Guest post by Sharon A. Hersh, author of Begin Again, Believe Again.

What is the first thing you thought about this morning? Prayed about last night? Worried about throughout the day? I imagine if we could have a face-to-face conversation about what you think about, dream for, persistently pray about, risk for over and over again, discuss with your friends, are willing to look like a fool for, and continually hope for more in, we would see your heart for relationships.

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In my new book Begin Again, Believe Again we will look at our hearts for relationships. God created us to long for purposeful, passionate, mutual relationships. I will tell you a bit about my own heart – broken and battered at times – because I know that we all have stories of heartache when relationships falter. We all have conflicts we don’t know how to resolve. We all have children who go a different direction at times than we originally dreamed of for them. We all have friends who promise to be there for us and then forget to invite us to their birthday parties. We all get lonely. And we are all tempted to give up.

Begin Again
Beginning again requires the humility to acknowledge that we don’t know what we really want, but God (the Beginning and Ending of every story) remains steadfast in His commitment to use our longing for relationships to bring us to what we most deeply want – Him.

Beginning again means we surrender to the story – a story that often takes two steps forward and three steps back – knowing that in this begin again, believe again story we find Jesus. We encounter the One who is grace, mercy, compassion, truth, hope, and love. We rest in the One who is the plot – the meaning of our stories.

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