Moldy Prayer

Looked at a couple of houses recently. Older houses that have some issues. Or a lot of issues.

A couple have had mold. Some people just try and paint over the mold. After a few months (weeks?) the mold starts to show through. If you really want to get rid of the mold you have to rip out the wallboard and solve the problem at the source. If you do it right you (or the person you sell the house to) won't have to deal with it again.

Kind of like prayer. All too often my prayer is just a surface prayer. Just a list of please do this and please do that and please get it done before breakfast.

Don't get me wrong. There are times when a quick prayer is all that I can pull off. Like when I am reffing a soccer match.

But if I really want to be an effective prayer, I have to get in and do the heavy lifting, the work. I have to grapple with the issue at hand and what God is telling me to do. I have to be willing to put my sweat and blood and tears into prayer.

And that means tearing off my walls before God. And letting Him in to clean out the moldy corners of my life that I don't really want to deal with.

And it means that I can't just gloss over the issues at hand. I have to put time in and work through them.

Prayer is work. And too often I approach it as play...

Joy Vampires

Great start to the day!

Up at 440 and headed downstairs with a cup of coffee.
Did my Bible reading: 1 Kings 18, Job 3 and Matthew 17.
Lot of time in prayer.

Fried egg sandwich for breakfast.

Light rain and into work.

Feeling good.

And then they struck. The Joy Vampires. One at time they can be relatively easily handled but when they gang up and all hit at once they are hard to take.

It started with the voice mail and a stupid request from someone who should know better. And then I turned on my e-mail and read a sarcastic e-mail from someone who seemed to think that I should be able to read her mind. I may be psychotic but I am definitely not psychic.

And just like that the joy was sucked out of me. And I was angry and ready to ...

I realized the Joy Vampires had struck and I had let them get the better of me. So I put things in perspective. These requests were important to the people making them even if they seemed idiotic to me. So I handled the requests and moved on to getting the work day organized.

And my joy returned.

And when other Joy Vampires stalked me throughout the day, I was able to fend them off.

You see, the people were not the Joy Vampires (although some people are). The requests were not the Joy Vampires. It was my response to the situation that caused my joy to flee.

And that is all my fault...

Living Water: Hearing God's Voice

Chapter 13: Hearing God's Voice of Brother Yun's Living Water

Brother Yun says that his theology is simple. All we have to do is listen and obey.

All too often we Christians do not stop and listen to God.
We are too concerned with giving God our concerns and listing out our problems and not stopping long enough to listen for what God wants to tell us.

Our prayer becomes a one way conversation which is not a conversation at all, it is a speech. And that is not the way to communicate with the God of the universe.

Brother Yun also says in this chapter that the Christian who hears the Word and then does not go out and do it is deceived. Sobering thought.

The other point that really jumped out at me is that God does not often shout. And there is so much "noise" coming at us through the media, through the pace of life, through our world. And God whispers.

We have to be willing to hear, to get away and listen, be willing to shut out the world and hear what God is telling us. This is difficult.

As I drove away from this meeting I was totally convicted that I need to quit trying to please man and be more concerned with pleasing God. Even if the men I am trying to please are godly men (at least on the surface). That doesn't mean that I will go out of my way to irritate or turn people off, but instead it means that instead of caring what people may say or think of me, i need to care about what God thinks of me.

Time to be a God pleaser and not a man pleaser...

Meeting

So for the past thirty five years our small group has been meeting at the same restaurant at the same time on Tuesday mornings (no, I haven't been a member for that long).

We've missed a couple of days. They've closed for remodelling (twice) and every once in a while a holiday hits on a Tuesday. But other than that we've been in the same location every Tuesday that they've been open for a long time.

Except on Sunday, during the Super Bowl, there was a commercial stating that everyone gets a free Grand Slam on Tuesday at every Dennys in the country! How dare they! Don't they take us into account?

I can get my back up and get all upset but in the grand scheme of things this is a minor inconvenience. And of course the corporate marketing people don't take into account small groups that may be meeting in Dennys around the country.

But our Dennys did. They held a table for us. Some of the guys went past the 100 people waiting to eat and some did not. We'll pick up next week where with what we would have done otherwise.

So maybe God had other plans for us today. Or maybe His plans for other people crowded us out. It's OK.

Maybe one of these Tuesdays there will be a line of 100 people waiting at the door to join us in studying about Jesus Christ.

Something to consider...