Ash Wednesday

Today is Ash Wednesday in the Catholic world. I realize many Christians do not recognize Lent. But Jesus was in the wilderness for 40 days and nights praying and overcoming temptation from the devil. He hungered and He thirsted and prayed to His father, denying the flesh.
While it is true that we give up things, particularly certain foods during lent, it is more important to find God and cleave to Him the way that Jesus did. It is important to follow Jesus' example of prayer. It is more important for believers to study their bibles daily. Nothing wrong with giving up sweets, but if one slips up, it is better to abstain from sin. Give up some of your television programs and study the Word as a family or by yourself. Be Christ-like, by forgiving, by not holding grudges. Don't take yourselves to seriously, give up the prickly spirit, and let the Holy Spirit, make you gentle and kind. Give up the need to be right all of the time, smile more, and be compassionate.
Don't judge others for their shortcomings, for their sins, rather pray for them. We are all flawed, and we all sin. Let us pray for one another, let us praise God together, rather than criticize each other.
Let's argue less, and let us quickly come to resolution. Call up family members you haven't called in ages. Let reconciliation be your spirit, be reconciled. Let Lent be a season of love. Love those who do not necessarily love you. Be like Jesus, and love your enemies, those who hurt you, and those who laugh at your misfortune. Let Christ be your champion, and let Christ fight your battles.
Let peace be your mantle. God says, "Blessed are the peacemakers. For they shall be called the sons of God." (Matthew 5:9)
Be His ambassador this Lent, and continue on after Lent being God's man or woman. Be a man or woman for Christ. Take care of your children. Honouring God by loving and really being patient and kind to your little ones. Spend time with your families, instead of watching that television program, or working that over-time, or going out with your friends. Honor Christ, by honoring your parents. Be kind to them, help them out financially if you are able. Spend time with them.
Bless other with the gifts the Lord has given you.
It is good to give up sweets. It is better to love those around you.

Prayer

Praying is listening to the voice of God or our attempt at listening. Not just petitions or requests but really and truly communing with God. It doesn't have to be eloquent speech, but a voice that cries out to God, a heart that wants to be close. From here The Holy Spirit, Jesus will pray with us, for us, through us.
It is about quieting the soul down, about silence, and longing, and searching for God. It is about union with the Lord, about surrender, about His will, and not ours. It requires discipline, or at the very least honesty.
Prayer must be seen as a joy and not a chore. It is a great priviledge to be able to pray. Christ died to give prayer to us, to give us His Holy Spirit, to make us Holy and beautiful.
Prayer will change us, will change the world. Without prayer there can be no forgiveness, no love, no joy, no peace inside of us to give to others. Prayer is plugging us into the heart of God, to the mind of God. It is not out of arrogance, but out of need that we must bend out knees, and our ears.
I believe prayer is humbling, since we cannot control the outcome of it. It requires faithfulness to it, and vigilence. The Apostle Paul wrote, "We must remain vigilant in it." (Colossian 4:2) What does that mean vigilant? In Webster's Dictionary, it means "to remain watchful and alert."
By the spirit one's prayers must be open to include others. It is wonderful to pray for your family, but one must pray for the entire world, or as many people as the Lord would have you pray for. Always keep your heart open to those around. The world needs prayer so badly, the world is wounded and limping and dying. Take a little of the burden and pray for the people in it.
Take the time and the effort to pray. Close your eyes, and let Christ guide you, let the Holy Spirit make it's utterances through you. Let God break your heart in prayer, be one of those people who weeps over sin, and weeps over the condition of this world. The world is not fine. Things are not well. Even if the economy recovers the country is not okay. There is too much sin. Prayers, sincere prayers must be the heart of the nation. Let Christ show you the wounded and scorched places of the earth. Hope how He hopes, love how He loves, dream how He dreams, pray how He prays, or at least let Christ lead you.
Be the voice for the world. Be the advocate for the world. Weep for the world. Don't rejoice with the world. How can we? When there are abortions being committed, when there are children being abused in every conceivable way, when there are women being raped and beaten, the homeless are everywhere, the hungry are everywhere, sin is being committed everywhere, and we have no commitment to our marriages, or children. There are fatherless children everywhere, fathers leave so easily and so heartlessly.
No, the world is not fine. So pray for the world. Pray with the heart of Jesus. Let the Holy Spirit use you, and let Him pray through you. Pray every chance you get. Pray in secret. Pray at night. Pray in private. Pray when you are with other people. Let prayer be your mantle. Wear it. Wear it for others. There is a world of devils. Prayer is our weapon. Pray for the little ones of the world, the helpless ones, the unsaved ones. Pray for the demon-possessed. Pray that the Lord frees them from Satan's hand.
We are a company of believers, a battalion, a brigade, an entire country of believers. We must fight. We must fight the good fight of faith, as the Apostle Paul instructed us to do.
Pray for your lives. Pray as if there were no tomorrow. Pray out of gratitude. Pray as praise to the One who Created us and sustains us.
Pray because it is the right thing to do. Pray as if your life depended on it, as eating or sleeping. Pray morning, noon, and night. Pray in the good times as well as the bad times. Pray as a smile. Pray as conversation. Pray before meals. Pray after meals. Pray when bathing. Pray instead of watching t.v. Pray instead of calling to talk to friends. Pray when you are lonely. Pray instead of cutting. Pray instead of drinking alcohol. Pray instead of over-eating. Pray when you want to sin. Pray when bad thoughts arise. Pray in church. Pray as worship. Pray with your husband or wife. Pray with your children. Pray with your mother and father. Pray with your brothers and sisters. Pray with your friends. Pray with strangers on the street. Pray to heal the broken places inside. Pray to fill the empty places inside. Pray to be close to the Lord. Pray when you are distant from Him. Pray after you've sinned. Pray because God loves you. Pray because you love Him.
Pray knowing that God will answer your prayers. Pray because He listens to your prayers. Pray because it is a joy. Pray because it is a great priviledge. Pray faithfully. Pray in the earliest hours of morning. Pray when you can't sleep. Pray when you are filled with worry and doubt. Pray when you can't speak to loved ones.
Pray as a first resort. Pray as a last resort.
Jesus prayed in the wilderness. He prayed everyday of His natural life on earth. He continues to pray. Since He prays. Let us follow His example, and pray too.

In His Time

In His time and not ours. The Lord will answer prayers in His timing and not ours. For His Glory and not ours. He is the Glory of the world, and with Him there is no time and space. He will make our petitions come to pass, but we must have faith. When we ask, we must believe that He loves us, and that He is able, and He will in His time and not ours. Faith waits for God, and faith believes that God works on our behalf, even when we do not see Him working on our behalf He is working on our behalf.
There are times that prayer is like a wilderness, and there is no rest, and prayers must be made fervently. The Apostle Paul tells us in the bible, "that we must pray without ceasing." (1Thes 5:17) It is a marathon, not stopping, prayers cannot be made haphazardly, sometimes, nor half-heartedly. Everytime believers pray it is with the hope of hearing from God, it is with the hope of being ushered into His Holy presence even if momentarily, it is with the hope of being in union with Christ, with being in-synch with the Holy Spririt, with letting prayer be more than words but the expression of a soul in-synch with the trinity. Of course, it doesn't always happen, but prayer isn't made for show, and prayer isn't just words, it is to be in constant relationship with Christ, with our Creator and Saviour.
Prayer is something special, exciting and real, when our heart want to reach His heart, not out of arrogance, but out of need, and brokenheartedness. God is close to the broken hearted. "When my heart is overwhelmed, led me to a rock that is higher than I." (Psalm 61:2)
Life is prayer, prayer is our life, is is our meat, our sustenance. Believers must be in constant contact with Him.
When I pray for people, it is with the hope that God intervenes in their situation, on their behalf, but it is also with the intention of understanding what God wants me to do with their situation. We are His people, His ambassadors. It seems logical that God would send His ambassadors on His behalf to work on His behalf. So all the work in prayer isn't on God, but it also falls on us.
Prayer is a tapestry, a weaving of patterns that will be revealed one day. Not in our time, but His. The tapestry of prayer will be revealed for His purposes for His Glory.
I cannot pretend to always know when God will answer the prayers I have made. But I can always feel confident that He hears my prayers believing that my prayers concern Him, and that they are not overlooked simply because situations have not changed around me. I still pray to move to the next level of what God would have me do, if I need to change here or there to see the Glory of God in any given situation.
God can change the world around us, nothing is impossible with Him, and with every prayer I make I know that it isn't in vain. With every prayer I make, I know that I have reached beyond myself to the source of my life. It brings me to the barest expression that I live by His grace and His mercy. Prayer brings the realization that we are but a vapor in this world, and we can change nothing without God. I realize prayer can change me. I believe prayer can introduce a sense of humility, and can bring forth real transformation.
When prayer is a dialogue. When prayers don't get answered right away. When answers sometimes take years. It is God wanting to have a deeper relationship. It is an expression of real love, when God brings us into deeper communion.
Today I heard my spirit whisper, "In His time, not yours."

Extreme Good

If we are in the last days what else can we do but hope in God? Hold onto Him, Hold onto His Word, Keep faith in Our Saviour, Believe in His Love, and His Mercy, and Know that His Word is all Truth. Know that He gives us boundaries for a reason, and trust that He does this out of love for us, so we do not hurt ourselves. When He says, "He who commits sexual immorality sins against His own body." (1Cor 6:18) We have to know that He means our sexual purity for a reason.
So much pornography on the inter-net, where children try to get a hold of it. It is there for all the world to see. But we have to know, that God would have better for us, than to look at other people commiting sexual acts in public view. They hurt themselves by what they do. People who commit such acts are not happy, they are hurting individuals, who have been deeply wounded.
In earnest do I write this. In earnest do I pray that the light of God would shine on all people.
A big and difficult debate, is Prop 8 in California. Christians hold dear the sanctity of marriage, the deep emotional, spiritual and physical bond between a man and a woman who love each other. We can try and change God's words, but we only deceive ourselves when we try to make God's eternal words mean what we want them to. People call Christians bigots, full of hate. I feel no hatred for anyone. I only adhere to the principles of the bible, regardless if that makes me unpopular. I am not politically correct, I only want to be spiritually correct. People of the same gender may love one another, but the bible has something else to say about physical love between the same gender.
The people of California upheld marriage between a man and a woman. We are in litigation over the unconstitutionality of it. Same gender couples feel they have a right to be married same as other citizens. But can they have a viable marriage, a true bond being of the same gender, can they reproduce without outside help?
As I said, I feel nothing but compassion and love for all people. But I can't write or say what they want to hear simply because they will get their feelings hurt or call me a bigot.
Of course their feelings are real, but I have always felt that this kind of expression of love between the same gender is a matter for psychology. We cannot change our physical bodies, God made us how He made us, both man and woman from the begining. This being the case, then doesn't the problem lie within each one of us. As with other mental issues, if the problem is in the head, insisting on certain things that we know to be not physically possible, then doesn't that make them certainly impossible?
I have struggled with cutting for years, yet I am told it is a mental issue. I am told I suffer from borderline personality disorder. Yet, for "cutters" it is a sanity that has us in that behavior. To "cutters" the insane thing to do would be not to cut when we feel the strong urge to do so.
We may have certain urges that need certain physical manifestations, but that doesn't make it right or healthy. Certainly beliefs that have an abnormal attachement to them, should not be forced on the rest of society.
I always felt that if we left homosexuality in the DSM IV that we as a society could help those who struggle with these desires. We should not have accepted it only because of political pressure.
As I said, it is not I, but God that has written marriage for a man and a woman. Not I, or other Christians, but God from the begining. Just because we feel pressure to change does not make it right. It is not easy for any of us. Life is an extreme struggle, a delicate balance. If we can help each other in love to overcome the things that hurt us then I think that is better than trying to re-write laws, or force laws on everyone.
Love is the highest law. But that doesn't mean we accept what God has said we cannot accept. He wants each of us to move towards Him, into His light of love, with the help of the Holy Spirit, why would we still want to cut or be in relationships that are neither healthy or God-ordained.
I know that homosexuals struggle with suicide. They feel because society does not accept them. But maybe it is that the Holy Spirit is shining a light on them, and calls them into the light of His love. As with me, cutting makes me struggle with feelings of extreme guilt. But it is our sins that cause our guilt, God only wants us to move into His Glorious Light.
In extreme love do I write this. Heterosexuals are not better. But we all must let God love us, let Him move us into His joy and peace. For the good of humanity, we need God's blessing and love.
He accepts each of us where we are, cutters, homosexuals, theives, murderors, but He would not have us stay in the darkness. He wants to share His beautiful life with us. He died for us. He wants only our happiness, and extreme good.