Lauren Chandler - Steadfast Love: The Response of God to the Cries of Our Heart

I had the privilege to get to know and love Lauren Chandler at the height of the season when God was wringing worship from her heart. I saw her cling to Him for dear life and resolve to trust Him amid terrifying circumstances. I also saw the very worship she describes in these pages surface in exquisite beauty. I am deeply grateful God put her pen to the page to share with us what Hes shown her and taught her in Psalm 107. Lauren has encountered the steadfast love of God vividly and powerfully. Within these pages, we are invited to do the same. Laurens tremendous gifting is obvious from first to last. She devours the Scriptures and makes us hungry for them, too. This is a gorgeous book. For all our sakes, I hope and trust it wont be her last.

Beth Moore

The steadfast love of God is a powerful balm for our souls, whether in the mundane details of daily life or in the deepest valleys through which we may be required to walk. Ive watched as Lauren Chandler has clung to His faithfulness, goodness, and love in the midst of desperate places and have witnessed the sweet fruit as she has tethered her heart to the truth about His character and ways. Regardless of where you may find yourself in this season, Steadfast Love will be a means of sweet encouragement and grace.

Nancy Leigh DeMoss

Copyright 2016 by Lauren Chandler

All rights reserved.

Printed in the United States of America

978-1-4336-8378-7

Published by B&H Publishing Group

Nashville, Tennessee

Dewey Decimal Classification: 248.843

Subject Heading: CHRISTIAN LIFE \ WOMEN \ LOVE

Unless otherwise noted, all Scripture is taken from The ESV Bible (The Holy Bible, English Standard Version) copyright 2001 by Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. ESV Text Edition: 2011. The ESV text has been reproduced in cooperation with and by permission of Good News Publishers. Unauthorized reproduction of this publication is prohibited. All rights reserved.

Also used: Holman Christian Standard Bible ( hcsb ), Copyright 1999, 2000, 2002, 2003, 2009 by Holman Bible Publishers, Nashville Tennessee. All rights reserved.

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Dedication

To Matt

For I am my beloveds and he is mine.

Acknowledgments

To my God, the Lord, who has shown me steadfast love. You are good and do good. You are worth writing about. May I never cease declaring your praise. May You ever keep me according to Your faithfulness displayed perfectly through ChristHis life, His death, and His power over it. Your grace is sufficient.

To Matt, my best friend, my favorite person, my beloved. I am glad the Lord thought it good for me to grow up with you and, if Hes willing, grow old with you. I am a blessed woman. Many of the words on these pages are owed to you. Ive not only sat under your faithful teaching for almost two decades, Ive seen up close how much you love Him and His word with your lifethe day in, day out, no-clean-white-T-shirts-in-the-drawers-but-still-seeking-to-serve-me love. You make me love Him more.

To my children, Audrey, Reid, and Norah. Thank you for your patience with this Jesus-needing Momma. Each of you are a delight to my heart, and I marvel at Gods goodness in en-trusting you to me. I love you and really, really like you.

To Momma and Daddy, you were the first to believe I could actually do something like this. Who knew that little poem could turn into a book! Thank you for loving me wellpointing me to the Lover of my soul from the very beginning. I am blessed to be your daughter.

To Jennie Allen, this book may not have been written if it werent for a lunch at La Madeleine with a woman I barely knew but am so glad to call friend now. Thank you for being boldly in love with Jesus. Its contagious.

To Ann Voskamp, thank you for your beautiful words and more beautiful soul. Your pen gives life and hope because you write from the overflow of grace and gratitude.

To Jonathan, Lisa, Grace, Pam, Rachel, Michael, and Maury, thank you for letting me write about you. Your lives have indelibly marked mine.

To Sarah, Carri, Natalie, Barkley, Kristyn, Faith, Amy, Tara-Leigh, Candice, and Courtney thank you for praying faithfully for this project and enduring the same prayer request for months on end!

To Jen Wilkin, Kelly Minter, John Piper, Tim Keller, and the team that authored the ESV Study Bible notes, thank you for faithfully mining the Scriptures for great treasure. I am among the many who have benefited from your laborthe fruit of which, I hope, is evidenced in these pages.

To Jennifer Lyell, Jana Spooner, and the team at LifeWay, thank you for your patience and encouragement, for enduring e-mails and texts, and for responding graciously!

To Doug Stanley, for lending your gifts to make this a reality. Thank you.

To Celebrate Recovery, for helping me see the chains.

Foreword

When you first meet Lauren Chandler, you wouldnt think shes a woman whos rode out a tsunami.

I met Lauren in an island of stillness up in the hill country of Texas.

We sat out in the quiet of slanting sun. Lauren spoke with this steadying calm, like the clearing surface of reflective water.

Cancer had slammed her Richter scale one unsuspecting morning, a tumor quaking her husbands brain and their whole world.

She glanced down at the cup of coffee in her hands, No one gives you any warning what day a waves going to slam into your whole world and everything you know is going to take a complete 180.

She looked up.

And she handed me a number right there: 107.

When everything takes a 180take the 107. Lauren turned to Psalm 107, like a woman whod ridden out storms was turning this key.

When I first heard Howard Ulrich talk about riding the largest tsunami of modern times, he had a coffee in his hands too. Howard had got up that morning with absolutely no warning that a monster wave, taller than the Empire State Building, would literally slam into him and his boy.

He and his eight-year-old son Sonny had anchored on the south side of Lituya Bay in a place called-Anchorage Cove.

Some went down to the sea in ships, doing business on the great waters... (Ps. 107:23)

Howard had said: All was smooth. It was a quiet and peaceful anchorage. There can be unwavering peace today when an uncertain tomorrow is trusted to an unchanging God.

With no notice, Howards boat, Howards boy, the bay, the circling mountains, the earth shook with one violent 7.8 earthquakeand forty million cubic yards of rock, ice, and coarse soil weighing ninety million tons, slammed into the drowsy bay. Fifty miles to the north, people stopped dead in their tracks, the explosion thrumming inner ear drums.

Howard stood dazed on the deck of his boat: Out of the corner of my eye, there was an explosion of water sending up a splash seventeen hundred feet high-and then the wave started coming.

For he commanded and raised the stormy wind,which lifted up the waves of the sea. (Ps. 107:25)

When God raises the winds and lifts the wavesyou can always trust His hand to lift you higherfurther up into Himself.

It was a wall of water, straight up and down, about two hundred feet tall, and it was blacktotally black from the soil and trees. You could see the shadows of the terror of it flash across Howards memories. That whole wave was traveling about seventy miles per hourbut it was strangely silent.

Ive known that beforethe strange silence of the encroaching crisis. Ive known that too: The silence of God you hear in the midst of stormscan be the deep intimacy of God falling all around you, an intimacy that is beyond wordsthat will carry you through and beyond this storm.