06.22.09
The Right Words at the Right Time
I love the idea of a perpetual calendar — reading the same thing year after year but finding new relevance in new ways. I believe this is the third year that I’ve had the Power of a Praying Parent desk calendar on my desk, and some days things don’t seem relevant at all; couldn’t make it fit if I tried. Other days the verse or thought is “good” but still not overtly relevant. Then other days it’s just right on, as if Someone knew what I was going through and chose that verse or passage just for me on just that day.
I had one of those “then other days” last week, June 16-18, to be exact. Finn has been having a problem with migraine headaches for nearly a year and these last few weeks they’ve increased in severity and frequency, so we’ve been trying to figure out what to do, which doctors to see, which advice to take, which medicines to give, etc. On Tuesday, June 16, the day after Finn started a new medicine my calendar had this to offer:
We have prayed our children through every cold, flu, fever, and injury, and the Lord has always answered. We never hestitate to take them to a doctor when they need it, of course, because we know God heals through doctors, too. The point is to pray first and then, when we are healed, we are not to question or doubt.
On Wednesday, the passage on my calendar was from James 5:14-15:
Is anyone among you sick? Let him call for the elders of the church, and let them pray over him, annointing him with oil in the name of the Lord. And the prayer of faith will save the sick, and the Lord will raise him up.
Finally, on Thursday, the calendar offered me this prayer, the prayer that was already in my heart:
Lord, because You have instructed us in Your Word that we are to pray for one another so that we may be healed, I pray for healing and wholeness for my child. I pray that sickness and infirmity will have no place or power in his life. And if we are to see a doctor, I pray that You, Lord, would show us who that should be. Give that doctor wisdom and full knowledge of the best way to proceed.
Wow. Wow. Who is to say that if when the Praying Parent calendar people put this calendar together that God knew I’d need to read those things the third week of June 2009 and therefore impressed upon them to include those pages on those days? It seems kind of extreme to build the entire calendar around one user, but if there are messages for me in June, perhaps he orchestrated it so that there are messages for multiple others on other days and in other years. And while nothing has really jumped out at me the last few months, in a few years something from another month — that I’ve now read over and over each year — may be the relevant thing. Isn’t that neat that God can be so big that we can’t wrap our minds around Him but at the same time be so up-close, personal and involved to have years-ago influenced and orchestrated the devotional passages that I would read today? I believe it happens more often than people know or acknowledge.
There are several pages from the calendar that I have torn out and tacked to the wall of my cubicle because they are ones that I want to read more often or ones that are relevant to where I am. September 23 — joy doesn’t have anything to do with happy … look into the face of God and know He’s all we need. September 9 — even if your child is beyond your daily influence you can pray for his mind to be sound and protected. July 12 — I pray my child will respect the wisdom of his parents and be willing to be taught by them … [and] have the desire to be taught by the teachers You bring into his life. And now June 18 — prayer for healing, wholeness, that sickness will have no place or power in my childrens’ lives, and wisdom for us, as parents, and any doctors He sends us to.
05.31.09
Book Review: The Shack, Part II
So I finished reading The Shack today. The book certainly gives you quite a bit to think about, so I’m sure that the full impact, if any, from this book may be yet to come as I continue to mull it over. Like the person who loaned to me said, I struggle with whether or not to recommend this book and if so to who? The book requires great open-mindedness and the ability to stretch your imagination and see “the point” without being distracted by the presentation. You will not get as much out of it if you just surface read and don’t really think about what you’re reading.
Now, that being said, I don’t want to give the impression that the book is so thought-heavy or overly religious that it wasn’t an enjoyable read, because it was. The tale of Mack, “the Great Sadness,” and his return to the shack where the Great Sadness occurred, is a quite a compelling story to follow, all the way to the end.
Two of my favorite lines:
[God]: “… that you can’t grasp the wonder of my nature is rather a good thing. Who wants to worship a God who can be fully comprehended, eh?”
[God]: “Unless people speak the truth about what they have done and change their mind and behavior, a relationship of trust is not possible. When you forgive someone you certainly release them from judgment, but without true change, no real relationship can be established.”
05.26.09
Book Review: The Shack (Part I)
I’m at the half-way point reading The Shack, and this conversation, between the main character and God, stopped me in my tracks and was worth thinking over before moving on.
[God:] “Jesus is fully human. Although he is also fully God, he has never drawn upon his nature as God to do anything. He has only lived out of his relationship with me, living in the very same manner that I desire to be in relationship with every human being. He is just the first to do it to the uttermost — the first to absolutely trust my life within him, the first to believe in my love and my goodness without regard for appearance or consequence.”
[Mack:]“So, when he healed the blind?”
“He did so as a dependent, limited human being trusting in my life and power to be at work within him and through him. Jesus, as a human being, had no power within himself to heal anyone.”
That came as a shock to Mack’s religion system.
[God:] “Only as he rested in his relationship with me, and in our communion — our co-union — could he express my heart and will into any given circumstance. So, when you look at Jesus and it appears he’s flying, he really is … flying. But what you are actually seeing is me; my life in him. That’s how he lives and acts as a true human, how every human is designed to live — out of my life.”
I’m with Mack. This is a thought I’ve never heard before, and even the possibility is a shock to my religion system. The teachings and beliefs I’ve been around my whole life are that Jesus was 100% God and 100% human at the same time, able to function as both. The root of that is Colossians 2:9, “For in Christ all the fullness of the Deity lives in bodily form.”
I’m not saying that the idea presented in The Shack totally rejects that, yet it doesn’t fully embrace it either. In The Shack, it seems as if Jesus was God but he didn’t exercise that power, where perhaps my line of thinking has been that he was God but he could exercise his Godly powers if and when he needed to. So, when raising people from the dead, healing, walking on water, and all the other miracles he himself was doing so as God and the primary reason we can’t/don’t do those things is because we’re not God. Yet The Shack would say that the primary reason we can’t/don’t do those things is because we don’t have the same faith or commitment as Jesus.
While I can’t sort it through it all, what I do find amazing is the example of what our relationship with God is supposed to be, or rather could be. The next line in The Shack:
[God:] “A bird’s not defined by being grounded but by his ability to fly. Remember this, humans are not defined by their limitations, but by the intentions that I have for them; not by what they seem to be, but by everything it means to be created in my image.”
Kinda makes me wonder what all I’m missing out on by not living up to his intentions.
05.13.09
A Prayer For Every Mom
They played this video at my church Sunday as part of their Mother’s Day emphasis. I found it very moving and it caused me not to focus on Mother’s Day being about me but rather on all women and all different kinds of mothers. I believe it is placed in the heart of a woman to mother whether they have their own children at that time or not, so for me this prayer from Intentional Moms was a tribute to women, not just those of us who wear our mother hat every day.
05.07.09
I prayed
When I wear this sticker
I wear it with pride and the lyrics to “I’m proud to be an American” run through my head.
Yet, today, when I am wearing this one
I’m a little scared. What if someone at work asks me to take it off? Would I? What if someone asks me “Why are you wearing that?” Will I have a good enough answer to represent my faith and the reasons that I pray, both today and every day? Those things make be scared. I’m still proud, that it expresses, to anyone who sees it, that today I did something I believe in (just like when I wear the I voted sticker), but the thought process of choosing to wear it (yes, I did think about do I want to wear this or not) led me to pray that I would grow strong enough in my faith that I would be just as proud and bold and unintimidated about expressing my faith as I am about expressing other things.
One big question I considered is, if I lived in a country where praying wasn’t allowed, would I still wear it? Something to think about. Think, Daniel and the lions’ den.
I’m wearing the sticker, btw, because today is the National Day of Prayer, a day set aside for us to pray for our country and all of its facets — our government leaders, our military, our schools, our businesses, our families, our media and our churches. I am wearing the sticker because I prayed.
04.20.09
Parallels of Sacrifice
This is a few weeks old now, but still cool. The Sunday before Easter I had the privilege to hear a Messianic Jewish Rabbi teaching at my little Southern Baptist church. I was very excited and in awe to hear from someone whom Jesus actually came for — God’s “chosen people” — and who’s nationality and blood is like that of Jesus’. That may sound silly (even sounds silly to me) but it’s how I felt.
Anyways, he taught on the story of Abraham going up to sacrifice Isaac and specifically looked at the parallels of this event with the death of Jesus. It has always been obvious to me that these two had parallels, after all the main theme in both is a father sacrificing an innocent son of promise, but I was amazed at all the little parallels.
So I’m going to walk through some of these because they are just that cool. There’s an old testament verse from Genesis 22 followed by a New Testament counterpart.
“And he said, Take now thy son, thine only son Isaac, whom thou lovest ….” Gen 22:2
“For God so love the world He gave His only begotten son ….” John 3:16
“Then on the third day Abraham lifted up his eyes, and saw the place afar off.” Gen. 22:4
“… ‘I will drive out demons and heal people today and tomorrow, and on the third day I will reach my goal.” Luke 13:32
“And Abraham took the wood of the burnt-offering, and laid it upon Isaac his son …” Gen. 22:6
“And he bearing his cross went forth into a place called the place of a skull, which is called in the Hebrew Golgotha.” John 19:17
“And Abraham said, My son, God will provide himself a lamb for a burnt offering” Gen. 22:8
“The next day John seeth Jesus coming unto him, and saith, Behold the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world.” John 1:29
“And Abraham lifted up his eyes, and looked, and behold behind him a ram caught in a thicket by his horns …” Gen. 22:13
“And when they had platted a crown of thorns, they put it upon his head” Matt. 27:29
