This Jesus Thing. It’s Like…

Standing on the edge of a cliff, preparing to take a step that the world tells you not to take, knowing that beyond your own sight is a hand, waiting to catch you.

Knowing a miraculous, saving, healing, life-giving secret that you do not want to be a secret, but most do not believe you when you tell them.

Standing on the ocean waves, stormy winds whipping, waves crashing, but you never sink.

Playing a game of LIFE that you have already won, but you keep playing to help everyone else win.

Having supernatural vision that allows you to see possibilities in situations that appear hopeless.

Choosing love in a world that constantly tries to convince you that it has something better.

An endless supply of new beginnings.

No Turning Back

“Now a slave has no permanent place in the family, but a son belongs to it forever. So if the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed.” John 8:35-36

I am free, forgiven, and new. Jesus is in my life and my heart. I have no doubt. Yet, I still find chains wrapped around my mind. Shame beats me to the ground. My old self looks back at me from the mirror. Why?

There was a time when the nation of Israel was held as slaves in Egypt. The Egyptians were cruel slave-drivers. The Israelites were desperate. They cried out to God, and the entire nation was led, they literally walked, out of slavery. What did they do on the other side? They sang God’s praises! They used their freedom to become the best people they could be! They went to Disney World!

No. They didn’t know what to do with themselves. Life got hard and they wanted to go back. The familiarity of slavery seemed more logical than the blind faith that living in freedom required. Their bodies were free, but their minds kept returning to Egypt.

This is what I do. I think back to the familiar days of slavery, and my mind stays there. I forget that I am free.

Like Israel, my ticket to freedom was a one-way ticket. I walked out of slavery, crossed the desert, and have arrived at the door of God’s promises. Now, I will only look back to remember what God has done. Never to return. Are you with me?

“…for the Lord has told you, “You are not to go back that way again.” Deuteronomy 17:16b

Path

Just Passing By

In 2014, God told me that I was to pursue full-time ministry. I didn’t believe Him. This was the third time He had given me this idea and I thought that I was fabricating it. I sat on it for a while, then starting talking to people close to me. Everywhere I turned, I received confirmation. I applied to college and was accepted. I requested confirmation from my church to pursue ordination and it was granted. This was new. Where doors had previously remained firmly closed, they began to open as if someone was holding them when I arrived.

At the same time, I was attacked. I immediately found myself in the center of spiritual, mental, physical, and emotional battles unlike any I had ever experienced. I was given a “thorn” in my heart that shook me to the core. It confused me. It made me question God, myself, my calling, and where it was leading me. I began losing weight. I couldn’t sleep. I sunk into a deep depression. I refer to 2014 as the year of the storm. It lasted more than two years.

Fast-forward to the summer of 2016. Though some of the spiritual battle was over, the thorn remained. By this time, the death of my father, the unexpected changes among my work family, and my decision to step away from ministry with girls that I loved like my own packed more pain around my thorn. I was at the edge of my strength. This was my year of darkness.

In the darkness, God periodically reminded me that He was there. While sitting on a bench outside my work, talking to God, I noticed a young woman jog past. Several people jogged past my work. I paid little attention. I closed my eyes. A minute later, a female voice, said, “Hi!” I looked up and the jogger was standing on the sidewalk near me. She had turned around and came back. After exchanging pleasantries, we recognized each other. She had attended school with my oldest son years before. She was in her mid twenties at this point. She said, “As I was jogging by, I felt like God wanted me to tell you to persist. Persevere. Keep moving forward. Does that mean anything to you?” Does that mean anything to me? It was a spark of hope, a word to stay the course on my dark path.

A few weeks later, I was taking a walk in my neighborhood, arguing with God (again). I noticed a decorative sign in a yard just two blocks from my house. “Hold on child, I’ve got you. Love, God.” I stopped and looked at it for a several seconds, then kept walking. Then I returned, trespassed in a stranger’s front yard, and took a picture.

Proverbs 20:24 reads, “A person’s steps are directed by the Lord. How then can anyone understand their own way?” The young woman was just passing by, and the Lord stopped her. To share a message. With me. I was just passing by and I saw a sign. That was not there before. That I needed to see. When we trust God, we can plan all we want, but Someone is guiding us. We can’t run away from Him, and He never walks away from us. Feelings are deceiving. He is always there.

A few days after I saw this sign, God turned everything around. Everything. It took years. Don’t stop moving. When you find yourself in a dark season, remember that you are just passing by.

Yard Sign

What Child is This?

I can not remember the entire conversation or the original subject. I remember the moment that the woman sitting across from me said, “Penny was a mistake.” (Name changed for privacy.) She was referring to her adult daughter who was sitting next to her. I remember the look on Penny’s face. She had been punched in the gut by an invisible fist that never withdrew.

This was personal. My heart ached for Penny. Though these words were never said to me about me, I have carried a similar message around with me for most of my life. They weren’t communicated so much by words, but by actions. Maybe you recognize messages like this:

You are a mistake.
I wish you were never born.
You are inconvenient.
You are not worth the time.
You are a hassle.
You are worthless.
You do not matter.
You are stupid.

There are so many other damaging messages that we can receive from a parent, some may be unintentional, that affect how we see ourselves. My messages were, “You are too much trouble, and not worth the time.” Every time my dad did not acknowledge my birthday, I heard those words. Every Christmas he did not call, I heard those words. Every time he said, “I will call you next week,” and months passed without a call, I heard those words. Every time he ignored my phone calls, I heard those words. When I did not see or hear from him for 13 years, I heard those words.

They were lies.

The circumstances surrounding your birth do not determine your value. It does not matter if you were unplanned, unwanted, or unloved by the people around you. It does not matter if adults fought about you or you were sent away. You are not a mistake. You may have been unplanned or unwanted by man, but you were foreseen, planned, and wanted by God. In Psalm 139:13 (NIV), a king named David wrote about God, “For you created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother’s womb.” This is also true for you. Regardless of what your parents did, God pieced you together with everything He wanted you to have, so that you would be able to do everything He wants you to do for this world that He placed you in.

Penny is the result of an unplanned pregnancy. I also had an unplanned pregnancy. This is what I told Penny, my son, and what I will tell you. You are a gift. You are a blessing. Your parents may have made a mistake that resulted in pregnancy, but your existence is not a mistake. You are evidence that God can take bad situations and turn them into something good, great, beautiful. You have purpose. You matter. You are loved.

So am I.

A Story Within a Story Within a Story

I was taking one of my long walks, searching for answers. Sometimes I prayed. Sometimes I wrestled. Most of the time I did both, out loud, as I walked to the park and back to work on my lunch break. I was never interrupted and I am suspicious that it was out of fear of the fast-walking, angry woman who took the same route and argued with an invisible person between noon and 1:00pm, Monday through Friday. It was the summer of 2016, arguably the hardest year I have ever experienced. Knowing that it was time, I had left a ministry that brought me joy and purpose for 15 years. The atmosphere at work had taken a bad turn. My dad died. I realized that these things had contributed to much of my identity and I lost them all. I was lost. I began asking God, “Who am I. I know what Your word says, but who am I really?” I knew that I was a child of God, crafted by His own hands, dearly loved, worth dying for. That is what the Bible told me. But at this point, I realized that knowing wasn’t understanding or believing, and just knowing was not enough.

I was listening to 2 Corinthians with my earbuds, still asking God, “Who am I? Who am I to you?” Above the words of the narrator, I heard, “You are a story that I am writing.” Those words echoed in my head for several more verses. I could not recall finding them in the Bible before. I grabbed my phone, went back to the beginning of 2 Corinthians 3 and played it again. They weren’t there. The closest thing I could find was 2 Corinthians 3:3, “You show that you are a letter from Christ, the result of our ministry, written not with ink but with the Spirit of the living God, not on tablets of stone but on human hearts.” It was all in my head. But it wasn’t.

I had long believed that my life was a story that God was writing. What I did was the story. I believed it was true of everyone. This was different. This was new. I don’t want to take anything out of context to prove a point. I am only writing what I experienced and what I believe to be true. God revealed that my existence is the story. It wasn’t the answer I was looking for, but somehow, it was enough.

The Bible is the story of God’s pursuit of the people He loves. Each life represented within the pages is a story that He wrote. We are continuations of that same story. The situations that we encounter within our lifetimes are stories. Stories within stories within THE story. And that year that shook my identity, shattered my heart, and nearly took my mind was a piece of me, the story that God is still writing to complete the grandest love story that will ever be written. You are a story that is part of that story. So take heart; the ending has already been written and it is a happy one.

Books

The Write Direction

My name is Brandi Hafler. I have lived most of my life in West Michigan, with a short stint in Arkansas as a child. I am married to my high school sweetheart and have four amazing sons and two beautiful daughters-in-law.

At the age of 41, God told me (for the third time) to pursue full-time ministry. Since then, I have earned a college degree and believe that public speaking is in my future. Typing those words fills this woman who passed out during a middle school speech with fear. The fear is not crippling, though. After giving my life to Jesus at 19, He has called me farther and farther onto the water. Each step takes me closer to Him. Each step leaves the fear farther behind me, in the boat: that safe, comfortable, boat. (If you haven’t read Matthew 14 in the Bible, I encourage you to do so. This analogy will make more sense to you.)

It is funny how removing comfort is the best way to remove fear. Removing comfort replaces fear with faith, at least that has been the case for me. That is what this blog is about, many of the things that I have experienced, learned, and found upon the waves. It also is a step in itself; a step toward the writer/speaker/pastor that I believe God is shaping me into. Through the stories that I share, I hope that you will find the courage to step out onto the waves of your own faith, and leave your fears behind.