Day of Prayer And Fasting

A Place Called Simplicity: Please Share Your Prayer Needs.....

Im captivated by Stellan's story!

scroll down and keep clicking previous posts to get to the beginning - and read backwords

The Storming of Ninevah

I love the book of Jonah. I love the idea of the whale and the boy. I love the prayers. I love the inspiration and courage. I love the fear and rebellion. I don't really care if the fish was a fish or a whale. I don't really care if it was an actual historical event or just a story to explain a concept. I just love the heck out of it.

 A part of me All of me really identifies with Jonah. Sometimes when God comes a calling I want to crawl under a rock and stick my fingers in my ears and sing out loud "la la la la la la la - I cant hear you". Sometimes I want to turn the radio up real loud and pretend I didn't hear him. Sometimes I want to use logic to convince myself why what He wants couldn't really be what is best for me. And sometimes, just sometimes, I want to hop on a boat and go in the other direction. I think most people probably feel this way sometimes. I know for me - my enemy is fear. Fear is what tries to yank me away from God's best for me. Fear of man. Fear of fear. Fear of possibilities. Fear of loneliness. Fear of God.

For a long time I wasn't just a tourist under that rock - I lived there. I was the rock girl. I didn't care that there wasn't any sun there - because the sun was too bright. I stayed under that rock and stuck my fingers in my ears and let fear take complete control of my steps. I am not saying I was happy under that rock, but it was my rock and it was comfortable.

Somewhere after my first missions trip fear started to lose grip on me. The love of Christ started to burn it away. I suddenly became filled with a new courage. I had this picture in my head. It was me being catapulted off the tongue of a whale, like a slingshot almost, flying in a somersault with my fist raised - storming Ninevah. I didn't want to run and hide from the word Ninevah anymore. I wanted to storm Ninevah. I wanted to raise my fist in triumph and speak forth the word of God.

I have told you about my bff anna and how we are tight. We also like to do projects together. We have done most things, from modgepodge to building homemade didgerydoos, to electrical diy projects and pranks.... paintings, clay... sewing... everything. Now one of the things we did at one time was we made some techno worship songs, and named ourselves "storming ninevah". They are kind of lame - anna is amazing but i am not. If you have a jrock account you can listen to them here http://www.jrockboom.com/userinfo.php?user=stormingninevah

So when fear starts to creep up and put its hands around my throat, I try to think about Storming Ninevah. Because as that story showed us, and as experience has shown me, God will do the impossible, all we have to do is show up.

I am putting a picture of jonah and the whale into my memorial box :)

  

The Starfish

Once upon a time, there was a wise old man,
who went to the sea to contemplate.

One day, while walking along the shore,
the wise old man looked down the beach,
and saw a gracefully dancing human figure.
The wise old man wondered out loud,

“Who would be dancing all alone on the beach?”
He began to walk faster to catch up.
Getting closer, the wise man saw that the dancer
was a child, who was not dancing at all.
The child was reaching down to the sand to pick up
something, and was very gently throwing it into the sea.

The man called out to the child,
“Good Morning! What are you doing?”
The child paused, looked up and replied,
“Throwing Starfish into the sea.”
Surprised, the man said,
“Yes, I see that, but WHY are you throwing Starfish into the sea?”

The child smiled brightly, pointed upward and
with perfect simplicity replied,
“The sun is up, and the tide is going out.
If I don’t throw them in, they will die.”
“But, don’t you realize, “asked the man,
“that there are miles and miles of beach and Starfish all along it?
You can’t possibly make a difference!”

The child listened politely.
Then bent down, picked up another Starfish,
threw it gently into the sea, just beyond the breaking waves,
and joyfully declared,
“It made a difference for that one.”



Want to throw a starfish back?

The Thick and Thin Friend

Memorial Box Monday Edition

When I first became a Christian I was missing a big piece of my walk. I was missing friends. I had a couple friends. At that time, not too many real friends, but I had friends. What I was missing were real friends. Friends who understood my faith. Friends who supported, encouraged, and challenged me. Friends like I read about in books. I have two sisters who didn't live near me at the time, and though one knew my faith, only had so much time for me via the phone. I was struggling with panic disorder at the time and there were many things I prayed about. The thing I prayed the most about at the time was friends. I prayed long and hard for friends that I could experience this life as a Christian with.

At the time I had nothing in sight. I was going to a church with an awesome teaching pastor but where no one seemed to notice I was there. I would linger a little before and after service but after a year and a half not a single person acknowledged me there or invited me to anything. I wanted a Christian friend more than anything, but it didn't seem like it was going to happen to me, and as shy as I was it was even more distant. Those days were tough for me, trying to teach myself and encourage myself. Lets just say my understandings and decisions weren't always the best. I would lay and pray and ask the Lord "Lord please could I have a friend who was a Christian".

Through a series of events, about 4 years later I started going to a particular church, and after a series of events started spending time with a woman named Arlene. Arlene was a tad older than me but we always had so much fun that I loved spending time with her.

I can't begin to explain how important she is to me. How she has encouraged me. How she has sharpened me, like iron on iron. How she has challenged me. How she has loved me. How she has taught me. How she has encouraged me. How she has supported me. How she has helped me in my walk.

At different times we have talked about wondering if our friends were the type that stick through hard times, through thick and thin. She always told me she would expect me to leave her in tough times. And I too had never had a friend who would go through the really tough times with me. Arlene and I have been through THE RINGER. Going through numerous people drama, church breakups, deaths, fights, attacks, accusations, and all kinds of hell she has stuck by me. When people have attacked her and when people have attacked me and when we fought even with each other, we always got through it together.

There were plenty of times it would be easy for her to walk away from me. But she didn't. She is the type of friend that tells me when I am wrong. She is the type of friend that protects me when people come against me. She is the type of friend that I can know will go through the fires with me in this life.

When I prayed for a friend - I was really praying for Arlene. I am amazed that the Lord had something so special in mind for me. Someone to teach me to be a friend, to teach me to be a wife, to teach me to be a child of God and sit at the foot of Christ. I have some very special and amazing people in my life, but I would not be who I am and where I am without Arlene - that is for sure. Paul said "follow me as I follow Christ". In the meantime I have been following Arlajean as she follows Christ. She is my real life Linny.

Perfume and incense bring joy to the heart, and the pleasantness of one's friend springs from his earnest counsel.? - Proverbs 27:9

This week I am putting a picture of Arl and I in my memorial box.

  

The Tip

Memorial Box Monday Edition

So for a period of time I was working for a cable provider as a field technician and really struggling to pay my way. It seemed as if every single week I would run out of money a couple days before pay day and really have to get creative. I would find ways to make groceries stretch, I would find ways to make the bills get paid a month early so that when I was late I was never really late, but could go a couple extra days since I was in actuality a month ahead. I would do things like this because I was in a situation where that was my only choice. Perhaps my eyes were bigger than my wallet as far as choosing housing and all, but for whatever the reason I was low on dough in those days.

So, God used these times to show me in mighty ways how tangible and real He was. I remember many times where I did not have money for gas to get home from work and God would just bring it out of thin air. I would be in my truck driving around and praying. "Please God - help me make my gas last for just one more day". Then I would moments later walk into a client who would hand me just enough money to put gas in my car as a tip. Now, tips were not the norm in my job. Sometimes you would go months without a tip. And I have to say I have never thought to tip the cable man when he came to my house. But every now again, without rhyme or reason, a client would shove money in my hand/pocket/toolbag and insist that I take it. The part that made it so very beautiful to me was when I hadn't had a tip in months, and not necessarily asking for it, just praying God would find a way to provide, and out of nowhere a tip of $10 or $20 to go into my gas tank and get me home and back to work the next day.

God made sure He did this in very obvious ways to me. And often now people think I am insensitive and careless about money. And perhaps sometimes I am (thank the Lord I have a husband who is the exact opposite with money), but it is just something the Lord has taught me not to worry about. The God of the universe has the ability to provide more money than I need, and He has proven to me that he will always take care of me much more than I deserve. So on this memorial box monday I want to make sure that I remember all those times God took care of the little things for me.

²⁵"Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more important than food, and the body more important than clothes? ²⁶Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they? ²⁷Who of you by worrying can add a single hour to his life^[b]? - Matthew 6

This week I am putting a bean in my memorial box. Because God was my provider of gas!

  

The Boy

Memorial Box Monday Edition

So while I spent my late teen years with my high school boyfriend, my early twenties found me broken-hearted and alone. My high school boyfriend and I had parted ways. My friends had all gone off to their own lives. My parents had completed a divorce and were involved in their new lives with their new significant others. I had a newfound faith in Christ, and while I finally felt like I was home (because of my faith), I was also experiencing my first alone time as a single "adult".

Initially it was very lonely and I was pretty sad. But then the Lord started to call me. He drew me to His word. I started reading it for the first time in my life and really seeing it as something real and applicable and the living word of God. I made some mistakes as an early Christian, as we all do. Saying the wrong thing out of zeal. Doing the wrong thing out of ignorance and rebellion. But from early on I had a desire to not just read the scriptures but to understand them.

But to be honest I often wondered about my husband. I wondered when I would meet him. I wondered what he would be like. Even in my most spectacular moments with Christ I had in the back of my mind earthly love. I prayed and asked God why everyone around me was marrying off and He had left me alone. I asked what was unworthy about me that I couldn't have a man to start a family with. I knew I wasnt ready, but I wanted it anyhow, and I guess I thought if I was persistent enough the Lord would eventually answer the prayer.

At some point my older sister told me to get my prayer journal and start making a list of the things I wanted the Lord to grow in my husband, things that were important to me. She reminded me how special it was to pray for a man I did not yet know. I did this, and continued this, though I often lamented and felt like it was something that would never happen. I often felt I would end up an old maid... silly I know but going through my twenties and being the only one in the room without even a boyfriend was difficult. I asked that the Lord not bring me a man until my husband, and He certainly fulfilled that, much to my chagrin.

So what were the things I was asking the Lord to prepare my husband with? What were the things most important to me? Here are a few I recall:

a deep love for Christ

a deep love for me

sillyness

humbleness

tenderness

the ability to make me laugh

passionate about youth ministry

someone to make me feel safe

laid back/easy going

So, I spent some time praying for this, but also for God to form my husband to be the perfect fit for me, and what I didn't even know that I would need in life. I often felt these were promises that would never be fulfilled. I knew that the Lord wants us all to feel the love of a spouse, especially when that is a reflection of His love for us. But I know there are still people in this world who don't get that, and I often felt that that would one day be me.

During this time I focused on my walk. I learned to appreciate my friendships. I grew in my faith. I learned more about who Christ is and what He wanted for my life. I have had the most amazing friends who have gotten me through that time in my life. I have had the most amazing and awesome moments with the Lord. I have experienced things some never get to. And in the end.....

So it was spring when we first met online. It was a website like myspace but for Christians. I initially signed up while I was researching for my online ministry and had surfed around it looking for ideas for new features. We started talking on the site, then it switched to text. Then we started playing Lord of the Rings Online together with some of my friends, until one day when his computer crashed and he called me. Then we started spending time on the phone. Until one day in late November when we set up our first date. I wasn't about to meet someone new on my own, so I made sure my friend Anna and her husband could come and that we would go somewhere public.

Well, after our date Bry and I went to Starbucks alone. We sat outside and talked. Before we knew it it was dark, the place had closed up around us and everyone was gone. I recall freezing but didn't want to go get a jacket for fear the magic I felt would end. He was even smart enough to leave the night with just a friendly hug. Our first kiss would come later. We both felt that connection, that magic, like nothing before. 

We both started to realize very quickly that this was it. At some point we had a talk about how we had been praying for a spouse. It was not long before we noticed that the very specific things that we had been asking God for were very specifically part of each other's character. Bry is the man I had been praying for (to the tee), and even more that I didn't even know I needed yet. Where I am weak he is strong, where he falls short I succeed. We are the perfect fit, and who would have known?

Since we have met we have encouraged each other in our faiths. Early on (when we lived 2 hours away from each other) we would spend hours upon hours on the phone. We would take turns reading through the new testament together. He would drive down for youth group on the weekends, where I was a volunteer. He became a friend not just to me but to my friends as well. I soon saw that all the things I had admired in husbands I had seen in my life were all compiled in Bryans very being. The night he knelt on the beach and proposed to me I told him I felt like I won the husband lottery. And I still feel that way even more than I could imagine. We are not perfect, but we are certainly perfect for each other. I pray for many many many years with Bryan. He is a daily reminder of not only God's fulfillment of a hope, but of the intense love that God has for us. He is my matching puzzle piece.

I am putting a candle from our wedding into our memorial box today. :Because our love is God's greatest gift to date.