Tag: prayer

With a Song in my Heart

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Speak to one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody with your heart to the Lord. (Ephesians 5:19)

I love to whistle.  I do it a lot, often with out even thinking about it.  When my wife and I go shopping,  if we should go our separate ways in a store,  she can always find me by the sound of me whistling.  When I am working in my yard, riding a stationary bike, or driving our car.  I find my breathing adapts to the rhythms of whatever song is going on inside of my head.

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The Back Side of Nowhere

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Last week was my 100th blog entry.  It certainly doesn’t seem that long.  Nest week my wife and I will be celebrating our 43rd anniversary.  That time seems even shorter.  Yet there have been tough times along the way.  Each of us has faced times when Jesus seemed far away and our prayers seemed to be bouncing off the covering of heaven.  I think we all have had that experience at one time or another.  Our solution?  Find a quiet time and place to pray our way through it and then begin to do something to help others.

When Jesus had some of His most difficult times of trial,  He often left everyone and went someplace alone.  Whether it was to a mountain or to a garden, He needed to get to be alone to communicate with His Father

When Abraham was told by God to sacrifice Isaac, he took him up onto a mountain.  There God met him and by His mercy and grace provided another sacrifice.

Moses saw the burning bush when he was out by himself, looking for straying sheep. And later, he went up onto a mountain alone and received the commandments from God’s own hand.

The Hebrews had to wander in the  for forty years until they heard and obeyed what God had commanded.

Think of Jonah.  Talk about being alone in a unique place…yet there in the belly of a great fish, God met him.

There’s nothing magical about being somewhere alone with God, but what it does is to take away all distractions and, if we’re willing, to forget them for a time, the issues and worries of life.

While this blog is shorter than usual, the message is still true.  If you are having a hard time getting through to God, get alone with Him somewhere and lay your troubles at His feet.  To help you leave them there, forget worrying about yourself and begin to pray for others.  Then give feet to your prayers by doing something for them.

If you’re serious about it, God will take away that imagined barrier you feel is blocking your prayers.  So go where you need to go to be alone with God.  And pray through the dry time knowing that He promised that you can always hears us and always answers.

Snailmail? Email? …… Kneemail!

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My wife and I recently had a disagreement with the United State Post Office.  We live on a cul-de-sac, which is extremely difficult for the local public works department to plow during the winter.  We’ve never had this problem before, but with all the snow that we’ve this year, the plow trucks ran out of places to put the snow.  So once the piles got as high as they could make them, they had to start extending the mountain into the cul-de-sac itself.  This resulted in the mountain of snow extending almost to our walkway.  It so high, we couldn’t even see our neighbor’s house from the road.  Despite the Postal Service’s unofficial motto that states,  Neither snow, nor rain, nor heat, nor gloom of night, stays these couriers from the swift completion of their appointed rounds,  it seems that, in our postal district, this doesn’t apply to mailboxes like mine.  Our box was shoveled out, but the mail truck driver couldn’t get to it with one pass.  He/she would have had to back into the cleared area or have exited the truck to reach the box.  So, we couldn’t get our mail for about 3 weeks.  Another week, and the Post Office was going to begin to charge us $53 to open a temporary box.  Our public works department came through at the last-minute and removed the snow and our mail was once again delivered to our mailbox.  Small wonder that so many people are communicating in other ways.

In our case, we now send birthday cards, anniversary cards, and most Christmas cards via emails or Facebook.  And if we want to reach them quicker, we can text them.  It seems that technology is increasing so fast, that by the time we’ve mastered the last new method,a new one (and sometimes more than one) has been invented.

Yet each of these methods can fail.  I’ve already mentioned my experience with the Post Office.  But both email and Facebook can be problematic as well.  The connection to the internet can go down or your can lose power.  With text messages, some one’s phone may be turned off or the battery may need to be charged.

The only communication that’s guaranteed is that when we pray, God always hears us and will always answer.  God always hears our prayers  (II Chronicles 20:27).  This is the confidence which we have before Him, that, if we ask anything according to His will, He hears us.  And if we know that He hears us in whatever we ask, we know that we have the requests which we have asked from Him (I John 5:14).  God’s answers everything we pray about and answers, yes, not yet, or I have something better in mind.  And our prayers need not be lengthy nor according to some precise formula.  For your Father knows what you need before you ask Him (Mathew 6:8).  And how often should we pray?  Pray without ceasing (I Thessalonians 5:17).  So, constantly be in communication with God, knowing that He hears you and will answer you according what is in your best interests.  This is an iron-clad guarantee that will never fail or be broken.

It doesn’t get much better than this.