Category Archives: Prayer

Singing (or Praying) with a Mask On

24 Thursday Sep 2020

Posted by in Asthma, Childhood, Jesus, Pandemic, Prayer, Recovery journey

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When I was growing up there was a popular phrase ‘Don’t knock it ’til you’ve tried it’. People used it to promote something they enjoyed and you weren’t willing to try.

One of my favorite things to do as a girl was to sing. Especially when there was nothing else to do. Like driving 600+ miles to North Carolina every summer.

I’m sure it annoyed everyone else in the car, but I would take an Inspiration songbook along and work my way through it. I’m sure the times I sang only the alto part were especially enjoyable for everyone else.

As a pre-teen I challenged myself to sing louder than the riding mower I was on all summer, and without vocal lessons learned to breathe deeply using my diaphragm.

I imagined even the truckers I’d signal to blow their horns could hear my Top 40 set list.

I actually think it was God’s plan from the start.

My initial motivation was entirely self-focused – how can I hear my beautiful voice singing my favorite songs while mowing the grass? The results allowed me to become a good swimmer, a performer who could belt out my part with no need of amplification, and an asthmatic who can force air in and out pretty capably during an attack.

My kids don’t like that my “normal” speaking voice is also projected and loud.

Muscle memory.

So fast forward to this season of life when all of a sudden our interactions with other people have constraints we wouldn’t have dreamed would happen a year ago.

Churches stopped having in-person services right away, but quickly regrouped to offer online versions. In watching several different churches I found a variety of ways the different elements were handled.

Worship teams performed to empty chairs, or from homes, pastors likewise spoke from pulpits or offices or home settings.

Missing were lengthy announcements, taking up an offering, transitions. And any hurry to get there. I could watch it anytime online.

But what I have really missed is worshiping while singing with other followers of Jesus Christ.

Of course, that CAN happen in a home. If yours is like mine, though, you may have some eager singers (me! me!), and others who aren’t comfortable singing without lots of other voices to make them less noticeable.

I sing, alone or with others, every time I drive a vehicle and crank up YES-FM, but it’s not the same as being with a bunch of other people all praising God. Psalm 22:3 tells us God inhabits the praises of his people, and it really is a supernatural experience to be part of lifting those praises, as loud and strong as I can!

So it was with great anticipation that I returned to Celebrate Recovery in person a few Fridays ago, eager to raise my voice with my forever family, grateful for our continuing freedom and healing from whatever has been holding us down.

The only thing is, masks were required.

Hmm.

My immediate thought was, how can I sing with a mask on? Not happening.

I mean, I have asthma already, so normal singing sometimes takes it out of me. Add sucking in air through cloth? It didn’t sound even possible.

But I was desperate to join with others in thanking and glorifying God.

So I decided to heed that old advice and reserve my judgment until I had given it a fair shot.

Let me say, it was not pretty. (One good thing about social distancing!) Imagine the vocal equivalent of running a race, the wet, labored, tiny bit lightheaded, mask in need of a good washing panting that went on for those brief 10 minutes or so.

But man, was it joyful!

I found, incredibly, that it was not only possible, but that it didn’t reduce my ability to project my voice in any way. In fact, after a few weeks, I have felt a new dimension in my vocal chords and breathing that so far in my 59 years I had not explored.

(Like how I worked that in? I just had a birthday, and the only time I know for sure how old I am is around that day. And even then I have to subtract my birth year to be sure!)

When I first started exploring the idea of intercessory prayer the feelings were a lot like singing for the first time with a mask on.

How do I do this? What if I do it wrong? Will it come out sounding muffled and incoherent or will it be understandable?

While there are lots of passages that encourage us to pray for each other, there isn’t a clearly defined method to follow. One thing is certain. If I never give it a try I’ll never figure it out.

I don’t know about you, but I like to know what I’m doing. I like to read about it, study up, follow the instructions at least the first time out until I get the hang of something.

But some things are mysteries, especially when it comes to following Jesus. Like fasting. I’ve never seriously done it because I always think I need to study it. Then when I come across a “How to do a Biblical Fast” kind of article, it doesn’t hold my attention. (They’re so long! I need 5 bullet points and go!) I don’t know what I’m missing, because I talk myself out of trying.

In this case, I’ve felt the benefits of other people praying for me, more times than I will ever know in this world. And I’ve had people inspired to pray for me by God, and then come and tell me something God had given them to pass on to me.

That has been one of the most humbling things I’ve ever experienced, God speaking to me through someone else.

But that was only after another person took the time to pray for me.

Now, I’m not a person who seeks emotional or thrilling experiences as proof of God working in my life. But I also would not mind being in what I imagine to be a deep closeness in my prayer life that would invite God to speak to me for other people’s benefit.

I got to a point where I decided it didn’t matter if I did it wrong. God knows my heart. And it didn’t matter if I mumbled and spoke with disconnected thoughts, the Spirit can make sense of even moans and groans.

So I started taking advantage of any old time someone would pop into my mind to say, ‘Ok, God, how can I pray for this person right now?’

At first I’d think, how can I pray blindly, not knowing what they need.

Praying with a mask on.

And thoughts that are not my thoughts will come into my head, and I take the personality and imagination that God put in me to lift that person in my mind, to sit down next to Jesus (sometimes I dare to climb up into his lap), and have a conversation with the only one who can truly do anything worthwhile and everlasting for any of us.

I love the way God can calm my thoughts, and help me focus on just one other person for a while. I love being given just a word, or maybe a feeling, to help me identify what I should be praying for, but even without any prompts there are things I can always know, that I can ask God to do for any person on this earth.

To let them feel his love, to draw them to himself, to create in them a desire to know him, and many other things that pop into my head that I’ve read over and over and now get a chance to speak back to him.

Maybe you think I’m wasting my time, or deluded. Or maybe this is one of those things you’ve heard of, like the idea of, but never knew how to do.

So may I suggest just doing it? Right now. Ask God who you should pray for. And whoever comes to mind (yourself included!) ask if there’s anything in particular.

Then listen.

Who knows what will happen next?

But one thing I can tell you.

Don’t knock it ’til you’ve tried it.

Dump and Run

18 Friday Sep 2020

Posted by in Jesus, Prayer, Recovery journey, Relationships

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My whole life I have been a perfectionist.

I know this because very little ever happens that is exactly the way I want it. You see, in my mind I can see the end result the exact way I want it to be. But in order for that result to come about there are any number of steps that have to be taken, in order, for things to work the way they should.

For way too many years I factored into my complicated chain of events the actions of others. And when they couldn’t read my mind and do their part, I gave myself permission to stop working toward that goal.

Why bother? It was never going to be the way I pictured it.

If only everyone else would just do their part, I could get mine done and everything would be…perfect.

In recent years I’ve learned a lot about boundaries. A basic thing I’ve found in working through Boundaries https://www.boundariesbooks.com/, by Cloud and Townsend, is I need to figure out where I stop and others begin.

The result has been that instead of factoring in other people’s parts in the way I’d like things to be, I’m more frequently taking things on with the idea that I may need to do it all myself.

But not BY myself.

In my faith journey I’ve always known that the goal is to have a personal relationship with Jesus. And in my head I’ve known that I can do all things through Christ who gives me strength.

HIS strength.

And though I’ve known this, it has been a lifelong search to figure out how to have that personal relationship.

I’ve been talking recently about prayer. Specifically about interceding for other people by praying for them, asking God to show me how to pray for them.

But praying for others is pointless if I don’t have my own close, personal friendship with Jesus.

Remember that image I talked about, learned from a Beth Moore study? That interceding is like someone who is intimately involved with another taking that person’s face in their hands, turning them to face themselves, and speaking up to defend and seek help for another.

It only does any good if the person’s face you’re holding has the power to act and bring real help to the one you are interceding for.

That would be Jesus. And he certainly has the power!

So I need to be intimately involved with Jesus before I can plead the cause of another.

In our lives we experience all kinds of intimacy. With our mothers when we were very young, our fathers and siblings as we grew up. More and more, working our way outward from family to friends to spouses, and then the closeness we have with our own children and grandchildren.

I have to ask myself, honestly I do this quite often, how intimate am I with Jesus?

How much of my life do I share with him? How much time do I spend with him? How closely do I listen for him to respond to me? How honestly do I tell him how I’m feeling and where I’m struggling?

I don’t want the kind of relationship where I’m so busy handling my life on my own, that I roll along gathering up problems I need help with. When I get such a heavy load that I feel like I’m going to break, THEN I take a quick minute to go unload it in a hurried prayer, and then I’m off handling everything on my own again.

Dump and run.

Any of you that are parents have probably experienced this with your kids.

You can tell there’s something bugging them. You try to get them to talk about it, but they aren’t ready, they’re embarrassed, or they think they don’t need any help dealing with anything. They can handle their own lives.

So the tension builds up until they can’t take it anymore, and out of nowhere there’s some kind of explosive response to the simplest request.

It’s messy, it seems to make no sense, and it can take a long time to figure out what the deeper issue is.

I’ve spent a lot of years dumping my troubles at the foot of Christ, then running away before I have to look him in the face.

Because I’m afraid of what he might tell me I have to do to make it work out right.

I was reading a short piece by A.W. Pink the other day that helps me picture the way I SHOULD approach God. He writes,

“He would have you make Him your Friend: not only your Counselor, but your Confidant – the One into whose ear you are to pour the very secrets of your heart. He would have you be quite artless and natural, just like a little child coming to its mother, pouring into her ear its every little woe, trouble, and disappointment.”

I remember those days, long before the defiant rants came on, when every one of my children would climb up in my lap and lay their head down and tell me their troubles.

That’s what Jesus wants us to do.

If you’ve never tried approaching him this way, what is stopping you?

For me there were many years when I felt I had no right. But that’s a lie. Jesus is supposed to be a friend who is closer than a brother.

A dear pastor and friend always told me that Jesus is a gentleman. He will never force himself on you. And that is absolutely true.

He leaves it up to us to accept his invitation to enter into a never-ending friendship with him.

And he gives us the right to approach him, any time we want, to talk about anything on our minds.

Or just to sit and be.

Even when I dump and run, he knows what my real issue is.

But like any close, loving friend, Jesus wants me to come and spend some time with him, feeling the relief of being with someone who fully knows everything about me, who I can be real with.

And as I start to open up about the things that are weighing me down, I find something remarkable happens.

He doesn’t give me a to-do list that will make everything work out right.

He asks me to leave it in his hands, to let him do the heavy lifting. He tells me I don’t have to handle this on my own.

And I no longer feel any hurry to run away.

Making Plans

03 Thursday Sep 2020

Posted by in Jesus, Pandemic, Prayer, Recovery journey

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When was the last time your schedule was full?

I can pretty safely say that, except for two short trips to a college campus to move a child out and then back in again, my schedule has been open for almost six months.

I’m not working outside the home, I’m purposely not going out where there are lots of people any more than I need to, and I have no social calendar.

So after last week’s post, I was really looking forward to time entering into God’s presence and praying for you, whoever and wherever you are.

I don’t know about you, but since COVID quarantine started I have felt like I was in limbo. I look at the new month on the calendar, and the only things on it are 2 birthdays and an anniversary, and a few health related appointments.

I feel like I don’t have the liberty to plan things more than a couple weeks ahead.

Who knows what the COVID prognosis will be even tomorrow. The level of emergency we are in could change daily. So how can anyone make any kind of solid plans?

Think about the end of last year, say in that week between Christmas and New Year’s when you start thinking about things you might like to accomplish in the next year. You plot out, at least in your mind, steps to take to get from point A to point B in your goals, and depending on how your mind works you may even make detailed lists of your plan of action.

I love making the lists. But for me, that’s fulfilling enough, just to think it through and write out what could happen if I did this and that.

Actually doing the this and that is much less interesting.

But even for a blowin’ in the wind kind of person like me, the futility of planning too far ahead has been unsettling.

For the first couple months of COVID sheltering at home, Dear Husband was recovering from a hip replacement, so I had already planned to be a homebody for a while. What I hadn’t planned on was life coming to a screeching halt.

A job that I had cheerfully worked for more that 14 years went away for now. Church went to online. Celebrate Recovery stopped meeting in person, and it was a couple months until I could get headphones and join the online meetings.

Anything in-person was canceled, and the things that went online were just not the same.

But here’s the thing. There was no point in trying to schedule anything for months. The rhythm of life got its legs knocked out from under it.

Doctors offices called to cancel or reschedule visits over the phone. All of a sudden it wasn’t as important to visit the dentist twice a year. School went online, and graduations were drastically different.

As we headed into the summer a passage in scripture kept going through my mind. James 4: 13-15.(NLT)

13 Look here, you who say, “Today or tomorrow we are going to a certain town and will stay there a year. We will do business there and make a profit.” 14 How do you know what your life will be like tomorrow? Your life is like the morning fog—it’s here a little while, then it’s gone. 15 What you ought to say is, “If the Lord wants us to, we will live and do this or that.”

When I was growing up all the lovely older people at church would say as their exit line, “Lord willing I’ll see you again soon.”

I thought it was just a saying for many years. Until people I loved died. Then I thought about it more.

And in the last six months I’ve honestly thought about it a lot. Because it doesn’t matter what I want or what my will would like me to do.

It’s all about God’s will.

If there is one big lesson I’ve learned during COVID it’s that I am powerless to control much of anything going on in the world right now.

I’m sure that thought scares some people to death!

It’s a good thing I have more than five years of recovery under my belt, because that’s one of the first things I became reconciled to. (And it only took me a couple of years!)

Principle One of the Eight Recovery Principles states it pretty clearly:

Realize I’m not God; I admit that I am powerless to control my tendency to do the wrong thing and that my life is unmanageable. (Step 1)
          “Happy are those who know that they are spiritually poor.” Matthew 5:3a TEV

I am so thankful that I’ve already come to an intimate knowledge of how destitute I am without Jesus! Because if I hadn’t, I think I would be even more worried and anxious and frustrated and bored than I am now.

But just because I know I don’t have the power to change the world around me, I can choose to change my expectations.

I don’t need to have that power, because I am a grateful follower of Jesus Christ, and HE has all the power this world needs to keep putting one foot in front of the other.

And so as I think about you all this week, I’d like you to know that I will be praying that if you don’t already, you will come to know Jesus. He is the only friend who will never let you down.

Because he already laid down his life for you. And for me.

Even when we were all still busy sinning.

So as you come to mind, I will be praying God’s word for you, because HIS word never comes back void.

It’s not a very long-term plan, but it’s a step towards getting back into the rhythm of living.

And, if the Lord wants me to do it, this is something worth adding to my calendar.