… to this website!
Newly redone in 2019, nancybentz.com has undergone a five-year transformation since I first began a blog-based website for my work as a faith-based life coach.
Five Grace-filled Years
Serving as a life coach since September 2011 began as a grassroots effort with those nearest and known to me. Over time, the Lord expanded the reach while simultaneously, a deepening work was taking place. Each year’s focus was uniquely orchestrated by Him as desires I held in my heart came to fruition:
- beginning in April 2014 when I launched the original edition of nancybentz.com
- working with clients and other attendees in workshop/session formats using the wonderful tool of a portfolio of faith-based visual life maps known as Listen to My Life
- designing, writing, and offering a trio of women’s retreats – each a God-met ‘desire of my heart’
- God-appointed opportunities to coach and counsel individuals He faithfully brought my way
- and – a boatload of inspirational, motivating, thought-provoking (and I hope action-inducing) blog posts in a series of categories that reflected the niches unique to my life coaching practice
Hey, hand me that hammer!
For anyone building something from the ground up, take heart. Noah was six hundred years old when he and his family entered the ark he had spent, by all accounts, decades building according to God’s precise blueprint. Individuals don’t live that long anymore, yet Father God’s blessings continue to a thousand generations. The fact that you are reading this is testament to His covenant faithfulness to you and those who preceded your life. Known or unaware to you, there is in your generational line at least one redeemed ancestor in the heavenly cloud of witnesses as you run your portion of God’s timeless story.
I think we all would be hard-pressed to find anyone, regardless of when they lived – including Noah – who has not asked the classic life questions:
Who am I? Why am I here in this time and place? What is my purpose?
Noah built an ark. Each of us is designed and called by God to build – in, through, and with our lives – a unique ‘something’ that He placed in the package of who we are. Fulfillment is God’s preferred outcome. On the way to fulfillment is a building project in various stages of deconstruction and reconstruction. The term for that is ‘living life’. One of the great tools we’ve been given is God’s blueprint of who we are.
2018 and Winds of Change
In early 2018, my husband and I re-engaged with a ministry that had been a key resource in our journey years earlier. We had followed Arthur Burk / Plumbline Ministries* for a lengthy season, learning and growing and experiencing many aha! moments as we delved deeper into the Word of God through Arthur’s think-tank approach. In his words, many “half-baked potatoes” and hours and hours with innumerable “Fred”s and “Sally”s later, his Biblicist perspective and design helped him, and others alongside, to mine treasured gems about our human spirit. Out of that season’s immersion came the revelation and insights that led to his teachings on the redemptive gifts. God had us otherwise occupied.
Fifteen Months Later
In our sixth decades, we two spouses have witnessed multiplied times that God’s timing is impeccable. The next fifteen months were an opportune re-immersion for us in the teaching about the redemptive gifts, aged over a decade since our first introduction to them. The timing coincided with recognizing the Lord was leading us step by step into another season. As Holy Spirit so often has done in our personal and married collective journeys, He provided the language to that which He had already been teaching, testing, and proving in us. We understood that though it was personal, it was also for the body of Christ.
The ‘squirrelly’ in me was aware in late 2018 of a transition and sharpened focus in what I was to offer through Shammah Ministries. I held in my hands the gift of not only growing into God’s principles for redemptive living as Holy Spirit had been teaching me for two decades; now I had the language and model of the Redemptive Gifts to share more broadly with others. When I discovered the redemptive gifts’ pattern of seven, my purpose and passion meter red-pegged. Those who have read my writings know I’ve observed that my life has too often revolved around cycles of seven years to be coincidence.
To say I got excited is an understatement!
That’s the brief back story. The rest of the story will be an ongoing page-turner as the website grows to reflect the building project already underway in your life and mine. I don’t claim to be the expert. God is.
Many hours have been invested in transitioning this website from its original theme and content to what you now see in front of you. I am grateful to my friend and professional cohort, Gretchen Louise, for her masterful web-mastering and aptitude that helped bring to fruition this website re-launch in April 2019.
Whether you’re sitting before your computer screen or holding a mobile device in your hand, I invite you to allow yourself some unhurried time to poke around and explore the clues, tools, and writings that currently populate this site. As you do, I encourage you to pause and subscribe to continue receiving more. I hope you will return many times, as the spirit of the content posted is written, chosen, and made available to help you with embracing your design for redemptive living.
~ Nancy
*now Sapphire Leadership Group
