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Welcome, Kim! Tell my readers a bit about yourself. 

I have a passion for helping others find their true mark – whether it’s helping companies with their marketing and business development practices, or using my counseling background to help others find God’s true mark for their lives. In my dream world, I’m doing it all while hiking or traveling the globe.

You recently co-authored the book Inked which is all about “Choosing God’s Mark to Transform Your Life.” It uses tattoos as a metaphor for how we can understand our identity in Christ. So, let’s get this out of the way first. Do you have a tattoo? If so, what is it?

No! I brave a needle about once a year when I need a shot for a poison ivy breakout (even that once resulted in passing out in the doctor’s office with the needle still in my hip), and I can’t even commit to a hair color! But I have a fascination with tattoos and, like everyone, I’ve been marked by life nonetheless.

To build upon this metaphor, I think many of us feel marked — labeled — by things we didn’t choose. Marked by pain or shame from our past, by others’ expectations or judgments, by cultural definitions of our value. Why do you think this is such a struggle for women? Why is it so hard to strip these “marks” away from our sense of identity?

It’s a struggle for everyone. We’re learning more and more about how our brains are shaped by our thoughts, or others’ words and actions. However, I do think women have unique challenges when it comes to identity. For example, research shows others observe men’s successes and women’s successes differently. If a man is successful, we tend to attribute it to his skill. If a woman is successful, we tend to attribute it to luck. 

When something goes wrong, men tend to attribute the blame to external causes, where women tend to internalize the blame. Here’s the good news, though, male or female: Research also shows that we are capable of changing the negative and harmful  patterns. But, of course, as Christians, we’ve always known that. The apostle Paul urged first century Christians to be transformed by the renewing of their minds. It isn’t always easy, but it is possible.

In Inked you write, “Every day, we have the opportunity to choose good markings. To be made new.” What do you mean by that? Practically speaking, how can a woman move toward embracing God’s truth about her value and identity?

If you walk into a tattoo shop, “flash” is the art you see hanging on the walls or in binders. It’s like clip art; the opposite of custom. Most tattoo artists tell us they prefer to do custom work. And so does God. It takes more work, but it’s much more interesting and one of the most important things we can do for ourselves. It starts with “taking every thought captive,” rejecting the flash, and replacing it with the truth and custom work God has designed for our lives.

 In Inked, we give a few practical ways to do this, but here’s a good start: Based on Philippians 4:8, make a list of at least twenty things that are true, noble, right, pure, lovely, admirable, excellent, or praiseworthy about yourself. Memorize the list. Whenever you start to have an untrue thought about yourself, immediately replace it with an item from your list.

This month on my blog we’re talking about what it means to be “whole” in Christ. Part of this sense of wholeness comes from seeing how God works in and through our brokenness to create something beautiful. Why do you think it’s important to really face our own brokenness? 

Facing our brokenness allows us to let God begin the healing and to turn it around for something better – as the prophet Isaiah wrote, to make something beautiful out of the ashes. One of my favorite stories in the book is about our friend Lilly. Once broken by an abusive relationship and marked by shame and pain, she fell into a cycle of cutting and carved a derogatory and sexually-charged word on her own thigh. Once Lilly confronted her brokenness and let God “re-ink” her identity, she covered up her physical scars with a tattoo of a colorful tiger lily – also her childhood nickname and  a symbol for her of hope and innocence. Now, she uses her story to minister to young women about their identity in Christ.   

 In Inked, you encourage readers to realize that they are each a “custom work created by a Master Artist.” You challenge us to “allow the Master Artist to do His work on you so that you can become a showcase for God’s glory.” What difference has it made in your own life to start viewing your life in this way?

My Great-Aunt Bea, now in her eighties, has been a huge Christian influence on me and has passed on a family story that is etched on my heart. When she was thirteen, her family experienced three tragedies: her grandfather and family patriarch died, their house burned down, and her 23 year-old brother and family hero was shot down and killed in his WWII fighter plane – all in the course of three months. Upon hearing this last news, my great-grandfather gathered his crying children around and said, “We can wallow in this, or we can turn it into a blessing. And we’re not wallowers.” Aunt Bea says it took her years to understand how such tragedy could be turned into a blessing, but now she understands how God has used such events in her life to allow her to be a blessing to others.

Like everyone, I could choose to wallow about any number of negative events from my life. Here’s one example: After experiencing infertility, being childless used to be a major source of pain for me. On the heels of my divorce, I cried out to God that I needed Him to give me a clear purpose for living. That week, I received three phone calls from people asking me to help with different events involving youth. Now, I’ve written books for young people, led them on mission trips and Bible studies, spoken to them on retreats, counseled them, and co-developed a camp for young girls that continues to this day. One night, at camp, I stood in the back of the gym listening to campers’ testimonies and tears flowed as I clearly heard God say to my spirit: “See? You’re not ‘childless.’ I have given you hundreds of children.”  

That’s how the Master Artist does His work on you so that you can become a showcase for His glory.

Ahhh… Thank God for the beautiful words of Ephesians 2:8-9. Grace to save us. Grace to build up faith within us. Grace as the most generous of gifts. Grace that is freely given — not earned, not accomplished, not awarded like a merit badge. And this grace makes us whole. Even in our brokenness and our ongoing struggles, this grace shapes us, builds us, forms something in and out of our lives.

And this grace is the context within which we understand the verse that follows. Read it all together: “For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God— not by works, so that no one can boast. For we are God’s handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do” (Ephesians 2:8-10).

“Handiwork” is the word poema–it’s something made, something crafted, a masterpiece. It’s the word from which we derive “poem” and this idea of poetry can give us a unique way of understanding God’s beautiful working in our lives.

You are divinely, intentionally, handmade by God. You — your story that includes pain and brokenness and areas of weakness and failing — You are God’s grace-shaping masterpiece. The Artist can create stunning and divine beauty even out of the broken pieces of one’s life! In Christ, you are whole and are being made whole (the journey isn’t done!) . . . and it’s for a purpose: to do the good work of God that he’s prepared for you to do in this world! God desires to work his goodness and love and healing and grace in this world through you. Even today, in whatever is on your plate, God has goodness — blessing — to give to the world through you.

Being “whole” doesn’t mean you’ve got it all figured out or that you’re earning “perfect-Christian” merit badges from God! It means you’re wholly-reliant upon grace, you’re wholly-immersed in God’s love, you’re wholly-dependent upon God for your identity and life’s purpose.

How is God shaping you with his love? How is he writing his poetry of grace in and through your life? How are you now, and how are you continually becoming, his masterpiece?

Thank you God for these words of truth that defy the darkness and confound what we, at times, believe about ourselves! Help each of us us more deeply embrace your truth at the core of who we are: “For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God— not by works, so that no one can boast. For we are God’s handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do” (Ephesians 2:8-10).

So often we struggle with self-image. Who am I? What am I worth? At times, many of us battle low self-esteem or even self-hatred.

But is this what God wants for us? Is this dark and crushing struggle what he made us for? Why he’s sustaining our life every day?

NO!!!!!!!!!!!!!

This common struggle and Scripture’s resounding answer to it compelled me to write Embrace Your Worth. If you want to dig into Scripture and explore ideas like self-worth, God’s grace, spiritual gifts, and God’s unique calling and purpose in your life, I encourage you to use Embrace Your Worth as a 30-day personal Bible study. Gather friends around you to go through the study together (and find a free discussion guide here). Or consider giving the book as a gift to women you care about – women who you want to develop a strong sense of identity, purpose, confidence, and, ultimately, their value in Christ.

What does it mean to be whole? How does God’s grace, God’s love, God’s healing change us, shape us, bind us up and weave us together into something new, something healed, something integrated, something complete? Into someone whole?

It starts with facing, first, our brokenness. In honest courage, looking squarely at the stain of sin in our lives. Join me in this month’s exploration of wholeness by first considering this excerpt from my Flourishing Faith devotional study Embrace Your Worth (Wesleyan Publishing House):

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“Then the man and his wife heard the sound of the Lord God as he was walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and they hid from the Lord God among the trees of the garden” (Genesis 3:8).

In your mind’s eye, imagine Adam and Eve, hiding away in the trees of the Garden of Eden. Sin has entered the world—and the immediate human reaction is shame (“We’re naked! Hurry, cover up!”) and hiding.

Can you picture Eve, crouched down, trying to hide herself away from her Maker? Trying to be smaller, to be invisible, to disappear?

Before the fatal choice to disobey God, Adam and Eve walked in confidence and joy and security. But now they’re completely different—isolated, insecure, ashamed.

When sin entered the world, it shattered the self.

The confidence and dignity God intended for us have been replaced by fear, self-criticism, deep loneliness, and shame.

Ever been there? Have you ever, deep inside, felt that sense of shrinking down, hiding away, wanting to be invisible, to disappear? . . . What triggers in your life—circumstances, people, cultural messages—cause you to hide away, to shrink down, to feel isolated or ashamed?  

Go on a short walk and look for sidewalk cracks. (It’s OK if you need to bring your children with you!) When you find one, stand directly on it. Look at it for a moment and, as you do, think of your own brokenness—the cracks, the nicks, the distortions within your sense of self.

As you stand there for a moment, silently speak to God: My sense of who I am is broken and cracked by sin. Lord, only you can patch me up and make me whole. I invite you to work in my life.

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The amazing thing about brokenness? The “wholeness” God creates out of our splinters and shards is beyond what we could ever dream or imagine!

Join me this month as we consider the power of God’s love and grace to work even in our deepest brokenness and to shape a healed and whole “self.” 

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Welcome, Karen. Can you tell my readers a bit about yourself?

I’m a writer who lives in Chicago with my husband and 3-year-old foster daughter and a needy, geriatric cat. I write about faith, doubt, and, well, life. I don’t settle for easy answers. I write in order to try to understand, or at least have peace, about the difficult parts of life.

This month we’re talking about joy on my blog. What’s the first thing that comes to mind for you when you think of joy? Is it an image? A memory? An experience?

My 3-year-old foster daughter exudes joy. She has been through so much loss in her short little life, but still, she is joyful 90 percent of the time and her giggle is music to my ears. She is teaching me what it means to find joy in difficult circumstances. Seeing her leap and skip down the sidewalk with a huge smile on her face, to me, is the pure definition of joy. She just loves everything—the robins she sees on the sidewalk, the woodpecker we hear in the park, the moon. Oh, to have that child-like joy again!

Your book, Rock-Bottom Blessings, tackles such a critical question: What does it mean to live the “abundant life” when all seems lost? Why did you want to write this book?

In 2009, like thousands of Americans, I lost my job. That was devastating enough in itself. But it had ramifications far beyond the fact that I had to find a new job in the middle of a recession. My husband was in graduate school, without my income we had to put everything on hold, including an adoption. We were wondering if we’d ever become parents. And it brought up all of my doubts about whether or not God loved me…and if he was even there.

Author Parker Palmer said he became a writer because he was born baffled. I can relate. I was baffled by why all of these bad things were happening to me, and I wrote the book to sort through it all. I also wrote try to discover what I still believed about God, and if there was a God, what sort of relationship I had with him. Some of my old beliefs about God and my faith – such as what it means to be blessed – were not working any more. People throw the word “abundance” around, but what does it really mean to have abundance? In the process of writing the book, my idea of what it means to live an abundant life was turned on its head.

How do you think the idea of “joy” is related to living an abundant life?

I think living an abundant life is about finding deep and inner joy, which is more than finding just temporary happiness. But living an abundant life is also experiencing the depth and richness of all of life’s experiences, including the dark times. I used to believe that the verse in Scripture said, “I came that you might have abundant life.” . . . Well the scripture actually says, “I came that [you] might have LIFE, and have it more abundantly” (John 10:10). We tend to skip over the “life” part and go right to the word “abundance.” But experiencing life in all of its richness includes the joy, grief, suffering, the boredom. I discovered that during those times when joy is absent and life seems dark—if we look closely enough, we will find treasures. The poet Rumi wrote, “Where there is ruin, there is hope for a treasure.” In my experience, that has been true.

Are there particular practices, habits, or experiences that you’ve found helpful in cultivating a greater sense of joy or a greater sense of living in God’s abundance?

Definitely. During the 3 or so years that we were going through a financial crisis, and I was having a crisis of faith, I decided to participate in an Ignatian retreat at my church. The Ignatian retreats are based on the spiritual exercises of St. Ignatius of Loyola. The Jesuits go through this retreat when they become Jesuits. Typically it lasts a month, but lay people stretch out the retreat to 34 weeks instead of 34 days. So over the course of almost a year, I was praying through the spiritual exercises, and found it had a profound impact on my life.

The Daily Examen, which is a daily prayer where you go back through your day to try to see God in it, was particularly helpful in finding my way back to God. I think often we look for God in places where we think he’s supposed to work in our lives, and when we don’t find him working in the ways we expect, we think he’s gone – that he’s left the building. But in reality, we don’t see him because he may be working at the margins where we don’t often expect him to be. It’s not that he’s not there . . . but we’re just missing it because we don’t have the eyes to see.

Of the many things I underlined in your book, one was a conversation with Terry, a friend from your church. Terry talks about receiving life and circumstances as a gift, saying that mindset “lends itself to a posture of trust to the author of the gift.” He asks, “What if it’s all a gift? Then the impulse in response to those gifts is reverence and gratitude.”

So what “gifts” from God are you particularly thankful for right now? What are you learning to receive with gratitude?

Well, I’m thankful for our 3-year-old foster daughter, who we’ve had in our home since July 2012. She’s so joyful and fun, and she has enabled us to experience parenthood. My husband and I never thought we would have that experience. We are hoping to adopt her later this year. But I’m also grateful for all of the “rock-bottom blessings” that have come about because of our difficult experiences in the past several years.

What encouragement would you offer to someone who’s reading this right now who may feel she’s at rock-bottom. . . discouraged, hopeless, frustrated, pessimistic, doubtful, alone?

Oh, look for the treasures . . . and the resurrection. You may not feel it, or think it’s even possible, but resurrection will come in some way. Have hope. If you believe in God and the gospel story, this is the hope we have – that we participate with Christ in life, death, resurrection every day.

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Thank you, Karen, for your honest and profoundly encouraging words. Friends, I highly recommend Rock-Bottom Blessings which is a candid and thought-provoking spiritual memoir. You can also learn more about Karen on her blog, KarenBeattie.net.

If you want to explore more about praying the examen that Karen mentioned in this interview, click here (and then scroll down past the interview) to read some of my blog posts on this important spiritual practice. Or to read a blog post about Ignatian devotional reading, also part of his Spiritual Exercises, click here.

It weaves through the gray days—the blah-blah, mundane moments.

And it even weaves through the dark. Through indigo grief. Through rusted, worn-out umber seasons. Through thunderous, slate gray periods of anger or bitterness. Through jet black discouragement, heavy-weighted with a sense of hopelessness.

A shock of brilliant joy dances through it all. Woven in and out.

Because, for the Christian, joy has a name.

And he has other names too.

“I am the bread of life” (John 6:35).

“I am the way and the truth and the life” (John 14:6).

“Let anyone who is thirsty come to me and drink. Whoever believes in me . . . rivers of living water will flow within them” (John 7:37-38).

“I am the resurrection and the life” (John 11:25).

 “I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full” (John 10:10).

We can choose joy in our life when we purposefully cultivate habits of worship, of gratitude, of intimacy with God. But we cannot manufacture joy. It’s more than a feeling or a state of mind.

For the Christian, true joy comes to us in and through the person of Jesus Christ. Christ doesn’t just save us into a future with God; Christ’s salvation saves us now into a joy-full life. In the Bread of Life we find sustenance for our souls. In the Way and the Truth we find direction for our path and the strength to take the next step each day. In the Living Water we can quench our longings and the deepest thirsts of our souls. In the Resurrection, we discover our own resurrection: the new life Christ works within us that defies the darkness. In Christ, our very life, we experience abundant life. Real life. Not just future, heavenly life but full-life-now.

This isn’t an Oprah-branded “live your best life” kind of message. It’s, ironically, a life about giving of yourself and dying to yourself and serving a world you’re learning to see through sacrificial, agape-love eyes. But in this new way of life we find joy in the person of Jesus Christ.

Joy weaves through every moment of our lives because Jesus weaves through every moment in our lives. Never leaving us or forsaking us. Never abandoning us.

Do dark, slate-gray days still feel dark? Yes. But  joy is present even then. Even then it lifts us. Encircles us. Sustains us. Draws us up and out and into a brighter vision: The resurrection life.

How do these names and metaphors of Jesus invite you to envision what joy really is? What it means in your life? Beyond happiness or good times, Jesus offers a deeper, sustaining joy simply in and through who he is.

How is this joy weaving through your life today?

Joy. 

Merriam-Webster defines it as “the emotion evoked by well-being, success, or good fortune; a state of happiness or felicity; a source or cause of delight.”

The dictionary is onto something here. Joy certainly is associated with these feelings—and I love the idea of “felicity” and “delight.”

But joy, for the Christian, is something that runs a lot deeper than feelings or emotions. Dallas Willard explained joy as a “pervasive sense of well-being.” Something deep down within us, throughout us, that touches each part of who we are, echoing that we are well. In fact, in Christ, we are well even when life is going completely wrong. This is circumstance-defying joy.

In my research for Restore Your Joy, I came across something really cool. Here’s a short quote from the book: “Chairo  is an important New Testament Greek word that means ‘to be glad and full of joy.’ Chairo is most often translated as ‘rejoice’; chara, a related word, is translated as ‘joy.’ Both are closely linked etymologically to charis which means ‘grace.’ As linguistic cognates, these three words ‘share the same root and therefore the same core (fundamental) meaning.’” 

Isn’t that awesome? Joy, rejoicing (worship), and grace are linked in their core meaning—they’re interconnected in the soul of the Christian. Joy can be present even in dark times because grace is there even in dark times. Grace itself defies the darkness—illuminates it and pushes the shadow into the corners. The brilliant grace of God forgives fully, offers hope, picks us up, renews our strength, affirms our worth, and empowers us to live fully. This is reason for joy!

Karl Barth is quoted as having written that “Laughter is the closest thing to the grace of God.” Now there’s a quote to ponder! Effusive, ringing, felicitious, abundant, generous, warming, enfolding, bubbling laughter. What a metaphor for grace!

We can choose to center ourselves in the grace of God – and this will lead us into deeper joy. We can choose to worship and rejoice in all God has done and is doing – and this gratitude fuels ongoing joy.

As I wrote last week, sometimes these choices come naturally. Happiness can be a heavenly gift that just flows through our life in felicitous moments. But it’s important to acknowledge as clearly as I can here that there are times when the emotional aspect of joy just won’t come. Sometimes it’s because of loss, mourning, pain, or difficult life circumstances. And sometimes it’s because of clinical depression. Many Christian women (and men) will go through periods of depression in their life—and that is NOT a reason for spiritual shame. (If it were, we’d have to cut Psalm 88 and many other passages out of the Bible!) If you think you may be facing depression, the joy-choice YOU can make is to get help. Be courageous to talk to a friend, your doctor, your pastor, and/or a counselor. Don’t try to hide it away or will it away or just pray it away. Receive God’s help through the help of others.

Wherever you are on the spectrum of life, from a bright and naturally happy time to a dark and dreary season, you can YET experience joy.

You can live in the laughter-grace of God.

Listen . . . can you hear it?

Joy, at times, comes naturally . . . instinctively. Smiles and laughter bubble up from somewhere inside us — from a spring of deep joy.

At other times, joy requires effort. The spring has run dry. Joy seems absent — like it fled away and is long gone. When life hurts, joy is not easy.

My new Flourishing Faith book Restore Your Joy looks closely at what Scripture says about joy: how it’s different than happiness, how it’s something we chose, how it’s something we can cultivate and grow. Joy, in fact, can supernaturally defy our bleak circumstances.

Do you long for greater joy? For deeper joy? For joy to be a characteristic of who you are, flowing from your life in Christ? Then join in the conversation this month. And let’s begin with a short excerpt from Restore Your Joy that reflects on one of the most preposterous passages of Scripture . . .

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“Consider it pure joy, my brothers and sisters, whenever you face trials of many kinds” (James 1:2).

What?! Is James urging believers to live in a Christian la-la-land that’s out of touch with reality or that denies our actual human experience of pain and hurt?

Certainly not.

This goes much, much deeper. Underlying the choice to consider a trial a source of joy is an essential ingredient of the Christian life: trust.

A belief that God is sovereign, God is in control, and God is love enables the Christian to find light in darkness, joy in sadness, and hope in a seemingly hopeless situation.

“Only love empowers the leap in trust, the courage to risk everything on Jesus, the readiness to move into the darkness guided only by a pillar of fire,” wrote Brennan Manning. “The love of Christ inspires trust to thank God for the nagging headache, the arthritis that is so painful, the spiritual darkness that envelops us.”

When we’re in the headache or the pain or enveloped by darkness, our trust may be reduced to a very simple confidence. Julian of Norwich describes how she turned to God in a period of confusion; as she prayed, she sensed Jesus saying to her: “All shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well.” Ultimately this is our confidence: No matter what happens, in Jesus, all shall be well.

. . . Trust in God’s sovereignty and obedience to God’s leading ultimately enable us to practice acceptance. To look at our lives—to see all the good and bad, all the dreams realized and hopes dashed—and to say I accept the hand you’ve dealt me, God, and I will be content.

This is the secret of the truly joyful Christian: accepting life’s circumstances (rather than worrying about them, resisting them, or resenting them) and finding strength to face them all through a joy-filled inner life with God.

* * * * *

How is God inviting you into deeper trust? Into acceptance? How will this trust and acceptance enable you to live in greater joy and contentment?

Let’s start out with what may seem like an obvious question: Why is environmental stewardship something Christians ought to care about?

I believe that we get our marching orders from the Bible – and the Bible is clear that we need to be good stewards of the earth. First, in Genesis 2:15 God gave his first job to humanity: to tend and protect the planet. There’s no expiration date on those marching orders. It’s still one of our prime directives: to be good caretakers of the earth.

Second, Scripture is clear that we need to love God. That’s what Jesus told us to do: to love God and love our neighbors. One way that we show our love for God is by loving what he loves. And very clearly in Genesis 1 he says not one time, two times, three times, four times, five times, but six times that it was good! So we know that God loves his creation. One important way we can show our respect for God and show love for God is by loving what he loves.

So often the idea of caring for the environment is linked with politics—and I think for some Christians, this political association brings up a lot of heated feelings and mistrust. How can Christians of different political stripes find common ground when it comes to creation care?

The really good news is that we have a book that’s eternal. It is neither left nor right—it’s just simply God’s Word. And that’s where we’re supposed to turn when we need to make decisions about how to live out our lives as followers of Jesus. Instead of worrying about whether something is left or right, we should be worrying about whether it is a biblically-based action. In everything we do, we want to be following what Jesus has called us to do.

Christians can find common ground by focusing on what the Bible has to say about living a life that is close to the life that Jesus led. Jesus is calling us not to be hoarding material things but to live a simple life in which our primary desire is to follow God. It’s not focused on accumulating things but focusing on relationships with people.

At Blessed Earth we stay out of politics completely, and what we do is focus on what the Bible says and what it calls us to do. To me this is much more about being a follower of Christ than it is about any political issue.

In Almost Amish you describe how concern for the environment was actually a critical factor in both you and your husband Matthew becoming Christians. Can you tell my readers a bit of that story?

Matthew and I went along a secular humanist path . . .  We didn’t have a moral compass. One night I asked Matthew two questions that would change our life forever. The first question was, “What’s the biggest problem facing the world today?” He said that the world was dying. And my second question was harder: “OK, we just put our young kids to bed—we care about the future. So what are we going to do about it?” And he didn’t have an immediate answer for me, but he did begin a path of searching for answers.

So you began reading sacred texts together and eventually you read the Bible.

Matthew read the Gospels and he encountered Jesus. And that gave us the answer to this problem that’s overwhelming: the world is dying.

The hope that we got from that message of Christ was particularly in Matthew 7 where Jesus says, “Hypocrite! Don’t worry about the speck in your neighbors eye, get the log out of your own first.” That gave us the confidence and the promise and the hope of changing our own lives first. Not worrying so much about cleaning up the whole world, but first cleaning up our own act. And that’s exactly what we did.

We cut back our energy use by more than two-thirds. We cut back our trash production by nine-tenths. We moved to a house the size of our old garage. And we found that the more that we gave up in material things, the more joy, peace, and contentment we gained as a family. It was a positive feedback loop for us: The more that we cared about God’s creation, the more time we spent outdoors enjoying his creation, the more time we spent gardening, the more time we spent hiking and walking and being, appreciating the glory of God’s creation—the promise of contentment, the promise of joy came. For us, our environmental journey really became intertwined with our faith journey. The desire to follow Jesus became the same path as desiring to be a good steward of God’s creation.

 In your book you describe how someone responded to your descriptions of simple, sustainable living by saying, in an insulting way, “What are you, Amish or something?” (Hence the idea for the title!) Why do you think we so often have a knee-jerk, negative reaction to the idea of paring down our lifestyle?

A lot, a lot, a lot, a lot of money is spent to make us discontent with the things that we have. Tremendous resources are spent in advertising to make us feel that we are too fat or are homes aren’t pretty enough or our clothes aren’t in fashion—all so we’ll go out and buy more stuff. But the Bible tells us that our reinforcements have to come from a very different direction. We are supposed to be concerned that at the end of our lives Jesus says, “Well done my good and faithful servant.”

People always ask me, “What’s the first thing that I should do? How do I get started in living a slower, simpler life?” The very first thing they should do is start by keeping a weekly day of holy rest—and that will change the other six days of the week. Until we are still and know God, we will never be on the right track.

Thank you, Nancy! Friends, learn more about Nancy and her work with Blessed Earth by clicking here. And be sure to check out Almost Amish and Go Green, Save Green!

Check out these 10 organizations, resources, and links to find out more:

A Rocha – A global, Christ-centered conservation organization. Find out about hands-on opportunities to get involved! (Click here to read my interview with A Rocha USA’s Tom Rowley over at Relevant.)

Blessed Earth – Great biblical resources for how the church can mobilize to care for the environment. (This upcoming Monday Blessed Earth’s Nancy Sleeth will be here on my blog for some Q & A. Stay tuned! You can also read a TCW article I wrote with insights from Nancy by clicking here.)

charity: water — Works to save lives and prevent disease by engineering clean water wells and sanitation.

Earth-Wise — My favorite Bible study resource on creation care. I highly recommend this study guide by Calvin B. DeWitt!

Evangelical Environmental Network – This organization inspires and equips evangelical Christians to care for creation. You’ll find podcasts, Creation Care magazine, and more.

John Ray Initiative – This British web site provides TONS of resources exploring the science behind critical environmental stewardship issues, all from a faith-based perspective. (P.S. If you’re skeptical about climate change, this is a great place to get more info you can consider.)

Local Harvest — Interested in finding farmer’s markets or CSAs to “green” your eating a bit? This web site will point you toward sustainable family farms in your community.

National Wildlife Federation – Support conservation efforts by getting NWF’s fantastic kids’ magazines like Ranger Rick and Your Big Backyard.

Plant With Purpose – Help the poor through reversing deforestation! Plant With Purpose addresses poverty in the name of Christ by planting trees and other environmental efforts.

World Vision – World Vision addresses many environmental issues in their work among the poor, including engineering clean water and advancing sustainable farming techniques.