The last scrap of meat has been carved off the end of the ham bone. The last deviled egg was gobbled, so the plate could be washed. All that’s left of Easter is the two malted milk ball eggs in the bottom of the bag that the kids didn’t find. It’s almost the end of […]
We had a gorgeous snow time in Michigan. Kayden was born on a snowy afternoon and it is still snowing. They closed schools for two days to celebrate Kayden’s birth. No, actually we celebrated and the school board protected kids from dangerous, icy roads. It was so cold, that the salt wouldn’t melt the […]
Trust Him- Jesus Will Never Leave You! Fall is my favorite time of the year. I can’t begin to describe the splendor of this year’s fall canvas. Vibrant hues of bright yellows, delicious oranges, explosive reds and emerald greens kissed a flamboyant blue sky. We watched brilliant golden leaves flutter and twirl their way to […]
My mom wasn’t really into Halloween when I was a kid, but she let us go Trick or Treating. Perhaps she was driven somewhat by fear, which kept us very close to home at all times, so I’m not sure how I ended up at my grandparent’s house three blocks down the street on Halloween Night. […]
Breakfast Saturday morning ended the ladies conference. Mama T, Thelma Wells, was hilarious and inspiring. I laughed my way to hope filled truth. The altars were packed and overflowing with people. God showed up! It was absolutely amazing to experience and see what God was doing. But by Saturday afternoon, or at the very latest Sunday afternoon, I am confident some people were already wondering, “God where is “my” miracle? God, I cried my eyes out, but nothing has changed. Did you even hear me?”
We seem to be asking the same question the psalmist asked in Psalms 119:84a NLT “How long must I wait? …” Wait is another four-lettered word we hate! (Remember the blog, The Four-Lettered Word That Will Change Your Kid) Wait? We hate to wait. We don’t want to wait for our fast food, nor the instant potatoes, nor the microwave to heat supper in the steam bag container. We want to pray and instantly see it materialize before our very eyes!
Oh, I wish it worked that way! I’ve seen a few instantaneous miracles, but most of the time my miracle required some waiting, some leaning on His wisdom. Actually it requires a five-lettered word that is on the endangered list—faith.
Faith is a pregnant word. Faith must be activated like yeast to do what it is designed to do. Relational prayer activates faith. You believe because you know to Whom you are talking. Waiting gives it time for the process to take place. I don’t know what process your in, but I guarantee you, one is going on–if you’ve engaged your faith. Satan wants to steal your faith and stop your victory.
OK! You’ve prayed, now you must move to step 2. The prayer position must move to a “wait” position. Let’s move “wait” off the “curse word” list and put it where it belongs as a necessary “success secret” in the life of a believer. This doesn’t mean you pick up a magazine or move to the television to occupy your time while you wait.
We need to understand how to wait. The dictionary meaning of wait is “to remain stationary in readiness or expectation.[1]” Psalm 62:5 NLT “I wait quietly before God, for my hope is in him.”
Wait is a faith position. For a bird, it is an outstretched neck, as it peers into the water for breakfast. For a fisherman, it is a baited line in the water, with eyes on the bobber. For a pregnant woman, it is nourishing her body as she waits for her baby to be born, not premature, but right on time. For a believer it means nourishing your spirit with Scripture and worship.
Isaiah 40:31 NLT “But those who wait on the LORD will find new strength. They will fly high on wings like eagles. They will run and not grow weary. They will walk and not faint.”
Remember to Pray, really Pray for America. This link is some prayer helps and declarations.
Check out this powerful declaration over America!
Resources for Teaching Children to Pray
[1] (https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/wait Accessed Oct 2, 2012 © 2012 Merriam-Webster, Incorporated
It was a dark foggy, moonless night in the mountains. The headlight beams of his Jeep bounced and jiggled as the tired traveler headed toward his log home. As soon as Jim topped the hill, he spotted a small rabbit in the extremities of his headlights as it shot across the road. Jim slowed his vehicle to be sure that he didn’t hit the rabbit.
The bunny crossed at a blurring speed, reached the edge of the road, then leaped high into the air to cross the ditch that twisted and turned parallel to the road. But in the instant it took the rabbit to leap and while the rabbit was still mid-air, an owl swooped down and snatched the rabbit away in his talons. Not a pretty picture if you like rabbits.
What is that makes a rabbit or a squirrel, for that matter, want to dart across the road just in front of your car? It’s a mystery to me, but it has happened more times than I can count. You’re driving along, minding your own business, when an adorable little creature darts out of nowhere, directly into your path. It makes me ask the proverbial question, “Why did the rabbit cross the road?” And Wayne answers, “Because he was chicken, silly!”
But look at this picture for a minute. The rabbit was safe beside the road. The grass was tall. The night was foggy. He was safe– until he moved. He was safe until he crossed the road. What drove him from his safe place to the owl’s dinner plate? The bright headlights must have frightened the small creature and drove him from his feeding place to a dinner plate. Fear drove the rabbit from a safe place into a dangerous place.
And what about you? Have you ever allowed fear or panic or stress to drive you from a safe place into a dangerous place. Panic will do that to you. Panic will make you do crazy things…crazy things. It will catapult you from a safe place into a disastrous place!
I’m not advocating moving into a fetal position or into a cowardice hiding place. That’s living in fear. If you’re living in fear, you’re already living in a disastrous place. And you need to take steps to get free from the fear that imprisons you.
God has a shelter for you. I’m not talking about a hide-a-way where the enemy cannot find you. His shelter is not a place of inactivity or immobility. It’s a place of strength, faith and confidence. It’s a bold place. A grace place. His shelter–His house–a place to live–God’s presence.
Psalms 91 describes it for us. Psalms 91:1 NLT Those who live in the shelter of the Most High will find rest in the shadow of the Almighty. 2 This I declare of the LORD: He alone is my refuge, my place of safety; he is my God, and I am trusting him. 3 For he will rescue you from every trap and protect you from the fatal plague. 4 He will shield you with his wings. He will shelter you with his feathers. His faithful promises are your armor and protection. 5 Do not be afraid of the terrors of the night, nor fear the dangers of the day, 6 nor dread the plague that stalks in darkness, nor the disaster that strikes at midday. 7Though a thousand fall at your side, though ten thousand are dying around you, these evils will not touch you. 8 But you will see it with your eyes; you will see how the wicked are punished. 9 If you make the LORD your refuge, if you make the Most High your shelter,
Did you see the description in verse 1; “rest in the shadow of the Almighty.” This rest goes beyond reclining or resting in the shade of a tree. It reflects a state of emotional rest and confidence. Stepping out because you trust Him.
It’s like a son following close in his father’s shadow. When Jason, my son was little, he would play in his dad’s shadow. The shadow was so big, his tiny steps could hardly keep up and stay inside the shadow. In order to stay in his dad’s shadow he had to stay with his dad. No rabbit trails. No running off. No stopping to play in the mud. He had to stay with his dad.
Walking in His shadow is restful, but you are confident in Him. It is living, breathing, and walking in His strength. Luke 17:28 KJV “For in him we live, and move, and have our being ;” It is leaning into Him. Learning from Him, listening to Him.
Exodus 14:10 describes a scene where the people of God start to panic. Now panic will make you do crazy things…crazy things. After spectacular miracles and amazing favoritism sent by the hand of God, the Jewish people stood on the banks of the Red Sea. No bridge. No boat. Not even a detour was possible, because they watched as Pharaoh’s army marched closer and closer. NLT “As Pharaoh and his army approached, the people of Israel could see them in the distance, marching toward them. The people began to panic, and they cried out to the LORD for help” They cried out to God, but it you follow the next verse, their cries seem to be more panic filled complaints, because next they turned on Moses to vent their frustration and fear. Moses encouraged them with faith filled words. God had a plan.
And He still does. But finding the plan means embracing Him. Living and walking close enough to Him that you can hear His voice and follow where He is leading. Psalms 37:7 NLT “Be still in the presence of the LORD, and wait patiently for him to act. Don’t worry about evil people who prosper or fret about their wicked schemes.”
Don’t let fear drive you from your safe place. Build your faith and confidence about who He is by feeding your Spirit. Let me repeat the instructions from Psalms 37:
I wanted to see the Mountain Laurels in bloom so we decided to go to church in Spruce Pine. As I entered the restroom a nice lady greeted me. We began to chat. She was originally from Florida too. Actually, everyone I met that day had lived in Florida at some point in their life. Here’s the story the nice lady shared with me in the restroom. She said I could share it with you, so here goes.
She explained they had lived in Melbourne, Florida for many years. Her husband had been an engineer at NASA. Their daughter understood the power of prayer and finding the right man was high on her agenda, so she prayed. But her prayer was incredibly specific. So specific it worried her mother. The girl prayed, “God this is what I want in a husband. I want him to be a committed Christian. (Amen) I want him to be musically inclined and love music. And…I want him to hate mayonnaise and pickles. In spite of her mother’s concern and mild protests, this is how the high school senior prayed.
During her senior year, God began to deal with her dad to quit his job and move to North Carolina. At the end of the school year, the family moved to North Carolina, 400 hundred miles away. They moved to Spruce Pine. A small town with only a few hundred people. There that young woman met and married a young man that loves God, and music and hates…mayonnaise and pickles. Now he is the worship leader in that church.
Don’t you just love it when God’s plan comes together in such a way you just know it has to be God. There have been times in my life I prayed so specific that I knew only God could have made it come to pass. Those times are memorials that keep me believing and standing in faith when I want to give up. Remembering those significant times stimulates my might to fight!
So pray, and yes pray specific. Don’t be hesitant to tell God what you need and want. Sometimes in the process God will fine tune the prayer and narrow it’s focus with clarity and understanding. That’s how a conversation works. As God fine tunes your heart and prayers, your relationship with Him will grow. Your faith will grow. Your answers to prayer will increase. I really like that part of the process. But I also find that the richness of my relationship with Him is as precious as receiving my answer to prayer.
More Links on Prayer:
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Think Missional! Pass this on to someone you think may enjoy it or need it.
One of the reasons we lose our might to fight is we get discouraged. In a culture of instant gratification, we want to say a quick little prayer and poof there’s the answer. Most of the time, God uses time to test our determination and our persistence. He builds character and endurance in us as we discover how to walk with Him into the strong, turbulent winds of adversity. I don’t know if you’ve ever tried to walk into storm winds, but they push you backward with every step. It requires you to grab hold of something and pull with all your might to process. If you’re in a storm, the something is really a someone, Jesus is with you in the storm, but you can’t lay down…you’ve got to stand in faith.
So many times I’ve heard my grand-daughter protest, “It’s hard.” The meaning behind those two words was, “I quit. I’m done. This is hard and I don’t do hard.” And the reality is way too often as believers, we give up on people. We give up on situations when we don’t see results on a time table that is consistent with our agenda.
But using the words from Casting Crowns song “Courageous”. “Lord, Make us courageous,” must become a mindset and a determination, not an excuse. We must arm ourselves with a bull-dog tenacity and the courage to persist in the face of hardships and adversity if we are going to win the battle. There are several stellar lines in this song, but one of my favorites is; “The only way we’ll stand is to start on our knees.” I can only say, Amen! You are not called to be a watcher. You are called to be a warrior!
Listen to the Lyrics. They’re powerful.
Think Missional! Pass this on to someone you think may enjoy it or need it.
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Yes, Florence Chadwick broke the world record in 1950 when she swam across the English Channel in 13 hours and 20 minutes. And yes, she is notably the first woman to swim the English channel both ways in 1951. Still she’s best know for her “not so successful” swim in 1952.
Ms. Chadwick’s new goal was to be the first woman to swim the Catalina Channel, a 21 mile swim from Catalina Island to the California coast. Rough waters, bone chilling waters and sharks make ocean swimming arduous and dangerous. Long distance swimming adds another layer of complexity to the challenge that lay before Florence. The shark infested waters alone, would be enough to keep this “land lubber” from attempting such a daunting task.
Her support team armed with medical supplies and rifles to shoot sharks, accompanied her in a small boat. In another boat held moral support-her mother! Yeah mothers! Of course, I must mention her dad had accompanied her on the English Channel record shattering trip, so yeah for dads too!
Florence swam methodically hour after hour in the cold waters pulling herself toward her goal. A thick, soupy fog settled over the waters making visibility impossible. When the bleakness of that fog began to blind her inner vision, she began to doubt her abilities. She complained to her mom, “I don’t think I can make it.” Still she swam for another hour. Florence had been swimming for almost 16 hours. But without that inner vision, all she could see was a never ending struggle and that drained her energy. That lack of vision and lack of hope defeated her. She called for her support team to take her out of the water. When she was sitting in the boat she discovered she was less than one mile from land.
Brian Cavanaugh, in A Fresh Packet of Sower’s Seeds, noted that she told a reporter, “Look, I’m not excusing myself, but if I could have seen land I know I could have made it.” (Read more:
She didn’t know just how close to victory she was. She was less than one mile…one mile. If only she had known…if only you knew just how close to victory you are. Life doesn’t give us mile markers to indicate how close we are to victory; like an interstate highway marks our progress to the next town. Without those indicators we must have confidence in our guide and a clear vision of where we’re going. If you don’t; you’ll lose heart. You’ll lose your might to fight.
While our vision must include a picture of victory, our vision must go even beyond the fight, even beyond the victory to the person holding the victory. That is essential as a believer. Jesus wants to give you the victory. As you behold Him, His promises, and His love for you, your heart will receive hope. That hope is a light that enables vision. If it’s dark where you’re cowering this morning and you’ve lost your might to fight, then go to God’s Word. Find a promise for your situation and begin to declare God’s truth, God’s reality over it. Look to Jesus.
Hebrews 12:2 “We do this by keeping our eyes on Jesus, on whom our faith depends from start to finish. He was willing to die a shameful death on the cross because of the joy he knew would be his afterward. Now he is seated in the place of highest honor beside God’s throne in heaven.”
I talked with a dear friend recently that is fighting a huge battle, I asked, “How are you doing?”
My friend responded, I’m deliberately building my faith. It’s a fight, but my confidence is in God.”
Two months later Florence Chadwick tried it again. This time she kept the vision of land in her heart the entire swim. The entire trek was completed in a record shattering “13 hours, 47 minutes, and 55 seconds”. Not only did she break the record by two hours, she began the first woman ever to swim the Catalina Channel. She did it and you can be victorious in your circumstance as well. Fight the good fight of faith by keeping your eyes on Jesus.
It’s not the size of the dog in the fight, it’s the size of the fight in the dog. Mark Twain Get your fight back…more tomorrow.
Think Missional! Pass this on to someone you think may enjoy it or need it.
Florence May Chadwick.” The Columbia Electronic Encyclopedia, Sixth Edition. Columbia University Press., 2012. Answers.com 07 Jun. 2012. https://www.answers.com/topic/florence-chadwick
Read more: https://www.answers.com/main/cite_this_answer.jsp#ixzz1x6XNivW2
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Kimberly made an interesting comment in my blog yesterday…”I know your prayers have helped me get back up when I wasn’t sure I had any fight left!” Her post actually fed a thought that was already rattling around inside my head.
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Everywhere I turn I see people facing huge challenges and battles. Many of those faces reflect what I imagine young David must have seen when he approached the battlefield at Elah.
He was there to supply bread for his brothers and cheese to their commander. He came with youthful enthusiasm to root and cheer for his team-the Israelites.
But David laid down his pompoms when his expectations of what a battlefield was like was dosed with the reality of what it is. David saw men running …not in the direction he expected. They were running away from the battle. Frighten men. Trembling men, trying to hide. Hiding from a single adversary, whose voice shot arrows of terror into the hearts of the would be heroes. They were too far away to see the muscles of the giant antagonist’s neck bulge as he bellowed , “Send me a man.” But they felt the blow of intimidation with every syllable he spoke.
Nobody wanted to be that man—the man sent to face the giant, so they hid. They cowered. They trembled while their accuser blasted them day after day. They had no “Might to Fight!”
That’s what I see in people’s faces and hear in their words. People seem to be looking for someone to fight their battle for them. And it simply doesn’t work that way. Maybe you’ve seen that same look or heard the resignation to defeat, come from the lips of tired warriors. Or maybe you’ve been there yourself, facing a battle without a clue what to do next.
But you must fight..there is a battle to be WON. Whether it’s a battle for your children or the nation, you must fight. Whether it’s a financial battle or a health battle or both. You cannot lay down or give up.
We all want victory, but victory is never automatic. I understand Jesus won the battle for us at Calvary. That victory should be our rally cry, not our excuse to be lazy. Remember the cross is our declaration of faith in the same sense that the Texans declared, “Remember the Alamo.” Remember, Calvary catapults us to take what is rightfully ours. It inspires us to stand our ground with the shield of faith and declare, “satan, you cannot have my kids. You cannot have my health. You will not steal my faith. I remember the price Jesus paid for my peace,you cannot have it without a fight. I resist you in the name of Jesus. Jesus you are my victory. You always causes me to triumph.” Victory doesn’t come without a fight.
In my next few blogs I want to talk about what we need to do to regain our might to fight. But before I can address the “how to get our Might to Fight back, let’s look at how we lost it in the first place. I think they fall under four maybe five categories. I’ll list them, then I’ll talk about them in the next few blogs, over the next few days.
Reasons we have No might to Fight.
· We loose our focus.
· We get discouraged. (That may actually be the same as loosing our focus, but I think it deserves special attention.)
· We compared ourselves or our situation to others.
· We get complacent.
· We feel hopeless.
Do you have some reasons to add to my five reasons? What have you seen that robbed people of their might to fight? Please share it in the comment section.
Think Missional! Pass this on to someone you think may enjoy it or need it.
Links on Prayer:
Think Missional! Pass this on to someone you think may enjoy it or need it.
Grandbabies are so wonderful. Our conferences allowed us to spend a few days with our youngest granddaughter. Papa is famous for his Saturday breakfast and Keira had her first. Here she is helping Papa put the whop biscuits on the pan to go into the oven. You know what a whop biscuit is don’t you? You take a […]
This year is Leap Year and today is Leap Day. It’s an extra day. You just can’t let this day get by without taking a leap. Ladies, I don’t recommend that you run off and propose to someone, especially if you haven’t seen them since last Leap Day! But I do recommend that you take a leap- […]
