Day 4... One home

Do you ever wonder why you even read the news? All it contains is bad news! Does it ever make you feel overwhelmed? I mean you're just ONE person in a world of zillions. What can you do?

It all starts with one person. It all starts in one home. As we prayed yesterday John touched on this idea, and it really ministered to my soul. If all John and I EVER do is set this one family of six people on fire for God, that is a start.

Let's just imagine, for argument's sake, that each of our children marries and has two children. If our children just set their families on fire for God, the number of on fire believers would swell to eighteen! If the numbers kept going exactly like that in just five generations, John and I would have indirectly helped set 122 people on fire for God! Now multiply that by just ten different families doing the same... 1220!!!!

We CAN make a difference! It JUST starts with ONE FAMILY at a time! This is the truth I have been reminding myself of during these past two difficult days (today was better than yesterday but still NOT good). I keep clinging to the fact that we CAN change the world just by affecting change in this ONE FAMILY!

Day 2... Prayer Walk

Have you seen Facing the Giants? It is one of our FAVORITE movies. I haven't blogged about it in quite some time though. That movie just ROCKED my world and is the source of MANY good ideas, blogs, and resolutions for John and me. One of those ideas came to us in April 2009. Inspired by the man who walks the halls of the high school praying over each locker, John and I began walking the aisles at our church prior to Sunday service, and praying for a revival. Well today John spring boarded off his initial good idea and came up with another doozie!

Ever since leaving New Day Church, John and I have felt God calling us to take a break from service. At New Day, we were self-admittedly over-committed. It seemed we served in every ministry they had available: set-up, worship team, lunch-making, youth group, meals for those in need. After four years we were POOPED and really felt that God wanted us to abstain from getting involved in church ministry for awhile. However, anyone who knows us can probably imagine what a difficult pill that was for us to swallow. We are doers. We are servers. We are NOT ones to just sit there in warm a pew. However, that was exactly what God was asking us to do. I fought back a little, testing the limits my Heavenly parent had set and begged, "Isn't there ANYWHERE I can serve God? I feel so useless without service!" Quietly I felt Him answer, "Your neighborhood is going to be your mission field."

As a result John and I have made efforts to reach out to those in our little neighborhood. We have gotten to know a few people, and we have reached out a little through prayer and service. Well today God gave John an idea which flowed perfectly with this new commission God had given us. He said that, just like we used to walk the aisles of New Day Church and pray, we should start walking the streets of our neighborhood and pray. GENIUS! I LOVED it!

So we started tonight. Admittedly we only made it down "our" cul de sac and part of the adjacent one. The kids pooped out halfway back up our cul de sac. Initially I told them they could go inside while we walked/prayed the rest of the neighborhood, but just a short way down the second street, I started feeling very uncomfortable about walking while they were at home and out of my line of sight. So we did a blanket prayer over the last two streets and headed back home.

As we walked down our little street, we prayed for all our neighbors. For the ones we know, we prayed specifically. Our friends Mike and Rose were out in their garden, and John even walked up the drive and asked if he could pray for Rose. We have been holding them tight in our prayers for several months as Rose has suffered some medical struggles that even the Mayo Clinic has been unable to diagnose. (I would really appreciate it if you could pray for them too. Pain and sickness are so hard to bear but when it is undiagnosed the suffering is greatly increased.) (Yups Kristie we prayed for you and your little clan too as we passed by your abode). For the ones we've yet to meet, we prayed more generally. Regardless it was a GREAT inaugural Prayer Walk, and I look forward to making it a weekly occurrence.

An update on the rest of the Soul Cleanse:

We are doing GREAT so far. No TV. No talk radio. No secular music. This morning we arose at 5:30 a.m. and had our individual quiet time which ended with prayer together as a couple. Immediately after "wake up call" I read the Bible with Auntie Marge and the kids and we prayed. As a family we did our prayer walk and followed it with Family Worship. Right now, John is doing bedtime Bible reading and prayer with the kids while I blog (last night's blog kept me up WAY too late).

We are experiencing some breakthroughs, but on a few issues we are still pounding against the barriers praying that God will bring them tumbling down. An odd side effect that I really didn't think of or expect has been a RIDICULOUS increase in intimacy. The more frequently we pray, praise and read the Word together the more I see of my husband's heart, and I REALLY like what I see. I know we're only on day 2 here, but I SURE hope that we can keep a consistency to some of this.... especially in the area of prayer together. We've always kinda gone in fits and starts in this area, and I just keep thinking if this is how much we've grown and learned and reaped after just two days of GREATLY increased prayed time, what would 2 weeks bring us? or 2 months? or 2 years? We shall see I guess.

Okay everyone I gotta close this up. We still have intercessory prayer on our Soul Cleanse agenda for tonight and my eyelids are already drooping. Have a great night!

Cleansing my soul....

This morning a friend's Facebook status (Sarah Bowling) caught my attention: it said, "I think ever so often we should consider doing a soul cleanse - just some food for thought." I immediately took this idea to my bff. "What do you think, Hon? Are you game?"

Together we started pondering the idea of a soul cleanse. We are SUCH huge fans of cleansing diets. While we never seem to make it all the way through one, we still believe deeply in the concept of cleansing toxins from one's body. So the idea of doing a cleanse for our souls really appealed to us.

We started thinking through what a cleansing diet involves: eliminating junk food and increasing healthy food.... the result of which is a cleansing of toxins from one's body. Then we marinated on how could we fashion a "cleansing diet" for our souls.

First we contemplated what things are junk food to our soul. Junk food in our diet isn't necessarily evil, but it does fill our bellies with food that does not bring much nutritive benefit to our bodies. There are things in our life that do the same thing to our spirits. They are not necessarily evil or sinful, in and of themselves, but they fill our time with stuff that does not bring much benefit to our spirit. We tried to identify what things in our life have little to no spiritual value. The list John and I came up with included: secular music, talk radio, and TV. We decided these things, while not "sin," are taking up space that could be filled with more spiritual pursuits.

Next we contemplated what is spiritual health food. What are the good things we should increase in our daily spiritual "diet" in order to eliminate spiritual toxins. We thought, "How can we get more God into our lives?" These spiritual "health foods" boiled down to three things: 1. Prayer 2. Reading the Word 3. Worship. We started thinking through our schedules and coming up with ways to get more and more of these three things into our lives.

One thing we change we have ABSOLUTELY got to make is: we have to get back to church! Car problems have kept us from traveling the 40 minutes to church for months now. We need a BIG repair to fix the problem and are not able to drive long distances right now. Today we spent some time searching for an "interim" church, and we found one just 15 minutes away! Even if it isn't the church where our hearts are, at least we will be at church. And who knows! Maybe God has plans for us at this "interim" church.

Another thing we are committing to: Family Worship. For a long time in the beginning of 2009, our family faithfully worshiped together on Friday nights. We would spend an hour or so, praising and worshiping, dancing and clapping, crying and praying. It was an AMAZING thing. However, somehow when the storms started we let that habit fall to the wayside. It is being revived again this week. In fact, this week we are going to try to do Family Worship EVERY SINGLE night! (Some of you BETTER keep me accountable and ask how many times we actually did it!) Then after our cleansing week ends, we plan to return to weekly Family Worship times.

It didn't take long as we were hatching these plans, for me to feel my stomach drop with the realization that Satan was NOT going to like this. I wanted to throw up, but yet I was not really deterred. See quick rewind back to 2009. John and I were ON FIRE for God! We were praying fervently and faithfully for a revival in our church. We were working hard to lead the youth of our church closer and closer to Christ. Using Facebook, I started a prayer group. I spent nearly every morning praying through long lists of requests, some from people I didn't even know personally. We might as well have been waving a red cape in front of a raging bull. John even posted on Facebook one day, "Bring it on Satan." Only we didn't fully realize how what we were doing was going to stir of the forces of the evil realm, and I don't think either of us had a healthy enough respect for what exactly Satan is capable of. So when Satan charged at us we didn't have our eyes on him, we weren't prepared for his attack. He blindsided us from what seemed like out of NOWHERE. He brought weapons to the fight that we didn't even know existed, and while he did not win (for he NEVER does) at the end of the battle John and I found ourselves face down in mud that was tinged with our own blood. Gravely but not fatally wounded, we found ourselves with a new appreciation for Satan's crafty power, a sickening realization of our frail, wicked humanity, and a triumphant assurance of His sovereignty, goodness, and never-ending, loving, kindness.

But this time I feel we will weather the battle better. I stopped the second I got that sick realization that we were about to HACK off the devil. I went to John, and we agreed in prayer, covering our entire family, our possessions, our relationship with the blood of Christ. I know we are about to make the devil a very unhappy camper, but this time we are ready for him. I don't want to fight him again. I don't relish the thought of battling him, especially since we really haven't even recovered from the last series of skirmishes. But I want MORE of God in my life. I want to know Him more deeply. I want to love Him more completely. I want to reflect Him more clearly. And if I have to fight to get that, so be it.

Last night we watched Independence Day. (I LOVE that movie! However, during our soul cleansing it will not be on the list of approved pursuits.) After an air battle with an alien which results in a crash, Will Smith opens the alien craft to find the alien inside is STILL alive. He punches the thing full in the face and knocks it unconscious. That scene inspired me! His character had just finished a grueling dogfight in which his best friend was killed. He was tired and weary yet when he saw the enemy was still writhing he rose to the challenge and knocked that alien OUT!

I too have been through a grueling battle. The past 12 months have been wrought with battles. My husband, my marriage, my family, my very life, and everything I hold dear have been threatened. I am tired and weary, but I tell you what, I am NOT going to go down without a fight! I am going to keep on taking swings at that crafty old snake, and I will crush him under my foot because I am a child of the King and MY SIDE WINS IN THE END! No matter how many stupid little battles Satan appears to have won along the way, in the end WE WIN!

So I am inspired and motivated, and I am girding up my loins for battle. But I am also reaching out my hands to my Father the King, expectantly and confidently waiting for Him to fill my begging hands with good and amazing things from above.

I'm going to do my best to chronicle this journey here daily. I will try as hard as I can to be as transparent as possible and let you all walk with us through this cleansing of our souls... I don't think it will be easy. I'm reminded of the vomiting that occurred the time I tried to begin my new year with a cleansing diet but the shock of caffeine withdrawal had me nauseated by the severe headache pain. I'm thinking that a spiritual cleansing might not be much more pleasant than that. However, I full, well believe that the benefits of cleansing my soul will FAR outweigh the benefits of any kind of cleansing of my physical body.

So here we go! Project soul cleansing begins when I wake up this morning. One week of eliminating spiritual junk food and increasing spiritual health food. I have made a list in my journal of "toxins" that I hope God will purge out of my soul and breakthroughs I hope He will bring. But I FULL WELL expect that at the end of this week, the list of actual toxins purged and actual breakthroughs made will far exceed my expectations and will be exceedingly more than anything I could ask for or hope for.

Be the Change You Want to See!

These words have been floating around in my head for several weeks. I decided it was time to blog about them and quickly googled them to see if maybe I had heard them somewhere and that’s why they have been stuck in my head. They are part of a quote from Ghandi. (Odd… it’s not like I have ever consciously studied Ghandi.) Regardless, the wisdom of these words has been coming at me frequently. Here are a few examples:

John and I have been praying HARD for revival for many weeks now. After seeing the movie, Facing the Giants, we were inspired by the man who walked the halls at the high school praying for revival as he touched the lockers. We have been focusing most of our prayer for revival on New Day Church; however, we pray that revival will spread to all corners of this earth. Therefore on Sunday mornings, we arrive early to church, and we walk through the rows of chairs praying for revival and touching each chair. Recently, I keep hearing God telling me, “Be the change you want to see.” I think he is telling me if I want revival at my church, in this land, then I need to spark a revival in my own heart. I need to get set on fire for God anew. Then that spark in my heart can start to spread to my church and throughout the whole earth. “Consider what a great forest is set on fire by a small spark.” (James 3:5).

Another way these words have been ministering to me is sort of a new twist on an old favorite, the Golden Rule. I am a very sensitive person (this might possibly be the biggest understatement in the world). I get hurt so easily, and once hurt, I often find myself wallowing around in the pain, “Why, oh why, did they do that?” “How, oh how, could a person be like that?” Lately I have heard God calling me to step out of the mud and muck of the pain I am wallowing in and do something to make a difference. I have heard Him saying, “Be the change you want to see.” It is inspiring me to greater heights of patience, loving kindness, and impartiality. When someone is impatient and rude to me at the grocery store, I counter with patience in my reply to them. When someone is cruel or unkind to me, I try to respond with love and kindness. When I feel slighted by a judgmental comment, I vow to strive harder to be impartial and never pass judgment.

I am sure some reading this are thinking but that doesn’t make a difference! You being nice to a rude person doesn’t stop them from being rude to the next person. You being kind doesn’t mean everyone in this world will be kind. You refusing to be judgmental doesn’t end unfairness around the world. But I believe differently. I believe that one person can make a difference, and I believe that even if all I changed was my filthy, rotten, sinful response, than that is still something good.

So go out today and “Be the change you want to see.” If nothing else you will change yourself, and that is still something very good.