My question to you is this: what ideas can you think of that would be appropriate for such a period?  I am thinking something that either saves time or takes the pressure off parents rushing for school supplies, or something that might be fun for the kids who are dealing with the shock of classes and homework again, or maybe something school-related that blesses a school.  Ideas please!

The slightly longer answer is a little more technical.  We did an update to the software that keeps the blog and it didn’t finish the update correctly.  Plus, in an effort to save money we decided to move the blog to a new server.  Now, we are taking advantage of the “do-over” to change up the look and feel of the blog.  This is something we wanted to do a long time ago, but we’re seizing the day now.

So, stay tuned for the island paradise picture top right to change.  And also, expect my blog posts to get shorter.  I just noticed after importing that I get a bit… long-winded at times.

And shortly I’ll have a more amazing announcement for y’all.  The word has been trickling out, but I’ll explain how it all went down shortly.

When we began to dream about planting a church in Alberta, one of the questions we had to answer was, “how would we support ourselves in Alberta?”  That question could have been answered in many ways.   We are immensely grateful for everything that Grace Brethren Canada have done to help us get where we are.  We can’t imagine where we would be without their investment into us through mentorship, leadership opportunities, chances to join in to the larger Grace Brethren family through participation in ministeriums, district and national conferences, and so many other little ways that have gotten us to where we are today.  Still that being said, the reality is with more and more church plants across North America, regardless of organizational affiliation, full-time support is not possible.  Grace Brethren Canada is still a small organization and can only support so many full-time staff.

So, when we considered how we would support ourselves, we realized that God had gifted us with several different options.  One opportunity which remains as a backup plan is seeing Cheryl utilize her bachelor’s of Nursing degree and broad experience in mental health nursing to obtain employment in that field.  However, this remains a backup as with 3 children under 3 in the home, they need a mother’s love right now the most.  Myself, I have a background in several fields, but some skillsets require updating to be employable in the field (such as forestry and computer & network support).  In looking at my last 9 years in particular, God has been building in me a skillset which emphasizes sales.  Interestingly, the particular field in which I have honed these skills has been in working closely with real estate agents across the USA and Canada, helping them do their businesses better.  It set me up for considering a new career in real estate.

Real Estate is a field that has a lot of short and long-term potential.  Short term, it is a business that builds on itself, and if done with diligence can easily support our family.  Long term it has two benefits: the first is scalability: as God builds His church, His people will require more time.  Real Estate can be easily scaled to fit in with the time demands as the church can begin to support us.  The second long-term advantage is that a successful real estate agent can employ others to help grow the business.  Assistants can be brought on to help which are also scalable positions – which can then in turn possibly help to support church planting interns while they grow to plant the next wave of churches to come after.  This supports not just a congregation here, but also the long-term goals of Grace Brethren Canada: to see churches planted all across this vast nation!

So, back to today.  Having completed my exams, the next step is to onboard with a local real estate company.  God has already blessed us with a solid relationship with the manager of the Century 21 office.  The man is a Christian and an elder of his church.  He has lived in Medicine Hat for over 40 years and has many connections, and the ability to help me grow my business as quickly as possible.  I have already explained to him my vision of growing a business for God to see new churches started and he is fully supportive of our goals.  This is an absolute Godsend as many real estate managers are only interested in how many sales you make, and care only how you can generate wealth for themselves.  With a money-centered manager, it would be hard to proceed with our vision but with the man God has prepared for us, we are very excited to get going.

The reality is that starting a real estate business costs money.  There is business software needed to manage all the tools we need such as communications, marketing, advertising, and prospects.  There are marketing items like signs, publicity pieces, business cards, and more needed to be purchased through the company.  There will need to be advertising purchased to raise my profile in the community.  We are believing God for all these funds but we believe that God also wants to work through His Body.  So here we are, laying these needs before you, and asking you to consider partnering with us to get our real estate business launched successfully.  Here is a breakdown of the expenses that will be entailed:

For those of you in the USA, you might consider a move to real estate to be foolhardy given the hard economic conditions especially surrounding foreclosures, short sales and such of that nature. In fact, while Canada’s housing market did take a hit as the recession hit, it has in most areas recovered. Alberta was hit harder than some provinces, and the market is slower here but it is by no means as bad as it is in many areas of the USA. There is still a lot of reason for optimism in Alberta, not least of which is the largest driver of employment and wealth here is in Oil, and with oil sitting above $80 per barrel right now, this province is well positioned to flourish in the recovery.

Join us in initiating the next stage our our church planting effort. If you are in the USA you can participate through GBCanada USA and you will be receipted for a charitable donation. Please follow the link to help. If you are in Canada, you can participate through Canadahelps.org and you will likewise be receipted for a charitable donation for your income tax return.  We need your help urgently at this point, as the outlay for these expenses will cut significantly into our savings which we are living on until the real estate business begins to produce income.  Thanks again for your prayers and encouragement on our journey.  We look forward to reporting on what God has in store for expanding His Kingdom in Medicine Hat!

I say family because I really feel that is the best analogy for what it’s like.  Some relatives you never knew you had, you love them just the same and look forward to learning about how God is working in their lives.  Other relatives may live far away and you long for every chance to reconnect with them.  Others live nearby and perhaps just the busyness of life keeps you from spending more time together.  It was family reunion time in Cincinatti, and it was a blessing!

In retrospect it appears that there was two major themes to this conference.  One was reaching out to Ethnic America.  We took in four workshops yesterday.  It is admirable this focus, because immigration in the USA and Canada is occurring at such a ferocious pace that the Church needs to step into this opportunity to reach out to the World at our doorstep.  When most immigration occurred from “Christian” nations, the churches filled as immigrants arrived.  But now, most immigration to North America is from nations who have no interest in church, but do wish, like we all do, to feel welcomed, to learn what it means to be citizens.  There is nobody who argues that the best opportunity for people to make life-changing decisions is at times when they are dealing with major crises – moving across the face of the earth is a crisis.  I can’t wait to see the fruit of these seminars being borne, and certainly it helped us look harder at the opportunities that are there in Medicine Hat.

The other big emphasis was wrestling with some big issues about the direction of the Fellowship and what family really means in this context.  That wrestling will go on, and we are excited to be a part of the voices that are calling the family to a common sense of purpose and a recognition of the reality of family.  It is easy to think of church as a non-profit business, and membership in the Fellowship as a marketing alliance, to be benefited from until it is inconvenient then discarded for another alliance.  I think that God is pretty clear in his Word that Christians are family, and the Church is one family.  This applies to the relationship between churches as well.  I think we need to guard against wordly business perpectives that merely ask “what’s in it for me?”  I am reminded of a great American who said about 50 years ago, “Ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country.”  I think that for those many people who are questioning the cost of investment in events like  National Conference, regional focus retreats, or even ministerium, need to turn that around, and ask themselves, “What am I contributing?”  The fellowship is the greater when each voice chooses to participate in the conversation, chooses to contribute their gifts to the whole.  The reward for this act is, as Jeff Bogue so eloquently demonstrated, is to become part of the sledgehammer, breaking the gates of hell!

For myself, I can’t imagine being involved in a fellowship where I wasn’t contributing to something larger.  I think back on everything about my walk with Christ and it’s always been about that.  When He became Lord of my life, He was ushering me into His Kingdom, and giving me a place in a grand plan that began before time: some have pictured it in Joel’s Army terms.  Some have pictured it as guerilla warfare in the Kingdom of This World.  It could even be pictured in terms like the smuggling of people out of slavery and into freedom (with a nod to the Underground Railroad Museum here in Cincinatti).  But I became a part of that.  As I have grown in Christ, there has never been a question that I need to give everything I have to offer to this enterprise.  To give to the larger means I am seeing something done that I could never do on my own.  I am not satisfied with acting on my own strength, because I know it is meager.  I lend my strength to my local church, and the church as a whole sees souls won to Christ – many more than I could ever win on my own.  My church lends its strength to other larger enterprises, and we see even more souls won to Christ and Jesus’ name lifted up in our nation.  When my fellowship acts as one, we will do things that can’t even be imagined.  But stepping back, not giving my all, thinking I can act in my own interests and further the Kingdom more?  I just don’t see how that makes sense.

What I am thinking about is carrying this conference, and this renewed recognition of family back to our local area.  We need more family in the Fellowship – we also need more family in the Northwest District.  We need all hands on deck to give the gifts they have to the larger whole and see God use us in ways beyond understanding.  I want to work harder than ever at connecting those I know in, and sharing my excitement and love for this family.  It is a wonder and a privelege that God brought us into this Fellowship.  I can’t wait to see what comes next.

I just finished a whirlwind day with a drive out to Calgary and back, then racing around picking up dorm keys for our guests, sound equipment for our large group meetings, and checking out the space at the Cultural Centre. Now Cheryl has journeyed out to shop for all the food we will need for Saturday night and the refreshments for Sunday night! I must say this is an educational experience to get all this in place. I am extremely grateful for all the hard work that Philip Bryant and Herb and Sharon Carr have put into this adventure to get it to where it is now, and I know we will be relying on them for the rest of the week. There will be meals to cook, teaching times every morning, three service projects to bless the community and those who serve it, and survey work where we will be learning about the people of this community in a direct way.

Watch this space for pictures and updates as we go forward this week, or if you are on facebook, search for “Great Canadian Adventure Medicine Hat” and you will find the event page which will be updated more frequently! We are going to do our best to keep this space, the GCA page, and the “Church Plant Medicine Hat” page all up to date as we go forward. Please pray for us throughout this week: we desire to see interest in a new church here, and to discover potential core members from the community who desire to be a part of an exciting vision.

New patterns:

• Trying to establish new mealtime patterns involving family participation in cleanup.  So many things slid by the wayside in the runup to the move.  We need to get back into that routine.
• Establishing new life patterns for the boys.  In Surrey we never really felt safe letting our kids wander around the neighbourhood.  Also, people tended to race by the front of our house so you never really knew.  Here, the driving is slower on our street and there is the big greenspace and pond right across the street from us.  Three kids were playing across the street yesterday so we released the boys.  They had a blast playing and visiting their new friends all day.  New to us and new to them.
• Figuring out where we will shop.  One thing that has been impressed upon us at recent events (like the Church Planting Congress in Calgary last November, and at two pastor’s retreats I have been on this year) is the value of doing life in your local community.  There are lots of nearby grocery store options, but we need to pick one and stick with it, developing relationships with the employees along the way.  We need to be “regulars”.  They need to know our “usual”.  From that comes friendship, relationship and opportunity for the Gospel to begin to shine through.
• Organization – as we unpack, things are going in new places.  We get a do-over in terms of organization.  We are rethinking where things go in the kitchen, and we are looking at our garage as a chance to implement good sturdy shelves and keep things in places.  I’ve been eyeing my toolboxes and wondering how many things would be better to hang than to stuff, so I can find them again.

I am amazed at myself at how intentionally living is spurring me to do things I could not do before.  For example, I am generally horrible at remembering names.  Since we’ve arrived, I remember Jeff, our appliance sales guy at Future Shop, who hasn’t been to church in 10 years and had a bad experience, and has a girlfriend of 2 years.  I remember Kris and Karla, the parents of  two our boys’ friends, 8 and 5.  I remember (a little more vaguely) Robin and his wife (Christie I think?  Haven’t met her yet), who attend church at the Link, and he is building one side of our fence (our neighbour hired him).  Their sons are 5 and 2.  There’s My neighbour to the left, Dave, and our neigbour who hasn’t moved in yet that I have met, to our right, Wayne.  Then his neigbour to the right I just met today: Shane, Karen, and their three: a girl of 8, and two boys 5 and 3.  Across the street, I haven’t met the adults officially, but their son who is 8 is over again right now to get Dylan.

So now the prayers begin on how to show Jesus to my neighbours who don’t know Him and to team up with my neigbours who do.  Please begin praying for these neighbours and that we have a chance to share our hope with them.

I struggle with “freaky coincidence”, though that may be all it is.  But two wildly different instruments playing the same tune bears closer look.

Before we go on, I must warn you: if you haven’t been to Cracked.com before, the language they use is… colourful.  So if you’re easily offended by that kind of thing you may not want to venture there.  However, the article I read there is called “7 Reasons the 21st Century is Making You Miserable“.  In this piece the writers make a number of very good points about the effects of the way newsmedia operates, the way social networking affects us, and the end result of completely reshaping the way we interact (or don’t interact) with people.  To spoil the article for you, the 7 reasons are:

1.  We don’t have enough annoying strangers in our lives

Money quote:

“Get stuck in the waiting room at the doctor? No way we’re striking up a conversation with the smelly old man in the next seat. We’ll plug the iPod into our ears and have a text conversation with a friend or play our DS. Filter that annoyance right out of our world….As long as you have needs, you’ll have to deal with people you can’t stand from time to time. We’re losing that skill, the one that lets us deal with strangers and tolerate their shrill voices and clunky senses of humor and body odor and squeaky shoes.”

2.  We don’t have enough annoying friends either

Money quote:

“Fifty years ago, you had to sit in a crowded room to see a movie. You didn’t get to choose; you either did that or you missed the movie… Yet, on the whole, people back then were apparently happier in their jobs and more satisfied with their lives. And get this: They had more friends…. It turns out, apparently, that after you get over that first irritation, after you shed your shell of “they listen to different music because they wouldn’t understand mine” superiority, there’s a sort of comfort in needing other people and being needed on a level beyond common interests.”

3.  Texting is a (not good adjective comparing texting to fecal matter) way to communicate

Money quote:

“So did we really need a study to tell us that more than 40 percent of what you say in an e-mail is misunderstood? Well, they did one anyway.

How many of your friends have you only spoken with online? If 40 percent of your personality has gotten lost in the text transition, do these people even really know you?”

4.  Online company only makes us lonelier

“When someone speaks to you face-to-face, what percentage of the meaning is actually in the words, as opposed to the body language and tone of voice? Take a guess.

It’s 7 percent. The other 93 percent is nonverbal, according to studies… That’s the crux of the problem. That human ability to absorb the moods of others through that kind of subconscious osmosis is crucial. Kids born without it are considered mentally handicapped…. And worse, if I do enough of my communicating this way, my mood never changes. After all, people keep saying nasty things to me! Of course I’m depressed! It’s me against the world!”

5.  We don’t get criticized enough

“I’ve been insulted lots, but I’ve been criticized very little. And don’t ever confuse the two. An insult is just someone who hates you making a noise to indicate their hatred. A barking dog. Criticism is someone trying to help you, by telling you something about yourself that you were a little too comfortable not knowing… E-mail and texting are awesome tools for avoiding that level of honesty. With text, you can respond when you feel like it. You can measure your words. You can pick and choose which questions to answer. The person on the other end can’t see your face, can’t see you get nervous, can’t detect when you’re lying… Gone are the common quirks, humiliations and vulnerabilities that real friendships are built on.”

6.  We’re victims of the outrage machine

“But how did we wind up with a more negative view of the world than our parents? Or grandparents? Back then, people didn’t live as long and babies died more often… Every site is in a dogfight for traffic (even if they don’t run ads, they still measure their success by the size of their audience) and so they carefully pick through the wires for the most inflammatory story possible… There effectively is no “mass media” any more… When we can’t even agree on the basic facts, the differences become irreconcilable.”

7.  We feel worthless, mostly because we are worth less

“There’s one advantage to having mostly online friends, and it’s one that nobody ever talks about:

They demand less from you… The problem is you are hard-wired by evolution to need to do things for people. Everybody for the last five thousand years seemed to realize this and then we suddenly forgot it in the last few decades. We get suicidal teens and scramble to teach them self-esteem. Well, unfortunately, self-esteem and the ability to like yourself only come after you’ve done something that makes you likable.”

I got into a conversation with my good friend Adam about the death of postmodernism.  Postmodernism is a description of the zeitgeist – the spirit of our society.  It means (and this nutshell is so small you really need to read something else to get it properly) that people view everything as relative, there is no objective truth.  This has far-reaching ramification effecting how we live our lives.  It has been troubling to a lot of people because when you’re in the truth business, and the person you’re trying to show the truth doesn’t even think that truth exists, you’ve got a tricky conversation to navigate.

What Alan Kirby contends, (the aforementioned Harvard professor) is that this idea, while still prevalent, is dying, being replaced by what he calls pseudomodernism.

“But somewhere in the late 1990s or early 2000s, the emergence of new technologies re-structured, violently and forever, the nature of the author, the reader and the text, and the relationships between them…

Its successor, which I will call pseudo-modernism, makes the individual’s action the necessary condition of the cultural product… Big Brother… would not exist materially if nobody phoned up to vote its contestants off. Voting is thus part of the material textuality of the programme – the telephoning viewers write the programme themselves…

The cultural products of pseudo-modernism are also exceptionally banal, as I’ve hinted…  Much text messaging and emailing is vapid in comparison with what people of all educational levels used to put into letters. A triteness, a shallowness dominates all…

This technologised cluelessness is utterly contemporary: the pseudo-modernist communicates constantly with the other side of the planet, yet needs to be told to eat vegetables to be healthy, a fact self-evident in the Bronze Age. He or she can direct the course of national television programmes, but does not know how to make him or herself something to eat – a characteristic fusion of the childish and the advanced, the powerful and the helpless…

This pseudo-modern world, so frightening and seemingly uncontrollable, inevitably feeds a desire to return to the infantile playing with toys which also characterises the pseudo-modern cultural world. Here, the typical emotional state, radically superseding the hyper-consciousness of irony, is the trance – the state of being swallowed up by your activity. In place of the neurosis of modernism and the narcissism of postmodernism, pseudo-modernism takes the world away, by creating a new weightless nowhere of silent autism. You click, you punch the keys, you are ‘involved’, engulfed, deciding.”

I shouldn’t have tried to summarize.  Read the whole thing yourself, at least twice.  The first time I didn’t really grasp it.  The second time through it sank in.  Pseudomodernism points out the transition to a fake reality.  A reality where you think you are involved in life, relationships, but you really aren’t.  Both articles touch on how fear and polarization are affecting us, and the end result is an isolation, a withdrawal from the life that humanity has lived for eons into a safe bubble where nobody can hurt you because we have thousands of miles of fiber-optic lines between us.

What is my point?  Both the lowbrow and the highbrow are seeing the writing on the wall.  We are deconstructing culture as we speak and moving into a space where we are more consumer-driven, not individualized but isolated, compartmentalized, and cut off from what used to be known as life.  The horrors that are beginning to play out in our young people need to be changed and the only remedy is recognizing where we are going as a culture and making voluntary choices to step back.

We need people.  We cannot afford to let the zeitgiest tell us how to live.  The Bible, the heilegegeist (hope that’s accurate German) speaks to life as it should be lived.  In relationship.  Loving others deliberately in obedience to God drags us off Facebook, off our phones.  We must look at our technology and recognize where we have allowed it to take us places that are destructive.  We must guard against viewing them as anything other than tools.  Facebook is necessary to communicate with but when we think that wishing someone “Happy Birthday” on their wall in any way involves us in their lives we are dead-wrong.  Throwing them a real birthday party, and taking the time to actually travel to where they are, that is what it means to be in authentic relationship.  Seeing them smile when they receive a gift, not just sending them an e-card.  If we want to know why we are so depressed, maybe it is because in our use of convenience we never get to see that smile, receive that hug.

Being in the presence of people.  We must make this our intention and begin the fight against the use of technology which insidiously isolates us, both physically and emotionally.

What becomes clear is that in places like the Jerusalem of Acts 2, where there is a well-seeded, pre-evangelized culture, the Gospel can be communicated with relative ease, and the primary question that the church planter must answer is:  “Brothers, what shall we do?” (Acts 2:37). In such communities, the newly informed believers can then be quickly grafted onto the new church.  However, in most of the urban centers of America, Canada and among many cultural groups where the “soil of souls” is an unseeded, unevangelized culture, we will most likely be required to answer the question, “What is this babbler trying to say?” (Acts 17:18).

If a planter finds himself in Athens-like Canada, or one of the increasingly pluralistic urban centers of America, he may be frustrated in his attempts to launch his church through what has become the “traditional” method of preview services followed by a “launch large” public service. In pre-Christian Athens (Canada or America), the planter may discover a Ministry Focus Group that requires a continuing conversation before they can come to belief.  The results that can then be expected in this kind of context are, “Some of them sneered…others said, ‘We want to hear you again on this subject,’ (and) a few men became followers…and believed.” (From “Step 2 for Church Planting” on Churchplantingvillage.net)

What puzzles me is the pessimism expressed in this passage.  The undertone is, “Don’t expect too much.  It’s just not going to work that way.”  What is it about Canada that makes it so resistant to the Christian message?  I think about how when Paul was sent through Asia, to Greece, and even to Rome, he was preaching and building churches in cultures that were completely uninformed about the God of the Jews let alone with Jesus Christ.  But yet, within a hundred years, some areas were predominantly Christian and the Roman Empire was approaching 10% Christian.  This means that somehow, those early churches were able to overcome this “slow growth” expectation and see God work in incredible ways to bring people to himself.  What happened?

If you’re here reading this blog, the odds are good that you believe that God is building His church and you want to support in any way you can our work to build a new church in Medicine Hat.  Please pray specifically that God would give us insight to see what we can do, but more that God would bring about the conditions that will allow for the seed of the Gospel to spread quickly and germinate into a harvest in Medicine Hat!

We’ve worked hard to stage it, to clean it, to make it look nice, to add to its value.  It seemed like it just wasn’t enough.  The look of our house was a great draw, but because the interior has never been as interesting as the exterior, the letdown effect was holding us back.

A family which lived just a few houses away recently sold their house and was shopping around for a new home.  They always loved the look of our house and were one of the first people to contact our realtor when our sign went up.  Their initial offer was much below our asking price, but at the time we didn’t realize just how much updating would be needed to be comparable to other houses in that range.  We rejected it at that time, waiting to see what would happen last weekend at our open house.

The week before the open house, I was in Medicine Hat looking at homes.  Instead of building and waiting for construction to complete, I was considering if a home recently finished with an open basement wouldn’t work for us as we could finish the basement to accommodate the kid’s bedrooms.  I did discover one that would almost suit.  But Cheryl didn’t like it.  Then, after I got back, she looked in more depth at it and decided that it would work for us.  It is just built and nobody has lived there.  The builder is a good quality builder.  The layout fulfills about 90% of what we thought we needed and had a couple of interesting extras that we never thought about.  We wanted to put an offer in but the builder would not move forward unless we came in with no conditions (waiting for the sake of our current home, etc.)  This put the pressure on us to find a buyer – but who would come in with no conditions?  Faith becomes a lot more real when you’re trusting God for what almost seems impossible.

The open house was insanely busy.  I’ve never head of 18 families coming through a 2 hour open house before.  But, they all saw the amount of updating “needed” as a major obstacle.

The first family didn’t, because the husband was a general contractor and planned to do the work himself.  They saw all the potential, and were actually minimizing the labour costs in their estimate.

They had a couple of other homes to consider, and they told us they would have an answer for us Monday night.  Monday came and went and no response.

Tuesday came and went… until Cheryl went to bed last night.  Then, at 10:30 pm our realtor calls.  They want to give us their offer.  That’s fine.  I am still awake.

11:30 passes.

At midnight, my realtor reaches our house.  She looks exhausted, emotionally and physically.  She comes in and says that they are presenting this offer with no subjects – no financing to arrange, no home to sell.  No inspection necessary.  No disclosure statement necessary.  They had visited twice, and as a contractor, he felt he knew the home to make an offer with confidence.

The offer was low.  So low, our realtor was in tears.  She felt she had let us down by not getting a better price.  We let her know that she had done a fantastic job – the realities of the home simply would not permit the price we had hoped for.  The offer was acceptable – ut after the interest shown at the open house and the poor results of that, we had to consider – would we get a better offer by staying in the market?

And God had brought us the unconditional offer we needed to get the home in Medicine Hat.  We prayed over it, and signed.

On Sunday we made a public appeal to our church for help – we are 2 weeks away from our self-imposed deadline for listing our house for sale.  Yes, it’s that close already!  We have lots to do to prepare our home, and because of the financial step back we took to give ourselves opportunity to do fulltime ministry, we do not have the cash to do all the repairs we need to, to maximize the value in the home.

So we asked for help in terms of labour, and also in terms of supporting specific needs financially.  We had several people step forward that morning offering their hands and that was a blessing.  We rejoice for the people of Community of Hope who love to give of their hands with gladness.

But we didn’t hear any expressions of help in terms of money.  That was a little discouraging at first, but having come this far, I can’t not trust God to come through.

So a few weeks ago God began to disturb me to pray more – more timewise and also more energywise.  It was that word, fervency that was lacking, the Lord seemed to be telling me.  So that day I got down on my knees and prayed.  It was good – that day was really blessed – I spent so much time in prayer that day (even apart from that time on my knees) and God encouraged my heart – ever just have that feeling that you are “filled with the Spirit”?  That was how I felt that day – like I was in sync with God.  It was very cool.

That brings us to today.  I felt God prompting me to return to my knees again, but I kind of put it off for a bit. Then, as I was doing my usual routines on the internets, I stumbled into sin.  I could pretend it was an accident, but choices were necessary to get there.  After that happened, I knew I needed to get back where he wanted me in the first place.  I prayed and asked for forgiveness for that sin, and asked him to separate me from that sin – as far as the east is from the west.  Then I began to bring our needs to him, and as I was praying for more people to rise up to help, I was prompted to pray for two people in particular, by name.  I did so – not normally praying that way it seemed weird.

As I stood up from the floor the phone rang.  It was one of the men I had prayed for!  What’s more, he was calling to say that he would take care of two of the items that needed financial support to complete!  I praised God on the phone with him and told him he was a direct, immediate answer to prayer.  So I am sitting here a little in awe of my God who loves me so much that he has leaped to my aid even as I prayed.

Be encouraged.  Prayer works, but take a lesson from me.  You need to do your part -

1.  Seek to do God’s will,

2.  Listen for His voice and obey it when you hear it,

3.  Confess your sins that you may be righteous before Him,

4.  And most importantly, PRAY and ASK!