We’re going to Puerto Rico!

On By happyreignIn HeatherLeave a comment

Hey everyone!

Update

These past two weeks Joel and I have put together and sent around 25 packages to different families in Puerto Rico that need access to food.  The first of them started arriving safely into the hands of their recipients yesterday.  We have a few yet to send off due to the people we want to send them to have had any access to the internet yet at this point to even know we need their address!  All that to say thank you for your donations, support and help as we extend a helping hand to Puerto Rico.

I think the hardest part in getting involved is hearing details about their lives and what’s really happened.  Beyond homes being ruined, ways of living and livelihoods on the island have been destroyed.  How can a wedding photographer take pictures when all the weddings for the rest of the year have been canceled and all the beautiful places they took pictures are gone?  How can a pastor continue to be a pastor when the building they met in is gone and families don’t have enough to get by themselves?

Shopping for the food packages you helped support to send to Puerto Rico!

Our Upcoming Trip

After considering it the first week after the hurricane happened, a trip to Puerto Rico wasn’t in the right timing for us.  But Joel and I have the heart, energy, and time to give freely.  Both of us have a history of being of service in times of need and crises and are trustworthy to steward relief.

Joel has family we just made contact with as of yesterday for the first time.  There are places for us to possibly stay and LOTS OF WORK TO BE DONE.  Whether Joel and I find ourselves cooking meals, waiting in lines for others, clearing homes, rubbish, debris, helping the elderly and infirm, filtering water, or giving humor and hope,  we are willing to go.  The people of Puerto Rico are worthy of love and help. Now is the time to go.

What’s The Plan?

Joel and I are flying out Thursday in hopes of teaming up with a long time friend of Joel’s that leads a ministry and is heading down at the same time.  They are planning to work primarily in a town called Quebradillas.  This is a town located next to the town Joel’s family from and where he lived for 15 years.

Our game plan is flexible according to the needs we meet along the way.  That’s the best description I can give you.  I know our hearts will be broken and the need will be limitless.

Joel speaking with a good friend in San Juan when we visited Puerto Rico in January

What do we need?

We need you in prayer, compassion, and support.  Thank you so much already to the handful of people that have already helped get food into the hands of those who are hungry.  With political banter surrounding this tragedy concerning Puerto Rico, I don’t feel the need to explain or justify how these people got into this situation or why it will be so hard for so long, but Jesus never asked us to ask why or put conditions on our service or giving.

If you want to come to Puerto Rico with us in Spirit and tangibility you can through prayer and partnership.  I will put a link below for any donations you want to add to this trip.  We may be bringing supplies or food down with us as well before we go.  Thank you in advance for believing in us, caring about the people of Puerto Rico and taking the time to read this in a busy internet world.  Love you and God Bless.

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The Lie that Fuels the Pride of the Church

On By happyreignIn Heather2 Comments

I remember when I was in the prayer and fasting peak of my life.  I prayed with authority, knew more bible verses than I ever had, probably had the least amount of joy in my life and that’s when God cut me with his words.

I will share a little background with you to help understand what he said to me.  I know a man who has been a drug addict since he was 14 years old.  He engaged in promiscuous sex,  began dealing drugs, was in and out of courtrooms and almost killed himself through driving while super strung out on drugs…three times.  He was my age.

God said to me in that little prayer room where I was giving up my life serving the poor, “I love him as much as I love you.”  You might think this would have been a comfort, but I tell you, it was an offense.  I had been taught by leaders in the church that God held a special place for people like me, the good ones.  That he loved the saint more than the sinner.  I didn’t notice the arrogance towards others that crept in under this teaching.  I believed I truly was better than those other people.  That is what I believed.  And that is the lie that God wanted to root out of me.

There is sometimes a stench that comes in religious environments and its the stench of pride.  When people move in the power of God or feel his presence or know his word or obey his commands, sometimes there is a smelly lie that accompanies this that we have earned his favor.  That we deserve it.  We are no longer like those unreligious secular commoners, we are the fingers of God and deserve the better than them.  Surely we are better.


I can feel the slithering feeling of these garments of pride even now as I imagine it.  Even now as I remember it.  This is the stench the world hates.  And let me tell you, it is also the stench Jesus hates.

Jesus did not separate himself.  He did not pride himself on his spotlessness.  He did not cast judgment, nor condemnation.  The thing he openly rebuked is what I have written about above and it was alive and well in the reigning religious order of the time.  There will be offense in heaven and it won’t be at God as a terrorist, it will be at God as a merciful king.

Teaching parables, “I will pay the wages I want,” he says as he pays someone who barely worked at all the same amount as the one who worked the hardest, causing offense at all of their efforts.  “Let me give everything I have to my careless son,” he says to the offense of the dutiful, obedient, older brother.  “Cast the first stone,” he invites to the guilty condemners of a whore, leaving them with nothing left to throw.

God is offensive.  His love is offensive.  His generosity is offensive.  His mercy is offensive.  Get ready to be offended by God, not by his judgment but by his mercy.  No one has earned his love.  No one deserves his favor.  No one has maintained their own innocence.  No one in Christ is treated as they deserve, they are only ever treated as Christ deserves and nothing less.

God the father didn’t wait for your life to change before you were worth dying for.  No, it was the other way around.  He wanted to correct me that his love truly is free to all right now in full, not just to those who climb the religious ladder.

God doesn’t love in part, love is who he is and we are his dream.  All of us.  We get to treat all people with dignity whether or not they have forgotten it.  We aren’t invited by God to love every kind of person because he asks us to, we are invited to love every kind of person because they are worthy of it because his shed blood says so.

God wanted me to see that nothing I had of him was ever earned of my religious efforts, therefore none of him could ever be taken away from me.  All of my religious-performance-self was offended.  God loves the man I mentioned in the beginning of this piece as much as he loves me still to this day.    Maybe one day we all will believe this and then the world will truly recognize followers of Christ by their love.

Judgement Free Living??

On By happyreignIn Heather, Reflections & MusingsLeave a comment

I heard a quote from somebody on you  tube last summer that I’ve never heard said before.  They said, “I never judge anybody.”  Whether or not this was true, the audacity of a person to live with the conviction of never judging anybody was still admirable.  It was like a thought that was too impossible to believe but upon hearing it was like a new air I wanted to keep breathing.

This may sound like an overly simple topic for Jesus himself said, “Do not judge.”  Pretty straight forward.  But for a human person other than Jesus himself to casually dialogue as if that reality was possible was entirely heavenly.

The world would play us on a string to have us do just the opposite.  Compare, condemn, divide, get defensive, get offended, react, live in opposition and controversy.  It is “cool” to be opinionated and not close minded.  The idea of not judging is cool but is often in reality partial as it stands in harsh condemnation of very judgmental religious institutions, therefore nullifying their non-judging stance.

But to really, I mean really, have the perspective in life that you have never walked in anyone else’s shoes, you have never lived their life, felt what they’ve felt, and been forced to make the decisions they have, never, for anyone, other than yourself.  Yet all of us undoubtable stand in judgment of some “other,” some “wrong” individuals in our perspective.

Here’s what this does: it only hurts ourselves.  When we stand in judgment of someone, of some hatred of act or word, whether based on politics, crime, color, or creed, we are smothering our own nature that was created in God’s image to love.  It suffocates our joy.

When we make snap judgments at news headlines and video clips we diminished our capacity for understanding and compassion.  He deny our role in helping where there is possible hurting need.  We remove ourselves from another’s humanity.

And what that does is deny the Christ that is living in every person.  Whether you agree with someone or not, whether you would have theoretically made differently choices than they have, they are still a living, breathing creation of God.  His life is breathing through them and he is experiencing life through what they experience, the good and the bad.  Nothing nullifies the value Christ’s death and resurrection has given all of humanity.  ALL OF HUMANITY.  Especially our enemies, especially those different from us.

Do not hurt yourself, do not deny your true nature as an origin of love, by judging another, by condemning them, by withholding your grace.  Do not suffocate the breathe of love that lives within you.  If you try and not judge, I will not try to judge either.  God bless.

Not 1% Less

On By happyreignIn Heather, Reflections & MusingsLeave a comment

So I want to share with you a journey I have had in the lasts few years.  It began in a bad place.  It really didn’t have to be that bad but there was one move I made that I will not make again.

People make mistakes.  Maybe you never have.  Maybe you have never made the wrong decision or never said something hurtful to anyone or said anything negative behind someone’s back.  Maybe.

It all began when I made a series of mistakes.  I concluded something and it was the wrong conclusion, which led to the wrong behaviors.  I can’t change that and I’m okay with that now.  But that’s not my point in this article, what I did that I will never do again, is turn my back on myself.


I have become very familiar with these thoughts inside our heads that will replay mistakes, or wrong words, or wrong conclusions.  At first I believed them because I thought they were true.  For example, I was wrong, therefore I should like myself less.  This equation is not true in heaven.

I was wrong!  And it really affected people.  And I still have permission to love myself today!  I thought I was worth being thought less of.  In a way, I was punishing myself because I thought that’s what I deserved.  I questioned myself and doubted my partnership with God.  BUT did you know there are no mistakes in heaven?!?!

Did you know that maybe I was setup to experience this whole in my character so that God could build a new thing there??  Learning requires humility to not know something to begin with.  All of these things are okay and never have to involve the self-destruction of shame, guilt, condemnation, or exclusion.

Did you know God still loves you and values you?  He never thinks less of you based on this learning journey you are on??  Did you know he speaks of your value, your worth, and your ability to always brush yourself of and dive right back into life.  SO….

In conclusion, you may be having other thoughts.  Even small incremental thoughts that get you to like yourself just a little bit less, maybe even one percent.  I don’t believe these thoughts anymore.  None of them.  For any conversation, presentation, appearance or decision.  Not one percent less.  They are not from heaven, and God will rebuild in your life, wherever you tear yourself down.  I will not partner against his work any longer.

You and I walk with a breastplate of Christ’s righteousness on that doesn’t let any accusing arrows through.  Not one.  There is no hole in his righteousness, no gap, no interruption, or weakness.  His righteousness is a perfect FREE GIFT that I have experienced more now than ever before.  Do not make room for any thoughts about yourself that get you to like yourself even one percent less.  They are not from Him.