ST. PAUL — It won’t be her first visit to Fargo, but Susie Larson, Christian author and speaker, says the message she’ll bring here in a few weeks “will come from a new place in my belly.”
“God has dug a deeper well in me,” she says, referring to having just lived through one of the hardest years of her life. “Some significant crises hit our family and it’s turned me upside-down.”
But it’s also served to make her message more impactful, she says, to bring others hope. “Through all I’ve gone through, I’ve had to find a firmer footing on God’s promises.”
Throughout her travels, Larson says, she finds people “in the storms of their lives.”
But it is precisely in these “fires” that God wants to refine us. “Our faith matters to God — it’s precious to God,” she says, paraphrasing Hebrews 12:26: “Right now things are being shaken, so that which is not being shaken can be clearly seen.”
The unshakeable, she says, comes in “God’s love, promises and commitment to us; that’s the sturdy place, and I feel super passionate about it.”
Larson says she wants to help folks “reset with our faith and our perspective of the call of God in our lives.”
“It takes a lot of grit and guts” to get out of self-preservation mode, she says, to begin to “dream again about the future, to ask God to do impossible things,” but “we have to be in that place.”
The Rev. Sharon Ona, women’s ministry pastor at First Assembly, says women often feel the pressures of the world emotionally, physically and mentally, and they need time to pause and reflect. “When Susie presents the Word, it can set people free, because there’s hope in it,” Ona says.
Lisa Donelson, First Assembly event coordinator, says Larson’s message is for everyone, no matter where they’re at in life. “If church is a bit intimidating for someone, maybe this is a good place to start, to come to an event with no strings attached, just to hear the message and be encouraged.”
Larson adds, “Sometimes the very obstacles we want to avoid are the very things God is using for his purposes to help us…We need to learn to trust and lean in.”
If you go:
What: “Extraordinary Expectations” event with speaker and author Susie Larson
When: General public: 7 to 9 p.m., Friday, May 5, “Living the Promised Life;” and women only: 9 to 11:30 a.m., Saturday, May 6, “She is Wise” and “She’s an Heir.”
Where: First Assembly Church, 3401 25th St. S., Fargo.
Cost: $40 for both days; $30 for one day; $10 additional for VIP tickets
For more information: Tickets available at firstassembly.fm/susielarson/, First Assembly lobby, 9 a.m. to 4:30 p.m., Monday through Friday, or Hurley’s Religious Goods
For the sake of having a repository for my newspaper columns and articles, I reprint them here, with permission, a week after their run date. The preceding ran in The Forum newspaper on April 22, 2017.
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