Author Archives: Jennifer Van Allen

God Always Did the Growing

Posted on by Jennifer Van Allen

Me: That tree has been there a while.

Prodigal: Yes, and it looks like it will remain.

I am looking straight ahead. I have stopped. I am not sure why I have stopped. But what is in front of me demands attention without even a sound. It is quiet. A warm breeze is in the air so that your skin does not feel a chill. The squirrels quickly run along the leaves on the ground which causes a rustling to reach your ears. There is no sense of threat. This area is not disturbed. Everything seems as it should.

I can’t take my eyes from what lays a couple of feet away. Most people probably would have kept on walking. Focused on the path, or focused on keeping a pace. Me I saw something different. It was a tree that was big, strong, and alone. The oak tree was not young. This mighty sapling had stood some time, winds, and rains.

As my eyes scanned the tree, something was not present. There were no fallen branches, dead leaves, or signs of disease on this old oak. No this tree, stood, and stretched out with its branches reaching for the sun light. It reminded me of a soul, of a blessing of the Lord.

What have you gone through oak? What have you seen, and yet you remain standing, and have domain on this area where you have been planted.

We cannot trust the Lord unless we learn from this oak. We have to survive, threats, seasons, weather, and our surroundings. We have to reach out to find the sun, nutrients, and to grow.

At first we are trying to strive so much, and are so small we are not noticed. But if we continue in years, and seasons, we grow without noticing. We grow, and spread out limbs. It is then that we being to resemble a tree. A tree that some people will stop to notice. It then that some will notice our strength, and notice that we have not succumb to the threats that seem always around us. Without saying, without trying people will know that we trust the Lord, and the Lord is with us.

But I will bless the person who puts his trust in me. He is like a tree growing near a stream and sending our roots to the water. It is not afraid when hot weather comes, because its leaves stay green; it has no worries when there is no rain; it keeps on bearing fruit.

Jeremiah 17:7-8

Jennifer Van Allen

www.theprodigalpig.com

www.faithincounseling.org

Lukewarm Do Not Act

Posted on by Jennifer Van Allen

Prodigal:  My friend wanted to hear more about lukewarm people.

Me:  Well, I was just reading about it so I will share.

This is from the book Crazy Love by Francis Chan

Lukewarm people are moved by stories about people who do radical things for Christ, yet they do not act.  They assume such action is for “extreme” Christians, not average ones.  Lukewarm people call “radical” what Jesus expected of all His followers.

“Do not merely listen to the word, and so deceive yourselves.  Do what it says” (James 1:22)

“Anyone then, who knows the good he ought to do and doesn’t do it, sins” (James 4:17)

“What do you think?  There was a man who had two sons.  he went to the first and said, “Son, go and work today in the vineyard. “I will not,” he answered, but later he changed his mind and went.  The the father went to the other son and said the same thing.  He answered, “I will sit, but he did not go.  Which of the two did what his father wanted?  “The first, ” they answered” (Matt 21:28-31).

We are all called to stand for Christ.  That means the radical will happen because standing firm, and not compromising today means that we will have enemies.  That means that people will hurt us, and disappoint us.  We are called to continue even when that happens.

O Lord, thou hast pleaded the causes of my soul; thou hast redeemed my life.

Lamentations 3:58

Jennifer Van Allen

www.theprodigalpig.com

www.faithincounseling.org

Choose

Posted on by Jennifer Van Allen

 

Prodigal:  Hi, I am glad we get to spend time together.

Me:  Me too.

 

This is from the book Abraham:  One Nomad’s Amazing Journey of Faith by Charles Swindoll

 

Each morning you wake up with a fresh opportunity to live that day well, to see your next twenty-four hours as a series of choices.  The Lord has granted you a genuine stake in what the day holds.  Choose a positive attitude.  Choose to seek out and focus on the good things.  Choose to face your opportunities with eager anticipation.  Choose to set aside your own expectations, and then embrace what God chooses to do.   Choose to live in a constant state of surprise by laying aside your will and letting the Lord’s will unfold.

Choose your friends well.  Be kind to everyone, but distance yourself from negative people, or you will become like them.  If they’re selfish, you, too, will become self-serving.  If their world revolves around themselves, you, too, will become narcissistic, cynical, and bitter.

 

 

In my Father’s house are many mansions:  if it were not so, I would have told you.  I go to prepare a place for you.

John 14:2

 

Jennifer Van Allen

www.theprodigalpig.com

www.faithincounseling.org

Just Passing By

Posted on by Jennifer Van Allen

 

Me:  Where are you going?

Prodigal:  I’m just passing by, on the way to the store.

Me:  That reminds me of a story.

 

This comes from the book  Angels Watching Over Us

 

Six months earlier, during a winter blizzard, Kathy’s car had spun off an icy road in a series of graceful pirouettes and come to rest in a deep, snow-filled ditch.

Fortunately, there were no other cars around to get tangled up with, but that also meant no one would likely be coming along for hours.  This was Kathy’s usual shortcut on country back roads between her house and the courthouse in town where she was a circuit court judge.

Used to weighing the facts and options of each situation, Kathy knew this one was not good:  First, the pressure on her chest from the steering wheel where she was jammed would kill her if the subzero temperature didn’t do it first.  Second, the airbag had deflated as quickly as it expanded and was threatening to suffocate her.  And third, no matter how much she wriggled, she couldn’t move enough to reach her cell phone for help.

She had no idea how long it had been since the accident, but she knew that the deepening lethargy creeping through her body was a warning that she was about to lose consciousness.  She drifted in and out of awareness, so cold that she could no longer shiver.

Suddenly, a man–ordinary looking in denim coveralls, a hooded parka, and a red-checked hat- appeared beside her car.

“Are you okay, lady?” he asked.

She could only nod, not having enough room to inhale deeply for a shout.

“We’ll have you out of there in a minute,” he said.

Before she could whisper, “Thank you, ” he disappeared.

She didn’t see him return but heard a noise behind her.  Glancing up in the rearview mirror, she saw him shoveling snow away from the exhaust.  Of course-the carbon monoxide would have killed her even before the cold or the steering wheel’s pressure.

“Sit still now,” the man said, shouting through the back window.  “I’m going to be making some noise.”

And, with that , she heard a wrenching sound as the rear station wagon door reluctantly opened.  The man crawled in and appeared behind her.

Carefully, he lowered the car’s seat back and helped her slide out to safety.  He held her in his arms and let her take in several deep breaths.

“We’ve got to keep moving,” he said.

Half pushing, half carrying her, the man got her up the steep embankment to the roadside.  An ambulance was just pulling up behind a farm livestock truck; she could smell the reassuringly familiar aroma of cows.  Gently the man set her down on the ground.  She closed her eyes lightly as she waited for the EMTs.  She opened her eyes again when she felt a blanket being wrapped around her.

“I’m so glad he called you,”  Kathy said to the EMT who was gently stabilizing and strapping her onto the stretcher.

“Who?”  said the EMT, looking around in confusion.  “Nobody called.  We were dispatched to another accident, but then we got the signal disregard it.  We just happened to be passing by.”

When Kathy’s husband went to the accident scene later that afternoon, the snowfall had erased any trace of an angel who’d worn a red checked hat and driven a stock truck.

 

For now I have chosen and sanctified this house, that my name may be there forever:  and mine eyes and mine heart shall be there perpetually.

2 Chronicles 7:16

 

Jennifer Van Allen

www.theprodigalpig.com

www.faithincounseling.org

 

Women Lovin’ Jesus

Posted on by Jennifer Van Allen

Prodigal: This is a perfect place to watch your video!

Me: I thank you for watching!

click here to watch

Proverbs 3:19

By wisdom the LORD laid the earth’s foundations, by understanding he set the heavens in place.

Jennifer Van Allen

www.theprodigalpig.com

www.faithincounseling.org

Carnal Nature

Posted on by Jennifer Van Allen

Prodigal:  I want to help my friend, but I sure hope I will get a nice thank you for it.

Me:  Well, I think helping your friend should be about your heart motive.

Prodigal:  That is something to think about it.

This is from the book Rise and Shine:  A Wake-up Call by Charles Swindoll

It is helpful to remember that the flesh (your carnal nature)  is very creative and selfish.  Think of it as a huge sponge, ready and willing to soak up all the glory.  It is a great pretender, acting like it is humble, yet all the while loving the strokes.  It anticipates them.  It is ambitious.  It is energetic.  It looks for opportunities to grab the glory that belongs to God alone.  The flesh is not choosy.  It doesn’t mind getting the glory for spiritual-sounding things or religious acts.  Who knows how many sermons have been preached in the flesh?  I’ve certainly done a few, I must confess. Futhermore, by hiding my motives, I can, with public skill, manipulate a congregation to do a number of things I want done.  And I can gloss it over so effectively they will think they are doing it God’s way, for God’s purpose, when in actuality they are doing my will, and I get the glory.  I can actually take the glory God alone deserves.

Don’t do it.  Don’t live in the flesh.  I know you have thought it over in your mind several different ways to make it seem it is spiritual, but lets be honest.  You want the glory.  You think your way is the way it should be. Well God has interesting ways, and they don’t always follow your plans.  Focus on a message with the Holy Spirit guiding you, and do not take any of the credit.  Focus on God instead.

Psalm 11:1-2

In the LORD I take refuge;

How can you say to my soul,

“Flee as a bird to your mountain;

For, behold, the wicked bend the bow,

They make ready their arrow upon the string,

To shoot in darkness at the upright heart.

Jennifer Van Allen

www.theprodigalpig.com

www.faithincounseling.org

Lukewarm and Their Sin

Posted on by Jennifer Van Allen

Me:  How is the water?

Prodigal:  It is lukewarm.

Me:  Water might be nice lukewarm but God doesn’t want our spiritual life to look like that.

This is from the book  Crazy Love by Francis Chan

Lukewarm people don’t really want to be saved from their sin; they want only to be saved from the penalty of their sin.  They don’t genuinely hate sin and aren’t truly sorry for it;  they’re merely sorry because God is going to punish them.  Luke warm people don’t really believe that this new life Jesus offers is better than the old sinful one.

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

“What shall we say, then?  Shall we go on sinning so that grace may increase?  By no means!  We died to sin; how can we live in it any longer?”  Romans 6:1-2

I was lukewarm for a very long time.  I remember not feeling upset by sin, and did not take it serious.  Also I remembering thinking that I was intelligent, and I could figure out the best for my life, and not God.  I was very wrong.  I managed to make the outside of my life look very nice but the inside felt empty and hollow.  Jesus really does bring Life!

Wherefore the law was our schoolmaster to bring us unto Christ, that we might be justified by faith.  But after that faith is come, we are no longer under a schoolmaster.

Galatians 3:24-25

Jennifer Van Allen

www.theprodigalpig.com

www.faithincounseling.org

Acquainted with Grief

Posted on by Jennifer Van Allen

Prodigal:  VOOM, VOOM

Me:  You and Brady are having a lot of fun!

Prodigal:  Yes, we are!

Me:  Well, now hush!  You’re makin’ such a ruckus, you’ll wake up the possums.

Prodigal:  Yes mam..we will try to be quieter.

This is from the book Reaching for the Invisible God by Philip Yancey

John Donne, the seventeenth-century poet and dean of St. Paul’s Cathedral in London was a man acquainted with grief.  During his term at London’s largest church, three waves of the bubonic plague swept through the city, the last epidemic alone killing 40,000 people.  Londoners flocked to Dean Donne for an explanation, or at least a word of comfort.  Meanwhile Donne himself came down with an illness the doctors initially diagnosed as plague (it turned out to be a spotted fever, like typhus).  For six weeks he lay tremulous at the threshold of death, listening to the church bells toll each new fatality, wondering if he would be next (“Never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee”).  During this dark time Donne, forbidden to read or study but permitted to write, composed the book Devotions, a meditation on suffering.  He was tuning his instrument at the door, he said–door of death.

In Devotions, John Donne calls God to task.  Sometimes he taunts God, sometimes he grovels and pleads for forgiveness, sometimes he argues fiercely.  But not once does Donne leave God out of the process.  The presence of God shadows every thought, every sentence.

Donne asked the “Why me?” question over and over.  Calvinism was relatively new, and Donne pondered the notion of plagues and wars as “God’s angels.”  He soon recoiled from that idea: “Surely it is not thou, it is not thy hand.  The devouring sword, the consuming fire, the winds from the wilderness, the disease of the body, all that afflicted Job, were from the hands of Satan; it is not thou.”  Still, he never felt certain, and the not-knowing caused him inner torment.  Donne’s book never answers the “Why me?”  questions, as none of us can answer those questions that lie beyond the reach of humanity.

But even though Devotions does not resolve the intellectual doubts, it does record Donne’s emotional resolution.  At first–confined to bed, churning out prayers without answers, contemplating death, regurgitating guilt-he can find no relief from ever-present fear.  Obsessed, he reviews every biblical occurrence of the word fear.  As he does so, it dawns on him that life will always include circumstances that incite fear:  if not illness, financial hardship, if not poverty, rejection, if not loneliness, failure.  In such a world.  Donne has a clear choice: to fear God or to fear everything else, to trust God or to trust nothing.

In his wrestling with God, Donne changes questions.  He began with the question of origin–“Who caused this illness? And why?”–for which he found no answer.  His meditations shift ever so gradually toward the question of response.  The crucial issue, the one that faces every person who endures a great trial, is that same question of response:  Will I trust God with my pain, my weakness, even my fear?  Or will I turn away from him in bitterness and anger?  Donne determines that it does not really matter whether his sickness is a chastening from God or merely a natural occurrence.  In either case he will trust God, for in the end trust represents the proper fear of the Lord.

Deuteronomy 6:18

And thou shalt do that which is right and good in the sight of the LORD:  that it may be well with thee, and that thou mayest go in and possess the good land which the Lord sware unto thy fathers.

Jennifer Van Allen

www.theprodigalpig.com

www.faithincounseling.org

Substitution

Posted on by Jennifer Van Allen

Me:  I am going to help you with those plants today.

Prodigal:  Good, I could use some teamwork!

Me:  Teamwork is better than standing alone.

This is from the book The Cross of Christ by John R. W. Stott

The concept of substitution may be said, then, to lie at the heart of both sin and salvation.  For the essence of sin is man substituting himself for God, while the essence of salvation is God substituting himself for man.  Man asserts himself against God and puts himself where only God deserves to be;  God sacrifices himself for man and puts himself where only man deserves to be.  Man claims prerogatives which belong to God alone;  God accepts penalties which belong to man alone.

We need reminders of this all the time because our flesh becomes proud and we began to think we can do things that only God can do.  Yes, the Lord uses us to help people, but really the change of a person’s heart, and spirit can only be completed by Christ.  This is not to condemn us but it is to turn us to Christ, and put out hearts and spirits where they need to be.

Have mercy upon me, O God, according to thy lovingkindness; according unto the multitude of thy tender mercies blot out my transgressions.

Psalm 51:1

Jennifer Van Allen

www.theprodigalpig.com

www.faithincounseling.org