Make space in your schedule and your life for an Advent guide like this one or another one you choose and invite a few friends, your family, your Life Group, or coworkers to join you. May God remind you of his love and bring you fresh ways to experience him.

I always wanted to be a good Christian, a good parent, and a good wife. Those three things were very important to me. I truly did desire to walk with him, but I thought that you had to do everything by yourself. So my walk was like a yo-yo, constantly up and down. Be strong, put on a happy face, act like everything is fine and mask anything that isn’t; living a life of religion has all these rules of do’s and don’ts.

There is a psalm that begins, “I waited patiently for the Lord, he inclined to me and heard my cry” (Psalm 40:1). What follows is a celebration of God’s goodness after a season in a “desolate pit” and “muddy clay.” It’s a psalm that David Sheets has come to understand deeply.

As part of our In His Image series this fall, we sat down with Mike and Victoria, who shared their story of discovering gender roles in their home and work. God has changed their views over the years leading them to a place of flourishing and serving.

At 24, Amy was trying to be invisible. There were deep wounds from a recent divorce to heal, two children to feed, and rent to pay. She sat in the back during worship service, slipped out during the last song to teach in Calvary Kids, and escaped to the parking lot when everyone else was gone. She held on and held it together. Until she couldn’t anymore.

“There is a verse in 1 Timothy that says, ‘But if we have food and clothing, we will be content with that,’ (6:8)” Raychaelle Horner says. “The experience of getting out of debt has helped us to be content with what God has given us.”

Six years ago Devin and Raychaelle Horner were typical American newlyweds – young, still in school, and already deeply in debt – when they decided living with debt long-term was not okay with them.

Isaac and Rahab Macharia, church planting pastors, talked with some of our church staff via Zoom from Kampala, Uganda, about the challenges and joys of planting a church and the unique ways they’re ministering during COVID-19 lockdown.

“In our heads, we’re still a young married couple,” Ryan Silver says. “But when someone in our Life Group asks for advice or perspective, we wonder, ‘How did we get to be the seasoned mentor couple?’”

Ryan and Sheila are Life Group leaders at Calvary, where they have combined their passion to give newly married couples the kind of solid relational start they had with Calvary’s commitment to teach people how to do life together in community.

“C’mon, let me show you my favorite room,” Audrey Krooswyk says stepping into a small rectangular room where boxed and canned goods line the wire shelves. A smile lights her face. This pantry, just off the spartan, industrial kitchen in the barn at First Fruits Farm, is the heart of Audrey and Mike’s First Fruits ministry.

“I came home from a medical mission trip in October 2018 and told Mike I felt like God wanted me to feed people. He held my hand and said, ‘Okay, we’ll pray about that.’

God’s grace is astounding to me. I thought because I had turned my back on him so many times and for so long, that he was done with me. Nothing could be further from the truth. He was there all along.

“Faith is not just coming to church on Sunday morning,” Derek Gora says. “It started that way for us, but when you surrender yourself – your body, your mind, your soul – to what God might have in store for you, you’re going to hear from him. You’re going to see him work.”

When you get in front of people, they’re just people. Their basic needs and their need for Christ is the same as ours. As different as our cultures are, we can look in the eyes of an Indian Christian and see a brother or sister. It’s like we’re tethered.

“When I tuck L* in at night, every time I pray that regardless of where she ends up, she would grow up to know and love Jesus,” Jon Moneta says about his foster daughter. “Whether that’s in our home, her mom’s, or in someone else’s, I pray that God will protect and bless her.”

“And I pray that if it’s his will, that we would be able to keep her. And if it’s not, then help us to grow in that too.”

For most of my adult life, all I had known was being married. When I was first separated, I would go to the doctor’s office and I didn’t even want to check the ‘divorced’ box. Just having to check that box made me anxious. I didn’t want my life to be this way. This is not how I would have written my story, let me tell you. But my prayer almost from day one has been that I would see beauty from these ashes. And I’ve seen a lot of beauty.

In the summer of 2018, my daughter, granddaughter, and I all went with the Calvary team to the Mitaboni children’s home. I felt immediately that this is where God’s calling me to serve. I wasn’t expecting that.

“God did a work in my heart and showed me singleness was kind of an unsuspected idol. I’m not trying to hold on to it, but in my effort to deal with it, to work through it, to process it, and to support others in it, it became one of my biggest identifiers.”

“We were carried along for 6 weeks: couldn’t drive, couldn’t grocery shop, couldn’t get outside the house, could barely get out of bed. During that time, we fought this peace battle. We said, ‘God is in this.’ We can only attribute that to prayer. We’ve got 60 prayer partners through our ministry, we’ve got the church, we’ve got a small group. We knew these people were praying, and they were also following up and showing up. That carried us. And it still does.”

Right now I’m reading through the Psalms and a book on lament. I never really thought about that word before. It’s a prayer in pain that leads to trust. It’s putting words to what I didn’t have words for before. Not to get stuck in the lament and the negative side of that, but to acknowledge that I can tell God what I’m feeling and what I’m thinking. He already knows.

Baptism is a celebration at Calvary. These are stories from people we’ve rejoiced with in 2019 as they went all in for Jesus.

Short-term mission trips are core to our global outreach ministry at Calvary. A mission trip shakes you out of complacency and usually puts you in the uncomfortable position of serving “the least of these.” And living out the gospel like that shifts something inside people. The obvious goal is for you to serve God by serving others, but what the global outreach team prays will happen is that you come home wanting to continueserving others, if not overseas then right in your community. That’s what happened to 7 medical professionals who went to Haiti last year. They left a part of their hearts behind and brought home a driving compassion to keep doing good where it was needed. 

One of the things that shocked me was how many international families live in the Valparaiso area. I had been in a ‘bubble’ – my neighborhood, the kids’ schools, and church all consisted of the same demographic.

For Kevin Hicks, divorce was like a bomb going off in the middle of his life. And in some ways, he’s still dealing with the fallout. But he’s not alone. Kevin turned to Jesus and found someone who would always walk beside him.

“The more I live in this world,” Kevin says, “the more I’m drawn to Jesus because I need somebody stable. I need somebody that I can trust that isn’t going to let me down. I’ve gotten to the point where even if I don’t get what I want or what I’ve prayed for, or I get the opposite of what I’ve prayed for, I know there’s a reason for it. I don’t know what it is right now, but I trust that God has a plan and that it’s for my good, and we’ll figure it out.”

Kevin and his wife Cindy shared his story for the May 2019 bulletin.

In May 2019, Kevin and Cindy Hicks shared what led them to participate in Calvary’s Rebuilding After Divorce course as facilitators. Cindy has never been divorced, but her story includes an abusive relationship, the difficult decision to raise and parent her son alone, and the unwavering conviction that God pursued her through every twist and turn.

In this lightly edited transcript, Kevin and Cindy Hicks talk about life change, the loneliness of coming to church when it’s not your weekend with your kids, how forgiveness can save a relationship, and why divorce seems like an easy answer but really isn’t. This conversation was recorded for the May 2019 bulletin story, “Redeemed.” There wasn’t space to include it, but the message is too valuable not to share.

Same old, same old. That’s the thing about routine. When you do something consistently for a long period of time, it can be a challenge to preserve the initial motivation behind it. And the more you get used to something, the less you consciously think about it. Sometimes it takes a disruption in the discipline for us to remember why we do the things we do. For Sarah Wallace, her routine spiritual life was interrupted by none other than God.

Recent high school grad Juan Gil is in transition. And not just between high school and college. Between social pressures and personal expectations, Juan found his footing in the Word of God. It’s a journey in process, but Juan’s story is fresh reminder of the power of the Bible and the need for community along the way.

“Many of my friends are engaged and planning their weddings, already married, or even married with kids. You could say I was getting a little impatient with God...