Groanings

Oh Father,

This morning your people need you. NEED YOU.

The routine of the daily steps of living, the onslaught of the enemy’s schemes and the discontent of our own hearts begins to move against even as we wake and attempt to rise out of our slumber.

You have protected us throughout the night. You have not slept. Your eyes have not drooped in weariness. You have not fought to hold your eyes open. Your head has not nodded. No, you have been near us while we sleep. And I thank you.

Many will rise to meet this day with discouragement and frustration. Many will wake to already present problems demanding and exacting payment. Many will open their eyes and face fears and doubts. Many will awake with the thought of how do I make it through this day?

Questions asked and answers unresolved. Inner turmoil roiling and unsettled. Confusion descending like fog. Pain entwining and constricting. And there is a deadness in it all—a numbness. And that frightens us.

Father, today will you please hear the cries of your people?

Please, Father, all around me I hear the moans of your people. I hear the groanings in an undercurrent. And I know if I hear then you hear it magnified. I see people writhing in fear and distrust, and I know if I see it then you must see it expanded. I feel people hurting in pain and doubt, and I know if I feel it then you must feel it intensely.

Father, please help. Please hear the pitiful weeping of your people. Please come stand beside us. Please come fight for us. Please come be our defender and our strong protector. The enemy is bearing down against us. He is using every resource to blind us to your truth, every arsenal tool to dismantle us so we don’t recognize your aid. Open our eyes as you did with Elisha’s servant—let us see, even for a brief moment, what you are doing around us. For just a sliver of time allow us to see so that we might be encouraged. So that we might see you through the haze.

Amen and amen

Winter

Father,

This morning the light shines through the mote-covered glass panes sending rays through the broken slats of the blind. I love the light, Father.

My soul dreams of spring. In the midst of frigid temperatures, of mercury dipping below the zero, I yearn for days of green and light and sunshine and color. I look out of the window now and I see a monochromatic landscape. Barren and dormant. And I feel my soul shriveling. Shrinking.

Father, I feel the center of me spiraling down to a small, small tight center.

I understand that winter must come. And we must walk through it. Winter comes in so many ways: when motivation is lagging. When enthusiasm wanes. When eagerness is dampened. When best efforts seem to produce so little.

Father, I struggle through this season. My focus is haphazard at best—completely non-existent at worst. My sap has ceased to rise up the trunk of me. Slowed to an immeasurable crawl. And not only does my body slow, but my mind is slow, dulled.

Father, I pray for me. I pray for all of us to allow you to work through the winter of us. I pray you would use this season to strengthen us. To fortify us. To thicken the bark on our trunk. I pray you would help us remember you have not ceased to work simply because we can’t detect growth.

Help us to trust you even in these barren places. Nothing is barren to you, Father. You see the beyond—you see the foliage of the next season. You see the dormant growth that will emerge. You see the fruit that will be produced from now empty branches. You see the abundance that will come from what seems like drought and famine now.

I ask for your help, Father. Carry us through this season. Remind us that it is just a season. Spring will come. Just help us to trust in you and your silent invisible work until then.

Amen

 

In the Dark

Father,

As I lay curled in my bed this morning—cocooned and covered—I felt the dark.

In the soothing, quiet and dark places in our lives I pray we would see your hand giving us rest and stillness. In the frightening, chaotic darkness in our lives I pray we would see your hand guiding us to peace and security.

Help us to listen in the dark. In the times when your voice seems to be obscured, even muted, I pray you would help us trust that it will be disclosed.

Help us to see while in the dark. In the times when your face seems to be turned away, even veiled, I pray you would help us recognize your outline, your profile.

Help us to obey while in the dark. In the times when we feel far from you, even lost, I pray you would remind us that you have promised to never leave us nor forsake us and to draw us near.

Help us to trust while in the dark. In the times when your hand’s protection seems far too broad, even absent, I pray you would help us remember times past when your arm has brought us out of the pit.

Help us to pray while in the dark. In the times when our petitions seem to dissipate into the vapors above us, even then, help us to know you hear. You listen to even our very sighings.

Help us to believe while in the dark. In the times when our unbelief shadows your interventions, even obscures, help us to cry rescue us from our unbelief.

Help us to thank you while in the dark. In the times when darkness seems to threaten, even prevail, help us to remember that darkness is as light to you. And light pushes back the darkness. Light dispels the darkness. Darkness will not overcome it.

Do not allow it to overcome us.

Amen

Unfolding

OH God! My God.

How good you are. How marvelous. How just. How powerful and mighty, and yet so very gentle with us.

I praise you this morning that you reveal yourself to us. I praise you that you disclose who you are to us. To us. You unfold yourself in increments—one fold at a time so we might see your glory little by little and not be overwhelmed. Even in this we see your care and concern for your people.

This morning I ask that you unfold more. Increase our capacity to hold one more unfolding. Increase the space within our own spirits to hold just a little bit more of your glory.

My God! My God. There is none like you. None. I’ve looked.

Please show us yourself. Manifest in the daily routine of our lives until we see you in the sheen of an ice cube. In the wind that causes the trees to bend and wake. Help us to see you in a child’s face. Reveal yourself to us in the pained face of an addict. Open our eyes to see you behind the mask of people who are hiding for shame of being found out. Make us aware of people who pretend for fear of being rejected if they do not.

Today, we ask for your unfolding. Today, may we see your face and be changed.

Amen

Break Us Open

Father,

Many of us will go up to your house today, Lord. Many will wake up to the Sunday morning routine and get ready to go. I pray that along with getting ready that you would help us prepare.

Prepare our minds for action. Prepare our minds for confession. Prepare our hearts for worship. Prepare our spirits for thanksgiving.

This morning I pray we would release to you bitter thoughts, skeptical doubts and subtle criticism. I pray we would not inwardly pull apart our shepherd’s message. I pray we would not complain about song choices. I pray we would not dismiss the sacredness of holy communion because it is served in the mundane routine of a church service.

Break us wide open today, Father. Crack these hard clay exteriors, these hardened surfaces, these rigid membranes on our hearts this morning. May your precious Spirit break through pierce us to the place we are quickened.

Show us today what it truly means to worship you in spirit and truth.

Not in idea. Not in theory. Not in doctrine. But in spirit and truth.

Meet us in your house today. Meet us there we ask.

And break us open.

Amen and amen.

Idle Down

Precious Father,

Oh, to wake this morning in the stillness and the quiet. To wake to your voice—how good and precious is the sound of that voice to me. That voice vibrates and strums across the strings of my spirit waking it and animating it to life. In the stillness of the silence of falling snow this morning I listened.

One thing at a time, Tamera. The next right step. And that is not difficult, if I (we) remember. Often we want to run when you want us to walk, and we want to walk when you have urged us to run. Father, help us to not lag behind you, and keep us from getting ahead of you.

Your word says for us to be in step with the Spirit—walk in the Spirit. Teach, guide and instruct us in the cadence of this walking. This running. This pushing of one foot in front of the other.

Father, this morning for those of us looking out our windows and seeing a fresh fall of snow I pray we would slow down in the quiet and listen to you. Really listen. Show us how to take advantage of the weather and the stillness. Show us how to idle down to a place where we hear you. You tell us faith comes by the hearing of the word of God…then let us read it today. On our phones, on our tablets, on our computers or in the book in our hands. Regardless let us read your word. Taste it. Chew on it. Digest it.

Bless you, Father. Oh, bless you for being who you are. For you are good. You are good. You are good.

Amen and amen

Conundrum

Father, this morning I pray for you to work your good will in us. Stir the deepest contents of our hearts. Bring even the darkest things to the surface so that you can shine your light on them. Surface the ugly stuff so that you can skim it off. So it can be removed.

I pray, Father, for this place we seem to often remain—this place of doing what we don’t want to do and not doing what we do want to do. Those words of Paul’s were certainly guided by you Spirit, dictated by his breath for they reveal the conundrum of human nature.

Even this week I have found myself struggling and fighting in this place. Doing what I don’t want to do. Repeating things I know are wrong. Not even engaging in what I know is right.

Father, please help us today. This day please help us to stop the pattern. Change our desires. Reveal our desires for exactly what they are. And help us exchange them for yours. Help us to do what is right regardless of how much our flesh doesn’t want to do so. Help us not to the wrong regardless of how much our flesh wants to.

Father, I ask for your intervention in our lives today. Only your intervention and intercession will heal us.

I know the good I must do, but if I don’t do it, Father, then it is sin.

Father, have mercy on us today. Forgive us because sometimes we don’t know what we do and sometimes we do.

Amen.

Being Love

Good Morning, Lord!

Thank you. Thank you.

Thank you for your love this morning that pours out like rivers. Pooling and gathering as it moves. Being fed from a source far above—a pure place with no taint, no pollutants and no bias. Thank you for love.

Thank you for demonstrating that great love by sending your Son—to tent with us. To tarry with us. To dwell with us. Because he did this love was and is not a theory. Not an idea or even an ideal. But it is a person. And we can love people. We can only be enamored by an idea.

We can love a person.

I watch Jesus, Father, and I want to act just like him. More than that: I want to think just like him because if I do my thoughts will eventually become my actions.

I watch Jesus doing love. Being love.

Reaching out to the leper. Pushing back those who judged and condemned. Raising hope. Resurrecting life.

Father, make me like him. Conform me. Transform me. To look like Jesus.

Reset my thinking. Change my mindset. Change the patterns and traditions of my ways. I am asking today. Whatever it takes today that I might resemble your Son more.  Please, please implement it. Please put it in motion. Your people need more Jesus.

This day let me more of him.

Amen

Count It All Done

Sweet God,

You are wise and good. You are so far ahead of us. And yet we have such a hard time trusting in that wisdom. We still turn to our own ways. Our own methods. Our own interpretations.

You are faithful and holy. We often overlook and underestimate both of these qualities in you. Sometimes we don’t trust your faithfulness because we forget your holiness. It is against your holiness for you to be unfaithful. Your promises are based on both.

Today, Father, help us to remember how wise and good and faithful and holy you are. You are worthy to be praised because of these, but we can count done all you have told us because of these.

Count done the fact that you said you would never leave or forsake us.

Count done the fact that you will never allow anything to separate us from you and your love.

Count done the fact that you will orchestrate and work all things together in order for us to be conformed to the image of Jesus.

Count done that your Son stands and intercedes for us.

Count done that your Holy Spirit will teach us truth and convict of us of the things that would hinder our relationship with you.

Count done that you, YOU, will make US holy.

Count done that you will provide what we need to become what you ask.

We praise you. You are a Count it all done God—you tell us love is more than hearing, it is doing what we hear.

Your love does.

Today. Today enable us to Count it all done.

Amen

 

Hungry

This morning, Father, make us hungry. I ask for the insides of us to rumble and growl to be fed. I ask that we be satisfied with only your manna—only the food that feeds the eternal parts of us.

Father, I am hungry. But.

Constantly I feed the hole of my mouth with junk. With food that is nothing more than fillers and calories. And I am talking about physically and spiritually. We both know this truth. I try to ignore what I am doing. I try to disguise it as I need time. I need rest. I need space. I need some buffer room.

What I (we) really need is you. I know this to be true in my head. I know this in my mental matrixes, but I crave and long for things that are immediate. Things that supply what seems to be on-the-spot satisfaction. Just as I walk through the kitchen and reach for a snack even though I am not hungry I reach for things in my spirit that fill but do not satisfy.

Father, through the psalmist you exhorted us to open wide your mouth and I will fill it. There is a promise there. There is promise. When we come to you to be fed we will be satisfied.

But, God, I tend to be so much like the Israelites. I see your manna spread out on the grasses like dew in the morning—glistening and sweet, but I feel the longings for leeks and onions and garlic rise up in me. They are loud and incessant in their demand of attention from me. These are all flavorings. They are all savors meant to add to our food, not be our food. And we roll manna around on our tongues and swallow hard because it seems so bland, so plain.

How do we learn that leeks, onions and garlic will not sustain us. These will not lengthen and strengthen our muscles. They will not provide nutrients necessary for the total health of our bodies.

But manna does.

Father, change my cravings. Change the palette of my appetite. Help me to long for what is good for me.  Enable me to assess my hunger and open my mouth wide for you to fill it with the richest of food and the best of wine. Your words says that is what you will do.

But we live like we don’t believe you. And we snitch and sneak the chocolate and the onions and the garlic and ask for quail because we don’t believe you will offer us the richest of fare. We have been conditioned to believe what you offer us will sustain us, but not satisfy us. What you offer will feed us, but not please the cravings.

No, we live like all you are going to offer is bread and water. But we forget…oh how we forget that your Son was the living bread. And he turned water to wine. Wine so rich, so smooth and so good that it was declared the best wine tasted at the wedding.

Why, oh why, God do we believe you did those things then, but have ceased to do them now.

Come, turn our water to wine. Come change our stale, dry crackers into living bread.

In the precious, beautiful name of Jesus.

Amen and amen

 

 

 

Whiter than Snow

Oh, Father!

I sit here this morning at my kitchen table, and I look out the window. The snow is blowing—

Father, I thank you that your Son’s blood makes us whiter than this gently falling snow. Your Son’s willingness to die for us, to be buried for us and to be resurrected for us is a gift—an utter gift. I pray today as we look out and see the snow fall we would remember what you have done for us. You did not leave us to do this alone. You did not leave us to logic our way through, reason our way across. No, you sent your Son here—to dwell among us. To feel with us. To suffer with us. To mourn with us. He was not exempt. You did not shield him because he was your Son—no, you told him the plan and he willingly came. Entered our atmosphere—our pollution and breathed it into his pristine lungs.

Often, Father, I forget the dark and ugly place I was when you came looking for me. I forget the pit and the dire straits to which I had fallen, and the mud and muck that encased my feet and sucked me in and down. I forget because I am in such a good place now. I live on level ground, solid terrain. Your lovingkindness dried up the waterbed of my sin. Your faithfulness strung a bridge across the torrential currents of my chaos.

Thank you. Thank that this morning the snow…

The snow reminded me of this great salvation you have given me.

I was scarlet.

Bleeding black red because of the condition of my heart and the bent of my spirit.

But you sent the snow. And his name is Jesus.

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

Amen

In Our Weakness

My God! My God!

Father, as I sit here listening to the quiet. Counting the ticks and tocks of the clock behind me, feeling the warmth of the blanket on my feet and breathing deep for a brief moment I am relatively still. I am rarely still. I am in constant motion—fluttering and flitting. Fixing and straightening.

Father, settle me. Settle us.

Constantly I am trying to meet my own needs by my own enterprises and abilities. Forever am I attempting to reason it all out, to try and make sense of it all, but I fall short. My abilities never meet the need and my reasoning never connects completely.

Only you can meet our needs. Only you can cut through all the hem-haw, all the excuses, all the explanations and sidelines and pinpoint the real need and fill it. Only you.

This week, Father, I have been disoriented. Like I have been blindfolded and turned around way too many times. The blindfold is now off, but I can’t seem to determine which direction I need to go. You always know which direction I need to be moving. Please help us today to trust you with this. Help us to ask you where the good way is and to actually walk in and on it. The good way is not just metaphorical. We need to know where to walk today, Father.

In our marriages today…show us how to listen. Really listen. Not with one ear and waiting to speak our piece even before our husbands are finished talking. Help us serve. Show us that being a servant is far different than we have been taught. Show us how to serve our husbands without expecting something in return. Shield us from the enemy’s darts: little benign things that suddenly fester.

In our mothering today…show us how to be patient. Really patient. Not the grimaced if-I-get-through-this kind of patience. But the patience that bears out because of the Holy Spirit. Show us how to love our children in ways that would truly benefit them. I pray especially this morning for mothers of almost-grown and grown children. Help us, Father, to learn to grow in your graces as a mother. Teach us how to love these children-grown, how to benefit them, how to pray for them, how to offer guidance without being overbearing and interfering.

In our friendships today…show us how to bear one another up. Help us to be encouragers. How to be safe places. Enable us to speak the word into people’s hearts. Help us to speak hard things in gentle ways. Help us to honestly rejoice with those who are rejoicing and seriously mourn with those who are mourning.

In our relationship with you today…help us to do as you have commanded. Out of an obedience rooted in love and gratitude. Help us today not only hear your word, but to use it and breath it. Father, help us be honest with you. Help us call sin sin. Show us the way of repentance. Enable us to turn. Help us to understand we need you. Shut our ears to the world’s mantra that depending on you is weakness. Help us to understand that coming to a place of acknowledging our need for you is crucial. It is in our weakness that you are revealed strong.

Father, we ask these things today in the precious, gracious and blood soaked name of Jesus. His name is above all names. He is above all things. In him all things work and hold together. Today may we be found in his name.

Amen

Thank You

Oh sweet Father,

How I bless and praise you for the goodness of your Word. How rich it is. How layered. How alive. I read your Word this morning and felt your Spirit hovering so that I might understand, so that I might hide these words in the depths of me.

How I praise you for calling different people to record your word—in their voice. In their style. In their experience. And yet, it all remains true and plumb. Thank you. Thank you that I have access to your Word at any given moment. Thank you that it is your Word that challenges me, comforts me, exhorts me, instructs me and disciplines me. Thank you that in so many ways you did not leave us orphans.

Father, I pray you would open our hearts and spirits even more to your word. I pray you would unfold it before us so that we might see. I pray with each unfolding you would empower us to live like Jesus. With each unfolding help us become more and more like Him.

Father, this morning I thank you. Just thank you. Thank you for being so good. So faithful. So Present. Thank you for this wonderful salvation. Thank you for this glorious redemption, not only the one coming, but the one that is now. Thank you for redeeming us now. And thank you that your Word assures of these. Your Word confirms what you are doing in our lives. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

Amen

Number Our Days

Teach us to number our days aright,

that we may gain a heart of wisdom.

Psalm 90:12 

Father, this morning I am thinking about minutes and hours and days. They all layer one upon another until years are created and lives are measured.

Thank you that you have all our days numbered. Not one will be lost. Not one will be wasted in your plan. Not one will be squandered and rendered useless or valueless because you hold them in your hand and will redeem them. If we lay these in your hands—lay them over the engraving of us that is etched there—you will redeem each second.

This morning I am asking that you teach me, teach us, to number our days aright. As we plan this New Year, as we look at this stretched out year numbered 2014, teach us to count our days for you. Father, I ask for your guidance. I ask for your direction. I ask that you would whisper behind us in our ears and that we would listen as you tell us how to spend our time.

The older I get, Father, I understand that time is one of the most precious and sacred commodities and gifts we have. Once spent it cannot be retrieved. We cannot return time. We cannot go back and look at our calendars and realize we don’t like what we bought and return it. What are we purchasing with our time?

Oh, Father, teach us today to number our days aright. Why? That we may gain a heart of wisdom. That we may see you in each second that ticks by on our clocks. That we may look back at our calendar and not regret what we bought.

Only you can teach and instruct us in this, Father. Only you know how to spend time in order for it to have eternal value. Only you know. We are asking you this morning to make our hearts receptive to your teaching. We are asking this morning to enable us not only to be receptive, but to actually put into practice what you instruct us to do.

Father, 2014 is before us. Many of us are planning. Devising agendas. Setting goals. We need your help, otherwise we are going to invest our time in vapor that dissipates and leaves little behind. Give us wisdom. Remind us to look at the author and finisher of our faith.

If anyone spent their days aright, it was Jesus. So, we ask in his precious name.

Amen

 

 

Let Us See You

Almighty God, we need to see you today.

I heard people say last night that they know you are real, but they can’t see your face and they can’t see your hand.

We need to see just a glimpse of you today. We need to see your face. It is your face which shines favor on us. It is your favor that gives us hope.

Today, Almighty God, reveal yourself to us. Open our eyes wide so that we might see you. Open our hearts even wider that we might recognize you. We don’t sometimes. We look for you and do not see you because of our preconceived ideas of who you are and what you look like. We have been trained to see you in the familiar and that is good, but teach us to see you in the unfamiliar, in the foreign.

Almighty God, if we see you then we see the world differently. If we really see you then we see our neighbor from a different perspective. And if we see from your perspective then our hearts can be changed—transformed.

Almighty God, reveal yourself to us today. Protect us as you did Moses. Hide us in the cleft of the rock if you must.  But let us see you.

Amen

 

Monkey Wrench Prayer

Father God, this morning I pray for your people.

I pray for those who are getting up, getting ready and attempting to move toward your house this morning. Sometimes is it so hard to get to the house of the Lord on Sunday morning.

Both our flesh and the enemy wages fierce battles on Sunday mornings—causing tempers to flare, and annoyances to heighten. The enemy strategically plans to disrupt routines.

This morning I ask for covering for your people. For your women who are up and getting ready this morning I ask for your peace to prevail. I ask for your words to rise in hearts this morning.

We have been called to enter your gates with thanksgiving and your courts with praise, but I know, Father, there have been so many times I have had to plaster a smile on my face between the car door and the church entrance. There have been many times I have had to shove down the ugliness that mounted in my heart from the time the alarm rang until I arrived at your house.

This morning I ask for a hedge of protection. I ask that spirits would be attune to the gentle proddings and nudgings of your Spirit. I ask for a greater measure of patience and a larger threshold of tolerance for little things that in the long run will have no bearing on the day.

Father, let mothers set aside the issues that don’t matter today. Today it doesn’t matter about matching socks or whether it’s sugared cereal or wild hair or even surly attitudes—just help them come to your house this morning.

I pray that you would thwart the enemies’ plans and schemes today. I pray for the proverbial monkey wrench to be thrown into his attempts today. And that wrench today is prayer.

I pray instead that your people would lift their voices asking you for your Presence. I pray instead that your people would ask for you to reveal yourself. I pray instead that your people would seek you. I pray instead that your people would set aside all the weights that hinder them this morning and they would enter your house expecting to see and hear from you.

Thank you, Father. Thank you.

Amen

A Good Measure

Oh Father, this morning. This morning please stop the roiling in our spirits. That you might cause the frantic thoughts of lists and to-do’s to subside long enough for us to hear you this morning. I ask that you hush the litany of “I’m never going to get these things done today” thoughts.

Father, we are such people of accomplishment. We want productivity, even if it bears little fruit. We want lists with items crossed out, because then it seems our day has not been wasted. We have proof we have not been lazy or idle.

But we cannot measure our lives in this manner. Life with you is not a to-do list. It is not an existence of get this done, get that done.

Lives lived in you focus on giving. Giving you glory. Giving you praise. Giving kind words to someone. Giving time to someone lonely. Giving encouragement to someone struggling. Giving direction to someone lost. Giving hope to someone in despair. To do lists rarely contain these things.

This morning I read Jesus’ words.

Father, your Son said that if we give, it will be given to us. He did not say if we finish our lists. Or accomplish our tasks.

You said if we give it will be given to us. But it is the description that got to me this morning, Father. You said if we give then a good measure, pressed down, shaken together and running over will be poured into our lap.

This morning help us to begin not with a to-do list. Instead help us to begin with a good measure. Father, help us to reach in our drawer and pull out the most generous measure we can find, and show us where to give it. Show us on whom you want us to pour this measure. Help us to pour lavishly. Lead us to pour intentionally. Your word says this very measure will be measured back to us. Oh, that we might be generous.

Today, help us to understand that you gave us a good measure, but then you pressed it down. It seems to me that you took your great big hand and pressed even that good measure down. Pressed it down like brown sugar. Then you shook it together, tapped it on the counter, filling in the gaps. And then you put even more in until this measure ran over.

What kind of grace and love is this?

Help us today to measure like you.

Amen

 

Help Us Run

Good Morning, Sweet Lord!

Thank you for keeping me through the night--for never slumbering or sleeping. Thank you that I can sleep and know you are present even when all my faculties are shut down for a period of time.

Thank you for your salvation this morning. Today may we consider this great salvation we are in the midst of and part of because of the sacrifice your Son willingly made in obedience to You. When I truly stop and consider this salvation, when I think about all the intricacies and orchestrations that you carried through our history from our ancient father and mother to us my mind cannot fathom. I just do not understand.

Thank you today that all those in the history of those orchestrations, those who were your instruments to carry out this salvation for us are now watching. They are our witnesses. And according to Hebrews 12 they are cheering us on in this part of the race.

Help us to run this morning. Help us to pick up our feet and put them one in front of the other. Our strides do not have to be long, our pace does not have to be fast. We need simply to keep running. Father, there are times that I forget how to run. Times I am too confused to run. Times I am too frustrated to run. Times I am too weary to run.

Remind me.

Remind us, Father, that you do not leave us to run alone. You do not send us out into this race without resources, without encouragement or without a goal. You do not call us to run aimlessly. You do not call us to run without purpose. You do not call us to run haphazardly. You do not call us to run blindly. Your Son, precious that he is, marked the race ahead of us. He paved the path and set the signs for our direction.

So, this morning help us run. Regardless of where we are in this race, please help us run. If we are at the beginning and are full of verve and energy, or if we are in the middle and we have set in for the long haul and we are getting a little weary or if we are moving toward the finish line--wherever we are, Father, help us run. One foot in front of the other. One breath at a time.

The Prize is waiting. The Reward is ready. The Rest is prepared.

Glory! This morning I think I can briefly and faintly hear the cheers of that great cloud of yours. But it is Jesus' voice I hear the clearest.

Amen and amen.

Never Could I Tell

Father, thank you for the sunshine on the snow. Thank you for little boys learning to speak words. Thank you for husbands who brave the cold to warm your car. Thank you for encouraging friends—who love you period. Thank you for dogs warming in the sun. Thank you for the turning of book pages. Thank you for your word…and how it is alive. Thank you that you did not limit prayer to place or time—simply when we breathe your name.

Father, there are moments when I get so full. The insides of me feel as if they have no room to expand because of all you have poured into them, and yet expand them you do. So full that I feel as if I will need to have vent holes in order to allow some of the precious steam to move out or I will burst. That’s how I feel. And I know feelings are arbitrary. But the source of the reality of this feeling does not change. You and your generosity do not change.

Father, never. Never could I say enough about you. Never could I tell others enough about what you have done in the dark parts of me. Never could I tell fully how you came and hand fed the emaciated Tamera until she revived. Never could I fully tell how you came and gave the dehydrated Tamera living water. Never could I explain reading your word and my heart growing far too large for my chest cavity and my eyes blurring with tears because your word spoke to the hardest, neediest parts of me. Never could I tell of the laughter you caused to bubble up in my soul like a fountain. 

Never could I fully tell them, but Father, I will try.

I will try.

Help me. Give the words. Give me the insight. Give me the intuition. Give me a greater measure of faith. Give me more of your Holy Spirit. I do not ask because I have a greedy sense of gimme. I just want so much for people to know there’s so much more than they know. You are far more than all we have imagined, or been told or taught. You are far more than tradition allows and you are far greater than the best stories.

I just want people to know.

Enable me to tell your story in my story so that people might know you.

Infuse me with courage and wisdom to tell your story true.

Amen and amen.

Battles

Father, this morning I come praying for the women I know who are struggling. Who are weighted down. Who are in a battle internally with the demands on their lives. For women who get up in the morning knowing the battle is waiting.

I ask that you would fight for us. Father, I ask that you would help us with the riots that go on in our own spirits. The battles of perfectionism, of expectations, of fears and of worries.

Father, I ask this morning that you would settle us. I ask that you come in the midst of us and calm our overwrought seas. I ask that you would help us in the midst of the frenetic lives we live. Help us to allow you to slow everything down—and help us to see you.

Yesterday was Epiphany—the day of seeing and recognizing the manifestations of your Presence. Let that truth carry over to us today. I pray that you would help us to stop striving. To stop working so hard at being.

Father, let our Epiphany come! Let it come with the reality in its wake that you really do have our backs. You really do fight our battles. You told Joshua to not be afraid that you would fight for him. I pray today that we would know that you are saying the same to each of us. You will fight for us if only we will allow you.

Today, Father, I pray for the beautiful, strong women who have been told that they are unattractive and weak by others, themselves or the enemy. I ask for you to surround them and me with your Presence today. And the knowing of you having our backs would give us courage to face this day.

Amen and amen. 

Teach Us to Love

Father,  how good you are. How amazing. How marvelous. How wonderful. How patient. How kind. How meek you are in your power toward us. How long-suffering in your wait with us.

There are moments when I am overwhelmed by the sheer audacity of who you are. When I think about who you are and then I think about me. About us. I am floored. I, with the writer, ask what am I that you are mindful of me?  Who am I that you stop to pay heed to me?

Father, it is not so much significant of who am I as it is Who You Are. It is because of who you are that you bend down to me. You squat down to this needy child because you are a good Father. You put yourself at eye level with me because you are a good and loving Father. I am your child. We are your children. And if we ever understand that you do love us, really love us, then we

might begin to know the mystery of salvation and the kingdom and declare it to the world.

But we have confused love with a myriad of other emotions. Our culture has created a stew pot of emotions that seem like love, perhaps smell like love. But it certainly doesn’t taste like love. We tend to use ingredients like infatuation, lust, fondness, duty, affection and camaraderie. All good ingredients, but they are emotions that slide, shift and shadow. This stew of ours lacks the meat. Love is the meat. Love is not an emotion. It is a decision, Father. You taught us this truth. Love is a deliberate choice that is not just a theory in the mind or an emotion in the heart, but it is a theory put into action regardless.

Teach us to love in this way. Teach us the Chapter 13 kind of love. Not because Paul’s words (directed by your Spirit) are beautiful, idealistic prose, but because that love has feet and hands and a voice. The love of Chapter 13 isn’t fickle, vacillating emotion. Your disciples asked your Son to teach them to pray. Oh, Father, this morning I ask you to teach us to love.

Teach us and then enable us to love because we know who you are and we know who we are. Teach us to love with abandon and without expectation of reward. Teach us that love is always, always making the next right choice in any given circumstance. Teach us the truth that your Son declared, They will know you are my disciples if you love one another. Not because of doctrine. Not because of political correctness. Not because of tradition. Not because of affiliation with a church. Not because of following the law or moral goodness. No, we will be known as followers of Jesus by our love.

Show us how to love then, Father. Show us how to look like Jesus. How to love in a way that people around us, who come in contact with us, recognize Jesus in us.

Amen and amen

 

 

 

Needy Children

F

ather, this morning we come. We come from different places and situations. Our circumstances on first glance may all look different. They may appear to be unrelated and unconnected. We, however, all have at the very minimum one connection. We need you.

We need you.

We need you to help us reconcile relationships. We need you to enable us to have wisdom as we navigate the labyrinth of emotions, expectations and demands of family and friends.

There are times we want to weep, Father, because all these threads get so tangled in knots. And the knots are so tight and we pull and pull and it seems to cause no change. There are times we are angry, because we want things changed and they seem unchangeable. There are times when we are agitated, Father, because we want to fix things, but they seem unfixable scenarios. There are times we are frustrated, Father, because we are confused and can’t make sense of it all—and then we are back to the knot. Back to the tangled jumble.

We need you.

So, this morning we pray for all those things. All those circumstances. All the hard things that cause our breath to shorten. All the difficult things that cause our chest to constrict. All the convoluted things that we just can’t seem to make sense of. I pray you would come. Come, Lord Jesus, in the midst of all of them and be present.

Dig out our ears that might listen to your counsel. Secure us in your Word that we might abide in your wisdom. Discipline us gently that we might heed your exhortations. Clear the clutter in our minds that your instruction might have true clarity. Help our spirits be receptive so that our interpretations of your directions might be led and guided by the Holy Spirit.

Praise you this morning that you know our need before we do. And you do not belittle us for needing you. Thank you that you do mutter about when these children of yours are going to stop being so needy. Praise you this morning that there is no knot that will confound you. There is no tangle you cannot unravel. There is no situation you cannot change.

We need you. Help us need you more.

Amen and amen.

 

Because It Is You

I call to you, O Lord, every day; I spread out my hands to you.

Psalm 88:9b

Father, you know us; you understand the frailty and fragility of us. And you bear it in mind. Thank you. Thank you.

How grateful we are that you show this kind of compassion to your people. How blessed we are that you are mindful of the weakness of us. In this weakness we experience your strength and power. How thankful we are that you make provisions for us in those weaknesses.

Many people are talking about shunning fear this coming New Year. Yes, Father, yes. Fear is an illusion meant to blur our vision and quell the passion in our hearts. Let’s relegate fear to the back burner, but in order to do that we have to fix our eyes on you. Not glance at you. Not occasionally turn our heads toward you.

 

We women constantly try to prove ourselves. To others. To us. We want perfection.

There is no perfection except in perfect love that casts out fear. There is no perfection available except to be washed in the blood and provision of Jesus. There is no perfection that is real except that we are sealed with the Holy Spirit and the holy deposit has been made.

It was this Perfect Love who looked at Peter. The soles of Peter’s sea-brined feet walked briefly on water because he set fear aside and looked at God With Us. He asked, “If it is you…”

It was you. And in that moment Peter decided to trust your reality, not what he thought was his own.

Help us this year, 2014, in every situation to ask, “If it is you…let us come to you.”   

In this New Year please help us not only to set fear aside, not only to walk on water, but to fix our eyes on you. Father, help us to declare, “Because it is you…”

Because it is you we will step out and into. Because it is you we will move forward and across. Because it is you we will move mountains and stand on top of waves.

Every morning let us renew our focus. Every morning may your name be on our hearts and lips as our eyes shutter open in the dawn. And in the evening may we call on you when our eyes shutter closed. Let us decide now, at the beginning, to call on you. Every day. May we spread out our hands to you in awe. May we spread out our hands to you in intercession for our sisters. May we spread out our hands to you in surrender.

And because it is you may we do things despite our fear.

Amen and amen

Sanctuary

Then have them make a sanctuary for me, and I will dwell among them.

Exodus 25:8

Make a sanctuary. A set-aside, holy and consecrated place.

And He will dwell among us. Abide. Live with. 

In college I worked in the cafeteria. The other students and I arrived at 6:00 a.m. to prepare breakfast. Three hundred eggs and four hundred biscuits or two hundred pancakes. I flipped pancakes and eggs in my sleep.

Our schedules varied; we worked different meals every day. After we prepared the food we would be sent to the line to serve. Something happened in that food line. I’m not sure how it began. I don’t know when it even started. But I began to pray for students who came through the line—pushing their trays along the chrome bars, talking and milling. I watched their faces. I didn’t realize then how much the Spirit was working through me, how much He was teaching me about God’s people and about prayer. I didn’t understand He was setting a precedent for my life. He was establishing the cadence of future routine.

I was too young. Too immature. Too clueless.  I had no idea of what real responsibility entailed.

But I prayed. The Spirit highlighted someone in the line and I would ask them how they were. I learned to discern very quickly the honest answers, the veiled answers and the flat-out lies. Then while dishing out fried chicken or scrambled eggs I prayed. Quietly in an ongoing dialogue. For two years this was my routine. I didn’t know I was doing anything grand or big or important. I just knew God was prompting me to pray. Sometimes the urgency would be overwhelming.

I graduated, married and moved away and some of that ministry dissipated. Life events happened. And I forgot. I forgot how to pray for others. I certainly forgot how to pray for myself.  

Prayer became one sentence life-preservers. Prayers cried out in the midst of crisis and chaos and chronology. Instead of dialogue my prayers became redundant refrains I spoke in desperation. Prayers that only concentrated on the very moment—no looking forward, outward or beyond.

Somewhere in the midst of those seasons I forgot who I was and my calling. I forgot, but God did not.

Scripture says God’s gifts and call are irrevocable. In those years of dormancy God was cultivating my gifts and detailing my calling. I couldn’t see it. I felt inadequate. Like a failure. Like a fake. Like a building with a false front façade created to make the building look bigger than what it really was. And I wanted so badly to be real. I longed to be authentic. To be the honest-to-goodness real thing.

Part of it was my own fault.  I accepted things I shouldn’t have. I played a part I should never have played. In my head the scenarios of what I would do if only were pretentiously grandiose and grossly exaggerated. Oh, I am embarrassed now to think I lived the inward life of a Walter Mitty—because God’s children do not have to live that way. God’s people are called to something far bigger than our dreamscapes. Far greater than the trailers in our heads.

He’s proven this to me just in recent days.  

I’m working a line again. There’s a large group of beautiful, but hurting people who come through my line. And one day I looked at someone and asked them how they were. They lied to me. How do I know? Because we interpret how are you as a greeting that rarely ends with a question mark. The phrase really doesn’t require an answer, and certainly not an honest one if you do. But the Spirit prompted me and I prayed for them. Just like I did all those years ago when I was twenty-something.

Prayer is my sanctuary. The throne room is the safest, most terrifying place in the world. Yet, it is the place I feel most at home. Most myself.

It has nothing, nothing, to do with me—my gifting of words comes from Him and the promptings to pray come from Him. It all begins with him. He has called me to pray.

Prayer is a sanctuary.

The enemy cannot touch us in this sanctuary.

When we are in the throne room, the enemy cannot wield his venom and ugliness against us. When we have bowed and are interceding before the Almighty, the enemy’s weapons are impotent. When we are being the priests Peter says we are, Satan’s tactics and schemes are neutralized.

The enemy tried to keep me out of the throne room for years. I believed his lies. I accepted the twisted half-truths he whispered to me.

But no more.

God can create a line no matter where you find yourself. He’s doing it again.  

Here.

In the sanctuary of Seventy Palms.

Where hopefully our Father will find a place he can dwell.

(This Sanctuary tab is the only one that will change daily. Morning prayers will be posted hopefully much earlier rather than later. Comments will be open on this tab. If you need prayer please don’t hesitate to contact me.)

Father, how precious you are. You have provided faithfully and fully during the year that just slipped away. You moved mountains, changed attitudes and transformed hardened hearts. You extended your grace with lavishness. We praise you for being this kind of Father. Generous. So, utterly generous.

2014. A brand new year. Father, this is thrilling and frightening. It causes me to take a deep breath wondering what will be written on its days. I worry, even now, about making mistakes—causing dark spots on the endless sea of white days. I worry, wondering what blunder I will make, what wrong thing will I say, what wrong action will I do? But your word anticipates that I will, we will, do this. And through your blundering Peter you exhort us to cast all our anxieties on you. Why? Because you care for us.  

Even in the last twenty-four hours you have repeatedly told me you are doing a new thing. And there are times we will be blind to it, miss it and not perceive it. But you make blind eyes see. You place road markers for our journey and you give us wisdom and insight to see what otherwise might be invisible. Help us not to live in fear of this New Year. Instead help us to have faith that even if it is a year of wilderness and wasteland you will provide. A way will be made clear. Streams will emerge even from the drought-ridden lands.

And our mistakes? Oh, we will make them, but there will be none that will be beyond your ability to make them work together for our good. And it is in this truth we must live out the days of 2014. Don’t allow us to live in fear, for if we do, we will miss the treasures in the darkness.

Father, help us see this new thing you are doing. Enable us, give us the faith, to trust that you have the days in your hand. Each one. You have already seen the blunders and sins of 2014. But you are not daunted; you are not dismayed.  

Father, I asked for us to be stretched. Stretch these muscles of our faith so that they might not atrophy. Do a new thing in us, Father. Something we have never thought of or imagined.

May we like Isaiah in the Temple see your glory and be undone. May we like Moses see your back and be carried in the wake of who you are. May we like David be abandoned in your Presence—dancing transparent and unhindered. May we like Mary hear you call us by name and may we answer.  

Come 2014. Come, because our God has already arrived.

Amen and amen