 I can't even begin to describe how amazing this conference was! The speakers were fantastic and the teachings and breakout sessions were great. I had an enjoyable time speaking with other book lovers as well! Here are a few pictures from the conference: 
0 Comments
 Hidden Treasures is released!
I'm so excited to announce that my devotional is now available for purchase! Thank you to everyone who has been a great encouragement through the process of writing this book! Your words and love mean the world to me. You can purchase a signed copy here! =) Thank you all!  The release date for Hidden Treasures is, August 31st! That's only 9 days away! Having trouble waiting that long? I know I am! So, I'll give you a little taste of what to expect in Hidden Treasures: "We’re traveling the path to the little white church. It’s only a mile long, but the road is steep in certain places, making for a good workout. The sun shines brightly, but the wind wins the battle this time. I shove my hands in the pockets of my light jacket and pick up my pace. Everything’s quiet and peaceful. The journey to the church is always that way. For forty or so minutes you can leave the world behind, and bask in the tranquility of God’s creation. No ringing telephones. No noisy electronics. No nagging alerts to check your email or text messages. It’s simplicity at its best. It’s peaceful. And other than personal Bible time, it’s my favorite part of each day. We top the hill, my sister’s dog panting from the exertion. Without fail, every time we walk past this hill, Woody is always here to greet us. Only Woody doesn’t really care about us at all. Woody is only concerned about his prize, his treasure. He’s persistent, I’ll give him that. The hollow, tap, tap tap, never fails to bring a smile to my face. Woody is a woodpecker. He’s just one of the wild creatures we’ve named on this route to the church. But Woody is by far, my favorite. Why? Well, because he’s an inspiration. He’s a reminder. But before you’re able to understand that statement, you’ll need to know just a few woodpecker facts.
Imagine you’re a beautiful woodpecker. You not only have to hunt for your food, but once you’ve found it you must dig a hole to get to it. Now that you’ve finished that task you get to enjoy the quick snack. But then you’re back to work and you do it all over again. 12,000 more times to be exact (give or take a few). The woodpecker is a picture of persistence. He doesn’t stop at any cost. He pecks away with only one thought in mind: getting to his prize. If only we could feel the same way about God’s word. “If thou seekest her as silver, and searchest for her as for hidden treasures; Then shalt thou understand the fear of the Lord, and find the knowledge of God.” (PROVERBS 2: 4-5) If only we could search for wisdom and understanding just as the woodpecker searches for his prize. If you had reason to believe there was a treasure chest hidden in your backyard, would you sit still and do nothing? Or would you take your finest shovels and digging equipment outside and begin searching at once? Probably the latter. So what should make God’s Word any less valuable than the treasure in your backyard? One of my favorite things to do is go scripture hunting. I’ll flip through my Bible in search of scriptures that bring me joy and peace. When I find one, I’ll underline it in a specific color. If I’m feeling down or troubled all I have to do is flip through my Bible in search of scriptures underlined in florescent green. So how can we search God’s Word as hidden treasure? Here are a few ideas:
Have a heart of understanding. A humble, broken spirit and a contrite heart. (Psalm 51:17) Always be quick to listen and slow to speak. There’s a reason God gave us two ears and only one mouth! We should never be afraid to ask God for help and insight when we don’t understand something. He’s perfectly capable of answering our many questions. He wants us to understand. Pray for wisdom and understanding. Search for them as hidden treasures. And guess what? We’ll find some, if we enlist His help. Don’t stop when you get tired. Don’t stop when it gets difficult. And always remember this…the treasure is always worth the effort.   Hi everyone! Today I’m so excited to be interviewing Anna, one of the writers for 30 Days of Surrender: a devotional for teen girls. (Check out Anna's bio below!) "Anastasis Faith is the founder of Morning Glory Ministries, an organization encouraging girls to pursue Jesus with their whole hearts through the Morning Glory Daily Devotional and blog. She is passionate about writing, blogging, and teen girl discipleship. When she is not blogging, she is typically studying, working, playing piano, or spending time with her family. You can connect with her on her blog at MorningGloryPursuingJesus.blogspot.com or on her Instagram @anastasisfaith." Anna, along with several other writers, has been working hard to put together this e-book and I am so excited to heartily recommended it! Don't forget to check out Anna's interview below, and get the chance to pick up your own copy of 30 Days of Surrender!  First off, tell us a little about yourself Thanks so much for having me, Aleigha! I am passionate about writing, teen girl discipleship, and blogging. I love my church, my family, and the community of godly people in my life. Back in 2014 I started Morning Glory Ministries which has been thriving ever since! It started as the Morning Glory Daily Devotional and then expanded into the blog a year and a half later. When did you first have the idea for 30 Days of Surrender? Around Christmas time I was brainstorming ideas for an ebook and 30 Days of Surrender kind of popped out of nowhere, but I instantly knew it was something I wanted to pursue. I emailed all my friends to ask if they wanted to participate, but no one seemed to really be interested. I emailed again over spring break and the response was crazy. God has been working ever since to move this project along! What did you enjoy most about writing this book? Reading the devotionals submitted to me was the best part. Some of them had me near tears, others grinning, and some were so convicting. I was so thankful that I had such a solid team of girls. Each of them came from such different backgrounds and could talk about certain topics in a way that I could not. What’s one thing you’ve learned during the process of writing this devotional? I’ve learned that God holds all things in His hands. :) He truly has control over everything and He will order things however He pleases. My goal is that my plans, priorities, and desires line up with His, and that has been my prayer. Unless God is glorified, this project is for naught. Daily I pray that this is an ebook that glorifies Him. Have the other writer’s devotions affected you in any way? Definitely! It was both ironic and convicting to realize that I was stressing about all the edits—and the current devotional I was on was about anxiety. A line in that particular devotional kept coming back to me during the most stressful weeks was “Don’t doubt the goodness of our Father by giving in to anxiety.” Do you have any dreams or visions for 30 Days of Surrender? Yes, I have plenty of dreams and visions, but every day I have to surrender them to the Lord. Ultimately I want this to be a pleasing offering to Him and a tool that He can use to impact girls all around the world. Do you have any tips for other aspiring writers? My biggest tip would be to read! Read everything that you can. Not only that, but take good solid English classes. My sister has been taking English from an excellent English teacher and now she’s teaching me writing techniques! Finally, I would encourage you to pray before you write. Doesn’t matter if you’re writing fiction or non-fiction. I try to always pray before I write that the Lord would bless my time, bless my words, and bless my heart. I pray that it is all to His glory and where my motives are impure, I pray that Christ redeems me. If you could pick one piece of advice to give to younger writers, what would it be? Aside from what I’ve already shared, I would encourage them to keep writing. Keep writing on one project until it is done. Set aside designated times for writing. Read, research, study. But most of all, just pick up your pen and write. About Anna: What age did you discover a love for writing? When I was ten, my best friend plopped down next to me and announced, “I’m going to write a book!” I promptly responded, “Me too!” We both then wrote our books about fairies (the books were practically the same) and spent time critiquing and editing each other’s books. That’s when I was hooked. For about four years, I would read and write books like crazy. In fact, I wrote about twenty novellas during that time and entered and won numerous short story contests. It was my passion. Sadly, the crazier life got, the less I’ve had time to work on my novels. However, since I started blogging two years ago, I’ve been able to keep it up. The years spent working on my novels prepared me for my years of blogging. Where did your love for writing come from? Honestly, I think it came from the Lord. Writing is so much a part of who I am I cannot imagine anything else. I remember during school when I was burdened with homework, I would write in the margins of my math notebooks, “I MUST WRITE! I AM A WRITER! I AM SO TANGLED BY THIS MATH! ALL I WANT IS PEN AND PAPER!” Sometimes they were stupid, terrible poems about hating math and being deprived of my writing. God created me with this passion and I am so, so thankful for it. What inspires you to write? When it comes to blog posts and projects like 30 Days of Surrender, I am inspired by Scripture, things that come up in my daily routine, and things I hear or read. I’m always sure to write down my ideas for blog posts or notes for ebooks which is helpful when I need to sit down and write. What do you like to read in your free time? A good novel is hard to beat. I have been avoiding romance novels, however, for the past several years. You can read my reasons why here. But I also love Christian non-fiction. Some of my current reads are Girl Defined, Do More Better, and The Gospel Changes Everything. What projects are you working on at the present? Right now, my big project is finishing up 30 Days of Surrender. That, and moving out. ;) After that, blog posts for the coming semester will be my next big project. Even though things have been insane with this ebook, I am already brainstorming for the next one. :P What do your plans for future projects include? A new website, Lord willing, and hopefully more ebooks! We shall see! Who are your favorite authors? This question is too hard for a writer. :) I love Francine Rivers, C.S. Lewis, Bethany Baird, Kristen Clark, Nik Ripken, and Darlene Deibler Rose, to name a few. If you are interested in purchasing your own copy of 30 Days of Surrender you can do so by following the link below: http://morningglorypursuingjesus.blogspot.com/2017/08/30-days-surrender.html And may you be truly blessed as you read the stories and godly lessons that lie within the pages!  A while back, a few of us older children migrated down to the play room at our friend’s house, where the children were happily playing “store." Taking their cash register, we proceeded to scan all the little children to see how much they were worth. And guess what? No price showed up, so of course we dubbed them, “priceless.” This continued (we even scanned all of us older children) until we got to my older sister. We scanned her and guess what? She was worth a whopping two dollars and fifty cents! Of course, that caused a great deal of ruckus and hollers of laughter, and to this day, we still don’t let her live it down. But it got me to thinking: How much are we worth? And not only that, but where do we find our worth?  Since I’ve started growing my platform, my goal has been to get as many subscribers as I possibly can. And in addition to that, getting more traffic on my site. Because we’re an open family, I’ve been quick to share my excitement whenever I receive a new subscriber, and I usually keep everyone updated on how many people were on my website the past week. Before I reached 100 subscribers, I was very motivated and excited, because I was quickly reaching my goal. Whenever I added one more email to my list it was as if I were celebrating my birthday all over again! My family is amazing, and they are always very encouraging! My siblings are always quick to offer words of encouragement and my Daddy even bought me flowers to celebrate one certain occasion. My Mother too, has been kind and encouraging, always there to listen to my long-winded tales about how amazing the YWW is! (Young Writers Workshop) It was during this that my mother brought something to my attention. She said lightly, “make sure this isn’t where you are finding your worth.” That got me to thinking. Where do I find my worth? Is it in how many likes I get on a Facebook post, or how many people comment on my blog? Do I find it in how many blog subscribers I have or in how many followers I get? I’ve discovered that the question isn’t how much am I worth, but rather where do I find it? The world endeavors to tell us all about our self-worth. It tries to build us up into some sort of god that we aren’t. They make a great effort to cause us to believe our worth is found in our appearance, or in how rich we are. It attempts to convince us that our worth is found in costly jewelry, designer clothing, and having “high friends in society.” Since the world is telling us that, we can be absolutely certain that it isn’t true. But guess what we can believe and trust? The Bible. And I must say, it does a fantastic job in explaining where our true worth should be found.  Today, we are barraged with the lie to “love ourselves.” The world promises that the way out of low self-esteem is just to love yourself more. Yet, this scripture doesn’t say that at all. In fact, it says the complete opposite. It says, “Do not think of yourself more highly than you ought.” Or in other words, we shouldn’t have an overly high opinion of ourselves, or exaggerated ideas about our self-importance.  Most of the time what the world deems beautiful is not the Lord’s definition of beauty. Or as it says in Samuel, “people look at the outward appearance, but the Lord looks at the heart.” God isn’t going to look at our clothing and give us extra points for dressing classy. He’s not going to look at my website stats and say, “you had 500 views this month-well done good and faithful servant.” He’s not going to look at anything that has to do with our outward appearance because He doesn’t consider that, rather, He considers our hearts. He looks at our hearts to determine our beauty and by looking at that, He knows where our worth lies.  This verse has always been one of my favorites! Because it ensures us that the Lord does indeed care about us! Amid His promises to “never leave nor forsake us,” or to “show us continual forgiveness” (and the other roughly, 5,000 promises in the Bible) He reminds us that not even a bird falls to the ground without His knowledge. And if He cares that much about a tiny bird (who has no spirit) try to imagine how much He cares about us, His children! In truth, it’s not even about “finding our worth and self-esteem,” but rather making sure that we are esteeming Christ rather than ourselves. If we’re finding our worth in Christ and only caring about what He thinks of us, then we’ve already taken a giant step in the right direction! How do we find our worth in Christ?
 Where does your worth lie? Are you endeavoring to serve Christ rather than yourself? Let’s do something this week; let’s try our best to make sure we are serving Christ and honoring Him in all that we do. Let’s humble ourselves, sacrifice ourselves and attempt to keep our eyes on Christ’s work rather than our own. God is our Father and He is the King, so let’s make it a point to be the best servants we possibly can. Do you want to receive blog posts and updates straight to your inbox? Subscribe to the newsletter and get notified whenever a new post comes out! Plus, you'll be the first to know about giveaways and other fun surprises! |
Hi!
|
RSS Feed
