Answered Prayers

Simple prayer post this week.  Next week I want to do an extended prayer blog my struggles with how God answers prayer in His time and His way, not ours.  This week, its just about a story that I thought showed God's sense of humor and how He loves answering our prayers, especially when it allows us to serve others.

Ryan was young, just a baby, and Robert and I were living paycheck to paycheck.  I had quit work to stay home, and  had committed to taking lunch to a group at church serving people who were doing job training and life skills for perpetually unemployable people.  They needed lunch for 20-25 people.

The week arrived and there was no money in the budget for the meal.  Stressed, I prayed that night, "God, I don't want to have to call them..please just let me figure out how to get this meal to them!"  I went to bed, thinking in the morning, I would call the ministry leader and bow out.

The next day I get a phone call from a friend. She says..."I have a 20 pound turkey in the freezer about to go bad, can you use a turkey?"  I laughed, told her, yes...I COULD in fact use a turkey.  Hanging up the phone, I said to God (out loud)..."OK, I get it!"

Sometimes God provides the ram, and sometimes He provides the turkey.

This week, I hope He speaks to YOU in unexpected ways.

Grateful Prayer

^{John 20: 19-20 the message} 

Later on that day, the disciples had gathered together, but, fearful of the Jews, had locked all the doors in the house. Jesus entered, stood among them, and said, "Peace to you." Then he showed them his hands and side.

The disciples, seeing the Master with their own eyes, were exuberant. Jesus repeated his greeting: "Peace to you. Just as the Father sent me, I send you."

 

Thursday night, we told the story of the Passover, and talked to Ryan about the cross, the grave and the empty tomb.  Ryan is getting older, so we did not hold back from expressing how brutal the cross was.  Ryan, being the sensitive guy he is, started getting very- very disturbed.  Frankly, I don't see that as a bad thing.  He was particularly alarmed at the picture of Jesus after the resurrection.  Jesus still had the holes in His hands, and Ryan asked me if He would still have them when we see Him in heaven.  I said "yes." 

Afterward, when going to bed, Ryan asked me "Why did Jesus still have those holes in His hands?  Couldn't God just fix those?" 

Well, good question. 

Later that evening Robert and I watched the Passion movie.  I cried all the way through...but kept thinking about those scars in Jesus' hands.  Why DID He keep those? 

Maybe it was to show that He was alive and flesh.  Maybe to show that He was not an impostor, so more people would believe. 

Or maybe it was to show us that scars are the human condition, we commune with each other through them.  Most of us have them, either on our body or hands or face, or more commonly on our hearts, minds and souls.  We are damaged goods.  We are broken and we are healed over, but the wound site remains. I have a C section scar I will keep forever. It allowed my son to be born.  Without it, he and I would have died.  

I don't know why Jesus kept the nail marks.  But those scars healed me. They heal still. Without those scars, you and me and the rest of the world-we are dead in every way.  Jesus understands our hurt and shares it. Scars are a testimony of how we have been healed. 

Whatever the reasoning, I am so so grateful and have spent time in grateful prayer,...thanking God for Jesus.  For what He did on the cross.  How He healed me and heals me still.  He makes beautiful things out of dust and ashes and blood and scars.  I am thankful for my own scars.  And thankful there is evidence of healing. 

Friday was sad. But Sunday, Sunday is almost here.  I plan to be up early in grateful prayer.

Thank You, God. Thank You for Jesus. Thank You for the simple and profound salvation You have provided to anyone that will accept. 

 Thank You. 

Praying for opportunities

I skipped a week of blogging, no excuses really, just waiting for inspiration.  I plan things to blog and it seems like those things never work out correctly.  The blog is started then discarded.

So waiting for inspiration is probably better.

As I was praying this week, I decided my focus was a bit off. So I prayed the opportunities prayer.

Ok, let me explain.  When Ryan was around 3 years old, we started praying together.  He would listen (he did not speak until after age 3) and I would pray.  I was trying to show him that Jesus loved Him and that we were called to a higher purpose and that purpose was helping people in need.  I was a stay home mom, and rarely did things outside the home, then mostly with other moms that were already Christians.  They were stable and had everything they needed.  How was I ever going to show Ryan what we were called to do? I was stumped.

So I started praying the opportunities prayer.  This is how it went.  "God please give us chances to serve You today, and make it clear to us where and whom you want us to serve.."  We prayed and prayed that prayer.

Well, pretty quick, I noticed there were little chances here and there.  I would have missed them, but the prayer made me very sensitive to the world around.  There would be a lady at the grocery store with lots of kids and we would put her basket back for her.  Or the new mom in need of someone to do her laundry. After a year of this prayer, the opportunities became more pronounced and the calling became a little harder.  At times I did not want to serve the way He was calling me to.  I still prayed the prayer though, and every time I ignored the pull, Ryan would notice and call me on it.  (wow I hate it when that happens!)

Then one day we were passing by a homeless man.  Ryan asked me if that was a chance to serve, I said yes, but I had no money that day.  He chimed up "mom, I have some cash!"  He handed the man a dollar bill.

God does have a sense of irony.  I was trying to teach my child purpose and prayer and he taught me instead.

All of that to say, God gives us many chances to serve when we ask Him. Those are the prayers that are closest to God's heart. They use us as a vessel to show His love.  Those prayers are blessed...we are blessed as we serve and God is glorified.  God sees all those little ways we serve, then blesses us with more and more ways as we obey the Spirit.

so my  plan tonight is to ask for chances tomorrow
..if by some chance I miss them, I know Ryan will make sure I follow through.

Praise Prayer

Revelation 15:3 the saved ones stood on the sea of glass. They sang the Song of Moses, servant of God; they sang the Song of the Lamb: 

   Mighty your acts and marvelous, 
      O God, the Sovereign-Strong! 
   Righteous your ways and true, 
      King of the nations! 
   Who can fail to fear you, God, 
      give glory to your Name? 
   Because you and you only are holy, 
      all nations will come and worship you, 
      because they see your judgments are right.

I read a quote today..some ancient Chinese thing. (aren't those quotes always Chinese?) It said "A bird does not sing because he has the answer, he sings because he has a song."

I thought it was nice...specially since I love to sing, and love music. Praise prayer is sometimes sung...it is an act of worship in the highest form.  David, he knew what he was doing..and wrote lots of praise songs to God.  They are almost always written in prayer form.

God loves praise.  Scripture says He "inhabits the praise of His people." that's a fancy term for He is right there when we praise Him.  And He doesn't like it when we praise idols or worship other things. don't get me wrong, He does not "need" our prayers.  Scripture also says the rocks will cry out, all creation sings God's all knowing, mighty, wonderful self. So why praise? Why adoration prayers?

Well for one thing YOU are telling creation that God is great.  God created all kinds of beings.  There are people.  There are also angels.  There are demons.  They are looking at God's church to see what she will do.  Will she deny Him?  Will she praise Him?   What if we are embarrassing our Creator today by denying Him the praise He deserves?  The marvelous mystery that is the blood of Christ should be acknowledged.  The Creator should be praised by the creation. It is the way it works.

so praise prayer is simple.  Tell God what a great God He is. How wonderful it is that He provided a way we could be with Him forever.  (btw..christianity is the only religion that provides a way to be holy..other religions just acknowledge our lack of morality and do not provide a way to fix it!)  Tell Him what a great sunset He made...or how you love this weather, or praise Him for inventing colors. Little or big, He deserves our praise for everything.

Going back to the bird quote...The bird doesn't have the answer, and the bird doesn't just sing because it has a song to sing... The bird sings because it was created to sing.

We were created to praise our Creator.  So lets do what we were created for.

Angry Prayer

Psalm 22  1-5  The Message
^1-2 God, God...my God! Why did you dump me
      miles from nowhere?
   Doubled up with pain, I call to God
      all the day long. No answer. Nothing.
   I keep at it all night, tossing and turning.

 ^3-5 And you! Are you indifferent, above it all,
      leaning back on the cushions of Israel's praise? 

Overall the week went great for me, lots of music, spent time with my husband and son,  had a friend visit and was able to serve another friend that has many needs.  It is March madness, and I love basketball, so things were good.  It was so much better than my week previous...where I spent the time in silence waiting on the Spirit, feeling very sad. So again, I set out on my strategic prayer blog plan.  Which, decidedly, has not happened.

Because now I am angry.  And the prayer/prayer blog I had in mind doesn't fit the day.

Listen to my story and you will know why.

I have a friend.  We have been close for over 10 years, and I have witnessed her endure terrible suffering.  First she had a baby die, then was diagnosed with Lupus and almost died in the hospital.  Her husband left her, and she could not work.  She remarried and they had another baby, who also died.  Then a miscarriage. Then they tried to adopt, took the infant home and were informed they had to return the baby the next day..the mom had changed her mind.  On Thursday March 17 she was pregnant and healthy and hopeful in her 3rd trimester with a baby boy on the way.

On Friday she gave birth and the baby died.



So yeah, I am angry.

I remember sitting outside the hospital when she was 23 years old, with kidney failure- told she would not live past that day.  Yelling in my car, out loud- at God....told Him I didn't appreciate how He was handling the situation.   So angry.  Ticked off.  And I let Him have it.

So today I feel the same.  I got home from church feeling great and now, not so much.

Now I have 2 big problems.  The first is that I am pretty angry at God.  The other is I pray and pray and pray for others and it seems as though He just says NO.  I mean, I could sorta understand if the prayer were for me..but I have been praying for her for a long, long time. REALLY GOD??? SERIOUSLY?  You couldn't answer one prayer I have for her?  Just one?

So it has clearly not been a day of prayer in the conventional sense.  I have not been doing much prayer filled adoring (praising God) today or supplication (asking for help for myself or others.)  The sitting in silence is making me mad.  The brief prayers seem pointless. I am stuck on angry.

Could just stay there and stew.  Or just throw up my hands and say "what's the point?"

But I am not going to.  I am going to tell God I am angry.  Tell Him that I don't understand.  And I think he is big enough that he will not hold it against me.  Scripture is pretty full of people unhappy with God, angry at times.  David prayed those prayers, the "how long oh Lord, will you hide your face from me?  how long will you let my enemies win? How long do I have to wait and run?"

As for the understanding, do I really think I will get more understanding of suffering? Or the reason why He is not answering my prayer in the way I want?  No.  That answer is really not for me to know.  But I think it will help me to tell Him.  When I am mad, He hears me and cares.  When I am frustrated, He wants me to talk to Him.   I think He understands when we are frustrated with suffering.  I actually think He is frustrated, too.  Because this is not the way it was set up.  He set it up perfectly.  We were the ones who screwed up. Sin and all its ramifications reverberates through every life on earth.

And even though I helped screwed it up, and I am angry at Him...He still hears me, cares, wants to love me and help me.   He is listening, and loving, even when I am angry like tonight.  God is the God of the angry as well as the joy-filled.  That is a relief AND a revelation.


Photo credit: Olivia Brigham  copyright 2011

Hearing God in the Silence

1 Kings 19:11-15 (The Message)

 Then Elijah was told, "Go, stand on the mountain at attention before God. 
God will pass by."

    A hurricane wind ripped through the mountains and shattered the rocks before God, but God wasn't to be found in the wind; after the wind an earthquake, but God wasn't in the earthquake; and after the earthquake fire, but God wasn't in the fire; and after the fire a gentle and quiet whisper.

I had grand plans for my blog this week.  It was going to be all about music and prayer, how David used the Psalms to pray, and most were meant to be sung.  It was a sort of "happy-fun-week-of-prayer." 
However, my week has been less than happy and fun, and the prayer times have been less deliberate and more desperate.  In other words, I was really too sad at times to pray formally.  Most of my prayer times this week have been just sitting in silence.  


Sounds weird, praying without really saying anything, waiting on God to speak to me.  Needing the Holy Spirit to say something for me to God, since I didn't really have anything to offer.  There are days and weeks when I have prayed by listening to the silence and received comfort, answers, revelations and opportunities to serve.


I did not always realize that God spoke in silences.  There was a time in my life when I filled every waking moment with noise.  My husband, Robert, loves the news..he tends to listen to it very loud.  I was constantly either listening to music in the car, on my headphones, when working out or playing guitar. My feelings on silence and prayer changed one night after Robert and I went to dinner with 2 other couples. 


One of the men remarked how he had led a group of people in prayer by waiting on God, then when one person had received an indication on someone to serve, they went as a group to serve that person.  (I was thinking..woh dude, you are out there!)  We all agreed to go to our church and sit at the foot of a very large cross...and wait on the Spirit. I was incredibly uncomfortable at first.  It was SO quiet.  No one said a word.  After a bit, one of the ladies said the Spirit revealed there was a lady who needed prayers- at a coffee shop across town.  During the prayer/silence my mind was just wandering with random thoughts about a song I needed to write.  It still seemed pretty crazy.  We got in our cars and went across town.  


The lady that needed prayers was the owner of the coffee shop.  Her father had Alzheimer's and they were about to put him into a nursing home.  He was sitting with her in the coffee shop.  We put our hands on them and prayed.  


Robert and I went home.  I woke up at 3 a.m. and wrote down the song. 
It began like this...


Storms are blowin on the wind 
Filling us with fear....
but a still small voice is calling to us 
If only we will hear 


Breathe, sigh, moan and cry..
call on me Spirit of God 
The Spirit is singing, breathing and bringing,
 peace at the foot of the cross. 


I think if I had not sat in silence, the Spirit would never have revealed those powerful words of prayer to me. 
Maybe you don't know what to pray today.  Maybe you even doubt God's presence.  He seems perhaps far far away.  Maybe you are sad or tongue tied.  The Spirit is the middle man, and He is saying the words you cannot form.  There is value to sitting and listening to the silence.  It is a time when we realize that prayer doesn't have to fit a mold, or be just one way-street.   Silence just requires patience and time.  It is simple.  God set it up so perfectly.  He knew sometimes we would be unable to express ourselves in the way we want to. So He provided a Spirit to help. 

Romans 8:26-27 

Meanwhile the moment we get tired in the waiting, God's Spirit is right alongside helping us along.  If we don't know how or what to pray, it doesn't matter.  He does our praying in and for us, making prayer out of our wordless sighs, our aching groans.  He knows us far better than we know ourselves. 

 God is not going to knock us down with a hurricane or remove our headphones from our ipod touch with a fire...He is going to be in the quiet whisper, and we might miss it if our life's volume is turned up too high. 


 I am going to sit in the silence again today.  Who knows, maybe I will get my happy-fun song after all.  

Perfume and Prayer

Psalms 141:1-2  God, come close, come quickly! Open your ears, it's my voice you hear! 

Treat my prayer as sweet incense rising.  My raised hands are my evening prayers.
Welcome to the beginning post of a prayer blog.  First let me say that I am not an open book kind of person, I am closed.   Pretty much everything in my heart is under lock and key.  My husband calls me "tough as nails." But really, I am weak and not good at revealing that weakness to anyone.  So, perhaps I have had enough of that kind of living, perhaps (gasp!) it is time to open my spirit and how I talk to THE Spirit, and the Father, and the Son.  


Talk to anyone, christian or non-christian, and they will likely tell you their prayer life is inconsistent.  We tend to make prayer complicated.  We are afraid so we ask protection. We ask for healing.  We wait until we have exhausted all our personal resources, then we say "Ok, I have tried everything. I guess, God, maybe you will have to do something..." We honestly don't know what time of day to pray, how long and what prayers God really likes.  We are intimidated.  We are struck down by guilt and shame and don't feel worthy.  We give excuses. We don't even know if God remembers us, or really wants to talk to us anyway.  After all, it has been a long, long time since we talked to Him. And all those "thee's and thou's" muck us up.  


 Prayer is not something to get right or wrong.  Prayer is not for God to feel great and mighty. The rocks would cry out if we do not because creation praises the Creator.  He doesn't need to hear our needs, He knows.  He doesn't have to be asked to heal, He just heals.  God doesn't need to hear our doubts, fears, failures and celebrations.  He knows them already. 


 He loves you fully, and you can't get more Holy or more loved than you are right now. So scoring "prayer points" is redundant.


Here is the revelation: God doesn't 'need' your prayers to work and move. He really just likes it when you talk to Him.  It is a gift that allows us to put all our worries on God.  It blesses others when we intercede for them.  It lets us talk to God like He is our friend.  It makes us know Jesus and gives us passion.  It is a vehicle for the Spirit to move and work. It keeps our center and focus not on ourselves.  Prayer is power for the powerless.  We don't hold the power at all, all we do is start the conversation. God does the rest. 


Whew, pressure off. 

 Every Xmas I receive expensive perfume from my husband.   I don't use it much, maybe once a week, and by the next year there is half a bottle left and the perfume has turned color.  So I throw it away.  I recently decided to start enjoying my expensive perfume everyday, even when staying home and doing laundry.  It smells good, reminds me of someone who loves me, and I won't have leftovers this year.

Our prayers are like sweet perfume to God.  They should be enjoyed by Him (and us) daily.  They are not meant to be saved for special occasions.  And no matter whether simple and straightforward or long and flowery, all prayer smells good to God. 

If you decide to join me on this (slightly scary) journey, I hope you will start simply this week. Tell God you miss Him and that you want Him back in your life. I promise, He has just been waiting for you to ask. 

Actually, He was there all the time.