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.

I am going to take a brief break from normal posting in order to celebrate the inclusion of my alma mater into the NCAA tournament this year. After a Lowe period in Wolfpack basketball lore, we are back in. If you want to spiritualize this post, I would accept prayers for State to win.  I have included an excel version of this year’s brackets for people to download to help you enjoy this year’s tournament.

Here is the link to the 2012 Tournament Basketball Brackets (xlsx). I am asking that you donate $5 if you chose to use this version I created. It is completely on the honor system, but it will help offset some expenses on the Prayer Coach Blog.

If you are not familiar with Prayer Coach, here are a few posts that have been popular over the years:

• 7 Tips to a Better Prayer Life
• What is the Importance of Confession?
• How to Pray for Love
• 10 Things to Pray for Your Husband
• 10 Things to Pray for Your Wife

Thank you for stopping by. Blessings to you and your loved ones.

Last week my only brother unexpectedly went to be with the Lord. This has obviously been a shock to the family as we have tried to make sense of it all. Last Friday was the memorial and funeral services, which I had the opportunity to share some of my thoughts about Scott and the effects on the family. This will be very personal, but I think they are appropriate to share here because it may help others that have lost loved ones.

Scott is an amazing man. His playful spirit camouflaged his intelligence. If you only knew him as a teammate or “Mr. Scott” or “Eating Bear”, you may have easily missed this, but he is very smart. He could do many math equations quickly in his head. He excelled and traveled with a specialized technical company. He may be Pooh Bear personified, but he is smarter than the average bear (if I can mix metaphors).

Scott is also full of fun. Everything is a game to him. Sometimes to an extreme which embarrasses those he is with. Growing up we would go to concerts, and while waiting for it to begin Scott would get the crowd to chant. For instance, “God is good.” “All the time.” “All the time.” “God is good.” The amazing thing to me was not so much he would do this, but that people would respond. But this is Scott.

Even so, the one thing I absolutely admire about him is that he never met a person he didn’t like, and he never kept himself from anyone. Even in high school while most people are worried about what it may look like if you are scene with certain people. Scott was never “too cool”. Now, I consider myself a kind person, but there are times and people that I will quietly pull away from. I’m not proud of this, but I am aware of it. I never saw this with Scott. He loves everyone and in response everyone loves Scott. They have to. Everybody loves Pooh Bear.

image courtesy of Braveheart

I was with a group of male friends the other day talking about movies. One of them stated that it needed to have some killing in it that was followed by majority approval. To be honest I spend a couple days questions the needs of my gender and why I recoiled at that statement.

Several years ago I was plagued by frequent violent dreams. I would wake up with my heart racing and breathing heavy — not the best way to get rest. They were not oppressive or consistent every night, but they were frequent enough that I wanted to do something about it.

I sought God to find out if there was anything He was trying to tell me through my dreams. I immediately felt if I stopped watching violent movies, then the violent dreams would stop. That was about 10 years ago now, and I don’t remember anymore since then.

Does this mean people should not watch violent movies? I’m not saying that; this is just my conviction. I will ask why that aspect of a movie makes it great for men? Death is an outcome of sin and is the underlying motive of our enemy. Jesus came to bring life. So where does this play into good movies? Killing is sometimes a necessity to guarantee freedom, but it doesn’t mean we glamorize it. David was a man after God’s own heart but was not allowed to build the temple for God because of his killing.

Therefore instead of stating what I think manly movies are not, I have decided to offer some direction on this topic.

Here are my conditions
for a good manly movie.

Absolutes:

1. There has to be a passion to attain something greater than yourself.

This week my youngest daughter expressed interest in the cross. My wife felt God’s leading to make the gospel personal for her, and she eagerly asked Jesus into her heart. When she did, my oldest daughter excitedly declared that she was the same age when Jesus came into her heart. as you can imagine, I am very happy for the girls. But, what do I do now?

It seems that too many people focus so much on the event of salvation that there is no plan for what to do afterward. This would be a big problem for my family, because both girls have come to salvation at such a young age. I have at least another 14 years of them in my house, and we have already reached that desired goal.

As important as that decision was for my daughters, my work is not done. That decision was merely the first step to my ultimate goal for both of them.

I pray that my daughters will never know a time they didn’t love and trust Jesus, God, and Holy Spirit.

That decision this week is amazing because both girls were three when they made that decision. Now my wife and I will continue to do what we were doing. Our goals are not different. We just saw significant progress; we did not see completion. We will continue to pray with our girls, read them the Bible, allow their hearts to connect with Jesus, dance, worship, etc. We will continue to allow them to see us pursuing God.

image courtesy of SjoerdvW

Last week I shared about shaping influences in our children. I recently had an example come up with my five year old daughter that I believe helps explain this.

Our family has been going to a meeting on Saturdays that has some women performing dance. My daughter loves this. She would stare as she watched them move gracefully around the room. Slowly the women started inviting her to join them. As a dad to the girls I have, I believe girls are born to dance.

These times on Saturday has become a highlight for this daughter. She got us to buy her new ballet shoes; she goes to this meeting in her ballet leotard. Other girls also started joining the women as they danced, which was a lot of fun to watch.

Recently, some of those in charge of the meeting decided that the children were becoming a distraction and asked us to stop letting our daughter dance with the other women. You can imagine the heartbreak as we told our daughter the news.

The point in sharing this story is to highlight how Jesus can override shaping influences. My daughter was devastated. My wife who was with her at the time was sad for her. Fortunately, she took the hurt to Jesus in prayer. She had my daughter to ask Jesus how He viewed the situation.

During the prayer, my daughter went from crying to laughing in a matter of minutes. Jesus spoke to her heart. He did not change the circumstance, but He did change her perspective on it.

And here’s how the story comes full circle.  God did not heal Payton’s heart.  God healed my heart.  And now I have an adopted daughter, Liv. She is the second half of this major story in my life.  The Lord has used our adoption of her to show me so many parallels of my relationship with Him.  As our adopted daughter, we didn’t adopt her and are now expecting her to earn the blessing of us being her parents.  We’re her parents because we love her and have chosen her to be in our home.  It’s our delight to make her a room and a home and cuddle her and love her and give her clothes and toys and play with her.  We love her for who she is – our daughter, a part of our family.  So often we have this perception with our heavenly Father – our adoption into His family happens, and then we live like we have to earn the blessings He’s already given us.

“God had adopted us into his family.  He’s called us His daughters and sons.  He’s named us His children.  You may not have beaten many of your bad habits yet, but the Lord has called you more than a conqueror (Romans 8:37).  You may have a bouncing bank account, but God has called you spiritually rich (Ephesians 1:7-8).  You may not even wear a bathrobe gracefully, but the King of Kings has adorned you with a royal mantle (1 Peter 2:9)…  It’s the difference between the ways of the world and the ways of God.  The world waits to see you prove your worth, then calls you wonderful.  God blesses you and then watches your life become beautiful to fulfill the promise of His words.  God buys you with His blood, then lets the world see how brightly you can shine.” (from Lover of My Soul, p.55)

image source unknown

This is part two from Heather Jones regarding the death of her little daughter Payton. The next two posts take you through the healing that God brought Heather through.

When Payton died, it felt like a part of me was taken away.  The closest thing I can use to explain what it feels like to lose a child is it’s like an amputation – a part of you is gone, and you go on with life from that point on learning how to live life again with that part of you gone.  And life starts to get a new normal, but there’s still always the reality that there’s a part of you missing.

The pain at that point was a gaping hole – it was big and there was no avoiding it.  I understood then, why people turn to alcohol or drugs – and there was a part of me that wanted to – to just escape the pain for a moment. I became aware very soon after that grief was going to be a journey, and I could choose to grieve now or grieve years down the road.  I wanted, as much as I could, to work through the grief now.  And so I made a decision to do that.

Grief, or processing anything hard in life, is a choice and it is work.  As much as I could I tried to lean on the Lord – I knew He was there, and that wasn’t always a tangible feeling – sometimes it was just a belief in what I knew, that He’d never leave me or forsake me.  That He was aware of every hurt I felt, every tear I cried, every memory I had to process.  I knew He was with me through all of it, though I didn’t always “feel” it.  Even in the tears, it was almost a cognitive decision to believe that He was with me in that moment and that these tears weren’t wasted, that I needed to keep leaning into Him and not away from Him.