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Words

  May the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart Be acceptable in Your sight, Lord, my rock and my Redeemer. (Psalm 19:14) OK, advanced warning. Overthinking is likely. I got back to my trailer last night after an evacuation “vacation” to my house up north. It wasn’t really a vacation. I had no water, no plumbing, and no gas – but I had electricity and got water from my neighbor’s house. I made due. I coped very well. If I’d stayed at the trailer, I would have had no water and no electric for at least a good chunk of the time. I’m not complaining. I’m setting up and recording for posterity, so to speak. I’m back, and God has blessed me with remarkably little damage. I’ve seen places with metal awnings torn off. I’ve seen where the water reached at its high mark. Work is already  underway to recover. First, the people who faced Helene and Milton need prayers, not just now, but for months to come. Some lost everything. Some lost only what was important. Some may not realiz
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Partnerships

                 I always thank my God as I remember you in my prayers, because I hear about your love for all his holy people and your faith in the Lord Jesus.   I pray that your partnership with us in the faith may be effective in deepening your understanding of every good thing we share for the sake of Christ.  (Philemon 1:4-6)           Have you ever partnered with or mentored (or been mentored by) someone? Undoubtedly, if you’ve had a job, been a child or had a child, you have. If you’re truly a Christian, God and your pastor (at least) are your mentors. Even if you read and apply something you’ve learned from a “self-help” book, you have a mentor. Sometimes, we are offended by the idea of mentoring because it involves submission and suggests that the mentor is somehow superior to us in essence rather than just in experience. The flesh truly is foolish in this way, throwing the baby out with the bathwater.           When we raise our children, teach our students, train our wor

What Is Lacking In Your Faith

                   Night and day we pray most earnestly that we may see you again and supply what is lacking in your faith. (I Thessalonians 3:10) It would be easy to see this one as a negative thing. Paul wanted to get back to the Thessalonians to supply what’s lacking in their faith, to fix what they’ve broken, to rub their noses in their failure and whip them into shape. Not a happy idea. Now look at it from another perspective. I know lots of people in the Carolinas, Tennessee, and Florida have places have been damaged or destroyed by Helene and Milton. Imagine a group of people showing up with tarps for roofs, lumber, screws and drill/drivers, and the knowledge of how to help repair the damage done by the world. Back in the fall of 2020, when I went to my park, I knew the Canadians wouldn’t be able to get there to take care of their places, so I started weeding gardens. I didn’t think, “Oh those horrible Canadians, why can’t they keep their places up?” If I can demonstrate

Maturity and Full-Assurance

                 Epaphras, who is one of you and a servant of Christ Jesus, sends greetings. He is always wrestling in prayer for you, that you may stand firm in all the will of God, mature and fully assured.  (Colossians 4:12)           Oh, now here’s a prayer request sure to rankle the flesh of some. “Mature?  I’m mature! I’m over 70 (over 40, over 30, over 18)!” I’m the other way. I’m still trying to figure out what I’m supposed to be when I grow up, but I understand the irritation because among the big contestants for what I want to be is “perfect,” and my failure in that rankles, too.           Put into proper context, however, the prayer request is just a little different. Epaphras prayed that the Colossians would stand firm in the will of God. This brings Ephesians 6 to mind, where, we’re told to stand firm as soldiers in armor. Here, the standing firm involves maturity and full assurance.           Maturity is the state of being complete in natural (or spiritual in this c

Prayer Requests 3

            I pray that out of His glorious riches, He may strengthen you with power through His Spirit in your inner being, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith. And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have power, together with all the saints, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge – that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God. (Ephesians 3:16-19)           As I typed this prayer, I remembered the prayer passages from the last two days. Both times, Paul prayed that the people to whom he wrote would be given power. Who does that? I suppose it makes sense because Paul saw these congregations as allies and what power he prayed for was fairly specific, but it still feels strange, dangerous, and even unnatural, at least to the natural mind. This may be because often, power means “power over” rather than “power to.”            In this prayer, the first po

Prayer Requests 2

                 I keep asking that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the glorious Father may give you the Spirit of wisdom and revelation so that you may know Him better. I pray also that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened in order that you may know the hope to which he has called you, the riches of his glorious inheritance in the saints, and his incomparably great power for us who believe. (Ephesians 1:17-19) This is another of Paul’s prayers that we can use for others and ourselves. This time, the first request is for the Spirit of wisdom and revelation so that we may know Him better. One of the challenges here that requires wisdom is that we generally only have three ways to recognize that we have grown in wisdom, received revelation, or know Him better. The first is that we receive some spectacular bit of wisdom or revelation. We notice that, but God doesn’t tend to work that way. The second is that we compare ourselves to others. That leads to roller-coaster faith, up o

Prayer Requests

            With this in mind, we constantly pray for you, that our God may count you worthy of His calling, and that by His power He may fulfill every good purpose of yours and every act prompted by your faith. We pray this so that the name of our Lord Jesus may be glorified in you, and you in him, according to the grace of our God and the Lord Jesus Christ.   (II Thessalonians 1:11-12)           Ever wonder what to pray for someone? Do we all have some standard “and God bless” requests? There’s nothing wrong with the God bless prayers. They’re good prayers, but sometimes I feel that sort of prayer becomes thin and weak as I pray it for person or group after group. At the same time, I feel invasive if I start barging into someone’s life, asking them to lay bare their souls so that I can pray for their “real” needs. I know when someone asks for prayer for a third party – and another person asks for details that weren’t given, I get irritated. A prayer request isn’t meant to be an opp