Hey sweet friends, today I am so honored to have one of my friends guest blog for me based off of a chapter in her new book that just launched today. It’s called, Chasing the Roar. It’s a wonderful and encouraging book with practical application. So proud of her and her obedience to Christ as she shares her heart with all of us. You can find her book here.
My prayer is that this would encourage you to chase after Christ and His Word above the world!
“I have known Brittany for nearly 8 years now and have been so encouraged and uplifted by her friendship and, even more, by her faith in God. We met while serving Jesus in a ministry to teenage girls and while she was a single woman with incredible influence on the youth that we served. We continued to build our friendship over our many boys all born within a few short years of each other and my admiration for her continued to grow. Little did we both know the enormous impact she would have for her faith in the coming days. I am so honored to be a guest blogger here today and I’m even more honored as she is an endorser for my new book “Chase the Roar: Becoming Faith Chasers in an American Dream Culture.” In this book, I share some of Brittany’s story in Chapter 8 entitled “Big Faith Bigger God”:
On September 29th, 2015, my incredible friend Brittany had three little boys under three, a thriving ministry to women, many friends, and she loved the Lord with everything in her. But that morning, in one devastating blow, she lost her greatest earthly treasure: her husband. It was sudden and unexpected. Her whole world shook. And all who knew her watched.
How would she react? Would this break her? Her shocked family and friends, and even her entire city were watching her. On her blog, she wrote, “Through this journey God has been so faithful to us and it is my desire to use this pain for His mighty purpose. I have learned that even in the darkest places there is always HOPE in Christ and I love to share His hope with others.”
As I’ve watched her story unfold since that tragic day, I’ve found that it is through the small steps of faith she has been required to take each day that she now has a great influence of faith on the world.
“We have no right to decide where we should be placed, or to have preconceived ideas as to what God is preparing for us to do. God engineers everything; and wherever He places us, our one supreme goal should be to pour out our lives in wholehearted devotion to Him in that particular work.”
—Oswald Chambers
A dear mentor of mine shared this Chambers quote with me recently, and it has cut me to the core. Oh, to have such complete devotion to our Savior that we would, essentially, give up our preconceived ideas about what we should be doing and turn every area of our lives over to Him! You, dear one of faith, have the opportunity to live out this wholehearted devotion in the particular work God has for you. You have the chance to weave it into the fabric of your being, to intertwine it into every relationship you have with other believers and every encounter you experience with lost individuals.
Often, in the middle of hard places within our faith walk, it is hard to shout this from the rooftops. But if we quietly acknowledge it within our souls, we carve it on our hearts so that we can live in this knowledge and enjoy the journey. This is exactly the purpose of this chapter: to acknowledge that, while living out big faith is hard and monumental, God is also far greater and allows us to actually enjoy it.
Big faith must always be greater than our selfish desires. There is no way around it. Our comfort must never compete with the call of God when making a faith decision. As a believer, a faith decision should be the only type of decision we make.”
Ariel Tyson
Instagram @arielctyson
Check out her book at http://amzn.to/2jqbtfN
Ariel Tyson is a daughter of the King, wife to a pastor, mom to five kids in six years, Montana church planter, homeschooler, college professor, lay counselor, elementary ministry director, and writer. Before beginning her career as a professor, she served as the director of a teenage girls mentoring program and is now the Girls Rock director in her church. She has loved writing throughout her entire life and has now found a greater purpose in the craft by sharing the story of what God has called her to do.
