Our Guest: Tessa Afshar
Tessa Afshar’s award-winning novels have been on Publishers Weekly and CBA bestseller lists and have been translated into 13 languages. Winner of the ECPA Bronze Milestone award, the Christy, the INSPY, and the ECPA Christian Book Award for her Bible study, The Way Home, Tessa holds a Master of Divinity from Yale, where she served as co-chair of the Evangelical Fellowship for one year. Born in the Middle East to a nominally Muslim family, Tessa converted to Christianity in her twenties. She is a devoted wife, a mediocre gardener, and an enthusiastic cook of biblical recipes.
Key Thoughts and Scriptures:
Lamentations 3:22-23 NIV Because of the Lord’s great love we are not consumed, for his compassions never fail. They are new every morning; great is your faithfulness.
Psalm 40:2 NIV He lifted me out of the slimy pit, out of the mud and mire; he set my feet on a rock and gave me a firm place to stand.
- God calls us to Himself.
- And He heals wounds we don’t even know were shaping us. And then in His mercy, He establishes our steps.
Proverbs 16:9 NIV In their hearts humans plan their course, but the Lord establishes their steps.
- Over time, we see that nothing in our lives is random. God is weaving together threads we don’t even know will matter one day.
Psalm 37:23 NLT The Lord directs the steps of the godly. He delights in every detail of their lives.
1 Thessalonians 5:24 NLT God will make this happen, for he who calls you is faithful.
- Tessa grew up in Islam not knowing there was a God whose grace could make a difference in her life.
- God redeemed Tessa’s loss of her native language by allowing her to be a prolific author in English.
Joel 2:25 KJV And I will restore to you the years that the locust hath eaten…
- In the loss of her home country, God used that homelessness to give her a new country.
- God also showed her that He was her everlasting Father.
- Even though Tessa didn’t know God personally at that time, He was still at work in her story.
After a relationship break-up, Tessa had a tremendous sense of hopelessness and began to look for hope for her future.
- At this time, God gave her a dream where she met Jesus face to face.
- And Tessa had a sense of love beyond any love she had experienced.
- She also sensed a power in His gaze.
Psalm 147:4 NIV He determines the number of the stars and calls them each by name.
Isaiah 40:26 NIV Lift up your eyes and look to the heavens: Who created all these? He who brings out the starry host one by one and calls forth each of them by name. Because of his great power and mighty strength, not one of them is missing.
Philippians 2:10-11 NKJV That at the name of Jesus every knee should bow…and that every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.
- “In the dream I knew Jesus was the Son of God…He was very God and whatever promise He made and everything He told you, even if it seemed impossible, it would come to pass. That He was totally trustworthy and faithful.”
- This is the presence of God.
- When you enter into a deep place of prayer, this is what He’s inviting you into. The presence of God allows you to lay down your burdens and experience peace.
Philippians 4:6-7 NKJV Be anxious for nothing, but in everything by prayer and supplication, with thanksgiving, let your requests be made known to God; and the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus.
- There is that exchange where you just give all your stuff to God and He gives you peace.
While Tessa woke from the dream, she didn’t know how to be a Christian.
- God surrounded her with Christians who poured love on her.
- “Every question I asked them, they kept answering, ‘Jesus.’”
- Tessa wanted God to give her a list of how to live her life, but that’s not how the christian life is lived.
- “I was a baby Christian…and didn’t understand a thing. I just knew what Jesus said about Himself, that was the truth. And that was my start.”
- After that, her direction changed and she started truly following the Lord and letting Him shape her life.
Luke 14:25 NIV “If anyone comes to me and does not hate father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters—yes, even their own life—such a person cannot be my disciple.
- The Word warns us that sometimes Jesus is an instrument of division rather than something that brings us together.
- There’s such a temptation when we want to serve Jesus where our enthusiasm and zeal for serving can lead us to a place of burnout.
- The Lord has created us for rest and work.
- Each of us has a different capacity. And He designs our lives based on our capacity.
- He expects us to live according to our capacity, and according to His rhythm.
- Tessa discovered that her external circumstances were only part of her problem, but the bigger problem was the internal wound she had been carrying since childhood.
- She was trying to abandon-proof her life, which is not the way God has designed us.
- God has not designed us to make our life rejection proof. He has made us unrejected by accepting us.
Romans 9:25 NIV …I will call them ‘my people’ who are not my people…
Rather than living from the truth that she belonged to God, Tessa was responding out of her wounds.
- Tessa’s burnout began with a sense of being overwhelmed.
- It became so bad that she couldn’t pray or focus.
- So she began to have anxiety because she started asking “When is this going to go away? What if it doesn’t go away? ”
- Instead of being specific questions they turned into constant anxiety.
- And she didn’t know how to pull herself out of it.
- The Lord gave her strength to be functional, but she didn’t have any more capacity.
- She realized that the Lord needed to go into that wound and restore her before she could be free.
- Even as you heal the deeper wounds, then you have to heal this pattern that your brain has entered into. And that pattern has to be undone.
- God has plans for us, even when we can’t imagine it in the midst of our present circumstances.
- She wrote her first book on a promise that she made to God that she would finish one book that particular year.
- Zānâ
- Rahab had wounds from her past yet the Lord chose her to be in the lineage of Jesus.
- “Lord, you need to fix this. It just keeps coming up.”
- “If they’re treating you as if you are the dust of the ground instead of My jewel. It never, ever takes away your worth. It never changes the fact that you are My jewel.”
- Tessa wrote that message into her book about Rahab.
- When you feel your dream is gone, God doesn’t care about age or statistics, He knows how to restore to us those dreams that the locusts eat.
Tessa has seen God’s faithfulness throughout her life.
- God is trustworthy. While your life will not be painfree, He’s able to redeem things that you never thought were redeemable.
- And He will restore to you things that you thought you had lost forever.
- Tessa always has romance in her novels, but the romance with God undergirds all of that.
- He’s faithful to walk with you through the hard times and bring you to the other side.
- You can lay the weight of your life on the shoulders of Jesus.
Psalm 23:5 NIV You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies. You anoint my head with oil; my cup overflows.
Ruth’s Story
- Ruth’s superpower was what in Hebrew they call dāḇaq. And dāḇaq basically means cling or cleave.
- She clung to Naomi.
- God is looking for people who know how to cling in a healthy attachment to others and to Himself.
- He is not just faithful, but He’s so gracious in His faithfulness.
- God doesn’t pursue us because we earned it. It’s all because of His grace.
Jeremiah 29:11 NIV For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the Lord, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.
Ephesians 3:20 NIV Now to him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to his power that is at work within us
Numbers 6:24-26 NIV The Lord bless you and keep you; the Lord make his face shine on you and be gracious to you; the Lord turn his face toward you and give you peace.
Links:
Books:
- Pearl in the Sand by Tessa Afshar
- More books by Tessa
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