Oregon saturated

photos courtesy of Tim Corban

The horizon hung low and heavy laden. The waters surged toward this place we call home. Gray on every horizon with leaden skies that were unforgiving... and the rain came.

Some lost their lives, others homes.  Out of tragedy ushers even greater gratitude for life, safety and wellness!

Lord be with those families who are walking through loss. Bolster them up. May your blessing be on this little state of Oregon.

Pursuing gratitude...

#268-280

• Safety
• Ability to get to school and work
• Witnessing acts of humanity and generosity
• The power of prayer to mend and heal
• Prayer vigil for a family's loss in the dark waters
• Continuing to open doors for Rebecca in areas of ministry and leading worship
• A marriage that though bumpy, is bound by a cord that can't be broken
• A hope for things unseen....(including the sun=)
• A sons heart to serve and love
• Random texts from from friends
• My other family, our little hospital
• Ability to hold hands with families as they make difficult life altering decisions regarding loved ones.
• A week of prayer and fasting and journals kept.

Dead Sea kind of week

  

The intense pressure, the roaring wave that has curled up over my head this week.
Thundering down and engulfing my nights with a ponderous weight of problems.

The clouds roll in quickly, thick and dense. My breath threatened. I stare into the blackness praying. The seconds turn to minutes...to hours. The deep ache threatens to break my heart in two.

The waves have seemed too towering, and I feel like I'm trying to move a mountain with a teaspoon.

So many needs a heart can anguish for before it gives way. So many hurting, a heart can't bare up under the burden.
The world seems in chaos, The economy is failing, our country has lost it's foundational focus, marriages are crumbling, cancer is winning, people are without Him and even those with Him... lost.

--crushing--submerging--beneath a churning, turbulent sea of troubles.

Dead Sea

GOD's PROVISION....
Swim up, swim up through the turbulence of dilemma, to rise to the surface and to stand, YES, to walk on the waters, to walk victorious on the very waves that threaten to drown!
God has made a provision, and it is called PRAYER.
We can pray, and with power.

"Earth has no sorrow that Heaven cannot heal."

--Thomas Moore--

David was overwhelmed. He said so. He cried out to God. But David knew how to pray when he was overwhelmed.
This is why He (God) has placed this knowledge in His Book. In the 142nd Psalm David prays.
A man crushed and weighed down,
"I cried unto the Lord with my voice; with my voice unto the Lord did I make my supplication. I poured out my complaint before Him; I showed Him my trouble when my spirit was overwhelmed within me."

He voiced his dilemma. This is important. The enemy of our life, which is Satan, will attempt to seal our lips. He will try to make us crawl deep down inside ourself and lick our wounds. He wants us to cower beneath his blows and suffer in silence. This is the first step into spiritual isolation.

Don't take that step!

Verbalize your prayer. Speak to God out loud. Tell Him your problems in your own words,

"God, please help me"!

"Jesus Christ the same yesterday, and today and forever".
He is the same today. He can open your Red Sea. He can provide all we need in that wilderness of poverty.

Life may be as flat and colorless as water, but He can change it into wine. He can put life and color into every day. This is the kind of God we have! A loving God. A forgiving God. A good and merciful God. Call upon His Name! Call upon His Name believing and expecting.

I will put it into practice and walk on the waters.
I will not be swallowed up by troubles.
I WILL grow from a weak woman in prayer to a tower of strength. When I pray, the room will take on a sense of power because of Him through me.

Faith will charge the very atmosphere.

A life all about worship and counting 1000 gifts!

#101
Leaning on His promises through thick and thin
#102
Valleys that lead to the high places
#103
Friends that listen
#104
The power He has given us through prayer
#105
Feelings are just that.

FOR OUR ETERNAL BEST

I  look in disbelief. No word seems adequate to express a heart and soul mourning our brothers and sisters toll in Japan. My family, we clasp our hands to pray and intercede.
It's an odd concept to know that we are to pray,  He directs us to.
But I feel so inadequate at the same time through those prayers. I realize the immensity of the travesty and my own fragility & humanity. But yet He tells us to..pray. He tells ME to pray...I realize it's Him.
It's Him through my prayers... through our prayers!

James 5:13-18

The prayer that is able to accomplish much

Prayer is a powerful tool in the hands of a Christian because as James writes

“the effective prayer of a righteous man can accomplish much.”

The idea is that when prayer is working, or doing its thing, it can accomplish much. This is because God has chosen to accomplish His will through our prayers. This truth can be mind boggling, but I think that we can grasp it by looking at another means that God uses to accomplish His will.

Romans 10:14-15
How then will they call on Him in whom they have not believed? How will they believe in Him whom they have not heard? And how will they hear without a preacher? How will they preach unless they are sent? Just as it is written:

"HOW BEAUTIFUL ARE THE FEET OF THOSE WHO BRING GOOD NEWS OF GOOD THINGS!

Who is it that saves a person? It is God of course. But here we see how God does it. God uses Christians who proclaim the good news about Jesus to call non-Christians to belief. It is not the Christian who saved the non-Christian, it is God. In the same way God gives us the privilege of working for His will through our prayers.

God uses our prayers to accomplish His will.

This is why our prayers are so powerful,

because

they have the power of God to accomplish His will behind them.

I find myself grappling with the age old questions:
Why is there suffering; why doesn't God always heal people when they ask?

There is this verse in Matthew 18 where Jesus is delighted to heal people who come to him. But he says, if your hand or your foot causes you to sin, cut it off.

Now right there, it shows that Jesus has a different priority, and that is our spiritual healing.

His real interest was in healing the soul.

He answers our prayers for our eternal best.

Sometimes that means physical healing. Even a miracle.
Other times it means using what Satan meant to destroy us to, instead, cause us to grow stronger
We have to remember that we live in a sinful world in which an enemy seeks to destroy us. He'll do that through whatever means he can. Illness, cancer, pain, discouragement, doubt, busyness.
Yet God promises to work all things to good for His children. Like Joseph, we can say, "You meant this for evil, but God used it for good" Genesis 50:20

I think of a great spokesperson of God's true healing Joni Eareckson Tada. "If I had been granted a miraculous physical healing back when I was 17, I know I wouldn't be in a ministry serving other people with disabilities around the world."

My prayer is for our Eternal Best Father!

#49 Power of prayer