An Answered Prayer

As Hubs was going through the interview process last month for the job in Texas, one of our major concerns was that the salary simply would not be enough for us to live on, especially considering that we are hoping to add children to our family in not too long. Still, we felt like God was opening a door for us, and we decided to stay in the process.

The church flew us to Texas and we both really liked the church. That in itself says a lot. One of my issues with the evangelical church in general is that many of them interpret the scriptures to mean that women are not to be permitted to have certain key leadership positions in the church. And because I'm a special brand of Christian (the feminist variety), that interpretation of scripture does not sit well with me. So the fact that this church believes that women can serve in any capacity in the church puts a big smile on my face. I really want to raise my kids in a church environment where they are not just hearing, but also seeing women in leadership. Besides that, the pastor is a wonderful teacher, and the music/worship in the church was awesome!

Hubs' interview went well when we were in Texas, we really enjoyed the people we met, and we flew home thinking that it would be a wonderful church community to be a part of. Still, there was the issue of salary, and the church had made it clear to Hubs that they wouldn't be able to offer more. 

When we got back to California, we knew that we would hear one way or another about the job in about a week. During that week, we prayed two specific things:

1.) That God would "do immeasurably more than all we could ask or imagine".

2.) That the church would make Hubs an offer that we couldn't refuse.

Well, one week passed, and the phone rang. It was the senior pastor of the church. He told Hubs that everyone involved in the interview process really loved him. He said, "We want to offer you a job, but we want to offer you a different job than the one you applied for." During the week that we were waiting and praying, some circumstances changed and the person who would have been Hubs' boss decided to move into a different area of ministry, and they decided to offer Hubs that job instead! The best part is that it is a job that he is much better suited for than the one he originally applied for, and it comes with a higher salary--one that we feel good about for starting a family!

Needless to say, we were just blown away with God's awesome answer to our prayer. My jaw dropped in amazement and Hubs' hands were shaking when he heard the news. God had worked on our behalf, and we were just sitting there taking it all in. Seeing God work in this way really gave us the confidence we need to move forward with this huge change in our lives.

I decided to share this experience here on my blog for no other reason than that I love to see God work when you know it is Him. Such amazing and specific answers to prayer are so encouraging to me, and I want you to be encouraged, as well.

"Now to him who is able to do immeasurable more than all we ask or imagine...to him be the glory...throughout all generations, for ever and ever! Amen." Ephesians 3:20-21

Dad Update 2

I spoke with my Dad today on the phone.  He is still in the hospital, but has turned a corner, and is in much less pain today.  Praise the Lord!  My sister will be driving over Sunday to spend some time with him, and he is expected to be released from the hospital on Monday.

Thank you so much for your prayers. They are much needed and appreciated. I'm relieved to know that Dad is feeling better today.

Update on my Dad

Almost a month ago, my Dad flung open a door to let one of his dogs out, and he felt pain in his shoulder.  He didn't know what had happened, but the pain got so bad during the night that the next day, he went to the ER.  X-rays revealed a broken arm just below the elbow.  They put his arm in a splint and a sling and told him to go see a bone doctor.

A few days later (while Jilly and I were visiting), he had an appointment with the bone specialist. He took another x-ray which revealed that the cancer had gone to a portion of the bone in his lower right arm and depleted the bone of 50% of its density, leaving it brittle--thus the broken bone from just flinging open a door.

The prognosis was that Dad would need an elbow replacement surgery, which he had yesterday. My understanding is that because the cancer had gone to the bone, the break would never heal. So yesterday, the surgeon removed the elbow and the part of the bone that was cancerous, and replaced it with a stainless steel prosthetic elbow/bone.

Dad was in a lot of pain last night after the surgery, and they were trying to help him manage it. Today, he is supposed to begin physical therapy--amazing how quickly they start it!  He will likely be in the hospital for the next 3-6 days. Please continue to keep my Dad in your prayers. Please pray specifically that his body will accept the new elbow, that there won't be any infection, and for his healing and comfort.

Thank you, as always, for your prayers and support.

With love,

Starshine

Breath Prayer

The following are exerpts from the Spiritual Disciplines Handbook by Adele Ahlberg Calhoun. I really liked what I read in it about "Breath Prayer":

Breathing is an uncounscious thing. And breath prayer reminds us that just as we can't live on one breath of air, we can't live on one breath of God. God is the oxygen of our soul, and we need to breathe him in all day long. After all, it is in him that "we live and move and have our being" (Acts 17:28). Breath prayer reminds us that each breath we are given is God's gift and that God's Spirit is nearer to us than our own breath.

Breath prayer or "prayer of the heart" has been practiced in the church for millennia. The Eastern Orthodox Church in particular has seen breath prayer as a way of living out Paul's instruction to "pray without ceasing."

To practice breath prayer, ponder the nearness of God. Settle deeply into the truth that Christ is in you. Deeply breathe in, repeating any name of God that is dear to you. As you exhale, voice a deep desire of your heart. When you exhale, offer up the desire of your heart. The brevity of the prayer allows it to be repeated over and over throughout the day.

Examples of breath prayers are

• breathe in "Abba," breathe out "I belong to you."
• breathe in "Healer," breathe out "speak the word and I shall be healed."
• breathe in "Shepherd," breathe out "bring home my lost son."
• breathe in "Holy One," breathe out "keep me true."
• breathe in "Lord," breathe out "here I am."
• breathe in "Jesus," breathe out "have mercy on me."

"Think often of God, by day, by night, in your business and even in your diversions. He is always near you and with you; leave him not alone." -Brother Lawrence

Joy to the World!

On Sunday night, Hubs and I attended a fantastic Christmas program at Bel Air Presbyterian Church. The church is located on LA's westside, and 75% of the congregation is in the entertainment industry. Needless to say, anything the church does entertainment-wise is pretty excellent. This Christmas program featured a choir and orchestra, a band, and a mix of classical and contemporary music.

The big finale was a Mariah Carey-esque version of "Joy to the World", which is probably my all-time favorite Christmas carol. With Christ's birth, joy burst onto the scene! Heaven's gates opened and God's peace, hope and joy were being offered to the world in the Person of Jesus.

The lyric of the song that stuck with me and continued to ring in my head after we left the church that night was "Let every heart prepare Him room." Isn't that, after all, the reason the Church observes the advent season leading up to Christmas each year? And isn't that also one of the reasons we are focusing more on prayer this month--so that December 25th doesn't sneak up on us without our having reflected on Jesus at all?

Christmas is only about a week away! During the next week as you are praying, ask the Lord to show you if there is anything that needs to be rearranged or purged to make room in your heart for Him.

"The virgin will be with child and will give birth to a son, and they will call him Immanuel"—which means, "God with us." ~Matthew 1:23

God is with us. We have not been left alone. Let every heart prepare Him room ... joy to the world!

Prayer Request

Please pray for me this morning. I will be at a callback audition for a short film at 11:00 am PST. Please pray that God will give me favor with the casting director and director. Pray that I will be well-prepared with my lines and my character. That I'll have good chemistry with whomever I read. That God will work in and through me to give the best audition!

Thank you so much!

Update: I just got home from the audition. It went really well. Thank you for your prayers! Now let's pray for some good news. :)

Ask Boldly

I want to focus today's post on asking God for what we want and need. Be encouraged by the following quotes to go boldly before God with your requests.

"Let us then approach the throne of grace with confidence, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help us in our time of need." Hebrews 4:16

I love that it is not a throne of terror or fear. Rather God's throne is one of grace--and one we are to approach with confidence, because our God is utterly loving and kind.

"Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God. And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus." Philippians 4:6-7

How wonderful that the result of presenting our requests to God is that His peace will guard our hearts and minds.

Prayer changes things. Thomas Merton, then a young man pursuing great success in a career in literature, felt drawn for reasons he did not understand to spend some time in a religious community with men who devoted much of their days to prayer. He wrote that when he left he was struck by the haste and anxiety of "normal" life: "My heart sank within me. I thought: 'What am I getting into? Is this the sort of thing I myself have been living in all these years?'" The thought occurred to him that in some real way these few men devoted to prayer "are doing for their land what no army, no congress, no president could ever do as such: they are winning for it the grace and the protection and the friendship of God."

You don't know how many people have been strengthened because you asked God to encourage them; how many people have been healed because you prayed for their bodies; how many spiritual runaways have come home because you prayed for their souls. None of us may ever know the true effects of our prayers this side of death. But we do know this: History belongs to the intercessors. - from The Life You've Always Wanted, by John Ortberg

Go boldly before God today with your requests. He is listening!

An Acrostic for Prayer

When my mentor Laura was teaching me about prayer, she gave me a great way to approach it. "Just remember ACTS", she said.

Adoration
Confession
Thanksgiving
Supplication

Adoration: Take time to worship and adore God. Praise Him for who He is. Maybe you can tell Him what qualities you love about Him (ie. His love, faithfulness, care). Maybe you can sing a hymn or song of praise. It doesn't really matter how you express your adoration, just that you express it!

Confession: The Bible says that it's God's "kindness that leads us to repentence". Allow God's kindess to draw you inward. See if there is any sin in your heart that you need to confess to God. Confess it, and ask for His forgiveness.

Thanksgiving: Thank God for the ways He has blessed you, for the ways that you see Him at work in your life, for His great love for you.

Supplication: This is just a fancy word for "request". Ask God for the things that you need. Make your requests to God. Do you need a job? Does a loved one need healing? Do you want to find a spouse? God wants you to be authentic with Him. Tell Him what you want.

I have so enjoyed interacting with my readers this month. I have loved praying for you, and I invite you to continue leaving your prayer requests in my comments section (anonymously is fine). I would like to ask you to please pray for my Dad, who is battling cancer. Please pray that God will heal him. Thank you for praying. God is listening!

God's Love Song

"The LORD your God is with you, he is mighty to save. He will take great delight in you, he will quiet you with his love, he will rejoice over you with singing." Zephaniah 3:17

What a powerful passage of Scripture to meditate on. So many morsels to dwell on. Take a few minutes today to sit alone with God. As you sit with Him, meditate on the above passage part by part.

~The LORD your God is with you. How does that truth impact your time with Him? How will it impact your day?

~He is mighty to save. Rest in his power to save.

~He will take great delight in you. Ask Him to show you the ways He takes delight in you, His child. How does your Heavenly Father's delight in you make you feel about yourself? About Him?

~He will quiet you with His love. God is love. Love is His overwhelming character quality. Love defines Him and motivates His every action. Allow His great love to quiet you. If your mind gets distracted, come back to His love. If stress starts to creep in, let His love quiet you. Sit with Him and let Him quiet you with His love.

~He will rejoice over you with singing. So often, we raise our voices to God in song as a way of showing Him our praises. But God also rejoices over you with singing. Take a moment to hear His song, as He rejoices over you, His precious child.

He loves you. His love for you is deeper than you can imagine. God, the great Creator of the universe, cares deeply for you. God loves you.

Making Room in Your Heart for God

Last week, Hubs and I were reading a morning devotional about confession. Just the word "confession" is enough to make my stomach churn. Confessing my sins to God, after all, means taking a bit of time to poke around my heart and recognize the sin that is lurking there. Still, only by confessing my sin and asking God for His forgiveness can I receive that forgiveness and know the joy of an unburdened soul.

The author of the morning devotional suggested that taking some time to examine our hearts and to confess our sins to God in prayer is an appropriate way to approach the Christmas season. Interestingly, when John the Baptist went out to "prepare the way of the Lord", He did so by calling people to repentence (turning from sin).

As we go into the Christmas season, let's take a moment today to sit with God. Ask Him to show you if there is anything in your heart you need to confess. Then confess it, ask for His forgiveness, and receive it. He will forgive you! By confessing our sins, we are "preparing the way" for God to work in our lives. Why not make some room in your heart today? Let's approach the season together with unburdened hearts that have prepared a way for Him.

From Heaven to the Holidays

This morning, our breakfast conversation turned to Heaven--how this life on earth is only a mere shadow of what is to come. Hubs got so excited, he jumped up and went to his book shelf where he pulled down his anthology of The Chronicles of Narnia. He began to read Lewis' description of the new Narnia (at the very end of the last book of the series, The Last Battle), and both of us got teary-eyed. Our life on earth is full of beauty and wonder and love, and those are the things we'll experience more of in Heaven. The unsavory things of earthly life--the fear, the tragedy, the suffering--will be no more.

And as He [Aslan] spoke, He no longer looked to them like a lion; but the things that began to happen after that were so great and beautiful that I cannot write them. And for us this is the end of all the stories, and we can most truly say that they all lived happily ever after. But for them it was only the beginning of the real story. All their life in this world and all their adventures in Narnia had only been the cover and the title page: now at last they were beginning Chapter One of the Great Story which no one on earth has read: which goes on for ever: in which every chapter is better than the one before. ~C.S. Lewis

Reading that thrills my heart! Somehow, reflecting on Heaven seems like an appropriate way to greet the holiday season. After all, Jesus came into this world to make Heaven possible for me. As November comes to an end (yea, NaBloPoMoers!), I really want to turn my heart and mind toward God in a meaningful way.

I like practicing some sort of spiritual discipline during the month of December because it helps me connect with God during the Christmas season and leading into the New Year, which always feels like a season of renewal and new beginnings for me. For the month of December, I'm going to be writing about and reflecting on prayer on my blog.

As I wrote in this post, I am inviting any of my blog buddies and readers to join with me in a month of prayer (not necessarily to write about it--though you can--but to practice it). Would you like to join me? My thought is that during the month of December, we can:

-take time (even if it is just a few minutes) to be alone with God each day.
-give thanks for the blessings He has given us.
-ask Him for something only He can do (He doesn't mind our bold requests. In fact, He encourages them!)

I also want to invite anyone to leave prayer requests in my comments section. It is fine if they are anonymous. I would love to pray for you.

Anyone is welcome to join me. Happy holidays!