One night as I was praying I heard, “Those who are afraid to pray, ‘Thy will be done,’ do not comprehend My love.”
Abba, I pray we might know your love more and more so we would fearlessly say yes to everything you have for us.
Tag: change
Love is Louder
When they received bad news from the fertility specialist my son-in-law (I’ll call John, as in John the Beloved) said to his young wife, “You know, the bigger the problem the bigger the miracle God can perform -and you know He can’t resist a good miracle.” They now have three beautiful little miracles to love and cherish.
This week we petition the Lord for another miracle -that these precious children would be raised by their healthy daddy.
When we arrived for our granddaughter’s fourth birthday he was already feeling very sick with what he thought was the flu and a pulled hamstring. Twenty four hours later surgeons were desperately trying to remove “brown gunk” from necrotizing fasciitis -flesh eating disease. They left an open incision from his knee to his waist and he has been on life support since Sunday morning after his blood pressure crashed.
But the most amazing things have happened as we trust God moment by moment.
When he heard the news shortly before the main morning service started, John’s pastor walked away from the pulpit of a large church to be at the side of his friend and a family in need. He has stayed with him in ICU, with several of John’s friends all night, every night since. The waiting room is filled with friends and people walk the halls nearly twenty-four hours a day praying for our beloved John. When the doctor’s reports grew more pessimistic they prayed harder.
Requests for prayer went out over social media and we are hearing from literally thousands of people around the world that their church, or home group, or school, or personal network is praying for this young family. We have never felt so loved.
God is doing something highly unusual here. As people come to pray they are themselves being touched by the love of God, repenting (choosing to change their thinking) and encountering a love and peace that does not make sense under the circumstance. People are being healed of deep wounds. Relationships are being restored, and more and more people are following the story on the media.
I’m mostly at home caring for the children with their other grandmother, while our daughter is at the hospital 20 hours a day. I went with her one night and was totally surprised by the atmosphere of peace in John’s room and the shouts of joy in the hall as the team prayed for the numbers on his monitors to change -and they did.
On Monday our little two-year old grandson was chattering to his distracted mommy who came home long enough to cuddle them herself, before returning to the hospital. Suddenly he changed the subject and said, “We don’t have to be afraid because Jesus is with us. Jesus is with us. Mommy, we don’t have to be afraid because Jesus is with us.”
Today she and I took the children for a walk, to take a breather. I had my camera with me (It’s a habit.) The little guy ran ahead and squatted down to trace “alphabets” that someone had written on the pavement. When I got closer I could see that it said “BE FEARLESS.”
The words on the other end of the bridge said, “LOVE IS LOUDER.”
I have no idea who wrote those words, but they felt like a gift from God.
The reports up until today have been quite negative. But God…
The love of God shining through people we have never met, through friends, through family who have travelled to be with John even though he is unconscious, have shouted down those dismal reports. Today we see improvement. Today the doctor said he was dying, but now he will live.
There is something more going on here than our limited human vision can see. John is a man who is willing to lay down his life for the Jesus he loves –and the people God loves. The love surrounding him is palpable. Some people are seeing angels in the room as they pray for him. He is the kind of man whose whole life is a message about God’s love and goodness. I know that if the Lord asked him to give his life to save the church, he would do it.
God is up to something. When his Holy Spirit surrounds his church His holiness reveals weaknesses where we have relied on the flesh and where it has become corrupt. He shows us how parts of the body of Christ have been without blood supply or functioning in the way God intended and other parts are not communicating with each other. Impurities that have failed to be removed by non-discerning “kidneys” can all be healed in the light of Jesus’ relentless love. He tells us we are in a war for unity and purity and love in the body of Christ and we have not been taking this fight nearly seriously enough. It takes a willingness to turn, to change, to seek the Lord. Without serious day and night prayer the church in this part of the world will succumb to hidden decay. We need God’s light and his love that shines and burns like a laser.
Love is louder!
“John” is very much loved by many, many people. If you would like to pray with us for him we are asking right now for his blood pressure to rise on it’s own so he can get off the medications that restrict circulation to his feet, for restoration and preservation of his toes, for an increased platelet count, for his kidneys to start to function and for rapid healing of a massive open wound.
But more than that we want to give thanks to a God who is good, who tells us in writing on the sidewalk that we don’t have to be afraid and who tells us that love is louder than fear.
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Persevere
There’s something about perseverance through suffering that grants an authority which can be gained no other way.
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Break Every Chain
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Watch and Pray
This song has been playing over and over in my head, day and night, for days. I have learned to pay attention to bits of songs that play even in my sleep.
Stay here with me.
Remain here with me.
Watch and pray
that you will not fall into temptation.
Praying.
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Waging Peace
All this will flow from the kind and compassionate mercy of our God.
A new day is dawning:
the Sunrise from the heavens will break through in our darkness,
And those who huddle in night,
those who sit in the shadow of death,
Will be able to rise and walk in the light,
guided in the pathway of peace.
(Luke 1:78, 79 The Voice)
We can’t fight darkness by focusing on darkness; it only leads to more fear. But if we walk in the Light, live in the Light, and the Light lives in us, darkness is displaced. In the Presence of the Light darkness must flee.
Rise.
Walk.
Shine.
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Paper Roses
On my way out of the gardening shop I spotted these roses near the door.
“Wow! Are they real?”
They seemed too good to be true. They were –too good to be true, I mean. As soon as I felt them I knew they were paper. Pretty though.
I drove home singing an old Loretta Lynn song I used to hear crackling out of the plastic radio with the big gold dial that sat on top of Grandma’s fridge when I was a kid.
Paper roses paper roses oh how real those roses seem to be
But they’re only imitation like your imitation love for me…
That got me thinking about the nature of deceit and manipulation and feigned love. In the cold greyness of spring that doesn’t feel like spring, those paper roses were beautiful and you know, I can appreciate them just fine –until the real thing comes along.
We joke about our tendency in Canada to be more polite than some other cultures. Honestly I grew up thinking it was normal to say sorry to the person who bumped into you with a grocery cart. It’s not heart-felt, but it does ease tensions and keep the traffic flowing in the produce section.
Someone told me the story of watching a woman trying to purchase a can of pop at a convenience store with a fifty dollar bill. The cashier took it but didn’t even look at the bill as he said, “This is fake.” The woman left the money –and the Coke – on the counter and dashed for the door.
My friend asked how he knew it was fake.
“I’ve been handling money all day, every day, for years. When you are familiar with the real stuff the fake stuff is obvious.”
There are a lot of people in the world who have no idea what real love feels like. They mistake politeness, tolerance, gratitude, warm fuzzies, lust, familiarity, loyalty, manipulation…all manner of things, for love. They have never been the recipients of true, unconditional, self-sacrificing love.
Here’s the thing. You can’t give what you have never received.
It is so easy to be critical of prickly people -the ones who are difficult to feel affection toward, or manipulative people –the ones who prod you into serving their own priorities with large dollops of honey on that stick. My son calls them EGN people. Extra Grace Needed. I believe that is one of the reasons why believers are to band together like a family. You can pick your friends, but God assigns family because we need practice learning to love EGNs, and also to experience being loved ourselves by those who can discern the real from the counterfeit and demonstrate the difference.
Very few new family members come with 70 years of wisdom. Very few church members start off as sanctified lovers, and some, like irritable, contentious old uncles sitting down at the end of the Thanksgiving table take much longer to get there than we think they should. It takes time –and just because a person recognizes an ideal doesn’t mean they are skilled in the practice of it. It’s not about tolerating hypocrisy; it’s about needing grace to grow.
Sometimes the best demonstrations of love some people can offer are like paper roses because that’s all they know. I wonder if, rather than reject the imitation item, we need to smile and accept politeness or tolerance or even well-intended criticism graciously –then return genuine love we have received from God by being willing to lay down our lives for people who have never truly known love before. Lord knows we all need some grace.
“It’s easy to say “I love God,” but genuine love reflects God’s love. If we belong to God, then we will love each other regardless of how hard love is.” (Note on 1 John 5 in The Voice version)
This is the embodiment of true love: not that we have loved God first, but that He loved us and sent His unique Son on a special mission to become an atoning sacrifice for our sins. (1 John 4:10)
Everyone who trusts Jesus as the long-awaited Anointed One is a child of God, and everyone who loves the Father cannot help but love the child fathered by Him. Then how do we know if we truly love God’s children? We love them if we love God and keep His commands. You see, to love God means that we keep His commands, and His commands don’t weigh us down. Everything that has been fathered by God overcomes the corrupt world. This is the victory that has conquered the world: our faith. ( 1 John 5:1-4)
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Promise
It’s snowing. Again.
This time of year we have glimpses of spring, a bit of green grass, a momentary warm breeze, a tiny crocus leaning into the foundation on the south side of the house. Then hope is deferred when the valley is socked in by low grey clouds and the signs of change disappear under more snow.
Sometimes I need to look for hope. So yesterday I took my camera down to the local plant nursery to see if anything was stirring there yet .
In and around the first greenhouse there were signs of change with pots being sorted, dusted and cleared of spider webs in preparation for filling.
The next green house was still bare and the third contained a tumbled mix of unsold plastic-wrapped patio furniture left from last season.
But in the small greenhouse at the back of the lot, someone was lining up pails of perennials on worn seasoned tables. These are the hardy ones, the ones that have known seasons of fruitfulness and seasons of rest, and they are showing new growth. Survivors. Forerunners.
But on the way out, in the warm environment of the shop, near the window, heaven poked its finger into my cold snowy world, and a perfect pure white flower from another place, one which cannot grow here, grew anyway.
We, on the other hand,
continue to live through the Spirit’s power
and wait confidently in the hope
that things will be put right through faith.
(Galatians 5:5 The Voice version)
Pray this way:
Your will be done
on earth
as it is in heaven.
-Jesus
Prepare your pots. Heaven is on its way.
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Planting Peace
But the wisdom from above is first of all pure.
It is also peace loving, gentle at all times, and willing to yield to others.
It is full of mercy and good deeds.
It shows no favoritism and is always sincere.
And those who are peacemakers will plant seeds of peace
and reap a harvest of righteousness.
(James 3:17,18)
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Flooded with Light
“The Puritans used to say that far too many Christians live beneath the level of their privileges. Therefore, I need to be told by those around me that every time I sin I’m momentarily suffering from an identity crisis: forgetting who I actually belong to, what I really want at my remade core, and all that is already mine in Christ. The only way to deal with remaining sin long-term is to develop a distaste for it in light of the glorious riches we already possess in Christ. I need my real friends to remind me of this–every day. Please tell me again and again that God doesn’t love me more when I obey or less when I disobey. Knowing this actually enlarges my heart for God and therefore shrinks my hunger for sin. So, don’t let me forget it. My life depends on it!” -Tullian Tchividjian
I pray for you constantly, asking God, the glorious Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, to give you spiritual wisdom and insight so that you might grow in your knowledge of God. I pray that your hearts will be flooded with light so that you can understand the confident hope he has given to those he called—his holy people who are his rich and glorious inheritance.
I also pray that you will understand the incredible greatness of God’s power for us who believe him. This is the same mighty power that raised Christ from the dead and seated him in the place of honor at God’s right hand in the heavenly realms. Now he is far above any ruler or authority or power or leader or anything else—not only in this world but also in the world to come. (Ephesian 1: 16-21)
Charis: Subject to Change 