Count It All Joy - Even In The Hard Times.

You know what's one of the hardest things in life?

Being happy in difficult times.

How are we supposed to have joy when things aren't going our way?

It's hard. It's challenging.

It can be nearly impossible to smile through our hardest days.

But it isn't impossible.

The Bible says that the testing of our faith produces patience. James 1:5 goes on to say "If any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask of God, who gives to all liberally and without reproach, and it will be given to him."

God's desire is for us to be patient. To be happy. To know that the testing of our faith is going to make us stronger.

God is always with us, and if we trust in him, then he will give us the joy that we long for. He will bring us through the difficult times with grace, and he will make us even better because of our hard days.

God's Plan For Your Life Might Not Be Something Big And Dramatic. God's Plan For You Might Be Something That Seems Small.

God’s plan for your life doesn’t have to be something big and dramatic.

Maybe God’s plan for you is something small.

And maybe you are even doubting his will for your life because of how insignificant the things that you are doing feel.

But God knows what he is doing. He has put you in the place that he has, he has given you the family, the friends, and the life that he has because he knows you. He has a specific purpose for your life.

And maybe that purpose isn’t to be the next Billy Graham or Martin Luther King Jr.. Maybe his plan for you is something simple. Something quiet and hidden.

Maybe you will never see dozens of people coming to God because of what you have done. Maybe you won’t be able to save the lives of those who are starving, maybe I won’t be able to write a number one best selling novel.

But God’s plan is still real. There are ways that he will use your life. Maybe he wants you to show love to your next door neighbor by helping carry in her groceries. Maybe he wants you to prove that forgiveness is possible by turning the other cheek when a co-worker pick a fight with you.

God is going to use your life if you are willing to live for him.

Do his will, and he will use you. Whether he chooses for us to make an impact in small ways, or big, it only matters that we follow him.

No Longer Broken Sample

If you haven't had the chance to purchase your copy of No Longer Broken yet, here is a portion of the first chapter for you to check out. Let us know what you think of this sample!

Chapter One

Isaiah Russo had tried hard over the years to pretend that everything was okay. He had tried to believe that eventually he and his wife would make it through their struggles and that everything would turn out alright, but he had been lying to himself. He could see that now.

Three weeks earlier, when he’d come home from his final tour overseas to find his wife in the arms of another man, he’d known that there was no hope for the two of them. There hadn’t been for a while, really, but he knew it with certainty then.

He’d filed for divorce two days later.

Isaiah had hoped for things to be different now that he was retired from the military, but he hadn’t hoped for things to change this drastically.

He and Catalina had been married for almost fifteen years—and for what? Their marriage had been a waste. All that it had done from the beginning was cause a whole lot of hurt.

Isaiah thought of Catalina’s children, and he knew that he had to do something that he should have done a long time ago. It was time that he put the past behind him and moved forward with his life.

He had learned a lot in the twenty years that he’d served in the military, and the most important thing that he had learned was to trust God with his life. He might have only asked Jesus into his heart a few months earlier, but that didn’t mean that his faith wasn’t real.

And he knew that he needed to put his newly-found faith into practice by doing what he should have done years earlier.

He had a lot of people to apologize to and a lot of wrongs to make right. He couldn’t possibly fix every wrong, but he was going to try.

He’d caused too much hurt and destruction. It was time to make amends. It was time to try to bring healing to the ones who he had hurt.

He just hoped that he’d be allowed the chance to do that.

Purchase the book to finish the first chapter and check out the rest of the story.
No Longer Broken is available on Amazon, Kindle, Nook and eLectio Publishing.

Does God Feel Distant? Do You Feel Like You Were Alone in the Past? God is with You Now, and He has Always Been Beside You

When someone has come through a hard past, it can be hard to trust that God could be interested in their life in the here and now. If you have lived through a lot of pain, if life has seemed unfair for you, it can be hard to believe that God cares about you. If he’s with you now, where was he when you were in pain?

Psalm 13 discusses a feeling of distance from God. The Psalmist cries out to God, asking him why he has forgotten him. It seems that the Psalmist is in a hard place and he feels that he has been abandoned.

“Will you forget me forever?” the Psalmist asks.

We don’t always know God’s plan for our lives and we don’t always know where he is when we are in pain. There are times when we reach out in an attempt to have God with us and we feel like he’s too far away to hear us. There are times when we feel alone, we feel forgotten.

Even in those times  when we feel like God is hiding from us, he is with us. Even if we feel that God was nowhere to be found in our past, he was there. What we want from life is not always the same as what God has in store for us. There are times when we must struggle in order for us to have the life that is meant for us.

Toward the end of Psalm 13, the writer states that “I trust in your unfailing love”. The Psalmist isn’t about to give up on God, even when he feels abandoned. He holds on to his trust even in a hard time. It is important for us to do the same.

Whether you are faced with a hard past where you did not feel God’s presence or you feel like you have been abandoned by him now, know that he is always there. Even when he feels far away, he is right beside you. He might not take away each of your struggles, but he will stand by you in the midst of it all. You can call out to him and find him right there, even in your pain.

In our book No Longer Broken, there are those characters who have come through difficult circumstances. They have to wonder where God was when they were faced with pain. The conclusion of the book brings about healing for those characters, the healing that comes only through God and the healing that often comes after we have felt far away from him. He is with us even when it doesn’t feel like he is, and we can reach out to him even when it feels like he is nowhere to be found.

Welcome!

Welcome to the blog of Emily Acker and Bethany Acker, two writers with a passion for the hurting in the world around us. We have recently published our first novel, and we are excited to see all that the future holds for that book and for each of the other novels that we create.

Thank you for checking out this page and for your interest in our writing.

Our debut novel, No Longer Broken, can be purchased through the following:

eLectio Publishing:

eBook:

http://www.electiopublishing.com/index.php/bookstore#!/No-Longer-Broken-eBook/p/69121857

Paperback:

http://www.electiopublishing.com/index.php/bookstore#!/No-Longer-Broken-Paperback/p/69121844/category=4758361

Amazon:

Kindle:

https://www.amazon.com/No-Longer-Broken-Emily-Acker-ebook/dp/B01J2GRQSG/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1470074551&sr=8-2&keywords=no+longer+broken#nav-subnav

Paperback:

https://www.amazon.com/No-Longer-Broken-Emily-Acker/dp/1632132206/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1470074551&sr=8-1&keywords=no+longer+broken

Barnes and Noble:

Nook:

http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/no-longer-broken-emily-acker/1124183194?ean=2940157090067

Thank you for stopping by! We hope you come back for upcoming blog posts on writing, faith, and more, and we hope that you enjoy our book.

Emily Acker and Bethany Acker