Faith Stories Archives - True and Faithful

20 Great Christian Women Everyone Should Know

03.14.2018 By Lisa Appelo 20 Comments

March is Women’s History Month and the perfect time to highlight the impact of Christian women.

This is a list of 0f 20 great Christian women everyone should know.

Two huge notes: First, this list doesn’t include the amazing Biblical women like Mary or Deborah, Esther or Ruth and so many others.

Second, this list doesn’t account for the immeasurable impact of women who do the extraordinary, unnoticed work. Mothers doing the holy work of scrubbing bathrooms and schlepping kids and monitoring cellphones. Or the preschool teacher who shows up Sunday after Sunday for decades with a room ready to receive the most reluctant or eager 4-year-old.

We all know women who make a singular mark for the kingdom throughtheir unseen long obedience.

This list is meant to inspire with the stories that have been recorded. Let’s celebrate these 20 great Christian women everyone should know.

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The Faith Blast that Blesses

01.30.2017 By Lisa Appelo 35 Comments

God wink | Faith Stories | Faith blast

photo creditI’m so excited to introduce you to Christy Mobley, a writing friend I met online initially until we realized we lived in the same town. Over chicken salad, we swapped stories of kids and families, grief and hope. Christy was authentic from the get-go and she’s sharing a faith story today for Hello, Monday.

* * *

When my friend Bonnie and I went to lunch for her birthday (one week late) she asked if I had time to go somewhere afterwards, she had a story to tell me…

Everybody needs a faith bomb dropped on them every now and then.

You know what I mean, a God thing. A God wink.

The incidental happening that couldn’t possibly be mere happenstance.

The place where we see and experience God at work and become infused with fresh faith.

Faith bombs are like that, they bolster assurance—fortify beliefs.

And when such a thing occurs and we share the story, like an explosion of confetti at a parade, every receiving heart gets sprayed with new-found hope.

Boom! Faith bomb.

Bonnie had been distraught for months over losing a pair of earrings.

They were’t just any earrings they were diamond studs and one of the last treasures her husband gave her before he passed away. She had searched high and low for them, every inch of her house—every drawer, behind ever piece of furniture, even under beds. It pained her. Losing them was like losing Chris all over again.

It troubled her so much, when her adult daughters asked her what she wanted for Christmas, with a look of consternation, she answered,

“My earrings.”

Bonnie’s oldest daughter Meghan had shared her mother’s hurt with her friend Jaime, who coincidentally had a similar story. Her mother’s husband (Jaime’s father) had also passed away about seven years earlier and her mother had oddly enough lost a pair of earrings he had given her. After much prayer by the two of them she miraculously found her special gems.

Believing in the power of prayer and that God cares even about the small things, Jamie asked Meghan if she could help carry her burden and pray for her mom’s situation.

Unbeknownst to Bonnie, the two girls started a prayer vigil, daily asking God to intervene and for Bonnie’s precious remembrance to be found.

Christmas came and went and still no earrings. Meghan had actually gone over to the house and searched for them herself. She so wanted to give her mom the desire of her heart for Christmas. Bonnie had decided she must have mistakenly put the earrings in the bag that went to the thrift store months earlier. She just couldn’t worry about it anymore.

A few days before Bonnie’s birthday Meghan and her husband Jack came over to pick up an old chest of drawers Bonnie told them they could have for their home. Before taking it away Bonnie scavenged through the drawers one last time in the off-chance she missed something, but she came up empty-handed.

In hauling the heavy chest down stairs at one house and up the stairs at the other, the drawers flopped open multiple times. If anything was in there it wasn’t anymore.

Meghan got the chest set up in her own home and went about preparing the drawers for her treasures. One of the cabinet pulls was missing and when she opened the bin to retrieve it, to her marvel THERE THEY WERE, the missing earrings—perfectly placed as if someone had gently laid them out minutes earlier.

If there was a Richter scale for faith, Meghan’s would have been off the charts!

Between sobs and squeals of joy she ran downstairs to tell her husband and call her friend Jaime.

Meghan couldn’t give Bonnie her Christmas wish but she could give her a birthday she would never forget.

On January 4th, Meghan called her mom to let her know she and her two little girls were on the way over— they had something for her. They sat Bonnie down, handed her the gift bag and said,

“This is not from us, it’s Gods’ gift to you. We’re delivering for Him today.”

Not sure what in the world they were talking about, Bonnie looked in the bag, pulled out the small box and opened it to reveal its contents…

This was the story Bonnie wanted to tell me. The faith bomb with which she intended to bless me.

Now in turn, I wish to bless you.

There is nothing quite as awe-inspiring as experiencing the place where our natural intersects with the supernatural and our everyday ordinary becomes nothing short of extraordinary.

Faith Stories | God's faithfulness | God cares about the little things that are big to us!

It’s the place where we see God at work and fully acknowledge that He sees us.

He sees our needs.

He sees our hurts.

He sees the desires of our hearts…and fulfills them.

It’s where the God of the universe says,

“I know you believe dear one, now let me help you with your unbelief.”

And boom! Faith bomb!

“And without faith it is impossible to believe God, because anyone who comes to him must believe that he exists and that he awards those who earnestly seek him.” Hebrews 11:6

Looking forward, pressing on, seeking God in every bump and twist in the road.

Christy is a wife, mother, mother-in-law, mentor and speaker. She chases tennis balls for recreation and at the end of the day she does her best thinking in the tub. You can connect with Christy at Joying in the Journey christymobley.com, Twitter, and Facebook.

If you’d like encouragement delivered right to your inbox, subscribe here {and I’ll send you a free downloadable thank you!}

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The Power in Worship and Thanks

12.02.2016 By Lisa Appelo 21 Comments

Today’s story is one you don’t want to miss. It’s a story of miracles, of the power in worship and thanks.

It’s the story of Kellie Haddock. Kellie is a singer, songwriter, wife and mom. Her music draws from personal, real-life stories of beauty, tragedy, hope and the celebration of life. Her latest album, Leave the Light On, produced by Ben Gowell and featuring Sara Groves, offers catchy melodies and introspective tunes with a refreshing, full and uniquely groovy sound.

* * *

Even in our deepest pain, there is power in worship and thanks.

Watching her three children play together in the backyard, Kellie Haddock was overwhelmed with gratitude. Her oldest, 10-year-old Eli, had beaten the prospects and prognosis once held over his little life.

A decade earlier, this brand new mom and her husband, AJ, had buckled their 14-week-old newborn into his carseat for a routine trip home after visiting grandparents across town. The sun was setting, Kellie and her husband were laughing and singing in the front seat when the unthinkable happened.

While Kellie has no memory of these details, she now knows another car from the opposite direction, exceeding more than 100 mph, hit the median, went airborne and landed directly on top of their car. It crushed their car roof to 1 inch above Eli’s car seat.

Her first memory after the accident is staring at a gold cross “It’s almost like a movie shot where everything around is fuzzy but the cross,” says Kellie. A woman who’d stopped to help was wearing the gold cross necklace. Another stranger was holding Eli, now pale and completely limp.

Kellie and Eli were life-flighted to a local hospital and it was only then that Kellie realized she hadn’t seen her husband, AJ. He’s probably not as badly injured and they’re taking him by ambulance, she thought. In the ER, however, a chaplain delivered the news: AJ had been killed instantly.

“God is good. Jesus is Lord,” were the words Kellie heard herself say. But that resolute truth doesn’t mask real pain and her “heart crushed into a million pieces” as she broke down weeping with her sister and mom.

The first time after the accident that she was able to get into the Word, Kellie opened her Bible and her eyes fell on 1 Corinthians 12:3 – “No one can say Jesus is Lord except by the power of the Holy Spirit.”

Kellie knew then that God was present in her pain, empowering her to call Him Lord even in the brokenness. “I always took that as comfort; as a powerful moment of how God met me in the pain of learning of AJ’s death.”

Even in our deepest pain, God is present and His love is true.

Even in the tragedy, God’s fingerprints of goodness were all over. Although the roof was severely crushed, Kelli inexplicably sustained no injuries. She had lost, yes, but God had also saved.

The Power in Worship

Eli had incurred traumatic brain injury triggering multiple strokes and seizures which deprived his brain of needed oxygen. He was in an induced coma in the PICU and had flat-lined more than once.

By the third evening in the PICU, nurses urged Kelli who had not left once to go home, shower and eat. Just as she arrived at her in-laws, she got the phone call from doctors she’d been waiting for. After all the tests, the prognosis was in: if Eli lived, he would likely never walk, talk or show emotion.

“My heart broke again in a million pieces,” Kellie recalled. Kellie said it was her lowest point. “The lowest point of my life. I mean I was at the bottom of rock bottom.”

The house was filled with family and friends and Kellie relayed the gut-wrenching news. Her pastor gathered the group and asked them to worship — to use this moment to speak what they knew to be true of God.

So en masse, about 50 of Kellie’s closest family and friends began to speak a chorus of praise:

God is good.
God is trustworthy.
God loves with an everlasting love.
God is on the throne.

The room filled with spoken worship. Though they never corporately prayed for Eli, Kellie said the presence of God in their worship was powerful.

An hour later, as she re-entered the PICU, Eli’s nurse ran to her. They’d been looking all over for her. Eli had woken up and taken four bottles. Not only that, when Kellie went to her baby, she saw immediately that the only cut he’d sustained in the accident was gone. Less than a week later, he was discharged to home.

The Power in Thanks

Kellie held onto hope that Eli had been fully healed. As he grew, however, it became clear there was permanent injury. “I’ve gone through a lot of heart work with the Lord about why he healed Eli but not 100%,” Kellie said. She’s comforted knowing that Eli will be able to do “exactly what God intends him to do.”

Since the accident, Kellie has remarried and had two more children. And it’s as Eli was playing in the backyard — running, talking and laughing with his siblings 10 years after the accident — that Kellie had an idea: what if she could tell the medical team the rest of Eli’s story? What if she could go back and thank the doctors and nurses, the flight crew and techs?

That week, Kellie and her husband opened their home for their usual monthly worship — a time when friends and friends of friends gathered for praise worship. Kellie happened to mention to a new guest her desire to go back and thank the doctors and nurses whose everyday heroics had saved Eli.

Turns out, that guest worked for the very hospital where Eli had been treated. Also turns out, the hospital was looking to video a story to celebrate its 50^th anniversary.

Kellie and her husband began to dream big. They found nurses and doctors, therapists and flight crew who had helped to save Eli’s life. They set up 20 surprise visits. Each one on the medical team was given a reason to report to a meeting but then surprised by Kellie’s personal thanks, pictures of Eli and an invitation to a Thank You Event.

Every one of the medical team remembered Eli. Many said they had worked more than 20 years and never been thanked. Several said this one thank you was enough encouragement to keep them going another 20 years.

The power in thanks was as much for Kellie as the medical team.

“When you’re in trauma, you’re just surviving,” says Kellie. As she revisited the PICU and met with the medical team, she says there was grief, but there was also deep gratitude. “[I was] so hurt over all that was lost but so grateful for what I have.”

The power of thanks in The Thank You Project has been documented and seen more than 65 million times.

* * *

What a joy to tell Kellie Haddock’s story today. Her faith despite the hard, her vulnerability in sharing how God has worked in tragedy is so encouraging. You can connect with Kellie’s site here to keep up with her music and events and find her music at iTunes here. You’ll find Kellie on Facebook and Twitter here.

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When the Nudge to Respond is Risky

11.10.2016 By Lisa Appelo 5 Comments

That nudge to respond can be risky ... the need overwhelming. But God doesn't ask us to solve, only to serve.

My eyes fluttered open at the sound of my cell phone ringing. Reaching for it on the bedside table, I saw it was my oldest daughter.

Having launched several children from home, I’ve learned to take their calls when they call – whether I’m in the grocery line or tackling my to-do list or just nodding off to sleep. So when her call came in, I answered.

“Hey! What’s up?” I asked, trying to hide my sleepiness.

But this wasn’t a call to chat or catch up. She’d seen something and was torn about how to respond, whether to respond. She began to explain that she had been driving home from work and as she exited the interstate, she saw a woman next to the off-ramp holding up a cardboard sign. The woman looked to be in her mid-30s with a small frame and dyed blonde highlights.

Her sign indicated she had no job and needed money.

Should she help or not? Handing off money wasn’t always the wisest and was temporary at best. Driving the woman somewhere was too risky. And if she stopped, what was she getting herself into?

I’d love you to join me at Katie Reid’s site to read all that God was doing with this nudge to respond as part of her Listen Close, Listen Well series.

**Also, you can get FREE the first 2 days of the family devotional Countdown to Christmas: Unwrapping the Real Story of Christmas with Your Family in 15 Days here. Take a peek!

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Hope in the Unexpected Middle

10.26.2016 By Lisa Appelo 16 Comments

Here's hope when you need faith for the middle of your story.

The arc of all good stories starts with problem, rises with increasing anticipation to a summit of suspense and — as if in a great exhale — resolves with the deep satisfaction of denouement.

Great testimonies of faith follow that pattern. Launched at podiums, told over the monthly women’s prayer gathering, we often share the kinds of testimonies where we can look back and sigh with deep satisfaction at God’s faithfulness.

Those are my favorite kind…listening to stories when it has all turned out — when we’ve come through the worry and the fear and what if’s and can show that the promises of God held. Even in the hard ending or deep loss or great pain, I want to see how God was faithful.

But faith isn’t a conclusion we tack on to the end of our stories. It’s lived out in the nitty gritty, unexpected middles of the narrative.

That’s where I find myself.

Faith for the First Step

Several years ago, in a great inhale of faith, we stepped out to follow God’s crazy call. With deep humility and obedience, we allowed God to determine whether we would have more children. This too would be His.

Even then we had several initial roadblocks:

First, my OB ruled out a reversal – it’s been too long, too much was cut, you’re too old was his response when I asked. (30s is not old y’all!) I grieved the permanency, grieved that I’d never even asked God’s input. Just like that, it looked like a closed chapter.

Then, a few months later, through a series of God-ordained events, I learned this was a thing. There were doctors who specialized in reversals. We researched and chose carefully because there’s essentially one shot at this kind of microsurgery.

Finally, because this was elective surgery, it was all out-of-pocket and Dan said we’d need to wait for his bonus. But he did get enough bonus and we scheduled the surgery.

Over the next few years, we welcomed two more children — Matthew and Annalise. Even their names mean “gift of God.”

We were elated. We embraced God’s new plan for us. We discovered our love wasn’t being divided but multiplied. We saw God provide for us. Even in some of the hard adjustments, the difficult pockets, we could see God’s goodness all over this step of faith.

Life became a happy, happy blur of babies, toddlers, growing kids, schooling, co-op days, sports practices and music lessons, dinners around the big table, filling a pew at church.

Only later did I realize that somewhere tucked deep — unspoken yet underlying every vision of my future — was an expectation of God: surely God who asked us to take such a step of faith, who then gave us these children, would bring us the length of days needed to raise them.

This is not the middle I expected. Where my youngest says she can’t remember what her dad sounds like and I’m retelling stories to create memories.

Some of the most faithful walked unexpected middles with God.

Look at Joseph, who was given not one but two clear dreams about the future that God had for him and was then sold as a slave to Bedouin merchants, wrongfully accused and languished in prison. What kind of middle is that?
There’s Mary — carrying the very son of God and yet uprooted from home, delivering in a Bethlehem stable and compelled to flee to Egypt with her husband and newborn to escape the murderous Herod. Perhaps not the kind of middle she expected after her obedience.

And then Abraham, who stepped out in great faith leaving family and home and country; whom God promised an heir — a son from his own body – and yet he waited 25 years to see God fulfill that promise. Wading through the middle year after year after year, waiting on God.

I knew I’d need huge faith to launch out in that initial step of faith. But I never considered I’d need faith to continue in an unexpected middle.

While I weep at so much in our middle, I have never once doubted God’s certain whisper to us. And there are a hundred mercies: big kids who step in to coach a younger’s ball team; littles whose playfulness keeps days bright; an older brother with flowers at the recital; youngers snuggled on laps or hoisted onto broad shoulders.

Maybe you’re in your own unexpected middle.

In the midst of knotted circumstances.
In the midst of paths that seem to have veered off completely.
In the midst of the wait and the wondering how this will all end.

Let’s proclaim God’s goodness now, long before it’s all tied up with a neat bow. Let’s in faith believe right here — in the nitty, gritty of our unexpected middles. Let’s be fully persuaded that God is able and is now leading us precisely through the middle He’s always had for us.

That’s the kind of middle I want. We will not shrink back.

Against all hope, Abraham in hope believed and so became the father of many nations…yet he did not waiver through unbelief regarding the promise of God but was strengthened in his faith and gave glory to God, being fully persuaded that God had power to do what he had promised. Romans 4:18-21

Note: This is Part 3 of a 3-part series on Faith in the Middle.
You can read Part 1 here.
You can read Part 2 here.

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Here's hope when you need faith for the middle of your story.