prayer coach

image courtesy of Disney’s Tangled

I took my girls to their first movie in the theaters yesterday. We went to see Disney’s Tangled, its Rapunzel story. The girls loved the movie and were well-behaved for our new venture making a perfect first experience.

Tangled was full of the elements you would expect from a Disney movie: fun, action, love story, evil villain, and a touch of magic. The thing that stood out to me on this movie, and the reason of wanted to post it, was how the villain’s method of evil was different. Mother Gothel did not wield physical strength, magical powers, or plain meanness. This villain used weapons of manipulation and emotional abuse disguised as love.

This to me is the most evil of villains. Her intentions and ways are no less powerful than other forms and yet for the victim they are hidden as love. Tangled does a good job showing some of the effects of this when Rapunzel leaves the tower. She goes back and forth from elation to despair as the joy of new found freedom is being attacked by the lies planted by years of manipulation.

Too many of us struggle like Rapunzel carrying around lies told to us by those who we thought loved us. Or, more than likely we carry around lies from people who did love us but carried lies of their own. Those who have loved us  have shamed us in order to get us to do what they wanted us to do. Mother Gothel wanted Rapunzel to stay in the tower because her hair was the source of her youth. She did not want to risk Rapunzel leaving and having to grow old. Therefore in order to get her to stay Mother Gothel made her fear the world and doubt her abilities to survive out there.

This morning I got John Eldredge’s newsletter in my email. I felt it went along with the post yesterday on hope: An Anchor for the Soul, so I have included the email text below.

Things Are Not What They Seem
3/17/2010

What do all the great stories and myths tell us? What do they have in common? What are they trying to get across? Wherever they may come from, whatever their shape might be, they nearly always speak to us Three Eternal Truths. First, these stories are trying to remind us that things are not what they seem. There is a whole lot more going on here than meets the eye. Much more. After the tornado sets her down, Dorothy wakes and steps out of her old farmhouse to find herself in a strange new world, a land of Munchkins and fairies and wicked witches. The Land of Oz. How brilliant for the filmmakers to have waited for this moment to introduce color in the movie. Up till now the story has been told in black and white; when Dorothy steps out of the house, the screen explodes in color, and she whispers to her little friend, “Toto . . . I don’t think we’re in Kansas anymore.”

Isn’t this the very lesson of the Emmaus Road? You recall the story—two followers of Christ are headed out of town after the Crucifixion, as dejected as two people can be, with every reason in their minds to be so and more. Their hopes have been shattered. They staked it all on the Nazarene, and now he’s dead. As they slump back toward their homes, Jesus sort of sneaks up alongside, very much alive but incognito, and joins their conversation, feigning ignorance—and they not seeing it is him.

• If God wants us to pray without ceasing, it is because He wants to answer without ceasing!
  
• If you want to see how popular the church is, attend Sunday morning worship. If you want to see how popular the pastor is, attend Sunday evening. if you want to see how popular God is, attend the prayer meeting.
  
• If you were to ask me the greatest discovery I have made regarding the truth of the church, I would have to say it is this: When Jesus built the church, He built a praying congregation! To put it even more plainly: When Jesus built the church He built a prayer meeting.
• Pentecost didn’t come through a preaching service; Pentecost came to a prayer service. From Pentecost to Patmos, God never departs from the pattern.
  
• Prayer is not ever thing, but everything is by prayer.
  
• Prayer is so major we dare not minor on it any longer.
  
• Prayer needs three organs of the body that are all located on the head. The ear hears His word to us, the tongue repeats what we’ve heard from Him back to Him, and the eye looks expectantly for the answer.
  
• We must never get away I from the fact that when Jesus built His Church He built a prayer meeting.
  
• When Christ ascended into heaven all He left behind was a prayer meeting. The early Church didn’t have a prayer meeting; the early Church was the prayer meeting. In fact, in the early Church every Christian was a prayer-meeting Christian.

John Eldredge’s newsletter from the other morning reiterated the thought from the previous post regarding what we are afraid to ask God for. I have included the email text below.

Do You Want to Get Well?
2/17/2010

The shriveled figure lay in the sun like a pile of rags dumped there by accident. It hardly appeared to be human. But those who used the gate to go in and out of Jerusalem recognized him. He was disabled, dropped off there every morning by someone in his family, and picked up again at the end of the day. A rumor was going around that sometimes (no one really knew when) an angel would stir the waters, and the first one in would be healed. Sort of a lottery, if you will. And as with every lottery, the desperate gathered round, hoping for a miracle.

It had been so long since anyone had actually spoken to him, he thought the question was meant for someone else. Squinting upward into the sun, he didn’t recognize the figure standing above him. The misshapen man asked the fellow to repeat himself; perhaps he had misheard. Although the voice was kind, the question felt harsh, even cruel.

“Do you want to get well?”

He sat speechless, blinking into the sun. Slowly, the words seeped into his consciousness, like a voice calling him out of a dream. Do I want to get well? Slowly, like a wheel long rusted, his mind began to turn over. What kind of question is that? Why else would I be lying here? Why else would I have spent every day for the past thirty-eight seasons lying here? He is mocking me. But now that his vision had adjusted to the glare, he could see the inquisitor’s face, his eyes. The face was as kind as the voice he heard. Apparently, the man meant what he said, and he was waiting for an answer. “Do you want to get well? What is it that you want?”

• “Four things let us ever keep in mind: God hears prayer, God heeds prayer, God answers prayer, and God delivers by prayer.”
• “Enthusiasm is more active than faith, though enthusiasm cannot remove mountains nor call into action any of the omnipotent forces which faith can command. Activity is often at the expense of more solid, useful elements, and generally to the total neglect of prayer. To be too busy with God’s work to commune with God, to be busy with doing church work without taking time to talk to God about His work, is the highway to backsliding, and many people have walked therein to the hurt of their immortal souls.”
• “God’s acquaintance is not made hurriedly.”
• “Wise is he in the day of trouble who knows his true source of strength and who fails not to pray.”
• “The little estimate we put on prayer is evidence from the little time we give to it.”
• “What the church needs today is not more machinery or better, not new organizations or more novel methods, but men whom the Holy Ghost can use— men of prayer, men mighty in prayer.”
• “God does not bestow His gifts on the casual of hasty comers and goers. Much with God alone is the secret of knowing Him and of influence with Him.”
• “The men who have done the most for God in this world have been early on their knees.”
• “Prayer is God’s plan to supply man’s great and continuous need with God’s great and continuous abundance.”
• “Life growing in its purity and devotion will be a more prayerful life.”
• “Prayer is the language of a man burdened with a sense of need.”