Hey!  All you who are interested in supporting our dream of planting a church in Alberta, please join us in prayer!  I have created a group on Kindle to track prayer requests and make public all kinds of prayers.  Prayer is the absolute first need of any endeavour of this type - prayer partners are needed before money, before team members, before planning, before everything.  Please sign up for a Kindle account and make it a part of your routine to check up with us as often as you can, and give us a spark every time you pray for a posted need. (You’ll find out what a spark is once you join Kindle!)

Thanks again, and God bless!

She is worth far more than rubies. (Proverbs 31:10)

Just this weekend I was reminded about how wonderfully gifted my wife is.  She is a counsellor, leader, organizer, coordinator, so many wonderful gifts that will be critical to our success as a pastoral couple.  At times I almost feel overshadowed at how effortless she makes these things seem.

This morning I was thanking God for her while walking the dog, and I thought about how God has gifted me as a leader as well.  We’re not the same.  And in some ways, I would have to say that she is much more charismatic - people give her leadership automatically - than I am.  While it would be easier to plant a church if I was that way too, instead of embroiling myself in sinful jealousy, I found my heart moving in a completely different direction.  I just found myself praying that I would offer no appeal that way.  That I would be invisible, that I would just be the kind of leader that points the way to Jesus.  If the church we begin is thought of as a house of God, and oh yeah, that guy Shane talks on Sundays, I would be satisfied.

So thanks, God, for my wife, and let me simply point the way to you.

So I decided to move off Mark Driscoll today and see if I could find some other sermons online. I googled John Piper, I’ve heard he’s a pretty good preacher. I found this:

As I watched it, I began to thank God that I didn’t teach that or believe that. But then God brought to my mind my prayers lately, and how much I’ve been begging of him for myself, my family, my needs, me me me. I don’t believe that I have earned blessing from God because of my faith in him, but I sure do act like it to a degree. I repent of that right now: of not begging God for others’ sake more than myself. For not thinking of others more than myself. Of thinking even subconciously that God is here to make my life easier.

I need him. And as the Mercy Me song says, “If that’s what it takes to praise you, then Jesus, bring the rain.”

Man, it just seemed like nothing went right yesterday.

I thought I was on top of things in the moment I got up.  Lots of time.  Daylight Savings and all.  I head downstairs at about 6:30am, take care of a few things, and “Waaah!”  Baby is awake (he usually sleeps in until 8am or so).

Spend the next half hour cleaning him up, changing his outfit, apply cream for the nasty rash he has right now, and attempting to feed him.  Then the other boys all get up.  I still manage to get out the door to take the dog for a walk, with 25 minutes to spare and the baby stapped to my back (Mommy was into her bathroom prep time).  I get back, and lo and behold, the boys are not ready.  Rush rush, cram them all in the van, get to church with about 1 minute to spare.

(First prayer skipped - breakfast)

Church goes fine actually.   Everything that happened at church was smooth.  My Discover Hope class went well, good discussion (with only one or two brain cramps).  The sermon was fun - Adam had the unenviable task of explaining Daniel chapter 7.

We leave church and the kids are hungry, but Cheryl wants to take them shopping.  Not my favourite activity, but shopping must be done from time to time.  We hit the Talize for some slightly used pants for the boys, then Wal-Mart for some nice shirts for them.  I figure we can do a cheap lunch at McD’s as I wasn’t hungry.  I tried to use McD’s as an incentive for behaviour, but Aydan is defiant, or forgetful, and by the time we get done with shopping, he has lost his drink, his fries and his sandwich.  When we sit down to eat and he realizes that nothing is for him, I finally see him react.  He gets it.  He goes very quiet and sad.  After a few minutes, I decide that he’s been remorseful, so I share my fries and drink with him.

(skipped prayer at lunch, too)

By the time shopping is over, I am getting edgy and I don’t know why.  What my subconcious knew that my concious didn’t was that we had a ton of stuff planned for Awana, but hadn’t prepared at all.  The list went on and on - November Newsletter, coffee and milk, cups, treats, all needed to be prepared in addition to the normal setup routine.   We had no indication as to how many children to expect to our “bring a friend” night.

By the time we got home, I was focused on the newsletter, but at the same time there was much else to do.  Housecleaning, making supper, picking games (because I was covering for our games director who was away) were all burdening me.  I managed to churn it out then I realized I would have to leave early to get it printed at the church office.  Then I get a call from one of our leaders, who couldn’t make it.  That’s two down.

I attempt to get out the door early but I wind up loading the gear for my wife as well.  We feed the boys pizza pockets, and I head out the door after some less than pleasant words with Cheryl, over codifying the points we give out for Awana clubbers as an incentive.  I was thinking it should be an easy task to delegate, but she felt totally unprepared to come up with anything.  We were both wrong, which is what happens 90% of the time we butt heads.

I get to the club and start setting up on time miraculously - I am there at 5:30.  I fix tape in the gym, then I notice that nobody is here but Shane.  5:45, still nobody.  Not even my wife.  Ed and his family show.  That’s good.  Mitchell is around - I guess he always was but I didn’t see him.  Adam and Susie show up.  It’s 5:52 when I finally see most of my leaders, and my wife pulls up with the gear.

Prayer before starting Awana skipped.  We should have loaded the kids into their seats in the sanctuary ten minutes ago.

I survey the land - we have two cubbies (normally our largest club).  Our T&T’ers, who I expected to bring the most friends - not a single new clubber.  No new parents at all.  Wow.

At the flag ceremony I don’t even bring up the lack of friends, and hence, no bonus rewards for clubbers.  But I am still way off my game.  I start the Awana song before we even do O Canada.  The kids call me on it.  I give a lecture on rewards and get some Awana bucks into the hands of the T&T Director. The Sparks director rolls in about 3/4 of the way through the flag ceremony.  Though I feel on the edge of snapping, I decide to err on the side of grace, since the guy had a migraine all day, despite all the lateness shown by pretty much everybody around me.  I can’t really be that upset - though I am on time this week, I have been tardy myself a fair amount and haven’t set a good example.

Relieved, I slink out to the foyer, where I start working up a points structure so we can actually figure out which team is winning.  By the time that is done, I have about 20 minutes to pick games.  I start flipping through the book, looking for games without beanbags as ours went missing about 3 weeks ago and haven’t turned up.  Every single game involves either food or beanbags!  Gah!  I finally find 3 games and with all of 3 minutes to spare, I head into the gym.

Short staffed, short patience, short wits.  Short of peace, short of fruit.  But the victory was I got through the day in one piece, and learned once again the importance of prayer.

Some mornings, events conspire against you to bring you to God.

Every morning, at 4:45am I walk my dog.  I actually appreciate this time because it gives me a chance to pray and talk with God.  Usually it’s a one-way thanks and praise session and I wonder sometimes that I don’t have a chance to listen to what he has to say.  But maybe he is enjoying what I have to say.

Anyways, today, I was rushed so I didn’t do a full walk with the dog.  Late night with my lady, enjoying some tickets that were given to us to the Vancouver Theatresports League.  I determined to listent to a little Praise 106.5 and pray while driving.  (Useful tip: if you pray while driving, DON’T close your eyes!)

Well, on the local Christian radio station in between songs they start saying, “Well, It’s Hallowe’en today, but it’s Reformation Day to me because today is the anniversary of Martin Luther posting his 95 theses on the door of the Wittenburg chapel and starting the Reformation.  Today we’re going to be talking about alternatives to Hallowe’en - Harvest Festivals, or whatever terms you use.”

I listened to this, and I started trying to pray.  I would get to “O God” and then my mind would get twisted back to Hallowe’en, and the fact that this Sunday night is our first “Bring a Friend” night.  Then God starts pointing things out to me.

“Hey, you’ve never really reached out to your neighbourhood here.”

“But God, I live so far away from church!  Nobody around here will want to come that far.”

“How do you know?  You do.”

“Well yeah, but…”

“Why don’t you hand out Awana invitation cards to all the kids tonight when they come to your door?”

“I guess I could, but they won’t come.  The cards will just get thrown away.”

“How do you know that?  Why don’t you try it?”

“But God…”

“Look.  Last year you had more than 200 kids come to your door.  At least a few of them, their parents may be looking for something more wholesome to send their kids to for an activity.  You don’t know.  This is the one night a year when you can walk up to people’s doors and knock and ask them for stuff and people don’t think you’re crazy.  It’s one night a year that children take candy (and anything else) from strangers.  Why are you wasting it?  You want to hear from me, here I am talking to you.  Now get to it.”

So I get to work and I mention this to a Christian friend of mine at work.  I tell him that it seems like a colossal waste that Christians withdraw from our culture on Hallowe’en because of its roots as a pagan holiday.  He agrees.  He says, “You should give them some candy for coming too!”  I was like, “Well, we were going to for the bring a friend kids anyway, but you’re right!  I should stick an Avery label on each card saying, more candy for new kids who attend!”

So now I have a plan of action for tonight.  And this weekend.  200 invitations, directly distributed only to families with kids in the ages we serve.  How easy is this?  And to think, Christians don’t like Hallowe’en.  I wonder how many of them consider the lengths the early church went to, to “take over” pagan holidays?  I mean, look at Christmas, Easter.  They are both in origin pagan holidays, co-opted by the early Christians.  I am not saying we need to do the same for Hallowe’en, but there are elements of Hallowe’en that provide fantastic openings for us as Christians who wish to share our faith.  Why not take advantage of them, instead of shaking our collective fingers at secular society, “tsk, tsk”ing the whole time about witches and dead things?

Oh Lord, sustain my children’s hunger for your Word.  Don’t let my own laziness or selfishness keep them from it.  I am so proud each and every night they beg me to read them a story from the Bible.  How easily that feeling is overwhelmed by the urgent, or by fatigue, or by petty distractions.  Thank you for each of their souls, and use them for great things, Lord.

Amen.

This weekend might have easily been considered overwhelming.

We had so much on the go.  Friday night was our first small group meeting of the fall, which went smoothly, but it was interesting forging a new dynamic for the season with much more concrete goals and planning.  We’re much more comfortable in doing what is being asked of us as small group leaders, and it feels good to have answers to questions that come from experience.

The fact that my laptop is slowly dying has been eating me alive for a week.  It was very distracting and my incessant attempts to rejig our finances to accommodate the purchase of a new laptop was driving my wife insane.

Then on Saturday I had to go to work, which quickly got exciting (and not in a good way) when we had to deal with a crisis.  I left work for a couple of hours to do what I could, and spent quite a bit of time in prayer over it.  It was good that this happened, in a way, because it completely got my focus off my own materialism (thinly disguised by a need to access my Awana documents and finish the paper I have been ignoring.)  Anyway, with all that going on, we had to hustle to find a babysitter and get out of the house that evening, but everything turned out marvellously in the end, and Cheryl and I had a very valuable pastoral experience.

Saturday night, after we got home, my wife whispered something very exciting in my ear.  No, I am not going there.  It was her agreement to allow me to get a laptop on Sunday.

So on Sunday, church was a run-run-run networking and troubleshooting experience, wrapped up around a very nice time of worship to the God we serve.  Two of our Awana leaders were cancelling out that evening, so we had to scramble to replace them.  We also shifted another of our leaders into a director-role, and freed up Cheryl to cover another place that needed doing.  That afternoon, I did a bottle depot run, picked up a bunch of flannelgraph pieces, shopped for cloth in a tent in some guy’s backyard, stapled it to a board, shopped for the laptop (including an intense half hour negotiation with the manager featuring all 4 of our kids, which did net us a 2 year service agreement worth $140 for free), prepared a council time talk, and picked up two of my leaders with 5 minutes to spare before Awana.

Praise God, my friend from work that I invited out to Freedom Session showed up!  That was exciting to see.  My talk in council time involved a lot of shouting and teaching, along with me throwing myself on the floor at least 3 times to illustrate 1 Cor 15:3-4.  Finally, I wrapped up the night with fetching sandwiches for my secretaries.

On top of all this, I had the joy of hearing from my wife’s lips the long awaited agreement on the need for us to have a shared devotional and prayer time together.  That to me was a huge blessing.  But really, when it comes down to it, nothing this weekend would have gone right without God’s hand working behind the scenes.  I can’t count all the moments where we could have done whatever we wanted, but if God had not been at work, this whole weekend would have burned to the ground.  It’s so much fun to see him come through!

And I have a new toy laptop.  Giggle.

Over at pastorhacks, Bob reposts something he wrote about prayer a while ago.  His point is that prayer requests are overwhelming to some people in ministry.  I can imagine that the larger a church gets, the volume of prayer requests also grows.  I found myself thinking, “well, why don’t they set up a prayer team and have them take all these prayer requests?”

Then I thought, “what if the prayer team gets overwhelmed?”

Then I thought, “maybe a rotational system that distributes the requests by round-robin.”

Then I thought, but what about Matthew 18:19?  Again I say to you, if two of you agree on earth about anything they ask, it will be done for them by my Father in heaven. Doesn’t that mean that we are shortchanging people’s prayer requests by only having one person pray for them?”

Then I realized, again, just like I realized last night on the phone with a lady from church who was pouring some of her heart out to me about her struggles as a Christian woman unequally yoked, that I try to fix things too much.  Here I am trying to solve the problem of prayer requests, just like last night my mind went into overdrive even as she spoke, trying to figure out how to reach out to her husband, who I’ve never even met.

Sometimes we need to trust God.  Praying for each other is what we should do, with those we are in relationship with.  I don’t know that God wants us alerting everyone we’ve ever had contact information for about our prayer needs.  He will act when two agree, and he doesn’t “hurry up” if we get two thousand prayer partners.

But there are other reasons to pray too.  I think prayer builds up our own hearts.  I think that it keeps us sensitive to things that do need God.  I think about the prayer book that was distributed to me at the GBIM (Grace Brethren International Missions) lunch we had in Tampa at the conference.  I determined yesterday to begin to pray through it, like the book is designed (it even has little checkboxes on each page so you can mark down who you’ve prayed for).  I don’t really know anyone in this book, but I believe that God will listen to my petition.  But more, he will work in my own heart to give me confidence when others pray for me.  Even more, he will grow my heart for reaching the world for Jesus.  It conforms me to Jesus’ heart to see every nation come to him in gratitude and love for his supreme sacrifice on Calvary.

And that’s a good thing.