Karen Moore's Blog, page 15

Pray, and let God Worry

Today, I’m going to encourage you to worry. That’s right. I know you’re going to do it anyway, so I’m not going for the old cliche, “Don’t worry!” In fact, my suggestion is that we set a timer, and just give in to whatever it is we’d like to put on the worry agenda. Write it down. Be specific. Throw caution to the wind and put every little worrisome thing out there. Once you’ve done that, you get one minute. That’s it! You get one minute to worry as much as you can possibly worry and then you’re done. What? You’ve got more to worry about than that? Well, not today!

So, the gift you are giving yourself is that you now exist in a worry-free zone!  That list you made to worry about just became your prayer list. You’re going to spend 59 minutes in prayer. You can choose how many of those minutes to string together, but the idea here is to pray any time a worry comes to mind. You can do 59 one-minute prayers if it suits you best but pray, and then pray some more.

Perhaps it helps if I remind you of my acronym for pray, which is P.R.A.Y.  P is about taking a moment to pause and to think about who it is you’re going to talk to when you pray. You’re going to speak to God, the Creator of the entire universe, the One who made the ground you walk on. You’re going to talk to Jesus, the King, the Lord of Lords, the One who loved you so much He went to the cross to save you, and you’re going to pray to the Holy Spirit, the One who reminds you that all is well with your soul Wow! You’re going to pray to the greatest force that ever existed. Think of that! 

The R is to remember what God has done for you in the past. When you’re in the midst of anything that feels like a crisis, it can be hard to remember how God has stepped in and helped you before. When you refresh your memory of all that God has done, you feel more encouraged to pray again. 

The A is simply to ask for whatever it is that is on your heart. When you are fully present, fully connected to your prayers, you know your heart is in it. God will hear the requests of your heart.

The Y is about being able to give up the answer you want and yield to the answer God has for you. It’s about you stepping aside and letting God be God. When you do, your open to all that He has for you and more able to praise His name.

Today, unshackle yourself from the weights of the world. Rest your worries on the shoulders of the only One who can carry them for you. You are not alone. You are not living in isolation. You are known and loved. God is with you now and will be with you wherever you go today.  As He said, “You are mine!”

Martin Luther wrote, “Pray, and let God worry.”

Be strong because you are surrounded by an invisible means of support.  Sending you joy and love today.

 

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More Patience, Please!

Most of us struggle with that thing called patience. When our days are calm and breezy, we’re pretty good at it. We go with the flow and let the world just do its thing. When we’re tired or busy or stressed though, it can be another thing altogether. We might not even recognize our short, abrupt responses to people we love, or our quick irritation with slow traffic, or anything that gets in our way. We probably aren’t even aware of our impatience until it gets to a place where we’re rolling over everyone in our path. We simply have no time for them. We have things to do and they are obstacles we don’t want to navigate. 

Sometimes we become impatient with God. We’ve been praying about the same difficult situation for some time. Not only has it not resolved, it’s actually worse. We can’t see how it’s going to get better. We don’t understand. Why hasn’t God just taken care of things? Waiting never feels like a friend. After all, we’re geared toward action. We want to make a difference, effect a change, get things moving. We’ve prayed. We’ve paced the floor. We’ve looked for solutions. 

Here’s the kind of prayer I can imagine putting out there when my patience is running low, in fact it’s on fumes.

Dear Lord,

I need some patience,

Breathe in, breathe out, repeat.

I need to learn from setbacks

And not take them as defeat.

 

I need to see the good

As I wait expectantly,

Because the huffing and the puffing

Just don’t do a thing for me.

 

I need to give myself a break,

When what I plan falls through,

And I need to ask forgiveness,

For the impulsive things I do.

 

So Lord, I ask you kindly,

For a patient mind and heart,

And if I may, I’d like to say,

It’s not too soon to start!

 

Amen!

When your patience is practically gone, it’s helpful to stop everything and wait for that moment when you can truly sense God’s presence. When that happens, pour out your heart to Him and breathe in HIs precious Spirit. Trust that He hears your prayers and that He is working even now to help you get to a better place. You may find that you suddenly have more patience than you thought. If so, it won’t be long before you’re fully ready to move on. May God bless you with patience in every difficulty, as you trust in Him to be with you every step of the way. 

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The Edge of All You Know

Most of us sat wide-eyed as Indiana Jones faced one of the most crucial tests in his search for the Holy Grail. He had come to the edge of the rock ledge, the edge of possibility and all he could see was the vast abyss that separated him from the prize he was after. Moving forward, required a leap of faith. That scene reminds me of a quote from Edward Teller: “When you come to the end of all the light you know, and it’s time to step into the darkness of the unknown, faith is knowing that one of two things will happen. Either you will be given something solid to stand on or you will be taught to fly.”

Indiana Jones was smart. He was a researcher and a scientist. He had discovered the path to the Holy Grail by great effort, and the help of Hollywood. Ultimately, he reached the edge of all he knew, and he had a choice to make. Turning back would have seemed sensible. The Knight who guarded the Grail would have deemed him wise. But something deep inside of him, told him he could step out into the abyss, and all would be well. For some of us, accepting the invitation of Jesus is like that. We are close to the edge, genuinely ready to answer His call, but the abyss of the world with all its traps and temptations looms heavy upon us. We imagine that somehow our own intelligence will be enough, but sometimes, being smart isn’t all there is. Faith doesn’t make sense to our limited intellect, so how do we take that next step? The Knight (Jesus) sees us coming and knows we’ll be on solid ground. He waits patiently for us to choose to take a leap of faith. The good news is that every human being who ever existed got to the edge of all they knew, and then they had to choose. One by one, they came to the answer for themselves. You can tool

Like Indiana Jones, we get clues along the way, the kind that take us right to the edge. When we get there, we can take the biggest step of our lives. No one else can do it for us. No one else can take our hand. We simply have to take that step which guides us into a lasting relationship with the One who is the Holy Grail.  With Him, we are always on solid ground because He goes before us to guide us from that moment on. The world will always be an abyss that seeks to tempt you and make you fall. What a relief it is to know that Jesus stands in the gap, ready to hold us up wherever we go. 

Keep choosing to follow where He leads. Who knows, you may be taught to fly!

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Putting the P in Prayer

Sometimes people ask me what they can do to have a more fulfilling prayer life. As a practitioner of prayer and a student of how it all works, I realize it’s a question that has multiple answers. It’s personal on one hand, and yet there are things we can do to experience more from the gift of prayer. Are there any formulas, you might wonder? Well, no, but you can always look at the structure of the Lord’s Prayer and use that as a model. Rather than focus on the how or what of prayer though, I’d like to focus on the Who.

I don’t know if this ever happens to you, but sometimes, I dive right into prayer with only a passing nod at God because I’m in a hurry to get to my request, to get an answer to something that isn’t going quite right in my life. More recently, I’ve felt like God is nudging me to slow down, to stop and try a quieter approach. He wants me to pause and ponder who He is! He wants me to recognize the privilege I have in being able to come to the King of the universe any time at all and speak with Him. I have never done this so intentionally as I do now. I realize that I need to dig deeper, try harder, spend more time in Scripture, so that I can know the One on the other side of my prayer. Since we’re in a conversation for two, I realize He already knows everything about me, but I can’t claim the same thing. I don’t know everything about God. I don’t know those things that He most longs for me to know because if I did, I’d be more focused, more consistent, more intentional in prayer. 

The psalmist said that we should praise God. What do we praise Him for? For everything! For creating the ground we walk on, for saving our souls, for freeing our hearts and minds to be all that He designed us to be. In fact, our praise list could take us from now to eternity to complete. Imagine for a moment that you are Moses at the burning bush, or Jacob as he envisioned the ladder with angels going up and down at heaven’s door. Wouldn’t you be in awe? Wouldn’t you fall on your face in total surrender because God opened your eyes to see Him? As you read through scripture, you become aware that every big event, every conversation with God happened because someone stopped long enough to tune in, and to listen for God’s voice. 

We may be missing out on knowing God, the One we go to in prayer. He is the One who makes all things possible, who provides for your welfare, and who plans your steps. Meet Him someplace that is comfortable for you, then take off your shoes, because you will be on hallowed ground. Pause to know God, then get ready to pray!

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Just Passing Through

Have you noticed that life doesn’t often turn out like you expected? You grow up, leave home to get a job or a further education, explore the world a little, search for a partner, have kids and start the cycle all over again. It’s what your parents did and what their parents did. Somewhere along the way though, the cycle takes an unexpected turn…the job falls through, the marriage ends, the kids leave home, and you have to adjust to the change. If, by the grace of God life turned out better than you expected, it’s still a mystery. One of the best ways to adjust to all these changes is to look for God’s hand at work in your life. When did He open a door for you? When did He show you another way to discover your mission or your purpose here? 

Since we’re temporary on planet Earth, we want God to direct our steps and keep us moving along. In fact, these days, we want that more than ever! Why? Because the noise of the world makes your head spin. You are swept into the vortex of television, news feeds, internet apps, and Facebook opinions. It’s a vast abyss that can mislead even the savviest thinkers. You’re not sure who to follow, or who to believe. You wonder if anything is real. You need a foundation stone, and even more, a cornerstone.

Jesus told his followers to be careful about building a house on the sand. It doesn’t matter whether the house is made of wood, bricks, or steel, it’s still going to fall. The wolf will always find his way to the door.  It’s going to collapse because it has no solid foundation. But if you build your house on the Rock of Ages then nothing can take it down. It will remain forever. So each of us must take an honest look at what kind of foundation we’re building. 

In my adult life, I’ve seldom been able to purchase my own home. Every opportunity for such things just slipped through my fingers. I’ve grown content with renting lovely homes, moving to different cities, never really landing anywhere, just passing through. It helps me remember to focus on the work before me, the race to be run, the job at hand. It reminds me that this very moment is the best one I’ve got, so I have to keep building on a foundation of faith.  In that, I feel secure.

Someday, I’ll end up a permanent resident in a mansion, a place that is already reserved for me, a place that will last forever. 

I don’t want to miss that party!

 

 

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For Your Own Good

I remember when hearing this phrase caused a shiver to go up my spine. Anything that was intended “for my own good” usually was followed by things that weren’t so good. Discipline of any sort can give us pause.  The very idea of guidance implies we aren’t all that certain about our direction. We need help, but oftentimes, we don’t want the kind of help that is simply “for our own good.”

The Scripture in Isaiah 38:17 is helpful. It appears that Isaiah was having a hard time with some of God’s initiatives. In the end, Isaiah wrote:: “It was for my own good that I had such troubles. Because You love me very much, you did not let me die, but threw my sins far away.” Whew! That’s something worth pondering. 

Even though it never feels good at the time, our troubles are often our best teachers. The lessons we learn are not easily forgotten. In fact, most of us want to help others avoid the pitfalls from our own experience. As parents, we never want our children to suffer in any way. The problem is that being human means we get off the track pretty easily. We dupe ourselves into thinking everything we’re doing is all right until the world we’ve created comes crashing down around us. So, what happens then? That depends on you. 

You can tell God you’re not wild about His parenting skills, if you want. You can find someone in your current circle to blame, even though you know they are not to blame. Or you can echo something akin to what Isaiah said as he learned to be grateful for God’s instruction. He learned that God was really helping him out of an eternal jam, which was most likely much bigger than his earthly problems. No doubt, we’d all like to learn our lessons the first time, so we wouldn’t need to be reminded of the foolishness of our choices. We’d like to sweep things under the rug and hope no one notices. 

God’s desire for you is not to make you suffer for your poor choices., but to make you a happier, freer person. He wants your heart to be light and your burdens to be few.  His desire is for you to know He loves you more than anything and that He will always seek the best way to help you draw near to Him. You can be certain God wants the best for you forever. In fact, He always does things for your own good.

 

 

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Weak in the Knees

1st Peter 5:7 is one of my life verses. It was given to me by a friend when I was being baptized at the age of 20. This scripture gives us something we can do with our worries, our anxiety and all the things that make us weak in the knees.  It says you can turn your worries over to God, cast them on Jesus, and give them to the One who cares for you. Humans are all about worry. Some of us worry even if there’s not a great reason to do so. Some of us worry about things long past, or things that feel beyond our control. You might think that we have a worry gene, but I’m guessing we’d be hard pressed to find it.

Granted, worry gives us something to do, while we wait for answers, try to figure out next steps, question our circumstances and even try to blame the world for our dilemma. The problem is that every bit of energy that we throw into this emotion called worry, simply can’t serve us well. Your local pharmacy can fill you with anxiety medication. Your local tavern can relieve the stress for a while. The problem is that these things don’t strengthen you and give you reason to hope.  So, what can we do about worry?

We can cast our burdens on God because He’s willing to take them off our shoulders and because He loves us more than we can understand, says the Gospel writer. He sees ahead of us and behind us. He knows what we’ve been through and what’s coming. He’s there with a gift and ready to hand it over. It’s called peace of mind and heart.

It’s hard for me to imagine what people do who don’t believe God is there for them. They may find comfort in one way or another, but they still miss out on what God has to offer. If we take God at His Word, and take Him seriously, then handing over our burdens should be the first thing we do. Praying about our concerns and then leaving them with Him, will give us time to do things that are far more productive than worry can ever be. Lean on Him! Picture His strong arm, His tender grip on your life, and let Him strengthen you.

When I look back at my own life, I know there are lots of times when I didn’t have a prayer. I was weak and unable to take on the tasks assigned to me, but these days, I try harder to trust that God is working things out, even when I can’t see what He’s doing. I wish I could say I’m not a worrier, but when I feel like worry is trying to take over my day, I ask God to help me carry the burden. Now, if I could just get to the place where I cast it on Him, and let Him carry the whole burden, that would be awesome.  Let’s keep in mind that God stands with us when we are weak in the knees!

Praying for your strength of mind and heart today.

 

 

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3-2-1…Go!

By now, you’ve lived long enough to know how the cow ate the cabbage, so to speak! You have a good sense of what you like, what you don’t like, and how to create your world in a way that feels satisfying. In fact, you’ve done it so long, you barely have to think about it. Now if your comfort level was all there is to talk about, you’d be in good shape. In fact, you might even resist anything that tries to move you off the path you’ve come to know and love.

But, imagine for a moment, that there’s more. That there’s amazing stuff you missed along the way, stuff that is still waiting for you to grasp it. What if opportunity is still knocking on your door?

For some people the energy and the time it took to become a worldly success, was a barrier to discovering those things that truly inspire your soul. So, if that is the case for you, you have amazing gifts left to open, and visions left to explore. Unlike those past dreams that required you to do most of the work, this one only asks you to get out of the way, to stop, and listen. This one thrives on getting to know you from the inside out. Oh, God has always been there. He has indeed helped you create the amazing life you have, but sometimes He wants you to get off the merry-go-round, and simply stop everything else. He wants you to notice all that He has been doing in your life, from the day you were born.

Like any proud parent, He loves your success, and He beams at what you’ve accomplished, but He’d like to know that you realize He was behind the scenes, empowering you, equipping you, and opening doors for you. He wants you to come often and talk with Him about all you’ve learned and what you still might wish for. He wants the two of you to be in a remarkable relationship, because it’s the one relationship you can have for eternity. It’s the one chance you truly have for a love that lasts forever.

Of course, you can keep doing everything on your own. You can continue to move along giving God a passing nod now and again. He won’t abandon you, but you will miss the best part of your life. You will miss knowing the One who loves you unconditionally, who wants only your good, and who is there for you at every crossroads you ever face. Of course, God can wait. He’s not restricted by time and space, but all your days were recorded in His book before you were born. He hopes you’ll come to talk with Him like good friends do.

In fact, today is a great day to give Him a call!

3-2-1…go!

 

 

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The Age Gag

In the greeting card business, when you tease someone about their age in a birthday card, it’s called an age gag. The card might have something like a birthday cake on the front with lots of candles and say, “Blow out these candles first. On the inside, it might say, “We’ll put the rest on when you’re done.”  Of course, we’re trying to say the cake could not hold all your candles because you’re so old.  I remember when my dad turned 80, we put 80 candles in a jar so he could have a visual of how many years they represented. Of course, he laughed good naturedly. 

Some say age is only a number. That’s true, but when it gets to be a big number, it means you probably see life through a different lens than you did some years back. I remember a song Bob Dylan sang that had a refrain that said, “Ah, but I was so much older then, I’m younger than that now!” That line is brilliant because it brings us full circle. It opens up our aging field of vision so that we see things in a bigger picture way than we did in those years when everything was daunting and critical. Now we can actually understand Romans 8:28 which tells us that “All things work together for good for those who love the Lord.” That statement proves itself to us over and again. We look at things we imagined would be difficult, and even if they were tricky to navigate, we see that things came together in a positive way. Time brings perspective we simply don’t have with fewer candles on our cakes.

Age may cause us to seek more of what God wants from us now. Of course, God is with us all the time, but He likes us to ask Him to draw near. So, what do we ask God? We might ask for a greater awareness of Him, a revelation in Scripture, or to be more like Him in the ways we choose to love others. What’s important is not simply the request we may have, but the opportunity we take to be quietly connected to the Creator. Prayer is His communication method. It is the way we can share the desires of our hearts.

The beauty of getting a little older is that we’re finally in a place where we actually want nothing more than to know God better. We want to be guided and directed by His hand so that we can finish the race of life to His glory. As Erma Bombeck said, “When I stand before God at the end of my life, I would hope that I would not have a single bit of talent left, and could say, ‘I used everything you gave me’.

Smile on your birthday no matter what age you happen to be. If God has blessed you with another year, it is because He still has work for you to do. You are always blessed to be a blessing.

 

 

 

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That Log in My Eye

Perhaps the most natural thing in the world is for any of us to look for someone else to blame when we find ourselves in a mess. After all, we hate even thinking we might truly be responsible. Apparently, Adam didn’t need anyone to help him conclude that he could just blame Eve when God questioned him about his actions. In a sense, Adam was actually blaming God. He said, “It was the woman you gave me…” Whew! He had two possibilities, God and Eve and so he blamed them both. Did it clear up the mess though? No! It didn’t do a thing to provide a positive outcome.

In Matthew, Jesus even asked, “Why do you see the speck that is in your brother’s eye, but do not notice the log that is in your own eye?” Yipes! Now, that’s worth pondering. What is it that allows us to peek around the big log in our own eyes, and try to find some splinter that is in the eye of someone else? 

Unfortunately, we all do this! We don’t like being the one who made a wrong choice, a poor decision, or simply stuck to a stubborn action. Somehow in our own minds we hope that even if we suffer further for our own mistakes that others will blame themselves for not doing what we wanted…even when we were wrong. So, what is the answer? If I have a log in my own eye, then I cannot see clearly what is going on. I cannot even understand how I am compounding the problem. I imagine that I’m the only one who is right and everybody else, regardless of their good intentions toward me must be wrong. Who can help me get the log out of my eye?

Perhaps there are a number of solutions to this problem, but in my heart of hearts, I think the only one who can truly solve the problem is me. I have to take a good long look in the mirror and face my fears, my stubborn pride, even my arrogance. I have to recognize that I have gotten in the way of getting help from anyone, even God Himself. God will not overrule my stubbornness. He can only help me when I invite Him in and when I surrender my own need to be in control. He is not trying to blame me, He is simply waiting for me to realize I need His help, because I cannot fix everything by myself. 

For any of us who might get a log wedged in our eye now and then, I want to suggest that we move as quickly as possible to get help. Shifting blame will not help us. Pushing others away will not help us. Holding on to the need to be in control will not help us. Only getting the log out of our eye will change our view, give us a hopeful perspective.

The truth is that everyone wants to help. Even those who become the recipients of blame. They want only the best. If you ever find yourself in the blame game, give it up, and do everything you can to gain a new perspective. Everyone who knows you and cares about you wants good things for you.

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