011, I will be holding a charity plant sale at my house in West Chicago. Proceeds will go toward defraying some of the above costs to underwrite the Global Bag Project. For more info, contact me at info@hungrysouls.org or leave a message on the office phone,630-293-4500. Any volunteer help the proceeding week or that weekend will be greatly appreciated.