Posts
Hannah Morrell
Opinions vs. Trust

I have been praying a lot recently for God’s voice on matters in my life, rather than relying on my logic or experience. I tend to want to figure something out, thinking that I solve problems by making them make sense. But I have been meditating a lot on Proverbs 3:5-6, and realizing that’s exactly the opposite of what God wants me to do.

The thing is, no matter how much I know or think through something, it often is never going to make sense, and I will be limited in my ideas by my own creativity. If I, instead, trust Him completely and don’t rely on my own opinions, He promises to guide and lead. This isn’t about gathering more information about God, but rather going deeper in intimacy in relationship with Him.

This means that no matter what the situation, you are not limited to your perspective or what you can figure out about it. Rather, we get to rise above the circumstance, and see things from His perspective as we are already seated with Him in the heavenlies (Eph 3:1-2) What seems true right now is only a fraction of the truth, and we get to trust Him to guide us in all truth. He cares deeply for us, and His main goal in this life is that we go deeper in knowing Him—deeper in intimacy with our Father.

Opinions vs. Trust
Posts
Hannah Morrell
Squeezing Out All the Juice

I have spoken to several people through the years who are staring death in the face. I always want to ask them about it—how do you die well? How do you walk towards what feels like the biggest fear in life? What does God speak to you in those raw and vulnerable moments?  

In the last email I received from my friend Debbie as she was put on hospice care, she said “Lots of emotions, lots of decisions, lots of walking uncharted territory with fear and trembling. But as always our God has proven himself faithful, he has proven himself to be true. It is so amazing to have the privilege of walking this journey. And I never, ever, ever thought I would say that about this cancer journey. God is good.”

That’s right—she just called walking a cancer journey a privilege. My response at the time was to look at my own circumstances and wonder how on earth they were a privilege? If she could see this, though, could I also?

The thing that Debbie understood, and so many others who are teaching me about dying, is that we are always dying physically, and it’s what we do with the life that we have that matters. She chose to count it as a privilege, and to squeeze out every drop of joy and peace from relationship with Jesus in the meantime. She saw the suffering, the pain, the separation as a chance to deeply taste the higher truth of God’s love through it all.

Squeezing Out All the Juice
Posts
Hannah Morrell
Dark Days

Today has been a hard day. Some days just feel darker, harder to hold on to hope. So much pain and fear threaten to choke me, drowning out the joy and peace. I can’t stop the tears as they pour from my eyes, uncontrollable cracks everywhere as my heart breaks again. Why are we so messy? Where is the hope? Where is the relief?

My body feels as though it might split in half. Fear closes a tight fist around my heart and I can’t breathe. It feels like someone turned out the light in the world, and I’m stumbling in the dark trying not to fall off a cliff.

And then. A little glimmer. I watch my daughter as she turns her face toward the rainstorm and keep playing rather than run for cover. Her smile grows and she is so brave and strong. Her freedom is contagious. She finds joy after a day full of pain and heartache. Light is not gone! She runs soaking wet through the pouring rain to play with her friends.

Dark Days
Posts
Hannah Morrell
10 Years of Adventure

I have recently seen many people posting about what 2016 was like for them, considering it’s 10 years ago now. So, I began to remember what that particular year meant to me.

2016 was a rough year. God was moving me, and I didn’t want to go. I had a 3-year-old and a 5-year-old, and no thoughts whatsoever about starting my own nonprofit and going it alone. I wanted sameness and the legacy I knew, and God was ready to push me into the deep end and show me He could carry me through.

I remember sitting by a fire on a camping trip in Moab with my family, begging God to change it. But also finally settling that if this was the new direction, I would know him more deeply in it. And boy, was that ever true.

I was choosing loss of security as I saw it, loss of the legacy I thought I was to carry, and loss of comfort. I was choosing to burn my future (as I had planned it in my mind) to the ground. And although I didn’t know it yet, I was choosing an adventure that would bless me in ways I could not imagine.

10 Years of Adventure
Posts
Hannah Morrell
Humility in Love

Have you ever thought about how loving yourself (which is commanded when Scripture several times says to love your neighbor as yourself) is actually an incredibly humble stance in life? Let me repeat that. Loving yourself is humble.

Here’s why I think so—I think you can only love yourself when you see who Jesus made you to be, and start to accept the love He has for you. Love is demonstrated, and He demonstrates this love all the time. The danger comes when we try to perform or deserve love. We try to measure our worth by what we do or how “good” we are. God doesn’t love us because we have measured up to a standard in some way. In fact, He says we all fell short of the standard. And yet. He still chose to love us.

When we fail over and over, we assume that God will get sick of us sometime. The problem is that He didn’t start with loving us because of our successes. He loved us before we loved Him—before we could see Him as anything but an enemy. He calls to us in love constantly, regardless of our behavior.

Humility in Love

Posts

Casting Your Cares

Casting Your Cares

Sometimes my purse gets incredibly heavy while I’m lugging it around day in and day out. When I finally decide to figure out what is making it so weighed down, usually it’s a random toy or some other heavy object that I don’t need to be carrying around, but have forgotten is in there. One time it was giant rock that my son had slipped in there for me to carry for him! After the troubling object was removed, I felt so much lighter and my shoulder quit hurting!

Contentment

Contentment

I recently watched a TED talk in which Shawn Achor discussed happiness and success. He pointed out that if we measure happiness by successes in our life and external determiners, we have to keep upping the ante. Thus, we are never really happy. If we reach the goal that determines success, we have to push the standard higher or come up with a new goal. We start over and are always lacking. If, however, we turn it around and learn to be content in our circumstances, we can be happy before we become “successful” in whatever terms we use for that. 

Endurance & Perseverance

Endurance & Perseverance

Last year, my sister-in-laws convinced me to try to run a 10K for the first time in my life. I was running a bit, but only short distances. Six miles seemed ridiculously far away. I often found myself running too fast in the beginning couple of miles, and then I was totally spent and couldn’t go further. I had to slow myself down so I could run for longer, increasing my endurance. 

Letting Go of Perfection in Favor of Love

Letting Go of Perfection in Favor of Love

This morning I realized one minute before we walked out the door for school drop-off that it’s 50’s day at school. And I have nothing to make my son look “50’s” at all. He tried to be gracious about it, and for that I’m thankful. But his disappointed look made me run smack into the wall of my own desire for perfectionism in all things. My standard for myself was not met. 

Religious Performance vs. Life in Christ

Religious Performance vs. Life in Christ

I think one of my greatest struggles in life has been to break free from the “religious” performance and recognize Christ’s Life as the source of every good work. I used to obsess on how I was working so hard to make God happy, when that was not His desire at all. In fact, I failed a lot and was completely miserable in my quest to be a perfect child of God on my own. Not to mention I judged a lot of other people in order to try to make myself feel better. Of course, it didn’t work, and I just ended up being a judgmental, miserable human with a prettied up exterior to show off in an attempt to prove I was something else. So much work for nothing!

The Blood of Jesus & Confidence for Today

The Blood of Jesus & Confidence for Today

Often I want to skip the suffering of the cross and go straight to the glory of Easter morning, when Jesus rose from the dead and presented Himself in victory to those who surrounded Him throughout His earthly ministry. I want the celebration without the fight. I want the promises of God to come to fruition without having to wait for them. Basically, I want the easy way out.

Kara Tippetts and Suffering With Hope

Kara Tippetts and Suffering With Hope

I hate being sick. The weakness, the pain, the feeling of being behind on everything while simultaneously feeling like you can’t get out of bed. As with every seemingly negative thing in life, I try to see Jesus in it. I have realized that the last week or so I’ve been praying for those with chronic pain and illness much more than I usually do. Something about the reminder of what those people feel every morning when they get up makes me come before the Father with the realization of how hard that must be. 

Baby Steps

Baby Steps

There was a movie many years ago called “What About Bob?” in which the two main characters are a psychiatrist and patient. The patient proceeds to drive the psychiatrist totally crazy by following his “baby steps” right into chasing the therapist down on vacation. The idea of baby steps for everything—small movements or decisions in life that add up to bigger strides to a goal—were supposed to help Bob (the patient) to overcome some of his anxiety. As funny as that movie was about the whole thing, there is something to be said for baby-stepping your way through life.

When God's Plan Seems Crazy

When God's Plan Seems Crazy

I was listening to Lisa Jo Baker today as she talked about a story in 2 Chronicles in which God told King Jehoshaphat to do some crazy things when faced with enemies bent on the destruction of his people. God told him not to fear, to stand still and to watch the Lord fight for him. So, he sent the choir out front of the army and marched down to meet the other armies. The singers sang praise to God and as they did this, the Lord defeated the armies and had them kill each other. When the Israelites arrived on the scene, nothing was left but corpses. It made me laugh because of how often God asks us to do the thing that doesn’t make sense, that makes us feel or look like a fool, or that is the opposite of what we would think we should do. 

Living in a Broken, Messed-Up World

Living in a Broken, Messed-Up World

It’s easy to feel that evil is swallowing up the world. Take one look around you and find pain, lies, brokenness and the overall feeling that we might be drowning without even realizing it. But perhaps what we see is what doing life without God looks like. It has happened many times before throughout history, this distancing from God and His ways. The results are never good. Governments, countries and powers that seem invincible and brilliant fall by the wayside as they implode. People convince themselves and each other that they are smarter than all the others and no longer need God.

Women's Retreat 2019

Women's Retreat 2019

I am excited to announce we are having a women’s retreat this year on November 1-3 at Table Mountain Inn in beautiful Golden, Colorado! We will meet from Friday evening through Sunday lunch, enjoying a few wonderful speakers, worship time, good fellowship with other women and also a chance to benefit from the giftings of some of the ladies who will be there like coaching, counseling and personality testing. 

Walking with the broken to find hope in Jesus