Logan

An Opportunity for Blessing

May 20, 2013 By Logan • 44 Comments

Dear Allume family,

Today’s post is really more of an announcement for you to know, and also an invitation for you to sow into one of our own. I’m writing primarily to let you know of an organizational change that has been made within Allume. Because we want to honor you, our community, we felt that it was important to let you know rather than to just let you wonder or speculate. We also appreciate your prayers over our team and over the conference.

We would like to honor Jessica Heights and the role that she has played within Allume over the past 3 years. She is one of the 3 original co-founders of the conference, and as we all have come to know her more and love her over the years, it is widely recognized that she has been a smiling face and welcoming presence at each year’s conference. Many even say she has been Allume’s very own Miss Congeniality.

In order to focus more fully on personal matters outside of the conference, Jessica is moving away from her responsibilities and roles within Allume and the Conference. The hole she leaves is great, and we ask that you would join us in honoring her, praying for her, and encouraging her.

Please know that we love Jessica, and are all in agreement that this is best for her and for the conference. This is not something we expect the community to take lightly, and in order to honor Jessica, we would like to ask that as a community, we join together to speak blessing over her and not pry into her personal matters. Please be in prayer for us as we move forward as I’m sure you can know that she leaves quite a hole.

If you have been impacted by Jessica in any way over the years, we’d love to bless her with a slew of encouraging words and scriptures in the comments section below. Thanks friends for your love and support of Allume and your kind words over our sweet friend. We are so grateful for your contribution to this conference, the community, and most importantly to the Kingdom.

Loads of blessings on you each,
Logan and Sarah Mae

Logan is a Jill-of-all-trades who can't make up her mind about what she loves most - decorating, cooking, creating, adventuring, and never taking herself too seriously in any of it. She's the wife of a great man, the mother of Kingdom warriors in the making, and daughter of a most extravagant King. She writes about life and her passions at www.LifeForDessert.com

Drumroll….The 2013 Agenda!

May 8, 2013 By Logan • 20 Comments

Did you see it?! The 2013 Allume Agenda?!

Ok…if not, you must immediately click HERE to open the full 2013 Agenda in another window so that you can peruse it in just a minute!

But first, I just need you to know why I, for one, am doing the happy dance!

It’d take me 45 minutes talking fast to cast the whole vision (and you’ll get some of that at Allume in the flesh) but for now, just know that God has been working in a chill-bumps-inducing way over the past several months.

A few months ago, the Lord gave me a picture of an underground river. It was bubbling and moving forward…yet, it was underground. And then suddenly the river came into the open. It broke through rock and earth and spilt forth…moving fast and branching off to cover all over the earth. And then I saw a bright light…and it was a line that was just positioned at the cross-section where the river left the underground and came into the light of day…and the Lord said…”this space, this place where the bubbling bursts forth into the earth…this is Allume.”

Every time I recount the picture and the words… I cry. God is moving friends. He’s moving in each of you now, and he’s moving in what he’s planning to accomplish at Allume. And when we all collide together in the same time and space, the work that He is doing, and the work that He will release is like a mighty rushing river of Kingdom awesomeness. It makes me excited. It gives me chills.

I’m excited about the things you see in the agenda listed with times and dates and titles, but the thing I’m most excited to see is what God does in the in betweens too. I’m excited to see the way he weaves the words of the keynotes, and teaches and inspires you with session speakers. I’m elated to watch you all connect and love one another in that special way that it happens at Allume. I’m blessed to have not just reached out to compile a list of speakers, but to have been building relationships with these Kingdom of Heaven World Changers, and I can tell you with every bone in my being, that the words the Lord gave to Sarah Mae, Jessica, and I back in November are coming to fruition.

”Behold, I am doing a new thing; now it springs forth, do you not perceive it? I will make a way in the wilderness and rivers in the desert…for I give water in the wilderness, rivers in the desert, to give drink to my chosen people, the people whom I formed for myself that they might declare my praise.” – Isaiah 43:19-21

Our dear friend, Ann Voskamp, will bring a fresh word, as only she can, and open our hearts on opening night. Melanie Shankle will make us laugh til we cry, and cry til we laugh just before Jennie Allen moves us with truth and life and reminds us how ‘faith is the is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.” Bianca will arrest us with passion, and Jeff will move us to live bigger and more authentically than we’d ever dreamed.

Our incredible sponsors will pour into you and help show ways that you too can pour out.

Our hope and prayer is that your time at Allume will equip you, empower you, refresh and refuel you, so that you can leave and walk taller into the callings that God has for you (and for your blog.)

We invite you to come spend time with us for a weekend of life, and friendship, community, and awakening. We can’t wait to see what God has in store for us all!

So now, if you haven’t yet looked at the whole incredible lineup yet, go….HERE!

And if you still need to snag your ticket, go HERE!

All our love,

Logan, Sarah Mae, and Jessica

Image Source

Logan

Fields of Faith

February 11, 2013 By Logan • 14 Comments

I’m in a season of some hard things right now. Big things…hitting my closest group of friends. We’re dealing with a lot of loss, a lot of tossing waves, a lot of hard questions. It’s not an easy time in my personal close sphere. But I am so thankful for this group of people that I do life with. They are exactly who I’d choose to have around me to weather storms.

Thankfully also, I know God is a bigger picture kind of guy. So I’m doing what I can to stay close to his heart …to hopefully, eventually, peer through the periscope that has a fuller view of the world above the waves.

I keep thinking on something that the Lord showed me when I was in Bangladesh via a word for a friend.

One day in a village with the Food for the Hungry staff, we did a devotion and read these verses in Matthew 8.

²³And when he got into the boat, his disciples followed him. ²⁴And behold, there arose a great storm on the sea, so that the boat was being swamped by the waves; but he was asleep. ²⁵And they went and woke him, saying, “Save us, Lord; we are perishing.” ²⁶And he said to them, “Why are you afraid, O you of little faith?” Then he rose and rebuked the winds and the sea, and there was a great calm. ²⁷And the men marveled, saying, “What sort of man is this, that even winds and sea obey him?”

My friend, Daniel, and I talked afterwards and he said how he loved that in these verses this time, the Lord showed him that our faith will bring about peace and calm.

My response… “and the good news is that for us, it only takes a mustard seed of faith to even move mountains.”

“I want more faith,” he said.

“Yeah, so do I.”

And along a walk back from meeting my sponsored child with Food for the Hungry, we came across a field of green plants with beautiful yellow flowers.

“What kinds of flowers are those?” I asked our translator.

“Oh those? Those are just mustard plants.”

I ran over to a plant and broke off a pod. I’ve never seen mustard growing before. Surely these pods are where the seeds are? Is this even the kind of mustard I’m thinking of? The kind we grind into paste and eventually mix with vinegar to put on a hot dog at home? The same kind that reminds us that just one tiny seed is all the faith we need to move entire mountains? Or is Bangladeshi mustard something different?

I opened the pod to find probably 30 tiny seeds. Just one pod with 30 seeds?!

If all it takes is 1 seed to move mountains, then here we stood with a pod of 30 seeds in our hands. And before us spanned a field with tens of thousands of pods on thousands of mustard plants.

It wasn’t lost on me that we’d just asked the Lord for more faith just a few hours before. And here we stood with fields full of faith stretched before us.

I emailed Daniel later and said, “All it takes is one mustard seed, but today God gave you a whole field. I think that whatever mountains in your life you’re wanting to move, you’re going to be able to move them.”

And I find myself thinking on the same thing now as the seas of this life are rough, and I need the faith to see them calmed.

“Save us, Lord; we are perishing.” ²⁶And he said to them, “Why are you afraid, O you of little faith?” Then he rose and rebuked the winds and the sea, and there was a great calm.

For truly, I say to you, if you have faith like a grain of mustard seed, you will say to this mountain, ‘Move from here to there,’ and it will move, and nothing will be impossible for you.” – Matthew 17:20

Afterall, the Lord let me see that field too.

The truth is, he has fields of his faithfulness around the bend for all of us. I wonder though, are we looking for them? Are we recognizing them for what they are when we stumble across them?

Open our Eyes Father to see with your eyes. Open our eyes to see above the storms, and through the waves, to the beauty that you have for us. Give us greater faith, but let us not be discouraged that our grain of faith may seem small to us…afterall, you pack a lot of punch in one tiny grain. We love you Jesus, and we want more of you.

**What storms has the Lord calmed for you lately? When has he increased your faith to see them calmed? And when was the last time you asked the Lord for something and instead of just giving you even the blessing of a double portion, he unveiled a whole field of his goodness before you? Share with the community in the comments below? We’d love to hear how he’s calming storms and moving mountains in your life.

Ship Printable Source, Photographs by Daniel C. White