prayer coach

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.

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)

David started out with great passion but in the end of his life, he allowed trauma to shock him into passivity. We all need to come out of passivity and speak life into our world.

For forty days the Israelites were kept in a prison of fear through the taunts of Goliath. One thing that is missed in this story is that the Israelites remained in fear because Saul offered no encouragement to their situation. His inaction led to a bubble of fear over his troops. David comes on the scene and bursts that bubble by speaking hope.

Some fifty years later one of David’s sons rapes one of his daughters. This sets up hatred between two brothers to the point one kills the other. The murderer flees to his mother’s hometown and hides for three years. Both the rape and the murder makes David mad and sad, but there is no record of him doing anything. His silence allowed things to fester. David’s children are left to figure out life on their own.

Joab wakes David from his slumber to go retrieve his son from excile. However David does not allow this son, Absalom, to see him. Left on his own, Absalom goes down the path of attempting to take the kingdom from his father. How much of this could have been avoided if only David engaged in their lives?

Avoidance does not make our problems go away. We only delay the inevitable and often make the confrontation larger because of the passage of time. God gave us the Comforter because His plan was to call us places where we would have to deal with things that were uncomfortable to us. If we are more than conquerers than we need to be in some kind of battle.

image courtesy of Matchbox

One interesting fact about me is I have been pulled over more than 10 times. I don’t mention this to brag; I am not a speeder. I just happen to get pulled often. I have gotten two tickets going 35 in a 25. I have been pulled driving overseas in a money collection tourist trap. The latest activity was when a radar detector misread my speed (at least that’s how the cop explained it to me). Why do some people constantly speed and never get a ticket, while I set my cruise on the speed limit and get caught for the smallest infraction?

People often feel God picks on them the same way. How come some people have blatant sin and God still continues to bless them, while you say a word at the wrong time and you feel God’s conviction? Why does God have some on a shorter leash than others?

Beyond the obvious answer that He deals with each of us differently (meaning God is not fair), sometimes the short leash is for those who need it for the calling that’s on their life. Think of Peter. Jesus may have had some harsh words for the Pharisees, but He never addressed them as Satan like He did Peter (Matthew 16:23). All of the disciples ended up deserting Jesus the night he was betrays, but Peter was called out as disowning Jesus (Luke 22:34). Was Jesus being hard on Peter?

No, Jesus was preparing Peter to be the Rock on which He would build His church (Matthew 16:18). If you feel like you are on a short leash, remember that God disciplines those He loves (Hebrews 12:6). He wants you to succeed in who you were created to be. Therefore He forms and fashions you to be prepared.

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.

image courtesy of The Money Pit

So far 2011 has been for me the year of nothing working out. At first it was merely frustrations – things that had been easy were becoming stubborn headaches. For instance, I was denied health insurance. My wife and I are relatively young and both are in good health, yet they found random items to deny us. Then slowly and surely expenses started increasing. Randomly I forgot to pay a bill which added late fees. I almost lost a $200 check. It felt as if our finances were being attacked.

Then I got into a car accident which was my fault. Nobody was injured; again it was a financial headache. After the cars involved were fixed, my car started having more problems in the spot it was hit. And, that same day I got a $460 traffic ticket for the accident and found out how much insurance would now go up. Ugh!

I believe this relates to the last post on Are You Happy. Each event led to increased stress, worry, and frustration. WHY LORD? But in reality I was believing a lie that God wasn’t taking care of me and these events were proving it. My stress over the circumstances was preventing (or at least hindering) God from bringing His provisions. I know my God will meet all my needs according to the riches of his glory in Christ Jesus (Philippians 4:19). He has more than enough to overcome each of these financial setbacks.

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.