Bright Lights And Schuyler

So I had a wonderful chance to "email interview" one of my dear friends from Michigan about Bright Lights. Some of you have probably heard of the program, but here's some insight from one of the lovely ladies who leads her own group. Please take a look at her responses and support her by following her links posted on the bottom of this page. Thank you!  

What is Bright Lights and how does it impact people? 

Bright Lights is a ministry that seeks to help teen girls to build solid character commitments. We call ourselves a discipleship ministry, and BRIGHT stands for Being Radiant in Godliness, Holiness, and Testimony. The goal of our ministry is to encourage girls in building good habits such as spending time in God's Word and cultivating biblical relationships with family and friends. Bright Lights helps girls navigate their teen years so they have a strong foundation for adulthood. Teen years don't have to be a pain, although they certainly are challenging. They can be a rich time of growing in and fellowship with Jesus.

Bright Lights was founded in 1996 by Sarah Mally. It has grown to include groups all around the US, as well as Singapore, Australia, Malaysia, and elsewhere. I lead one of the Midwest chapters. :) We meet twice a month for a time of teaching, singing, memorizing, and tea in real teacups!

How did you get interested in Bright Lights?

I was familiar with the Mally family through their book Making Brothers and Sisters Best Friends.(We read that a lot when we were little.*smile*) Then, the summer I turned 12 we received a brochure in the mail for a Bright Lights girls' conference in the state where I lived. I loved it. Not only was it a special one-on-one trip with my mom, but I caught the vision for being a good influence on girls younger than me. The whole weekend was a time of conviction, encouragement, and making dear friends that I still know to this day. I loved the older girls on staff running the conference--they seemed so grown-up and wise to me. :) And I hoped that someday I could be a Bright Lights leader myself. Four years later that dream came true--and to date, I myself have helped out at Bright Lights conferences just like those other young ladies so long ago!

What topics/lessons do you teach on and which one is your favorite? If you have a favorite lesson/application, why?

There are so many topics we've covered--sets on fruits of the Spirit, basic Christian commitments, and removing polluting influences from your life. But I think my favorite topics were the last two we covered. We did a several-lesson set on wisdom, and I learned so much about how to gain wisdom--primarily by spending time in God's Word. Wisdom helps us receive rebukes from others, make wise comments, and grow in our knowledge of the Lord. Also, this latest set we just finished covered modesty and inner beauty. I was amazed by studying the Greek of 1 Peter 3:3-4 and learning just how much I've missed over the years with a superficial reading of that passage.

How long have you been teaching Bright Lights? And is this something that you would like to continue doing for many years to come? 

I have taught Bright Lights for 2 and 1/2 years, since June of 2012. It has been a blessing to impact the various girls that have come and gone, and I am committed for as long as the Lord wants us to keep going! I don't know how long that will be, but would imagine another couple of years at least. :)

Is Bright Lights for any certain age group or for girls from healthy homes?

Bright Lights is advertised as a group for girls from ages 10-14, but we have open hearts and willing homes for girls on both ends of that age spectrum. In my group I have invited even younger girls (especially if they have older sisters attending) and I have girls who have stayed long after they've left 14 behind. :)

While Bright Lights is primarily designed for discipleship (Christian growth) rather than evangelism (non-Christians) we certainly welcome girls from broken homes. If they are struggling at home, all the more reason that they should come here for some safe, loving fellowship! God doesn't require a perfect home to grow in Christ, and neither does Bright Lights. :) Especially if they are Christians, we would want them to get some biblical encouragement that they might not get otherwise. And if they are non-Christians and interested in coming, we would not turn them away! We want each girl to see the truth and mercy of Christ in each meeting. In fact, in the last few months I have made it a goal to tie every lesson in some way back to the basic gospel, so that the girls know why they should seek to build good character in the first place.

How have you, personally, been impacted in teaching the lessons? 

Well, as a leader my desire would be that I am a clean vessel, able to genuinely share what God has entrusted me with. Though I am not always perfect, nor do I embody each lesson, I learn a LOT with the girls. I have learned the importance of perseverance and discipline in planning lessons and keeping in touch with the group. I have been encouraged by the joy I see in the girl's faces, and the conviction, and the fact that the Holy Spirit is using the lessons to teach them about their relationship with Christ. I have seen the Lord provide inspiration and confidence for me time and time again when I was worried I didn't have everything together. And he has always blessed the meetings mightily.

I look forward to seeing what he will do in future, and pray that I will be found a faithful servant.

Schuyler McConkey is a novelist and Bright Lights ministry leader living with her parents and two siblings. She keeps busy with the last edits of a WW1 espionage novel, and critiquing various manuscripts for friends and writing partners. Schuyler also authors a blog, My Lady Bibliophile, where she writes book reviews and articles evaluating classic literature. In her spare time, she enjoys listening to Irish love songs, learning Gaelic, and reading too many Dickens novels.

You can find her on Facebook, Pinterest, Goodreads, and Twitter.

God's Not Dead!

         "How do you hate someone you say doesn't exist?"                         ~Josh Wheaton, God's Not Dead


I had the privilege--a few weeks ago--of going to the theater to see one of the most talked about Christian movies of the year. Actually, it was my first experience in a theater and it was very exciting with all the loud speakers, the smell of popcorn in buckets worth $19.50, and the largest screen I had ever sat in front of! But this was just the beginning.

I had not even watched the trailer of the movie, and in fact, I hate watching trailers to anything unless I question it. But I wanted every scene to be a complete surprise. Not only was I surprised....

                             ....I was amazed!


                         Anna's Movie Review on....God's Not Dead

The story revolves around a young college freshman, Josh Wheaton, who needs to attend a Philosophy class to put credits towards his pre-law degree. His faith is then challenged by Professor Radisson who not only personally hates God, but makes it his mission to make all the students in his class write "God is dead" or they will fail the class. Josh and the professor are at odds with each other from the beginning and Josh must prove God's existence in the classroom. He tells the class that Professor Radisson is the prosecutor, Josh himself is the defense attorney, and the class is the jury who gets to decide if God is really dead or....not.

Though Josh endures many hardships when he takes on the professor's challenge, the story also encompasses other people who are somehow "connected" to each other. These people's faith are also tested and that makes this show so real, as their trials are similar to ours. Some actually came to know the Lord personally at the end of the movie; unfortunately, as in our lives, many will turn away after hearing the truth. Josh was given two Scripture verses to read to help him make his decision. I will not expose them, as I implore you, the readers, to watch the movie for yourselves and see how Josh's Pastor's advice will help us in our individual missions to reach the lost.

The show as a whole is moving and demonstrates the power of our witness to the world. Pastor Dave told Josh that he should not be "clever", but to let the power of God's Word be proof enough. I remembered Moses in the Old Testament who thought his words were not eloquent enough to come before Pharaoh. But God still used Moses and God will use us in a powerful way to complete His plan. We just have to believe that we can still be instruments that God uses. He will give us the strength we need to reach out and stand boldly for Him.

As I watched Professor Radisson tell the class to write "God Is Dead", I kept thinking, 'You must believe in God, because to say that He's dead, must mean that He was alive at one point'. But we know that God is still alive, well, and working in this dark world. Man may say that God is non-existent, but without Him, life would not be worth living. Indeed, God is alive!


Final thought:

My encouragement to you would be to find, if you have not already, a movie theater near you and see this powerful film. I guarantee you that this film that I give 5 stars to, will not disappoint you. It's certainly not a waste of money to see it and even buy it when it comes out in DVD format in August, possibly.


For more information, go to: God's Not Dead Official Movie Link

Direction After Correction

". . .My son, despise not thou the chastening of the Lord, nor faint when thou art rebuked of Him: For whom the Lord loveth He chasteneth, and scourgeth every son whom he receiveth."  Hebrews 12:5,6


The key word here is "love". God doesn't chasten you, because He hates you. Just as when we were kids and were being disobedient, our parents punished us out of love. So God, Whose love is great for us, punishes us when we try to lead our own lives on our own strength. Through chastening, we will most likely find ourselves at a 'dead end road' and find no way to go except back to Who we wandered from: God. Through chastening, we realize our need for God and are reminded that we cannot live a life free from Him. Through chastening, we recognize that our sin is blocking us from having a complete relationship with the Savior and that we must repent in order to rebuild the bridge that separated us.

God never walks away from us. He never chooses to let us out of His hands. He never wants that sin to separate us from Himself. But when we let sin interfere, we ourselves are choosing to be separated from His love and care. We choose to walk away; and hence, why we sometimes don't sense God's presence with us any more.

God isn't always chastising us when life seems to do a back flip; but it's important to eliminate the possibility by examining our lives carefully. Such as when we partake of Communion. We should ask God to show us where we went wrong, and believe that He is faithful to point out the problem(s) that we need to ask forgiveness for and turn away from. He will never close the door in our face or walk away when we desire to repent from whatever sin has been plaguing us.

In a devotional book that I sometimes share stories with you, this one stood out as going along with this post topic very well. "As a professional stock-car racer, Darrell Waltrip was once proud of his image as 'the guy folks loved to hate'. When crowds booed, he'd just kick the dirt and smile. Then things began to change. He miraculously survived a Daytona 500 crash. He began to going to church with his wife, Stevie. He and Stevie began to try to have a family. Stevie, however, suffered four miscarriages. One day their pastor came to visit. He asked, 'Your car is sponsored by a beer company. Is that the image you want?' Darrell had never thought about it. He had always loved watching kids admire his car, but the more he thought about it, he discovered that he did care about his image. He thought, If Stevie's and my prayers were answered for a child, what kind of dad would I be? He remembered his pastor's admonition to 'walk the walk, not just talk the talk'. He didn't know what to do to convince the car owner to change sponsors, but amazingly, an opportunity opened for him to sign with a new racing team sponsored by a laundry detergent company! After much thought and more prayer, he switched teams. Two years later, daughter Jessica was born, and a few years later, daughter Sarah. In 1989, he won Daytona."

As we see in the above story, when Darrell changed his life around by advertising something better on his racing car and refusing to model pictures of beer around the track, God began to answer his and Stevie's prayer regarding their family. Sins truly do block our prayers with God. We cannot believe that God will listen to our cries for help, if we continue to allow the sin to remain in our lives.

God continues to encourage us to live a life pleasing to Him. As in the scene on the famous movie Facing the Giants, Grant pushed his player to do the death crawl across the whole field. Blindfolded, the play cried out in agony as he carried the "140 pound" player on his back to the end zone. Our Spiritual walks are the same. We carry around baggage and it feels that there is no hope in crossing this "field of life". We cry out to God for help, but He seems to be nowhere near us. God is asking us not to give up on Him; but to give up the sin that is separating us from Him. When we do so, we will find ourselves in the "end zone".

"In order to receive the direction from God, you must be able to receive the correction from God."

Sis in Christ,
Anna

2013 Summer Pictures

For this post, I wanted to share some pictures with you that I was able to take in the last few weeks. With all of the rain, the flowers and crops are growing nicely, and everything is looking green. Hope you enjoy them. 

"Blessed is the man who trusts in the Lord, and whose hope is the Lord. For he shall be like a tree planted by the waters. Which spreads out its roots by the river, and will not fear when heat comes; but its leaf will be green, and will not be anxious in the year of drought, nor will cease from yielding fruit." Jeremiah 17:7-8

"For as the earth brings forth its bud, as the garden causes the things that are sown in it to spring forth, so the Lord God will cause righteousness and praise to spring forth before all the nations." Isaiah 61:11

"Have you not known? Have you not heard? The everlasting God, the Lord, the Creator of the ends of the earth, neither faints nor is weary. His understanding is unsearchable." Isaiah 40:28

"Therefore the Lord will wait, that He may be gracious to you; and therefore He will be exalted, that He may have mercy on you.. For the Lord is a God of justice; Blessed are those who wait for Him." Isaiah 30:18

"You are  my God, and I will praise You; You are my God, I will exalt You. Oh, give thanks to the Lord, for He is good! For His mercy endures forever." Psalm 118:28-29

"Blessed be the Lord, Who daily loads us with benefits, the God of our salvation!" Psalm 68:19

"Again, the kingdom of heaven is like treasure hidden in a field, which a man found and hid; and for joy over it he goes and sells all that he has and buys that field." Matthew 13:44

"For the Lord is good; His mercy is everlasting, and His truth endures to all generations." Psalm 100:5

"For as the heavens are high above the earth, so great is His mercy toward those who fear Him; As far as the east is from the west, So far has He removed our transgressions from us." Psalm 103:11-12


In Christ,
Anna

Take a Stand

Election day is tomorrow.  And of course, I have thoughts on it.  First of all, I'd like to state my views here so you can get a general idea on what I'm about to post on this blog.  I am a Christian conservative who is concerned with the lives of the unborn; a strong believer in "one man one woman" marriages; a person who is appalled at the national debt that our country has sunk in to; an advocate of those who support and hold the constitution close to their hearts.  I'm not going to preach at you to get out and vote, even though that is my wish if you are of age.  But that is not what I am going to do. That is between you and the Lord.  Just as my decision to vote is between Him and I.

To start off with, let's look at abortion vs pro-life. Is that an important enough issue to vote on?  Well, it is.  In fact, it's bigger than the topic of our national debt-though that is one of the sorriest things I've been hearing about lately. ;)  But what does God say about it?  Does He not state in Psalm 139:13-16 "For You formed my inward parts; You covered me in my mother's womb. I will praise You, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made; marvelous are Your works, and that my soul knows very well. My frame was not hidden from You, when I was made in secret, and skillfully wrought in the lowest parts of the earth (the womb). Your eyes saw my substance, being yet uniformed. And in Your book they all were written, the days fashioned for me, when as yet there were none of them."
God is saying that no matter how much we think that "blob" is worth, He created it.  Abortion activists state that the 'woman has the right to choose what she does with her body'.  But her body was meant to be the temple of Christ and she should not do anything with it that would cause harm.  That "blob" is breathing inside of her.  It can touch, though it can not see at first, it can still feel.  And pain is no exception.  Do we wish to see more harm come to the unborn? or do we yearn for the day when all those days have past?

Proverbs 22:2 "The rich and the poor have this in common, the LORD is the maker of them all."


For the next topic here, I'd like to lightly touch base on pro-marriage vs. gay lifestyles as I do have young readers and it is not my duty to inform them of such things.  But we should be asking ourselves: 'what would Jesus think?' if we sat back on election day and watched as a pro-gay president gets another four years?  What would Jesus think if we voted for him?  I would think that this question is relatively easy and can be answered by what God said in Genesis 1:27 "So God created man in His own image; in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them."  This is grounds alone to stand upon to take action against the evil lies this world tries to confuse you with regarding this topic.  God created the man and He created the woman.  He took the rib from Adam's side (not the head to lord over him and not the feet so that he may trample her), which made her equal with him.  But it is important to remember that God did just not leave man on this earth alone.  Nor did God put women on this earth alone.  He created both so that they may enjoy unity and as God commanded in Genesis 1:28 "Be fruitful and multiply; fill the earth and subdue it.."  Do not disregard Sodom and Gomorrah as a coincidence.  God can do the same with our nation as this  sin is going against one of His first commands to man (and woman).


Now, for the final topic that I'd like to discussion.  And this time, I'd like to use some simple banking methods in order to get this point across.  Say you owned a brand-new car and you took out a mortgage on it.  Over time, you got behind on your payments, maybe got behind on other financial areas and lost your job, perhaps.  The bank came along and repossessed it, along with everything else that you were in debt with.  You no longer own that car.  And you no longer own that brand new stereo system that you just installed in your garage.  You were in debt then and no you own nothing.  In another situation, your friend asked you for a five dollar bill; however, over time, he kept asking for more and more money.  Soon, he owed you over $500.  He's in debt to you, to the bank, and he has no way of paying you back what you loaned him.  He's now sitting in jail for writing worthless checks.
These are just two examples of what is happening to our country today.  We owe trillions of dollars to other countries and we think that we can get out of debt by borrowing more to pay off those current debts.  If you owned that car or your friend needed more money, what would you do?  Would you go out and borrow from other people to pay off the car and then get in debt with them? How about the friend that owes you over five hundred dollars?  Do you think that by lending him more money, that he can pay off his current debts and still have some left over to settle the debt with you?  Of course not!  And by the way, I'm not trying to point fingers. ;) I highly doubt any of you would go out and buy the brand new, spittin' clean Mustang.  I'm just trying to illustrate the importance of the relationship between this and some of our government's wasteful spending like putting monkeys on marijuana to see how they react! This is one of the many ways that our government is spending this borrowed money on.  And I'm afraid to say it, but this currency that we hold in our wallets and purses are worthless.  The gold isn't there to back it up, but our government doesn't want anyone to know.  As Vice President Joe Biden stated, the middle class "has been buried the last four years".  And it has!  Our economy is in such a bad situation right now, that it's hard to believe we haven't been taken over by China already.  This is scary, I know.  But this truth needs to get out to family and friends before they go to the voting polls tomorrow. This election is critical and it's our job to inform those around us of the impending dangers of "being buried" another four years.

I would like to add a closing thought though.  God is still in control.  No matter who wins the election, He will not lose His sovereignty.  But this does not give anyone the excuse to neglect their God-given right to vote.  God gave us the most powerful nation on earth.  And in return, our government is giving us back an active, socialistic society.  Let's not see another Rome.  Let's stand up and fight for what our founding fathers stood up for over 200 years ago: our freedoms.

In Christ,
Julianna