You are currently browsing the category archive for the ‘Prayer’ category.
In the book Beloved, the main character, Sethe, wrestles with how she can prevail over the trauma of slavery while the memories are still alive and well. Many of us have this struggle. How do we overcome the past, when it still holds influence over us?
I’ve talked before about what many wise men and women have said and written…you don’t need to erase the past or block it out, or forget it. You need to embrace it, use it, and let it appropriately inform your future. Who we are is a direct result of where we’ve been and what we’ve experienced. Good. Bad. Ugly. Every mistake, every poor choice, every act of abuse or betrayal or trespass, it’s all been used to design you and equip you for your God-given purpose.
This means many of us need to closely examine how we treat the past, because we’ve likely made the mistake of letting memories (particularly bad ones) continue to derail us in our daily lives. To hold us down and oppress us. To define us. To strip hope, peace and joy from us. To poison our thoughts. To haunt our dreams.
We have to stop using our memory as a torture device, or a shaming technique, as evidence to substantiate the lies we tell ourselves, as an escape from reality, as an excuse for a pity party, as a cage that renders us helpless and depressed, as a way to keep score and justify our victim hood, or as a glass ceiling that limits our future potential.
Instead, we should leverage our memory positively to retain and recall the lessons we’ve learned, to keep us humble before God, to keep us filled with gratitude, as a means of instruction for others and ourselves, as a counter balance to irrational present thoughts or future tripping, as a detailed ledger of our strengths and our weaknesses, as a way to measure how far we’ve come and how far we still need to go.
Memories can be an extraordinarily powerful tool for our healing and our health. They can also be a cancer that gnaws at us from the inside and blinds us from all that is beautiful about ourselves, our lives and the world around us. Some things just go. They don’t hang around in our memory. Some things do. I strongly believe any memories that are strong enough to stay with us (good or bad or ugly) are to be used for a greater purpose. They have magical powers waiting to be harnessed. But like any superhero, we have to use that power for good and not in destructive ways.
Just a quick word of encouragement…regardless of how much trauma lives on in your memory…today you are blessed beyond measure. Air filling your lungs. Beauty filling your eyes. Music filling your ears. You can choose joy. You can leave the pain behind while you carry its scars. You can actually use the past to create more of the joy you seek now. It’s all about perspective. Trust me, it’s not easy. It’s a daily discipline. I’m not fully executing on it at the moment, which is why I needed to get it down in a blog post and place it in front of me. I needed a reminder today. Maybe you did too?
I posted this picture on my Facebook page earlier this week. Here’s the story behind it and what it means to me.
Several months ago, I attended a weekend retreat with a group of men. We processed a lot of emotions, feelings, past traumas and basically just worked really hard to get a better handle on our fears, wounds, resentments and character defects. It was a pretty intense two days, and there were many deep conversations, inward reflections and buckets of tears.
I left that weekend with a better appreciation for who I am as a man, a clearer view of how my past has shaped me (for better and for worse) and what I need to specifically work on as I stepped forward with my life. I also brought home a souvenir from all my tears. A stye in my right eye.
At first, I just ignored it and assumed it would subside over time. It did not. I went to a couple of eye doctors, who gave me instructions for healing it, including taking medications and applying a warm compress. I tried both, but neither made a difference. So, I ignored it some more. Then, I went to an ophthalmologist for a closer look. He advised me to follow up with their surgical specialist to see about removing it. I scheduled an appointment. Rescheduled it. Cancelled it again. Scheduled it a third time. Finally, I went.
After a long wait, the doctor finally called me back and explained the procedure. They would deaden the eyelid with a cream and then a big needle. Then they would pry it open with a clamp, lacerate it, scrape out all the stuff inside the stye and then cauterize it back together. And I’d be as good as new. Risks would include infection or possibly damaged vision (although that was very rare). She asked me if I wanted to continue with the procedure.
I paused and seriously contemplated saying no thanks, I’m good, have a nice day. But I proceeded. I sat in the room forever waiting on the doctor to come back and actually perform the surgery. I almost left the room twice. I was filled with dread. I hate things near my eyes. I hate needles. I hate any kind of medical procedure. I hated everything about this. But I stayed. And waited. And finally, the doctor was working on me.
At the end of the visit, I was in pain, bandaged up, looking like I lost a fight in a big way. But the stye was removed. And in a few days, I’ll be, hopefully, good as new.
This is so symbolic of my journey in recent months. There have been many moments where I had to choose to subject myself to extreme discomfort and pain to make positive steps in my life and to care for myself. I’ve had to do many challenging and hard things that previously I avoided at all costs. I had to purge myself of fears and hurts that I had resigned to live with and deal with forever. Things that, like my stye, weren’t incredibly easy to notice, at least not if you weren’t looking closely. But they were there nonetheless, having an impact.
If you’re trying to decide whether to deal with a problem in your life, whether it’s a stye, a sin or a sickness, let me share these 4 truths with you:
- It won’t go away. You aren’t going to wake up one day and be rid of it. You aren’t going to wait it out. It’s not going to just give up and leave you alone.
- It will only get worse. Sure, there’s a minimal chance that my stye would have shrunk over time, but it was far more likely to get bigger. Most of our problems are like that. They only get stronger and more hellish the longer we let them fester.
- It will hurt. When you decide to deal with it, you can bank on the fact that it won’t be pleasant. There will be pain and suffering. It will sting. You will ache.
- It will be worth it. When my eye is fully healed, I’ll be glad to no longer have the stye. It will be a relief. The temporary pain I endured will be a steep discount compared to the price I would have paid to avoid it and keep that puss pocket under my eyelid for the rest of my life.
If you made it this far in the post, you likely have a specific problem that has risen to the top of your mind. A problem you don’t want to deal with. A problem that might even seem like an annoyance at the moment, versus something that is an urgent need. But it’s there, and it’s been there. And it’s been nagging you, gnawing at you, getting bigger. Maybe it’s a tough decision you have to make. A wrong you need to make right. A confession that needs to take place. An act of forgiveness that is extra difficult. A sin you need to surrender. A wound you need to heal. A commitment you should make. Whatever it is, I urge you to take action. Take a step. Lean in! No matter how painful it might be. How scary it might seem. How overwhelmed you might feel. Take action. Take a step. Lean in!
As for me, I can see clearly now; my stye is gone! I hope you can say the same soon.
I am weary with my groaning; all night I make my bed swim; I drench my couch with tears. My eye wastes away because of grief. It grows old because of all my enemies. – Psalm 6:6
That was me. Word for word. I could not have said it better myself, and I was very surprised to stumble upon it this week during quiet time.
Restless through each night. Sleepwalking through each day. Feeling old, tired and defeated by the enemy. Numb. Hopeless. Stuck. That was me.
So what changed?
I got mad. I got even. And then I gave up.
The answer to my plight, as it turns out, was just a few chapters away in Psalm 4:4. It says, “Be angry and don’t sin,” and then, “Put your trust in the Lord.” In my words, that means get mad, get even and then give up.
One point of this passage is that we can’t sit in our shit (pardon my language). We must be moved. One commentary I read on this passage suggested that we need a “vehement commotion of the mind and heart.” We have to shake loose from the slumber. We have to wake up and get mad. We have to want it, badly. We have to feel something, whether it’s anger, grief, fear…we have to get fired up. We have to oppose the carelessness, numbing out and carnal security that comes from filling holes in our lives with idols and self-medication.
So, step one…get mad!
And then step two, positively respond to that emotion. Mediate on it. Calmly and objectively examine it. Get even, as in level-headed. Don’t be carried away by the emotion. Yeah, I have a lot of experience getting step one wrong. And I am equally qualified with not appropriately responding to emotions. But it’s how you get from there to here, or from here to there.
Luckily, there’s a step three to help with steps one and two. Give up. You do this by placing your trust in the Lord. Yeah, I know that sounds so cliche and cheeseballs. So Sunday School. But when you truly hand things over to God, truly surrender them, I’ve learned that good things happen. Crazy good things. Transformational things. You just have to give up!
Going back to the first passage in Psalm 6…that terribly dark picture of my former existence…take a look at how that Psalm ends. It says the Lord has heard me, my prayer, my supplication. He will receive it. He will turn my enemies back from me. That’s the promise.
This is the path I’m on, and let me tell you, it works. Feel what you’re feeling (get mad). Wake yourself up, and actually engage with the emotions that are bubbling up inside you. Appropriately respond to those emotions (get even). Examine where they are coming from, what they mean. Meditate on them. And then, hand them right on over to God (give up) and ask for Him to deliver. He will. He always does.
I’ve been reading a lot of Ecclesiastes lately. Re-reading it would be more exact. Although I’ve read it before, even blogged about it before, it speaks very differently to me now. For starters, the preface in my new Bible sets up what the book is all about, specifically defining what is meant by the term “vanity.” All this time, and I haven’t truly been defining that term properly.
According to my Bible, vanity is “the futile emptiness of trying to be happy apart from God.” I had previously associated that term with pride, vainness, self-centeredness, etc. Thinking about it as futile emptiness that comes from trying to satisfy yourself with anything other than God is much more powerful, and convicting, for my life. It is the definition of where I’ve been.
A few other parts and pieces from ECC that stood out this time through the scripture.
Chapter 1, Verse 18 – In much wisdom is much grief, and he who increases knowledge, increases sorrow.
This has been so true in my life. Stuffing my head with knowledge about what God wants without changing myself, internalizing His words, seeking His will, has left me miserable beyond belief. Similarly in Chapter 6, Verse 9 it says – All the labor of man is for his mouth, and yet the soul is not satisfied.
Chapter 7, Verse 13 – Consider the work of God; for who can make straight what He has made crooked?
And then in 14, In the day of prosperity be joyful, but in the day of adversity, consider that surely God has appointed one as well as the other…I’ve spent most of my life resisting God’s call, fighting his crooked path and trying to make it straight. Trying to avoid the adversity and just receive the prosperity. It doesn’t work like that.
Chapter 10, Verse 15 – The labor of fools wearies them, for they do not even know how to go to the city!
I work so hard and stress so much, and He says, “Hey, you know you aren’t actually accomplishing anything. You are just wearing yourself down and taking yourself out of the game. And still you’ve done less than nothing. But that’s ok, because I’ve got it.” In chapter 9, verse 7 it says basically to chill out because “God has already accepted your works.” God will order my steps. He will light my path. When I go it alone, I’m just walking in darkness, feeling about as a blind man at midnight. By now, you’d think that I would know better than to think I know where the path leads.
Excited to read through ECC one more time. Wondering how God will speak to me differently the next round!
There’s a lot going on right now. Personally. Professionally. Spiritually. It’s easy to get distracted, or overwhelmed, and retreat back to a simpler, safer path, instead of continuing to press and lean in to what I’m hearing from God.
I’ve found a few really effective ways for me to keep perspective and stay in the moment. To not get led astray by all of the competing priorities and noise around me. To keep me focused on the work at hand.
The first thing I’ve done to keep myself focused is to find a consistent time to be with God. It’s not easy for me to sit still. It’s not easy for me to turn my mind off and hear from God without letting all my thoughts and worries get in the way. For a while, I used a daily commute to work as captive time to spend with God. Lately, I’ve been a daily dip in the tub. It’s not the most manly thing in the world, but in my warm bath with Bible or other book in hand, I’ve been able to be still and hear from God. And He has graciously rewarded my diligence by granting countless insights and connecting numerous dots for me.
The second thing I’ve done to keep myself focused is weeding my flowerbed. Also not very high on the manly man scale, right?
I used to absolutely despise anything related to working in the yard. Cutting grass. Planting stuff. Yuck. We have a large flowerbed that borders our back patio. I built it, and since that moment, it’s been the bane of my existence. Twice, weeds have overtaken it to an extent that forced us to hire professional assistance to get it back under control. As the warm weather once again summoned those insanely persistent demons from below, I begrudgingly spent an hour crouched beneath the bright sun, wrestling with the weeds, my hands gnarled and shredded, my lower back aching. About halfway through the process, I started to notice all the obvious parallels to my spiritual walk. How these weeds represent my sin, my wounds, my struggles.
These include the fact that if I don’t consistently tend my spiritual garden, the weeds will overtake it. The longer I put it off, the tougher they are to pull, the more damage they can do. Even if things look okay on the surface, they are waiting just below the surface. They are still there, lingering. If I don’t actively combat them, they will suffocate growth. They will create a tangled mess.
Since then, I’ve tended this flowerbed several times. And I’ve started looking forward to it. As I work, I visualize the struggles I have in my spiritual walk as these sinewy little green creatures. With each pesky weed that I uproot from the mulch, with every shrub I free from the clutches of these attackers, I meditate on how I can achieve the same thing spiritually. It’s been really hard on my hands and my back, but it’s been powerful for me in my relationship with God. Another opportunity for me to stay in tune with the fight I’m supposed to be fighting.
So there you have it. The keys to my spiritual focus lately are flowerbeds and bathtubs. My man card is in serious danger of being revoked right about now.
It’s tough to slow down. Especially during the holidays. But my wish to all of you out there is that you can find some time to meditate on God and what He’s trying to say to you.
There’s a great line in a song called Renegade by Jay-Z. It says:
Do you fools listen to music, or do you just skim through it?
What’s your answer? Are you listening to the insights God is sharing? Or are you just skimming through them? When you read His word, are you listening? When you pray, are you listening? Jay-Z wanted to know whether people were really “getting it”, whether they were actually extracting the message of the song or just nodding their heads and letting it melt into the background as white noise.
Every day, I’ve been asking myself the following. Am I listening? Or am I just going through the motions? Am I stopping long enough to actually receive a blessing from God, or am I rushing to the next thing on my list?
Asking these questions helps me slow down and get more from God.
So, my holiday wish (and I’m sure Jay has my back) is that we can all stop skimming and start listening. At least for a few days.
Merry Christmas!
This will be a short post, as I’m pressed for time. However, I feel compelled to write it because a. I’ve been pressed for time a lot lately and b. God is stirring within me.
So, I’ve been wrestling with a major decision the past few days. Driving myself crazy. Weighing pros and cons. Asking God what to do. Just a few moments ago, I paused and realized I might be praying for the wrong thing. It’s just like me as a broken, frail human to cut to the chase and ask God for the specific answer. Don’t make me work for it, God. Just hit me with it. Make the choice for me. Tell me what to do.
We all know the adage about teaching a man to fish. You give him a fish, he eats for a day. You teach him to fish, he eats for a lifetime. Same goes for decision making. What I actually should be praying for is the following:
1. The wisdom to make the best choice.
2. The faith to step into that choice with confidence.
3. The perseverance to see it through to completion.
4. The provision that God promises to always make available.
That’s a much taller order than just sending me the answer. Just like teaching someone to fish is a heck of a lot harder than snagging a bass or a catfish (my favorite) and handing it over.
The reason I haven’t felt comfortable with either road that lies in front of me is that I’ve been treating it like a coin in my hand, flipping it into the air and asking God to call heads or tails. That’s simply not the way to go about it. I am now praying for the above. Wisdom. Faith. Perseverance. Providence. That will lead to increased peace and unity with God, as well as a deepening of who I am in Him.
Earlier this week, I was frustrated and struggling. You may have noticed me heading to such a place in my recent posts. During a moment of quiet time, I specifically asked God to help me see why I was so stuck and why I was falling so fully back into my old routine, my old chains, my old idols. Over the course of 30 minutes, God spoke to me from Psalms and two “prophets” to help me make sense of things.
After my prayer for clarity, I opened my Bible. Randomly. And hit Psalms 132. In that passage, it says, “Surely I will not go into the chamber of my house, or go up to the comfort of my bed; I will not give sleep to my eyes or slumber to my eyelids until I find a place for the Lord. A dwelling place for the Mighty God…”
Insight #1: I’ve been cramping God’s style. I haven’t been making room for Him. Providing Him with space to work. That makes sense. I’ve talked before about how important it is to create space. I just haven’t been practicing the preaching.
I continued my pursuit, flipping back to passages in Jeremiah that I had read earlier in the week. In Jeremiah 4:14 it says, “…wash your heart from wickedness, that you may be saved. How long shall your evil thoughts lodge within you?” And then in verse 18, “This is your wickedness, because it is bitter, because it reaches to your heart.”
Insight #2: I need more elbow grease. Evidently, I still have some internal scrubbing to do. Sin digs deep. It sets in over time. You can’t stop scrubbing when things look clean on the surface. I am in a continual fight to take back my heart, as we all are. Yet another example of the need for patient endurance.
I finished up in Jeremiah, and then another prophet of sorts spoke to me. Jamie Oliver. My wife was in the background watching Food Revolution, tracking Jamie’s efforts to improve the health of Los Angeles by, as the title of the show suggests, revolutionizing their food. I was about to close my Bible when I heard Jamie shout out in his snippy yet endearing British accent, “You have to ask the question: Where does my food come from?” He was referring to the quality of the meat being used to make hamburgers. God used that simple phrase to give me one last truth to chew on.
Insight #3: I need to check my food supply. In addition to not making space for God, and failing to continually clean, I am also malnourished. I have been filling myself with junk food. Feeding on the same old lies. Curbing my hunger with things that temporarily satisfy but have no long-term value. It’s like eating bacon for breakfast, lunch and dinner (I could so do that by the way) and expecting to feel healthy and full of energy.
Ask and ye shall receive. God responded to me with a clear explanation of why I have been experiencing less than what He has for me. I’m not creating space. I’m not cleansing my heart. And in fact, I’m filling the space with additional junk, nourishing myself with things that will just further clog my spiritual arteries and further damage my heart.
I love that I’m in a place right now where I can troubleshoot with God. It’s so different from how I would have approached the situation in the past. Thanks to Jeremiah and Jamie for the words of wisdom. Now, if you will excuse me, I’m going to try and find something healthier than bacon for lunch.
Just wanted to share a simple prayer I’ve been using lately before seeking God’s wisdom or reading from His word.
God, please show me what you need to show me. And allow me to see it. Amen.
That’s really all it takes for me to get more out of a quiet time. Simply asking God to reveal. In the past, I’ve jumped into it without asking for the guidance I was seeking. It’s amazing how different I feel now after such a simple string of words.
Oh, sure. I’m only 36. I’m not scheduled for a midlife crisis for another 15, maybe 20 years. Well, I don’t want to wait that long, so it is time to stage one. Let me explain.
As I mentioned several days ago, I’ve been reading a compilation of work by Richard Rohr. I’m doing it all wrong. It is supposed to be a series of daily meditations. I’m reading a week’s worth at a time and stitching them together to search for greater meaning. I’ve always been an overachiever.
On Day 26 (which I’m reading on Day 3), Rohr poses the question, “Who are you really?” He suggests that a midlife crisis is the last real chance for men to make radical changes, and that God uses a midlife crisis to “shake the tree one last time and challenge us” to stop being who we think we’re supposed to be and finally be who we really are.
In an adjacent meditation, Rohr states that most men are not able or willing to step out of their comfortable, safe, predictable lives to truly respond to God’s calling, that most of us are unlike Peter, who immediately cast his net aside and left his livelihood of fishing upon being called by Jesus. And finally, Rohr says, “Many men are no longer on a journey. They’ve accepted the easy answers before they’ve struggled with the deep questions.”
To recap: I’m hiding behind easy answers to avoid the deeper, darker places. Likely unable to obey and respond to God’s call because I’m clinging to conformity and comfort. And it will take God rocking my foundation through midlife crisis to even have me truly consider dramatic change that would get me back on a real path. Ok, that’s a lot to process. Which is why you are supposed to read one of these a day I’m sure.
Those who have been following this blog know that I’ve been on a journey. That I’ve been trying to get to the deep questions and not settle for the easy answers. That I’ve struggled with completely surrendering to the call. That I’ve longed to better understand what the call is in the first place.
In all this time, through all this writing, I’ve not prayed to God to show me. To really show me. To let me have it. I’ve been afraid of what He might ask of me. What it might mean. Well, I’m tired of being on a journey without truly being on the journey. Tonight I am praying to see it, whatever it is, as clearly as I can see it. If it impacts my comfort, so be it. I’m unsettled. I’m nearing crisis. I don’t want to drag it out to midlife, and miss another two decades of doing what I’m supposed to be doing here.
I am still working on the book, and I’ll complete that regardless. But I don’t really feel like that is the big goal God has for me. I don’t think He’s being trying to tell me, “Write that book,” this entire time. I’ve written a lot about not being ready in the past. And I might still not be fully prepared. But I am ready. So, God, I pray, please show me who I truly am!
the way to (t)here 
What You Said