Saints Label Facebook ad: “Deepen Your Faith Every Day”

About this ad

Meta Ad Library ID

29142735022012643

Platforms

Facebook, Instagram, Audience Network, WhatsApp and Threads

Relaunches

0

Niche

Education & Courses

How we count

Ad text

I had to spend Halloween in a haunted prison with my ex-husband and the woman he left me for. For my granddaughter’s twelfth birthday. The trip I was paying for. And the only reason I did not fall apart in front of all of them was something my best friend sent me two weeks before. Here is what happened. Last spring, I signed my divorce papers after thirty-three years of marriage. Eleven minutes. That is how long it took to legally end the life I had spent three decades building. Barry was texting her in the parking lot before we were even done. Her name is Ashlyn. She is two years younger than our daughter. I am sixty-one. I married Barry when I was twenty-seven. I worked overnight at a truck stop for twenty years while he built his business. I packed every lunch. I ironed every shirt. I remembered every birthday. I kept the family in church when he was too tired, too busy, or too important. Somewhere between raising children and helping him build a life, I turned into background furniture. Useful. Quiet. Easy to overlook. Years before Barry actually left, he had stopped looking up when I walked into a room. Our granddaughter, Quinn, was born on Halloween. When she was five, she saw a picture of an old haunted prison in Philadelphia. Dark cell blocks. Castle walls. Actors in masks jumping out of cells. She drew me a ticket in orange crayon. It said: “ONE TIKET. GRANDMA AND QUINN. HANTED JAIL. WHEN IM 12.” I put it on my refrigerator. Seven years later, she turned twelve. So I booked three days in Philadelphia. Her first haunted house. Her birthday dinner. Grandma was paying. Then Quinn asked if Grandpa could come. My daughter Erin said yes before I could answer. Then she added two more seats to the booking. On my card. “Dad will pay you back, Mom.” He has not. And the second seat was for Ashlyn. A few days later, Quinn called me so excited she could hardly breathe. She said Grandpa told her Ashlyn should take her through the haunted prison instead of me. Because it would be dark. And I might be too scared. Too slow. Too old to keep up. She did not mean anything by it. She is twelve. But I knew exactly where that came from. Erin got on the phone after her. “Mom, maybe you can sit that part out. With Dad and Ashlyn there, it is a lot.” On the trip I was paying for. I said, “I will be there.” Then, two weeks before the trip, Quinn called me again. This time she was upset. A girl at school had told her Halloween was demonic. That Christians should not celebrate it. That if she went into the haunted prison, she was “fellowshipping with darkness.” Quinn had found a video online where someone quoted Ephesians. “Have no fellowship with the unfruitful works of darkness.” Then she asked me what it meant. I should have had an answer. I had been in church my entire life. I had raised children in church. I had listened to sermons for forty years. I owned three study Bibles. I had devotionals in every room of my house. I had a reading plan folded into the back of my Bible. But all I could think was, “Let me look it up.” And then Quinn said something that hurt more than it should have. “Ashlyn says she knows what it means.” I told her we would talk about it when I saw her. Then I called my best friend, Trudy. Trudy has known me since I was nineteen. She let me tell her everything. The divorce. The trip. Ashlyn. Quinn’s question. And how embarrassed I felt that I could quote a verse but could not explain where it came from, who Paul was speaking to, or what the verse was even asking Christians to do. Trudy was quiet for a second. Then she said: “Gwen, you are not bad at reading the Bible.” I said, “Then why do I always feel like I am guessing?” She said, “Because people handed you the sentence before they handed you the letter.” That one landed. Two days later, Trudy sent me a Saints Label Bible Study Guide. I thought it was going to be another giant commentary. I have commentaries. They sit on my shelf like bricks. I thought it was going to be another study Bible with tiny footnotes I would never finish reading. It was not. It was sixty-six pages. One clear page for every book of the Bible. Who wrote it. When it was written. Who it was written to. Why it was written. What was happening in the world at the time. And the main ideas to look for before you start reading. I opened to Ephesians first. The letter Quinn’s video had quoted. And for the first time, I understood why Paul had written those words. Ephesians was written to believers living in Ephesus, a major city shaped by idol worship, wealth, status, and every kind of pressure to go back to the life they lived before Christ. Paul was not writing a one-line rule about Halloween. Halloween did not exist when he wrote it. He was calling Christians out of lives defined by sin, greed, sexual immorality, cruelty, and deception. He was telling them that they had been brought from darkness into light. And he was telling them to learn what pleases the Lord instead of just copying whatever was around them. That changed everything for me. Because suddenly, Quinn’s question was not: “Am I bad if I put on a costume?” It was: “How do I make choices as a Christian without letting fear, trends, or somebody online decide everything for me?” And that was a question I could answer. Not because I suddenly became a theologian. Because I finally had the context. I called Quinn back. I told her, “Sweetheart, we do not have to pretend that darkness is good. And we do not have to be afraid of everything that looks dark either.” I told her, “We can ask whether something honors God. We can make thoughtful choices. And we can respect Christians who decide differently.” Then I told her what Ephesians actually meant. Not just one sentence somebody used in a video. The whole message. She got quiet. Then she said, “So the Bible is not just giving me a rule?” I said, “No. It is teaching you how to think.” The morning of the trip, I put the orange crayon ticket in my purse. Then I put the Bible Study Guide beside it. When I got to the airport, I saw Barry and Ashlyn before they saw me. Ashlyn was standing beside two massive suitcases and a garment bag full of costume pieces. Barry was on the floor trying to zip one of the suitcases shut. Then Quinn saw me. “GRANDMA!” She ran across the terminal and grabbed my hand. Barry looked up. Then he looked at the small brown Guide tucked under my arm. He said, “What is that?” Before I could answer, Quinn said, “Grandma helped me understand the Bible verse about darkness.” Ashlyn looked at me. “Oh. Which verse?” “Ephesians 5,” Quinn said. Ashlyn smiled in that way people smile when they think they already know the answer. She said, “Well, it is pretty clear. Christians should not participate in darkness.” I looked at Quinn. Then I said, “Do you remember who Paul was writing to?” Quinn nodded. “Christians in Ephesus.” “And what was he telling them?” “That they were not supposed to go back to the old life they had before Jesus.” I said, “Exactly.” Barry stopped pulling at the suitcase zipper. Ashlyn looked down at the floor. I did not argue with her. I did not try to embarrass her. I just told Quinn, “The Bible deserves more than a sentence pulled out of a video.” At the hotel, Erin pulled me aside. She said, “Mom, I am sorry.” I said, “For what?” She said, “For acting like Ashlyn should explain faith to Quinn instead of you.” I did not know what to say to that. So I just said, “I am learning too.” Halloween night came. Barry was a vampire. Ashlyn was a cat. Erin was a skeleton. Quinn was a ghost bride. I was a witch, because I had promised Quinn seven years ago that I would wear the green rubber nose. Right before we entered the prison, Quinn looked nervous. The line was long. The building was dark. You could hear screaming from inside. Barry leaned down and said, “You ready to go in with Ashlyn?” Then Quinn squeezed my hand. “No,” she said. “I want Grandma.” Barry looked at me. For thirty-three years, he had almost never looked at me like I was someone to choose. Now he was waiting for an answer. I looked at Quinn. I said, “You sure?” She nodded. Then we walked in. Inside, it was dark enough that you could only see the person in front of you. Water dripped somewhere behind the walls. Cell doors slammed shut. A man in a mask jumped out from a corner with a flashlight under his chin. Ashlyn screamed and grabbed Barry’s arm. They took the first exit they could find. Quinn and I kept walking. Not because we were trying to prove anything. Not because a Bible Study Guide made a haunted prison less scary. But because I had spent too many years letting other people tell me who I was. Too slow. Too scared. Too old. Too confused. Too far behind. Halfway through the final cellblock, Quinn looked up at me. She said, “Grandma?” “Yes, sweetheart?” “Being a Christian does not mean being scared of everything, does it?” I held her hand tighter. “No,” I said. “It means learning how to walk in the light.” When we came out, Barry and Ashlyn were waiting outside. Ashlyn’s cat ears were gone. Barry looked at Quinn. Then he looked at me. Quinn said, “Grandma took me all the way through.” He nodded. That was all. The next night, at Quinn’s birthday dinner, she reached into her little backpack. She pulled out her Bible. Then she pulled out the Guide I had shown her. Inside the front cover, she had written: “Ephesians: Don’t let fear or people online tell you what God means. Read the whole thing.” She had spelled “Ephesians” wrong. I did not correct it. For years, I thought I was the problem. I thought I had not studied enough. Not listened well enough. Not been smart enough. But I was never missing the desire to understand God’s Word. I was missing the context. The Bible Study Guide did not replace my Bible. It did not tell me what Halloween decision to make. It did something better. It showed me what the verse meant before I tried to apply it. It gave me the background. The author. The audience. The date. The purpose. The historical setting. One clear page for every book of the Bible. So before you open Ephesians, you understand Ephesians. Before you open Romans, you know who Paul was writing to. Before you open Isaiah, you understand what was happening in Judah. Before you open Hebrews, you understand why the writer was pleading with frightened believers not to walk away. If you have ever felt embarrassed because somebody asked you a Bible question and you did not know what to say… If you have read Scripture for years but still felt like you were opening it in the middle of a conversation… You may not need another devotional. You may not need another person’s opinion. You may just need the map. The Saints Label Bible Study Guide is below.

Where the ad sends people

saintslabel.com

Deepen Your Faith Every Day

Guide your walk with scripture, prayer, and reflection on every page