Who Speaks To Your Heart? Blog Tour
Devotional Excerpt taken from Ch. 15
of Who Speaks To Your Heart?
Hi, this is Stacy Hawkins Adams, author of Who Speaks To Your Heart?
Have you ever felt invisible or as if you weren’t valued?
At some point in your life, whether once or a hundred times, you’ve likely felt dismissed or nonexistent. Others may have unintentionally ignored you or purposely excluded you.
However the slight occurred, feeling invisible – in a professional setting, at a social event or even in a relationship – may have punctured your soul, or at the very least, left you wanting to really disappear. Feeling like you don’t matter opens you up for doubts about your worthiness – whether you’re smart enough, pretty enough, thin enough, educated enough or simply good enough to deserve acknowledgement.
But God declares in Jeremiah 23:23-24 that he is always near, and none of us is invisible to him. He reminds us that when we feel the most disregarded and isolated, we should instead be encouraged, because he values those that are considered the “least of these” by others. In Matthew 10:30 he says he knows every hair on our head, and Psalm 56:8 reminds us that he’s collecting every tear we shed in a bottle.
If we believe the truth of these promises, then the times during which we question our significance– or allow someone else to do so – should be exactly what they are: minor slights we must sometimes endure. This is easier said than done, because the childhood cliché is incorrect: words can and do hurt, as well as the absence of them when you need to hear them most. But learning how to turn to God when we’re confronted with this issue is critical to learning to listen better and to hearing him speak.
When you feel like you’ve been overlooked, disregarded, not taken seriously or misunderstood, talk to God about it. Study scriptures that remind you that you are God’s choice pearl and that your every thought and move matter to him.
© Stacy Hawkins Adams. Excerpted from Who Speaks To Your Heart? Do not reprint or publish this excerpt without full attribution to the author or without express permission from the author or publisher, Zondervan.
About the Book
With insight, inspiration, and practical ideas in her new book—Who Speaks to Your Heart?—, author Stacy Hawkins Adams shows you and all women—regardless of the labels placed on you—that your best and most important title is the one given by God … chosen vessel.
“I wrestled with whether a God that I couldn’t see or touch would be willing to single me out from the millions of other people who wanted love, attention and help.”
To women all over the country, from all walks of life, this uncomfortable uncertainty is all too familiar. Now—for inspiration, for affirmation, for a divine connection—you have a new place to turn … to this authentic look at what it takes to pursue God with abandon, by acclaimed author Stacy Hawkins Adams.
Offering insight, inspiration, and practical ideas on how to connect more often and more deeply with God, Adams helps give you and women the world over the courage to go deeper and grow deeper in God’s word to hear Him more clearly. Women young and old will be empowered and renewed by Adams’ reminder that—regardless of the labels placed on you by society, your family, your friends, and even yourself—your best and most important title is the one given by God … chosen vessel.
About the Author
Stacy Hawkins Adams is a nationally-published, award-winning author and speaker. Her contemporary women’s fiction novels are filled with social themes and spiritual quests that take readers on journeys into their own souls.
She holds a degree in journalism and served as a newspaper reporter for more than a decade before turning her full attention to penning books, speaking professionally and writing freelance articles.
Stacy lives in a suburb of Richmond, Virginia with her husband and two young children. Visit Stacy online at stacyhawkinsadams.com.
Book Review by Linda Fegins
Who Speaks to Your Heart by Stacy Hawkins Adams is filled with delightful rich and powerful nuggets of inspiration, wit, wisdom and the practical use of the Word to empower women, really anyone ,to seek to know God intimately. Want to receive guidance and answers about your choices, purpose and destiny? Who Speaks to Your Heart gently shares with you the necessary steps to recognize God’s voice to obtain His wisdom. In Jeremiah 33:3 the Word states “Call unto me, and I will answer thee, and shew thee great and mighty things thou knowest not”. Hawkins provides loving practical and challenging strategies and tips as to how not only to pray to God, but to “LISTEN” with our hearts the messages He will truly whisper once you diligently seek Him and learn to listen when He speaks to you. Many forget that an important aspect of prayer and study is to listen.
I read a couple of chapters twice, such as “Letting Go of the Life You Imagined”, not because the reading was difficult, but I needed to soak in the chapter to garner what the Lord was speaking to me through the wonderful chapters. Adams shares her personal journey of faith with interesting stories such as her need to have a hearing device and reluctance to face the fact, experiences with her daughter and much more as a model for how God can speak to you. Women will be encouraged and empowered to grow deeper in the Word to listen to what God is speaking to their heart, in a “non-preachy” manner.
View the blog tour schedule and read an excerpt at http://bit.ly/WhoSpeaksToYourHeart.
