Lauren Gaskill

Encouraging women to live in faith and joy

 

lauren gaskill

encouraging women to
go deeper in faith and live in joy

Purchase Lauren's New Book

Into the Deep
Diving Into a Life
of Courageous Faith

a note from lauren

Welcome, dear friend! Whether we’ve known each other for years or are just meeting today, I am so glad you are here. Here’s one thing you need to know about me: I have a heart and passion for encouraging women to fight for faith and keep the hope of Christ alive in their hearts. Together we can push back the dark and shine bright as we rely on the joy of the Lord to be our strength for every day He blesses us with.

Subscribe for Weekly Inspirational Updates

Joy Follows Knowing Jesus

• Leave a Comment

Please join me in welcoming Amanda Davison to the blog, as she guest posts about finding joy in following after Jesus and cultivating joy in marriage.

I stood hunched over in the middle of our mudroom, helping our toddler get her boots on. Just as I reached my arm out to grab her gloves on top of the washer, my husband walked by, on his way to grab another child’s coat. As he scurried behind me, my hand brushed against his. The touch surprised me, so I looked up and caught a glimpse of his face. It showed a spark of happiness and surprise, and I realized he thought I was reaching out for him, wanting to connect. My heart sank.

In that moment, I felt sad. In part, my sadness was due to my husband’s excitement over such a small gesture. I wondered, is this really the only kindness I’m showing him? Misintended acts of love? What a wife I am! And partly, I felt sad because I didn’t really want him to think I was reaching out for him. I knew it wasn’t right, but it’s how I felt. I didn’t want to give him the satisfaction of thinking I was reaching out for him because I felt he hadn’t earned it. I’m not reaching out for you when you haven’t reached out for me, I thought.

This encounter caused me to stare straight into my reality–I was not happy. And I hadn’t been for some time. My soul felt stale, and my marriage mundane. I so badly wanted to feel fulfilled in my marriage, but I was too busy being angry at my husband to look for signs of life in other places.

I Had it All Wrong

By this time in our marriage, I knew Jesus. I had a relationship with Him. And the mere fact that I was walking with God made me even more frustrated to not be experiencing joy in my marriage. Wasn’t He supposed to give me joy? I sure didn’t feel it.

Read More

Creative Praying Aloud: The Power of a Word {From the Art of Amen}

• 1 Comment

POWER IN HIS NAME*

Hot tears flow like silent prayers from my swollen eyes. Each one whispering, Jesus, Jesus, Jesus. The pain, it’s growing louder now — so loud I can barely hear my husband say, “It’s going to be OK.”

Is it going to be OK? Fear whispers from the back of my mind. This could be it. This could be the start of everything breaking apart. You knew this day would eventually come. You can only outrun time for so long.

Twitch. Pop. Spasm. There are little fires burning in my muscles, joints and bones, torching an already fragile ecosystem. I open my eyes to stare at the blank ceiling and this time I say it out loud, “Jesus. Jesus. Oh, help me, Jesus.”

It’s all I can muster, but for right now it’s enough. Because, friend, there is power in the name of Jesus, and don’t you ever forget it. For everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved1. And at the mention of His name, demons are cast out and signs and wonders are performed2. There is power when we call, mention and pray the name of Jesus out loud amid our struggles.

Sometimes when we’re hurting, the name of Jesus is the only thing our lips can utter. And that’s OK, because His name is more than enough.

POWER IN HIS WORD

Later that night, my husband and I climb into bed and I pull out my bedside Bible, desperate for a fresh dose of Hope and Truth. While dinner and dessert had offered welcome (and delicious) distractions for a few hours, the fear is returning as I settle under the covers.

Lord, give me a Word that will banish this fear once again. I pray.

I’ve read Psalm 91 more times than I can count, but I don’t question when the Spirit leads me there once again. Tonight, however, it’s not enough for me to simply read this passage of Scripture. You see, I don’t just want the atmosphere of my mind to change. I want the atmosphere of the whole room and house to change. I want to hope and faith to arise in such a way that the fear will flee with each spoken word.

So, faith comes from hearing, and hearing through the word of Christ.3

Even when believing is hard, God can deeply strengthen our faith and drive out fear when we dive into His Word.

POWER IN OUR PRAISE

It’s morning now. The little fires have calmed down to embers, but still the aches and pains persist. I rub my eyes and debate whether or not I should even get out of bed. Mondays have never been my cup of tea, and this one is already shaping up to be a doozy. I hit snooze on my alarm and close my eyes as I roll onto my good shoulder to drift back to sleep.

Get up.

“Lord, can’t you see I’m trying to sleep? You say to take care of the body you’ve given me, and that’s exactly what I’m trying to do here.” I say, clearly annoyed by the early morning disturbance.

This is the day that I have made. Rejoice, and be glad, Lauren.4

I open my eyes once more to see sunshine peeking through our blackout curtains. Still, all I want to do is stay in bed so I can drift into a state of being blissfully unaware of my pain. I try cover my head with a pillow to block out the light, but when I do, one word flashes in my mind. Rejoice. Rejoice. Rejoice.

“OK, OK, OK, Lord!”

I grab my phone and tiptoe across the room while pulling up one of my sweet mama’s favorite hymns, Victory in Jesus. Ten years ago, if you’d asked me to sing a song of praise to my Savior, I would have jumped at the opportunity. Growing up, I sang on a daily basis and was a regular member of our church band. You know those crazy people you see sitting in the car next to you at a red light, singing their lungs out to the radio? Yeah, that was me. But that was before Hypermobile Ehlers-Danlos destroyed my jaw and landed me with a stage four degenerative joint disease diagnosis back in 2015. Now, singing is a point of pain for me, and a reminder that, while I don’t understand all of the reasons why, God has chosen not to heal me … yet.

But, every now and then, as He has on this particular morning, He stirs in my heart to sing anyways. So, despite the fact I feel like my whole entire body has been hit by a car, I clear my throat and I begin to sing as the chorus begins.

O victory in Jesus,
My Savior, forever.
He sought me and bought me
With His redeeming blood;
He loved me ere I knew Him
And all my love is due Him,
He plunged me to victory,
Beneath the cleansing flood.5

I hum my way through the rest of the song, and while the pain hasn’t yet left my muscles, joints and bones, the blood of Jesus brings my heart to wholeness as I remember the ultimate victory I have in Him.

  1. Romans 10:13
  2. Mark 16:17; Acts 4:30
  3. Romans 10:17
  4. Psalm 118:24
  5. E.M. Bartlett, “Victory in Jesus,” 1939.

*Excerpted from my contributor piece for Catherine Bird’s The Art of Amen by Leafwood Publishers. Learn more and order a copy on her website.

Moving Beyond Brokenness to Experience Breakthrough

• 1 Comment

Jennifer Renee Watson joins me today for the first episode in our “Breakthrough” She Found Joy podcast series! Jennifer is an author, mother of two miracle babies and out-of-box minister’s wife. Her passion is to see women experience a real breakthrough and break up with their emotional baggage. Her debut book, Freedom! The Gutsy Pursuit of Breakthrough and the Life Beyond It comes out Feb. 19. You can enter to win a copy by heading over to the She Found Joy Instagram page.

In this episode of the She Found Joy Podcast, Jennifer and I chat about:

  • What true breakthrough is and why we should adapt a breakthrough (not stuck) mindset.
  • Why the Holy Spirit will always be stronger than what tries to break us.
  • How to move beyond our brokenness to move forward in our faith journey.
  • How even in the seasons when we feel like there is no fight left in us, we have someone fighting on our behalf.

P.S. If you’ve been blessed by the She Found Joy Podcast, or if this episode blesses you, it would mean the world to me if you left a review on iTunes. This will help more people find the show and learn more about the joy of Jesus.

Connect with Jennifer

Facebook | Instagram

Connect with Lauren

Facebook | Instagram

Read More

His Love Is Deep

• 1 Comment

My husband and I walked hand in hand, away from the shoreline and down Jennette’s Pier in Nags Head, North Carolina, my eyes growing wider with every step we took. The meteorologist on the morning news had warned us that Hurricane Michael was quickly approaching the Outer Banks islands, and the winds had picked up to at least 30 miles per hour.

I squeezed my man’s hand and leaned in close as the pier’s wind turbines whipped and squeaked at rapid intervals above our heads. To my left and right, the waves raged and swirled whitecaps at every angle, creating along with the wind a symphony of chaos and sound. Come midnight, Michael would hit the pier with all of its force and fury, about a month after Florence had threatened to take the islands out.

We reached the end of the pier and I stopped and stared out into the distance, marveling at the magnitude and beauty of the Atlantic stretched out before me.

How wide, how long, how high, and how deep my love is for you, daughter.

The wind and waves should have drowned out any other sound from making its way into my brain, but these words echoed crisply in my mind.

Yes, His love is stronger, wider, longer, higher and deeper than any pier, ocean or hurricane.

God’s Love Will Carry Us

I’ve spent a great deal of my life caught in what I like to call the undertow of doubt, fear and despair. When the waves of chronic pain, depression and anxiety came crashing over my head, I didn’t know how to overcome them, and so I closed myself off from receiving God’s love and believing things would get better. I heard people say His love was strong enough to save me, but after years of battling the same issues and seeing little to no progress, I had hardened my heart to the truth.

I can’t pinpoint the moment when God’s love finally broke through my incomprehension. It’s not as if I woke up one morning and instantly felt God’s love. Instead, much like my unraveling, recognizing and accepting God’s love was a process.

The more I prayed for God to reveal and help me feel His love, the more He showed up in the most amazing ways to woo me back to Him.

There’s not enough space here for me to tell you the many ways God’s love has carried me through the high sea battles I’ve faced over the years, but I will tell you this: the depths of His great love saved and continue to save me from sinking into the undertow of doubt, fear and despair every single day.

I don’t know what high sea battles you are facing today, but I do know that His love can and will carry you too. All it takes is a little courage and a tiny seed of faith that’s willing to say, “OK, God, I can’t face this storm alone, but I’m trusting You and Your love to carry me through to the other side.”

May we all have the power, together with all the Lord’s holy people, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ today and every day (Ephesians 3:18). And may we declare, right here and now, that the only thing we are going to drown in in this life is God’s deep love — not the deep waters that surround us.

Say it with me: Jesus, I need your love. 

Want to learn more about God’s deep love and go deeper in your faith? Read my new book, Into the Deep: Diving into a Life of Courageous Faith.

Why I Wrote a Book

• 3 Comments

into the deep lauren gaskill

“Did you hear about Jessica?” I overheard them whisper.

“She nearly overdosed at a party last weekend and now she’s in a treatment facility,” another added. “Poor thing. How sad.”

Poor thing. How sad.

While I didn’t know the Jessica whom they spoke of, I was pretty familiar with the words they used to describe her. Because every time I looked in the mirror that’s exactly what I said about myself.

I picked up my backpack, not wanting to hear more of their conversation, and beelined it for the library exit. But before my feet could take me down the ramp, I found myself headed for the Christian nonfiction department instead.

At this point in my faith journey and experience with chronic pain, anxiety and depression, I really struggled to read the Bible. In my pain, none of it felt real to me. The stories seemed like a distant fairy tale — something only for people who had it all together and not for someone as messed up as me. Maybe you can relate to feeling this way.

Though I didn’t find what I was looking for that day, later that night I came across an advertisement for Francis Chan’s Crazy Love. After years of praying and pleading for God to take my suffering away, the title of the first chapter stopped me in my tracks: Stop Praying.

Francis writes, “What if I said, Stop praying?” What if I told you to stop talking at God for awhile, but instead to take a long, hard look at Him before you speak another word?”

Now, this might not seem revolutionary to you, but for my 18-year-old self, it’s what God used to begin the healing process in my heart. Let me be clear: I didn’t wake up the next morning and feel completely set free from all of my pain. In fact, life got much worse before it got better about four years after reading the book … but while Crazy Love did not make my life better overnight, the book certainly ministered to me in one of the deepest valleys of my life. And for that, I am forever grateful.

Books are powerful, and it is through this experience that I 1) learned about their potential to change lives and 2) vowed to do the same for someone else by writing a book if it was God’s will someday.

Shortly after reading Crazy Love, I started blogging and finally picked up the Bible in an attempt to revive and go deeper in my faith. And you know what happened? As I dove deeper into my relationship with God, He pulled me up out of the undertow of doubt, darkness and despair, and into a place of joy, hope, peace, freedom and courageous faith as I learned to swim through life with Him.

And He can and will do the same for you if you reach out for Him!

My first book, Into the Deep: Diving Into a Life of Courageous Faith, is the story of God helped me rediscover and go deeper in faith, but it is also a love letter to you. All 201 pages are full of love and encouragement to help you go deeper in your faith journey — whatever you may be going through.

This book is a lifelong book because faith is a lifelong journey. 

This one is for the fighters.
The overcomers.
The ones who want to rise above.
This one is for the one’s who are tired of trying to swim through life’s deep waters on their own.
For the overwhelmed.
For the one who wonders … is there more to life?
For the one who wants to step out of fear and into courage and faith.

Order your copy today, and get ready to exchange fear and frustration for the boldness, courage, and holy confidence that lead to a life of deep faith and joy!

And remember: The waves of life are no match for those who are courageous enough to live by faith.

All my love,
Lauren

She Found Joy #10: Michelle Jewsbury: Healing From Abuse and Empowering Others to Do the Same

• Leave a Comment

Michelle Jewsbury joins me today for She Found Joy #10! Michelle is an author, actress, speaker and humanitarian. She is passionate about using her natural talents to make the world a better place by combating domestic violence worldwide. She is the founder of Unsilenced Voices, a nonprofit working to help men and women who are victims of domestic abuse worldwide.

In this episode of the She Found Joy Podcast, Michelle and I chat about:

  • What its like working on a movie set.
  • Healing from and speaking out against domestic abuse.
  • How to extend kindness and grace to ourselves and stop self sabotaging.
  • What to do with the God-sized dreams we feel called to pursue.

P.S. If you’ve been blessed by the She Found Joy Podcast, or if this episode blesses you, it would mean the world to me if you left a review on iTunes. This will help more people find the show and learn more about the joy of Jesus.

Links from the Show

But I Love Him book
Unsilenced Voices

Connect with Michelle

Facebook | Instagram

Connect with Lauren

Facebook | Instagram

Tweet the Podcast

Domestic abuse is not your fault.” @mjewsbury #SheFoundJoyPodcast

Click To Tweet

If you feel like you’re drowning today, reach out for Jesus and just keep swimming. #SheFoundJoyPodcast

Click To Tweet

Read More