Soul Sister Time

              The 10-Day silent retreat I attended was focused on centering prayer.  Centering Prayer is a discipline of praying without words.  Your full attention is focused on just being with God.  The recommended time period is twenty minutes two times a day.  I have only practiced it that way during two seasons of Lent.  My working, doing the dishes, paying the bills life does not seem to allow for that much time to be devoted to prayer.  On the silent retreat, however, I was praying like that for 3-4 hours a day.  It was intense.  The sessions were thirty minutes.  That may have been a welcome challenge for those who have made room in their lives for twenty minutes a day two times a week (at least it appeared that way to me), but for me it was difficult to keep my mind focused only on the presence of God using my sacred word to remind myself of the intention of my pray...

           My word for the year is prayer .  At the end of 2015 I took some time to reflect and pray and ask God for a spiritual focus for 2016.  I can’t remember how, but the verse God led me to was Luke 2:37… she never left the temple but worshipped night and day, fasting and praying .  I have been doing a lot of praying this year, but I haven’t fasted except during Lent.  I usually fast when there is something really important coming up.  I do have a concern regarding a major decision that I am powerless over, so I thought I would gear up my prayer with fasting once a week.  I don’t see fasting as a way to make God more inclined to do what I want Him to do.  Rather, I see it as a way to remind myself of how dependent I am on God’s grace and through my tangible efforts.  Fasting is a spiritual discipline that reminds me that the best I can do is entrust my concerns to His care.  When I go without food as a re...

            I’ve been a Christian for almost fifty years.  I’ve done a lot of praying over those years.  I can’t tell you the number of people for whom I’ve prayed for all their cancer cells to miraculously die and for their health to be restored.  I’ve diligently prayed for certain souls to turn to God.  I’ve begged God for doors to open for a certain blessing.  If I could remember every prayer I’ve prayed and calculate the number of times I got what I asked in prayer, I would have to conclude that prayer doesn’t work.  Prayer isn’t given as a magical remedy to the part of life that I don’t accept.  God doesn’t bid us to pray so that we can order up our wishes like we choose a snack from a vending machine.  Rather prayer is about intimate connection.             The greatest prayer that was ever prayed was from the Garden of Gethsema...

            You have an enemy who is after your peace and joy in Christ every day.  Your enemy’s best strategy is to remain incognito.  Your enemy stirs up emotions, discord, problems in your life every day, but he is quick to hide and let someone else take the blame.  He gets you to think your enemy is your brother, your child, or your boss.  The true enemy you need to see is the enemy of your soul!             Peter’s best advice regarding fighting the devil is to be aware.  He wrote: Be alert and of sober mind. Your enemy the devil prowls around like a roaring lion looking for someone to devour (1 Peter 5:8).  Peter is the one who should know.  He was the one Satan sifted like wheat on the eve of Jesus’ crucifixion.  I’m not sure what sifting by the devil exactly means, but I do know it is not good.  It hurt.  Peter crie...

I’m learning to become excited about Jesus’ ifs .  If I want what Jesus wants for my life there is one thing I can count on.  It is that what He wants for me is not what I want at first glance.  It makes me feel much better to know that the leader of the disciples, Peter, reacts to Jesus’ ifs that way too. I really appreciate Peter.  He always opened his mouth and said what everyone else was thinking but may have been afraid to say.  I would rather risk ridicule than to live in ignorance. Even though Peter denied Jesus three times, Jesus did not fire him from being the rock on which He would build His church.  He gave Peter far more than a second chance; rather He gave him every chance he needed to make him into the kind of man that legend tells us watched his wife be crucified for her faith, and then asked to be crucified upside down since he didn’t feel worthy to die in the same manner as his Savior.  I love this about Jesus.  He doesn’...

              I hope that none of us lives a whole day without prayer.   I know it happens from time to time, but hopefully we are smart enough to know a day without prayer is not worth living.   Each day needs prayer but there are times and circumstances that require passionate prayer.               Passionate prayer is how you pray when your loved one is facing the battle of his life.   An example of passionate prayer is the Woman from Cana.   Here’s a description of her prayer life from Matthew 15:21-28. 21  Leaving that place, Jesus withdrew to the region of Tyre and Sidon. 22  A Canaanite woman from that vicinity came to him, crying out, “Lord, Son of David, have mercy on me! My daughter is demon-possessed and suffering terribly.” 23  Jesus did not answer a word. So his disciples came to him and urged him, “Send ...

              We can make living a life worthy of our calling in Christ so complicated when we neglect one simple spiritual reality--we forget that we are powerless.   It sure does take a long, long, long time to become holy.   How many truly holy people do you know?               If you haven’t noticed by now, I would like to point out to you that becoming holy is a far cry from who we are.   We are destined for holiness and called to holiness, yet once we get clear enough to want holiness, we realize how hard and distant holiness is.   Rather than cause you to get discouraged and give up, I hope you will learn from what I have for this week; all I have to do is ask.             I was having one of those obviously less-than-holy weeks.   It’s not that I was oblivious to all tho...

              How often do we pray without thinking of God at all?   Perhaps that is not a problem for you.   It seems that the more fervent I desire to be about prayer, the more I realize that what I would call praying is perhaps not praying at all.   Indeed, it might be indulging in silence and rest, but no thoughts Godward!             This fact caught me by surprise as I was reading a book about prayer by Anthony Bloom.   He made this statement about interceding for others that really made me think about my prayer focus:   No, it was not born of God’s presence, of your faith in Him, of your longing for Him, of your awareness of Him; it was born of nothing but your concern for him or her or it [the object of your prayer], not for God.             Yikes, I never thought about my pr...

The Lord’s Prayer — Thy Name , Thy Will, Thy Gift, Thy Victory, Thy Protection Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil               In our last section of the five requests in the Lord’s Prayer, we ask God to send us into the world with His protection.   This request does not mention heaven, but it is all about the heavenlies!             It is vital that we daily take into account what we can and cannot see.   It is what we cannot see that has the greatest power to affect the outcome of each day.   Sometimes we think our enemy is our boss, our spouse, our children—those with whom we have a conflict.   They are not our enemy.             As this prayer attests, we are up against something powerful each day.   It is called evil.   We are tempted to follow th...

The Lord’s Prayer — Thy Name , Thy Will, Thy Gift, Thy Victory , Thy Protection And forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us.             I don’t know about you, but I don’t think very rigorously about the things I do wrong to others. After all, I know they are done out of a good heart. I have all kinds of rationalizations about them.             But let me tell you. I can become very stern over a minor (in comparison to my sins) resentment.   I can let resentment crush my soul by rigorously detailing every wrong I endured.   I can be depleted of time, emotional energy and clear thinking when I put myself in a prison of resentment and throw away the key of forgiveness.   When I do this, I drink the poison of unforgiveness, rather than experience the supernatural experience of sincere, agape love for someone who has either ...

The Lord’s Prayer —Thy Name, Thy Will, Thy Gift, Thy Victory, Thy Protection             For the next five weeks, I would like to unpack the five main phrases of what we call The Lord’s Prayer, The Our Father, The Prayer Jesus taught us to Pray, The Model Prayer , found in Matthew 6:9-13.   I hope to help us reflect more deeply on the phrases many of us know by heart.   Jesus did not teach them to us to pray without considering the meaning behind each word and phrase.               Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name ….what a beautiful way to begin.               Our Father : Jesus is the one who taught us to think of God as our Father.   God gave this image of Himself with mankind in the Old Testament (Deuteronomy 1:31; Psalm 103:13; Malachi 3:17) but it was not until Je...

              Sometimes you need to give up your faith to get faith.   What I don’t need is the kind of faith that is committed to what I believe is the right way for things to go.   I must constantly guard my heart, mind and spirit from clinging to my own rendition of faith.   For faith to be real, it has to be given by the Spirit of God, and not based on my own understanding.   Faith is sure of what is unseen.             I can’t move forward in faith until I recognize that I carry unexamined expectations of where the road of faith will lead me.   My childish beliefs about faith must be laid aside if I am to grow in true faith.   Since God is always for me, my faith might cause me to believe that everything will work out well for me and therefore not so good for those who come against me.   When the opposite happens, my expectat...

            I have a challenge for you this week.   Really listen to each person who leads you in prayer, not just on Sundays during a worship service but anytime anyone prays whether opening a meeting, over lunch, or because someone is in need.   Listen for the grace.             While you are at it, listen to your own prayers.   Survey them for grace.   J.I. Packer asks: Do you claim to know the love and grace of God in your own life?   Prove your claim, then, by going and praying likewise .   Prayers reveal if we know the love and grace of God.             I know I fail to recognize the reality of grace in my daily life.   I cheapen grace by overlooking my own personal sins and those of people who sin like me.   I distance myself from God when I use prayer as a social cust...