prayer coach

image courtesy of Tom Cochrane

This post will be a bit different as it is personal and may be harder to pull out an application for you, but bear with me as I still feel it is important. The other day I was driving through town and came to a stop light that just turned red. I was going to turn right so I was watching for my opportunity to pull out. After about a minute I perceived it was safe to go. However as I started I heard someone shout.

I quickly stopped and there was a man on a bike at the left front of my car. I had completely clipped him and bent his back tire. He came from my right and was riding across the intersection, and somehow I completely did not see him.

Thankfully he was not hurt and I am not sure who was more scared. We talked and worked out the details. When I finally got back in the car, my heart was still pounding. I quickly turned my attention to God asking what did all that mean?

I have not mentioned this in some time, but I believe that God uses everything to get our attention. God has committed Himself to intimacy with His children and will use anything to draw us closer to Him.

When I got to where I was going, I had no answers, but I got my heart rate down enough to call my wife and let her know. I also let some friends know that I was meeting. I had to move past the shame of the event.

image courtesy of adidas

This past weekend I got to play soccer. Unlike most Americans I love the sport and have had moments of being good. I can even claim scoring goals on three continents. However most of those “glory days” have been in the past. This weekend it all came flooding back.

While playing men 10 to 15 years younger than me, I was weaving in and out of them with surprising ease. While several on the field were international and exponentially exceeded my passion for the sport, I outscored all of them combined.

I probably should add that I was the only one wearing cleats and that the grass was damp. Even knowing that I had an unfair advantage, the feeling of triumph made me feel like a star.

The truth is I feel that the Christian life should be the same way. I feel that I should have some special advantage over the rest of mankind to be able to run circles around them. Why not? We have the living God living within us. We have the mind of Christ. Why are we not ruling the world?

Do you ever wonder that God has something more planned for us that we are not tapping into? With all of the resources on our side, why can’t we be incredibly successful. Jonathan climbs the enemy’s encampment with just his armor bearer and turned the war for Israel (1 Samuel 14:13). Gideon blows a few horns and the enemy runs away scared (Judges 7:22). Moses throws some wood in bitter water to make it drinkable (Exodus 15:25). Jacob has his livestock drink water with strips of bark in it to make them have spotted babies (Genesis 30:37-39). Elijah lays on a dead boy and he comes back to life (2 Kings 4:32-35).

Today’s post is by Kevin Adams author of his Wake Up My Faith blog. I came across Kevin through his twitter account, @wakeupmyfaith, and through some shared views we came to form a connection. Kevin is one of the rare people who maintain an authentic relationship with God  and with his heart. By not giving up on one for the other, Kevin’s writings bring you into the tension of living true to both. I asked him to share his walk with God in trust and prayer through a recent tough season of his life. He has graciously agreed. I encourage you to follow his blog and twitter to continue to grow from his experiences.

If you’re alive, you have breath. If that breath has ever been taken away, even for a moment, you have a testimony. In the fall of 2008, after a decade of hard work, I had a successful business, high income, great investments and no bad debt. By January of 09, within 100 days, I’d lost it all, was in overwhelming debt, and my entire financial structure had collapsed squarely on top me and my family. Ten years of effort left me with nothing it seemed but guilt, fear, and shame.

Since then, there have been days with no groceries and no way to buy them, days of not knowing where we would sleep, days of marriage held by a thread and depression held by a rope, and even days of watching extended family place material wealth above our need. And some of the longest days were spent watching our prodigal son reject us, and all that we embody.

image courtesy of Shelton Interactive

Recently I was approached by Shelton Interactive to do a review for Anything: the prayer that unlocked my God and my Soul by Jennie Allen. This is not a paid review, but my opinions on this book.

This book is a journey with Jennie through her life the last couple years. It starts giving her background of a good Christian girl and comfortable pastor’s wife. Her life gets turned around after coming in contact with a blog by Ugandan missionary, Katie Davis. Katie Davis was also the all-American girl, but she ended up dying to all the normal American dreams to serve Jesus in Africa. As Jennie read Katie’s blog, areas of her heart came alive and reawakened desires to give it all to Jesus.

While this book is mainly Jennie’s journey, her husband Zac was also being lead by God to the same abandonment. Together they prayed a simple prayer, “God we will do anything.” This book is primarily about the consequences of that prayer, through the many things that gave up and the extraordinary things they gained.

God is incredibly in love with us, but the things our hearts desire keep us from fully giving ourselves to Him. We say that God loves us, but we believe that we loves ourselves more than He does. We live our lives as if we know what would make us happy. Jennie’s journey shows her giving up things she thought would make her happy and moving toward things that scared her. But in the end what she found was that the things God was calling her to were things that made her come alive.

Joseph has a dream that he would have a position of authority. His dream is followed by 13 years of slavery and prison, in which he rises to the positions of authority. Each place has parts of his dream, but it never realizes until the day he is brought before Pharaoh.

David has an extraordinary experience of the chief religious leader of his time declaring him king of Israel after each of his brothers were overlooked for the position. He has some immediate successes with Goliath and advancement in Saul’s army, but it is 15 years before that word comes to pass.

Abraham gets a word from God, a promise that he would be made a great nation. He believes the word but has to wait 25 years before he even gets one son.

The thing that stands out to me is not necessarily the wait but the acceptance that the promise would come to pass. What assurances did any of these men have that what they were told would happen? How many dreams have you had at night were from God? How do you know what someone says to you is from God?

Even the story of Abraham doesn’t explain how God spoke to him. Did he hear an audible voice, or was it just God’s voice spoken into his thoughts?

I do not doubt any of these men’s experiences, but it makes me wonder how can I be so sure. Several months ago I started my newest walk of faith which I mentioned in my post, Does Your Life Make Zero Sense to UnBelievers. Now I face what Blackaby calls the crisis of belief.

image of Luke Sankey in prayer

The common thought is it takes 21 days to form a habit. I can’t tell you how many times I have heard this through high school youth groups to parenting training. If you can just stick with something for 21 days you will form a habit, then everything will be easier.

While it is true that repetition creates momentum, habits cannot form if we don’t really want them. I recently read a review of The Power of Habit by Charles Duhigg that simplified the process down to three steps.

“In order to build a habit you need to create a Cue, a Routine, and a Reward.”
- Charles Duhigg

The cue is the thing to remind you to do something. For instance if you want to start exercising, you may place your running shoes by the bed so it reminds you when you wake up to go for a run. Or, you can set up an appointment with a buddy to meet at the gym. The cue is the thing to be that personal reminder to do the habit you want to create.

The routine is the habit itself. This can be any habit you want to create. To be more precise, the routine is what you do in order to accomplish the habit you want to create.

The reward is what you want to get out of the habit. Using the exercise example, maybe the reward is a new pair of pants or running in a certain event. The reward is the motivation for creating the habit.

God enthrones Himself among the praises of His people (Psalm 22:3). The believers in the video below build a throne for the everlasting God within a mall in Beirut. In doing so they expressed their love of Jesus and His resurrection last Easter that brought beauty in a non-threatening way.

I encourage you to watch the video. Even though the song is sung in Greek and Arabic, their love for Jesus will boast your own worship this Easter. I have found the English translation and added it below.

Rough translation of what is being sung:

Christ is risen from the dead,
and by His death, He has trampled upon death,
and given life to those who are in tomb.

This day is the day that God has made,
let us be happy and rejoice in it.

Truly, He is risen!
Truly, He is risen!
Truly, He is risen!

Every Christian seems to have their technique for keeping from sin. We have to—if we are trying to follow God, we will be aware of our sin. It must be dealt with.

The Easter season makes this more prevalent because of the so many participating in the tradition of fasting things for Lent. This is wonderful tradition to prepare us for the Easter celebration.

Some of the tools Christians use for motivation not to sin are the following:

• Accountability: If I sin, I’ll have to tell someone what I have done.
• Consequences: If I sin, I’ll do something. This may be 100 pushups, give someone money to pay “the fine,” run an extra mile, etc.
• Think It Over: If I sin, I’ll go contemplate how bad that decision was, how it made God feel, and how bad I feel afterwards.
• Guilt: If I sin, I’ll sit in guilt.
• Shame: If I sin, I’ll beat myself up. Sin is bad, and if I sin I must be bad.
• Ignore It: If I sin, I’ll quickly move on. That’s not who I am. Plus, I am forgiven already.
• Sense of Value: I am too good to sin.

I have heard each of these options from preachers over the years, and not all of them are bad ideas. Very rarely have I heard how God motivates us not to sin.

God’s main motivation is love. It’s His kindness that leads us to repentance (Romans 2:4). Jesus said if you love me, you will do what I have commanded (John 14:15). Find out what pleases the Lord and have nothing to do with the fruitless deeds of the flesh (Ephesians 5:1-13). We are not to beat ourselves up over our sins. We are not even to focus on how bad it makes God feel when we sin. Sin has been dealt with. Our motivation for not sinning is an expression of love to the One who loves us. When Jesus comes to Peter after his denial, Jesus gets Peter to focus on his love. “Do you love me?”  (John 21:15-17)