Prayer

Prayer is supposed to be a conversation between me and God. But too many times it's one sided. I give God my requests and tell Him what I want and that's it.

My Rooted group will be going through their Prayer Experience in less than seven days. I have the humbling honor in leading them in this. But my prayer life is not the ideal that should be modeled for them.

Today has been a time of reflection to evaluate where I am with my prayer life. I speak, but I rarely listen. God has things to say to me but I'm just not open to hearing His voice. There's too much "noise" in my life with work, bills, broken relationships, and concerns about the future. I've let these things take priority over my relationship with God and I just don't have time for Him. It's time to make changes. It's time to refocus.

While others try to "find" the time, I need to "make" the time to step back from all that is going on in my life and spend quality quiet time with YHWH. I need to step back from all the noise and pray in private with Elohim. This needs to be on a regular basis at a specific time of day, either as the day begins or at day's end. My prayers have to be frank, honest and genuine. I have to have faith that what I ask for I can expect to receive, or receive something even better.

But then I need to listen for His still, small voice. The noise has to be kept out as I listen for His answer. Once I hear it, I must obey. This is dangerous for me because I don't always obey which leads me to the edge of catastrophe. I have to be more intentional in doing what I hear Him tell me.

So now the adventure begins...

The Plunge

My bible Scripture this morning is -

For to me, to live is Christ and to die is gain. - Philippians 1:21

Today is the day of my baptism.  Yes, I was baptized as an infant in the Roman Catholic church, but today I make the choice as an adult to make a public declaration that I believe that Jesus Christ is my Lord and Savior and that He died for my sins.  I believe that because He rose from the dead I have the promise of eternal life with Him in heaven.

A friend painted a picture of her baptism for me.  She said that as she was being lowered into the water, it signified her old self dying.  As she was totally immersed for just a moment it signified her old self being dead and buried.  When she was lifted out of the water it was her rebirth as a new creature in Christ.  What an awesome picture!

I don't know if I will have a revelation like that this morning.  I don't know that there will be any kind of change.  I know there will be people there that I love who also love me.  But there will also be others that don't know me or Jesus that will be witnessing this event and maybe God will touch their hearts and it will spur them on to make a decision.

I am excited about my baptism.  I also know that over the last few days up to this moment and up until I am actually baptized, there has been a power working against me in the spiritual realm.  The many prayers of my prayer warrior friends have put a hedge of protection around me to minimize the attacks as this power has attempted to keep me from being baptized.  I know I am not out of the woods yet, and there may be more attacks, but I have the assurance through the prayers of many that I am protected and God is in control.

Faithfulness

Tuesday morning.  I was getting ready for another day of challenges at work and an evening of celebrating the completion of a ten week bible study with almost three hundred other people.  I checked my emails one final time before heading off to work and saw an unexpected one.

There was a need for drivers to help take twenty, and possibly even more, kids from one of my church's outreach centers to the movies.  Only two had responded with a commitment to help drive the kids.  It only took an instant for me to respond and to volunteer to help drive the kids to the movies.  I knew in my heart that sacrificing the time of celebration for these kids was the right thing to do.  Throughout the day there were several emails posted but no mention of any more drivers.

At the end of my work day, I went to see my bible study group leader to let him know about what I was doing.  He said he thought that I was making the wrong decision.  He told me that the celebration dinner was just a one time event, but there would be many other opportunities to help the kids.  I thought to myself that this was an immediate need to help and serve, something that we had talked about and experienced in our study.  How could I rationalize a party being more important than helping with these kids?  He finally said that he understood my heart and why I was choosing my decision.

I headed to the outreach center.  On the way there was a voice telling me that I was making the wrong choice, but it was giving me selfish reasons.  You're not going to enjoy a dinner with people that you have shared experiences with over the last ten weeks.  They're going to take a group picture, and you're not going to be in it after being there faithfully each week.  It's the last time that the group will meet, but you're not going to be there, so you can't say that you were at every meeting.  Because of this, I knew I was making the right decision.

I arrived at the center thirty minutes early and just hung around the office.  About fifteen minutes later I stepped outside and noticed there were four adults standing around waiting.  Then more showed up.  It looked like there would be just enough drivers there to take all thirty-two of the children to the movies.  Groups of children were assigned to different adults and they were gathering at the vehicles, but none had been assigned to me.  I thought to myself that I may be able to go to the dinner if there weren't any more kids hiding somewhere.  There weren't and I was not needed after all.

So I jumped into my car, called my bible study leader and let him know that I was on my way and would be a little late.  He was excited to hear the news.  It was 6:20 and the dinner started at 6:30 and I was probably thirty to forty-five minutes away in southern California rush hour traffic.  Between the center and the freeway on-ramp, I hit three red lights.  This was not a good start.

If you know the 55 and 405 freeways in southern California, you now they are horrendous during rush hour.  I was expecting the worst.  I got on the 55 and actually flew down to the 405 interchange.  On the interchange I saw that the 405 was moving pretty well.  The normal back-up was not there.  I continued flying to the off-ramp that I needed and saw that the back-up started just past the off-ramp.  From the off-ramp to the church's entrance there are nine traffic lights.  Every one was green.  Yes, every single one!  The trip only took twenty minutes!

I was stoked and shared the events of the afternoon with the group.

Why did this all happen?  I suspect that there was at least one person that prayed for me to be at the dinner, but it was about my faithfulness and God's faithfulness.  I was faithful in making the right decision to serve the needy.  God was faithful in blessing me for my choice and getting me to the dinner just ten minutes late.  It's about the faithfulness of a loving God who takes care of His faithful.

A faithful man will be richly blessed. - Proverbs 28:20

Lukewarm

Over the years, I've known many "pick and choose" Christians. They pick and choose what they want to believe in the Bible to validate their choices in life. They also disregard other parts of the Bible so they would not be called out by them. God calls people like this "lukewarm".


     I know your deeds, that you are neither cold nor hot. I wish you were either one or the other! So, because you are lukewarm—neither hot nor cold—I am about to spit you out of my mouth. - Revelation 3:15-16


These Christians are hot about some parts of the Bible and cold about others. Here's an example:


     You shall not lie with a man as with a woman; it is an abomination. - Leviticus 18:22 AMP

This has become a contentious issue over the last few years. The argument from some Christians about this issue is that this is victimless. No one really gets hurt by doing this. Everyone has a right to love who they choose. This goes beyond that.  It's talking about "lie"ing or having sex between the same gender. Then they totally disregard the second part of this Scripture.


Abomination as defined at www.answers.com is:

     1. Extreme hostility and dislike  2. An object of extreme dislike.


God dislikes homosexuality to the extreme. I believe another word for this is hate. Because He does, it's a sin. He designed it to be only between a man and a woman. Remember Adam and Eve? It was Adam and EVE and not Adam and EVAN for a reason. Although we enjoy it, it was designed for procreation.


Some will argue that the Scripture from Leviticus was only a directive from God for the Levites or priests of the Old Testament, but this is what is said in 1 Peter 2:9:


     But you are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people belonging to God, that you may declare the praises of him who called you out of darkness into his wonderful light.


We Christians are the "priesthood"; we are the priests.


God doesn't want us to be wishy-washy about Him. We need to be in complete agreement and hot for Him, or cold and against Him. He is good with that, but being lukewarm is distasteful to Him. Ever have anything in your mouth that was absolutely awful? What did you do? You spit it out. That is what He will do with distasteful, lukewarm Christians.

Free Will

^{Jeremiah 1:5a} "Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, before you were born I set you apart."

^{Matthew 10:30} And even the very hairs of your head are all numbered.

^{Matthew 12:25a} Jesus knew their thoughts...

I loved spending time with my daughters as they were growing up.  Looking back, I realized that how they would react to certain situations became predictable.  It's because they were my children and I had an intimate relationship with them, teaching them about cause and effect and the consequences of our actions.

I've never been to seminary or claim to be a bible scholar, but this has been weighing on my heart over the last few days.  A few years ago, my best friend and I had a great conversation about free will.  I really didn't have an opinion about it then, but over time and reading Scripture, I've come to this conclusion, although I could be wrong.

Do we have free will?  The answer is a qualified yes.

Scripture tells us that God knows us intimately.  He knows everything about us.  I believe He knows everything about everything.  The word for that is omniscient, meaning all-knowing.  He knew us before He created us in the womb.  He knew what our DNA and genetic make up was going to be.  He wired us to be the individuals that we are.  He knew every detail about us, down to the number of hairs on our heads, and even how many hairs would be left after fifty-four years in my case.  He even knows our thoughts.  There is absolutely nothing that He doesn't know about us.

I knew what choices my daughters would make, or how they would react in certain situations.  God knows us, but much better than how I knew my daughters.  We are His children.  So we can make our choices out of our free will, but God knows us so well that He already knew we would make those choices.

Many think we live in a complicated and chaotic world, but I say that the Great Architect, the Great Planner has designed all of this and all the actions, reactions, and interactions.  God knew before creation what your thoughts were going to be at this very moment, and that you were going to be reading this at this very moment.  Not only you, but He knew what everybody else on this planet would be doing at this moment.  Not just us, but everyone else before us in time and everyone to come.  This is staggering.  This is overwhelming.  This is the omniscience of God.

There will be those that scoff at this and say I'm absolutely wrong, and I've already made that concession.  But think about it.  Many of us have made the claim that God is omniscient.  I don't believe we can fully and completely believe that if we attach any stipulations to it.  If we do, we diminish the power of God.  We make Him smaller than what He really is.  The God that I know is big.... REALLY BIG!

The UnForgiving

A few weeks ago, I just totally blew it.  I was absolutely rude to a group of people at a party when I tried to squeeze my fat butt into a seat in a crowded area forcing the people at an adjoining table to move elsewhere.

This was not the first time that I've ever screwed up.  God only knows how many times in my life I've done things like this.  I was taught at a very early age to apologize for the things that I was sorry for, and even the things I wasn't sorry for.

For if you forgive men when they sin against you, your heavenly Father will also forgive you.  But if you do not forgive men their sins, your Father will not forgive your sins. - Matthew 6:14-15 NIV

Since I didn't know when I was going to see any of the people at that table next, I emailed someone who is a respected leader at my church that was at that table, a letter of apology asking for forgiveness three days later. That was twelve days ago and I haven't received a response.

Some slanderous remarks were made against me a few years ago.  They came from someone that I respected as a mature Christian.  The allegations were derived from misconstrued remarks taken out of context. I apologized for the misconceptions, though not my fault, and asked for forgiveness.  As it is repeatedly brought back up, I continue to ask for forgiveness.

Forgiveness is not easy.  We've been hurt.  Someone has robbed us of our joy and even our integrity.  We've been shamed.  The command is clear.  If we desire the forgiveness of God, we must forgive those who have sinned against us.

As Christians, we claim the forgiveness of God through the death of Jesus for our sins.  So aren't Christians SUPPOSED to forgive?  Aren't they supposed to be different from an unforgiving world?  The answer to both is "Yes".  So why do mature Christians and Christians in leadership positions withhold forgiveness?

I don't know.  Clearly, that goes against what God desires of us.  All I can do is to forgive those who have not forgiven me, just as God has forgiven me.  That is the mandate.  That is love.

It's Not Enough

It's now two days past Christmas. Another Christmas in a string of Christmases spent in being single. It's the same for several of my other friends, but especially for one who has just gone through a break up in her relationship. I didn't know what to say to her. It was the same for those that are waiting for God to bless them with the intimate relationships that they desire. I just didn't know what to say to them. Everything that I could think of seemed so shallow. It wasn't enough.

When I think about my situation, I want so deeply to buy into what I've been told in my favorite Scripture. In Hebrews 13:5, God says, "Never will I leave you, never will I forsake you." He's telling me He is always with me. He's telling me that I am not alone. He's telling me that I have a relationship and companionship with Him. I want so badly to believe this. But there is one thing that keeps me from believing this one hundred percent. I can't physically touch God. Unless this happens, I can't believe it one hundred percent. Reading and believing this Scripture is not enough.

I know God loves me and my friends. I know He hears each of the prayers that we lift up to Him regarding our relationship status. I know He grieves with us for the pain in our hearts and for what is lacking in our lives. I know He wants to bless us with the relationships that we desire. I know that He does not want us to go through life single. My faith helps me to believe all of this. It's just not enough.

I want an intimate relationship with a woman here and now. I want to sense the scent of a woman. I want to feel her soft hands in mine. I want to feel the warm embrace of the woman that loves me unconditionally for who I am. I want to hear the soft, alto voice of the woman who believes in a loving God as I do. I want to hear the uplifting, joyous laugh of the woman that will enjoy each humorous moment that we can share together. I want to feel her soft kiss on my lips. I want to look deeply into her eyes and share her joys and sorrows. Until this happens, it's just not enough.