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Prayer for the Turning of the Year

 

Thank you for building my faith in 2011 for___________(insert your own experience). Faith is your gift. Unless you strengthen my trust, I will sink into the mud of unbelief. Let my faith, hope, and love increase  in 2012.

Thank you for showing me again, that you are  bigger than __________(insert fear). In 2011, you’ve brought me through so much. I will trust you in 2012 for this area where fear keeps knocking at the door of my heart.

Father, thank you, this year, for convicting me of __________(insert sin). You’ve helped me see the destructiveness of those choices and attitudes, in my own life and in the life of those around me. Thank you for your tough and tender love that saves me from my own self-destructiveness. You are a faithful God. I count on that steadiness. Only you will deliver me from evil and bring me safely to the heavenly home.

Add your own prayers of release and thanksgiving at the turning of the year.

As we end 2011 and begin 2012, let’s release all that has held us back and express our thanks for all that has spurred us on.

May the new year be the best because we turn our hearts more and more fully toward our dear Papa-God.

 

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A Christmas Prayer

 

Thank you, Father, for sending your word made flesh to that smelly Bethlehem stable. Your odd, nearly unbelievable advent.  Your lethal weapon against this world’s destructive ruler. A soft-skinned flailing infant. Your weakness stronger than our strength.

infant Pictures, Images and PhotosThank you for embodied hope. For peace and promise. For abundant expectation in the kingdom that has come, is coming, and will come.

At this season, may we receive again the wonder of this offer. May we recognize that stable’s glory. The beginning of the end of destruction. May your rule and reign come. May your creative, healing will be done. In every heart, in every home, in every city, in every nation, in all the world. Yes. So be it.

 

 

 

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Obedient Wrestling

“If I tell Jesus my anger, he’ll throw me out of the room.” The young woman’s tears glistened on her cheeks.

During prayer ministry time, I had just encouraged her to be honest with God about how she felt. Her husband had cheated and she’d been downsized. She was furious with her husband, her boss, and with God for letting it all happen.

“What makes you say he’ll throw you out?”

“I dunno. But that’s what my father would have done.” She wiped her tears with a crumbled tissue.

“But you’ve turned your back, your arms are crossed, and you’re ten feet away from him, right?”

“Well, yes.”

“There’s a world of difference, in our anger, between facing away and facing toward him.”

“Oh.” She looked at me, a half-smile mixing with her tears.

“He knows your anger. But he doesn’t know you in your anger. He wants to know you.”

“He won’t reject me?”

“Did he reject Jacob? I’m not talking about cursing God. I’m talking about a respectful but intense wrestling with him. Like Jacob did in the wilderness when he wrestled with the angel of the Lord. That was where Jacob’s name changed. It was that honest wrestling that changed Jacob’s character so much he needed a new name.”

“Oh. How do I wrestle with a God I can’t see?” She stared at the carpet.
“Write a letter to him.”

A letter allows us to pour out our emotions in words to the God who listens. It also enables us to confess to God our dark desires to hurt others as we’ve been hurt.

The Father of Jesus is unlike any other authority figure most of us know. He invites us into an obedient wrestling.

To wrestle is to learn the contours of your opponent’s very body.  To wrestle with God is to experience him and let him experience us.  Not only will God stay in the room with us, obedient wrestling will teach us the contours of our hearts–and of his.

Jesus, give us grace to wrestle.

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I Will Yet Praise Him

praise Pictures, Images and PhotosWhy are you downcast, O my soul?                                                                                                                                       Why so disturbed within me?
Put your hope in God,
for I will yet praise him,
my Savior and my God. Psalm 42: 5, 11 and 43:5

Three times in these two Psalms, the writer admonishes himself. In D. Martin Lloyd-Jones book, Spiritual Depression, which I read years ago when I fought serious depression, he references these verses as he talks about “taking ourselves in hand.” That’s the phrase I recalled as I slogged through July.

In previous years, it was a revelation that I didn’t have to let myself live in what I felt. I could, to some extent,”take myself in hand,” and step outside it, into more objectivity.

When we’re seriously depressed, though, there’s no objectivity. We see only what’s right in front of us. Our perspective narrows. But the blahs come in several shades of gray.  And my July experience, rather than the nighttime of severe depression, was about the color of our house–a pewter hue of slowed-downness.

One of the secrets of coping with feeling down is not to shame oneself for it. That down mood is our cue to ask for insight and wisdom from our Father-God who loves to give us what we need. We need to know what’s feeding the depression so we can pray more effectively.

I don’t know all that burdened me those weeks. (Even therapists don’t always make sense of their own issues.) Jerry’s cancer, my extra few pounds, feeling professionally stymied, all contributed. I assume Satan had a hand in it.

Whatever. Under stress, I’m prone to depression. We all have our weaknesses. Unlike some other periods of my life, I got out of bed every day. I cooked and did my usual duties. But I read a lot, wasn’t creative, and praise required choice.

I chose to remind myself, daily, that my hope is in Jesus. Not ministry, or a healthy husband, or weighing what I weighed in high school.

When we cannot muster deep-hearted praise, it’s time to remind ourselves that we will again. God will bring us back. He will bring us out. Jesus promises his peace.

Jesus, thank you for all the times you’ve carried us through. Meet us again, today, with your truth and your smile.

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The Disputable God

Why is it that everything God does can be disputed? I just read the Pentecost account where the people came running to see what had happened because they heard the “mighty rushing wind.” At least fifteen different people groups were represented in those who heard the 120 disciples speaking in unlearned languages. Each of them heard their own language. And yet, some said, “They’re drunk.”(Acts 2)

Even after the resurrection of Jesus, when he’d been with his followers for forty days, eating with them, teaching them, letting himself be touched–some doubted. (Matt.28:17)

And when my sciatic nerve pain was healed through prayer with the laying on of hands, was that God? It hasn’t come back in many years. Feels like God to me. And yet, others would say it was coincidence or I did something else that caused the pain to resolve.

Don’t you have a dozen places in your journey where you’re sure you’ve been touched by the God who is there and active, that others would question?

Believing these are God touches is about faith, of course, but why is faith important? The phrase came to me: “He wants to be wanted.” When I searched for that phrase, I learned that A.W. Tozer already said it. God wants to be wanted. He wants to be desired. He wants our genuine, heartfelt love.

Just like us. We want to be wanted. Seems to be one of the ways in which we are made in his image.

Jesus, we want to want you today. We want to want you as you deserve to be wanted. With whole hearts and active minds and hot pursuit.

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Prayer and Action for Haiti

Father, your heart is breaking with the suffering in Haiti. Holy Spirit, please be manifest among the survivors. Bring your strength, healing, and hope. Jesus, pour out your heart of compassion on the suffering ones. In this tragedy, may your name be glorified above all others. Give your people hearts to weep with the people of Haiti. And convict the IMF and the others to cancel their debts. May your kingdom come. May your will be done here and in our hearts. Amen.

Haiti copy 

http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/2.0/deed.en

From ONE, a world-wide organization serving the poor:

Subject: Take action and help the people of Haiti

Like millions of people around the world, I've been shocked by the terrible events in Haiti.

Only now is the true scale of the disaster emerging. Reports now
suggest as many as 75,000 people may have died, with hundreds of
thousands made homeless.

The work ahead to recover from this tragedy is immense. So
here's our goal: $1 billion for Haiti. That's how much Haiti owes to
the International Monetary Fund, the Inter-American Development Bank,
and a handful of others.

Sign the petition below to ask Haiti's creditors to act quickly and cancel Haiti's debts:

http://one.org/us/actnow/drophaitiandebt/index.html?rc=haitidebtpaste

As Haiti begins to rebuild we can help by lifting this debt.

Together as ONE we can make a difference! 

Thanks! 

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Dead End?

Jerry and I love to roam back roads, looking for herons and other wildlife, enjoying God's creation. Sometimes, though, we'd get to the end of a little gravel road, at a creek or the end of a county. Even though there'd been no sign to warn us, we'd run right into a dead end. When DeLorme began publishing their series of backroads maps for each state, we delightedly snapped up Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, even Texas, when we vacationed there. Technology moved on and now we enjoy Microsoft's Streets and Trips with GPS on our laptop. We haven't run into any dead ends in years.

Not so, however, in life. So many times, we find ourselves moving right along, no sign to warn us, and we suddenly find ourselves in a spot that looks like the end of the road. Maybe you know the feeling. You've done everything you can for the teenager who insists on violating curfew to hang with friends who look like they're going nowhere. We feel trapped in a job and think we shouldn't feel that way. We ought to just be grateful to have work. Perhaps we and our spouse sleep in separate bedrooms, not just in order to sleep, but because the spark has died.

When Jerry and I encountered dead ends in the country, we backed up, turned around and tried a different road. We knew what the end of the road looked like. In life, sometimes, it's not so easy to tell. Is this situation really a dead end? Is there anything else I can do? And, most importantly, what does God have to say?

And, are there really any dead ends if Jesus is involved? Are we seeking hard after him for his solutions? Maybe there's a little path through that underbrush in front of us that we haven't seen yet. Maybe what looks like an end will, by grace, turn out to be a new beginning.

Sweet Jesus. Oh, to see our lives as you see them. Give us your eyes, your truth, your pathways.

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Three Passionate Prayers that Saved my Life—and Might Save Yours

As a counselor, I’ve listened carefully to painful stories
of mistreatment. People have confessed deeply shameful sin. And I’ve encouraged
my clients to think objectively about their self-destructive patterns.

In Isaiah 9:6, Jesus is called a “wonderful counselor.” In
my own growth toward holiness, Jesus has been my counselor. I’ve poured out my
heart to him. I’ve been scrupulously honest, no matter how ashamed I’ve felt. And
I’ve asked Jesus to show me how he, the only objective observer, views my sin
and unbelief and fear, so I can see myself as he sees me.

Here are three of my passionate prayers:

1. “Where were you when I was suffering?” In childhood, I’d
been seriously mistreated. I wrestled with God for ten years about where he was
when I was abused. He showed me.

2.  “God, I hate you!”
Parenting challenged all my control issues. One day, I fell by the side of my
bed, gnashing my teeth because I couldn’t make my daughter behave. He delivered
me.

3. “I lay myself open before you. Clean me out, fill me up.”
Behind all my intense questioning of God, I knew he was my only hope for a
peaceful, powerful life. I still pray this often.

Be intense in our pursuit of God, be honest with him about
our feelings, and, with him, think objectively about our circumstances. These
three attitudes of prayer will save our emotional lives.

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Breakthrough4Wholeness

Next Sunday, November 9, at 6:30, a Prayer Service for Wholeness will be held at the Urbana Holiday Inn, just south of I-74, just off Lincoln avenue. Ten churches and organizations, across our usual denominational barriers, will join together to pray for healing of all kinds. If you're in the area, please come. We'll start with singing, hear three testimonies of healing, brief remarks about healing, and then we will pray for each other.

We held this meeting last year, with a palpable sense of the presence of God. We are expecting God to again honor what he has asked us to organize. To see more information and to see the sponsoring churches and organizations, go to our website.  

 "Ordinary people praying for ordinary people in the presence of an extraordinary God."

 

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Think

Since September, 2005, when we got a bread machine, we’ve enjoyed
baking our own wonderfully fragrant whole wheat bread. They looked just like
store-bought, except where the stirring paddle tore the bottom. Not such a big
deal, really, the slices in the middle of the loaf just had a V-shaped piece
missing, but still.

The process takes two hours and twenty-five minutes. At one
hour and thirty minutes, after the mixing and a few minutes of rising, the stirrer
briefly shapes the loaf. At that point, its work is done.

Last Tuesday, my husband, hearing the eight-second burst of
activity, reached in, lifted the dough, and removed the paddle. What a
brilliant idea! I’d often heard the noise but it never occurred to me to remove
it. The three sixteenths inch shaft leaves a tiny hole. Thinking of that
solution took us three years.

Why do we tolerate minor irritations that could easily be solved
if we’d just stop and think? We usually look for God’s solutions for the bigger
trials, but maybe we let the faucet drip rather than figuring out how to
replace the washer. Or we keep tripping over the table in the hallway rather
than thinking about how to reorganize the furniture.

Maybe you’re completely on top of the irritating details of
your life, but for the rest of us, sometimes we just need to stop and think. God’s
solutions for the small irritants may be staring us in the face, waiting for us
to stop long enough to see them. They may be as obvious as removing the paddle
when its work is done.

Father, help us think. Open our eyes to your solutions, not
just for the big trials, but also for the small annoyances.    

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A Sure Foundation

“That steel I-beam sure looks strong.” My husband and I had just awakened this morning in the unfinished basement of my daughter’s two-story house.

“It looks strong, but in a fire, wood would only char. That steel is like hard wax–it would melt. A beam of several pine 2x12s nailed and glued together would maintain its structural integrity, even in the flames.”

“So even though the steel looks more stable, wood is better in a fire.

“Yup.”

There’s an image. What’s our foundation made of? Do we look strong or are we really strong? Are we strong in ourselves or strong in the Lord? And how can we know, except in the fire?

Paul says, in 1Corinthians 3, there is one foundation–Jesus Christ. Maybe in our everyday lives, we’re not so aware of our foundations. We manage a busy household, we perform well in a challenging job, and/or we get A’s in graduate school.

But what happens when a child gets leukemia, a new boss fires us, or we sustain a closed-head injury?  Or even the lesser fires of the flu, a critical boss, or a bout of the blues?

What do we rest on then? What supports our weight in those flames? It’s not our good looks. It is the surety of that Jesus-beam that undergirds us. He is the foundation that survives every fire. 

Lord, Isaiah 33:6 says you are “a sure foundation for our times.” May we rest our weight on you.

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Can You Hear Me?

My sheep listen to my voice; I know them, and they follow me. John 10:27(NIV)

Do we know his voice? Some of
us struggle to believe his voice is the one we are hearing. Often we believe
what we’ve heard is just our own thoughts. How can we distinguish his words
from media voices, parental words, Satan’s input, and our own ruminations? A
friend recommended a helpful book, Can You Hear Me? by Brad Jersak.

Jersak, a Canadian pastor, writes
clearly on hearing Jesus’ voice. He talks about the simplicity of listening,
blocks to hearing, and the life of listening prayer. His simple instructions
offer practical guidelines. For example, he describes listening through
biblical stories by starting with picturing the details of a Bible story, after
asking God to bring to mind one that is meaningful to you. After you imagine
the characters and their behavior, he suggests, just in your imagination, to use
your senses of touch, taste, sight, hearing, and smell to immerse yourself in
the narrative. Then, see where Jesus is and what he’s doing. Finally, as you
draw near to him, ask him what truth he wants to speak to you.

Following these instructions
with the Mary and Martha story, I got a clear sense of a personal word. I was
surprised, actually. I’ve often questioned whether I’m listening to his voice,
but the sentence that came to me spoke directly to a current need.

As Jersak points out, this
particular prayer strategy isn’t new, but he communicates it in a way I can grasp.
In addition to this engagement with scripture stories, Jersak teaches other ways
of hearing God. He also talks about intercession, justice, and inner healing,
among other topics. If you, too, are hungry to hear the shepard’s voice, this
book will feed you.

Father, Jesus, Holy Spirit, we want to hear and obey
your voice.

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Join the Dark Side?

“Join the dark side.” That was the bumper sticker I saw this
morning. Yikes. Why would anyone consciously want to join with darkness? Many
have made an unknowing contract with the dark of night, for example, when they
allow themselves to be addicted to drugs. But, a well-thought-out choice?

I can think of three reasons: 1. They’ve never seen the light. 2. Darkness promises power. 3. They want to be with someone who lives in darkness. “God
is light and in him there is no darkness at all,” John says. (1John 1:5, NIV)  With no experience of God’s multi-splendored light, the light that illumines the colors of life, the dark side may feel like
the realistic side. Then, the dark side promises the ability to achieve your own
purposes. To join with God is to put aside our own desires and to work with him
to bring the rule and reign of King Jesus. And, it’s easy to slide into
darkness if people depend on others who have already chosen the dark side.

But those who join with darkness do not foresee the
consequences. They see only the glittery promises of personal power or the
comfort of connection. The dark one hides in the shadows, around the corner,
behind the shed.

Even for those of us who walk in the light, the darkness sometimes
entices. For most of us, drugs are easy to recognize as lightless. Pride, prejudice,
and greed are not so easy to see, crouching in the shadows. Let’s keep asking
King Jesus to shine his light into our dark passages. We need his power to see
the consequences of darkness. By his grace, we will choose the light of day,
every day.

Holy Spirit, come illumine the hidden corners of our hearts.

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