“

Crown of Beauty:

How did you know Drew was “the one”?

Ellie: He was my best guy friend I swore I’d never date, but he had been such a good friend to me that I began to get sad at the thought of dating anyone else, because I would miss his friendship so much. I was amazed on our first date by how natural the whole thing felt. Peace describes the feeling well. I never grappled with whether or not we should be together forever because my heart felt total peace in a way I’d never experienced before in a relationship.

It was our second date when he said this to me: “Ellie, I’m crazy about you and I want to love you really well, but I’m just a man. I’m going to fail you, hurt you, and disappoint you. I don’t want to do any of those things, but I’m only human.

So I need you to run as hard as you can after a relationship with Jesus because He’s going to be able to love you far better than I’ll ever be able to, and I want you to be loved the best.” I knew that I’d found a man who would point me, over and over again, to Jesus, the Author and definition of love itself.

”

—	Ellie Holcomb

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God has a way of stripping everything that we think we need, and He leaves just Himself to us. It is never an easy thing to be in that situation; one day praising God for His goodness and the next crying out to Him to make Himself known in the storm.

When we have rooted ourselves to a safe place, God tends to rip us out of the ground and plant us somewhere new. We may hate it, revile Him for it, and even reject Him for a time. But when we look back, we will see that we needed to be uprooted, to be changed from that place that was slowly killing us.

God is the master gardener, He knows all His plants by name, He delicately removes the bad weeds and waters the good seeds. He does what needs to be done, so that one day we can look back and see the majesty that He was doing.

You are being made into a beautiful thing, something that God loves to watch grow. So the next time you are taken out of your comfort zone, know that Christ is slowly making you something great, because He is doing it; and He is the greatest thing.

”

—	T.B. LaBerge “Let life break your heart until your heart becomes unbreakable. Try. Fail. Risk. Jump off the deep end. There are no conditions to love. And no end to its depths.” —  Jeff Foster

Stir My Heart

“You have listened to fears, child. Come, let me breathe on you. Forget them. Are you brave again?”

- C.S. Lewis // Prince Caspian

“The more you know about Christ, the less you’ll be satisfied with superficial views. The more deeply you study His life in the fullness of His grace, the more you will see the King in His beauty. You will long more and more to see Jesus.” —  Charles Spurgeon