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Engaging in Prayer

 

This lenten season has been one that has been a truly blessing to engage in, not that every year is not a blessing, but this year feels particularly fresh.

That is something unique in ministry with something we do annually.

We always try to create freshness with Lent, Easter, and Christmas, but when we (the church) do something annually in a repetitive manner we tend to lose the true meaning of it overtime, not completely, but to a certain extent the freshness begins to wear off, little by little.

Which is why this lenten season has been especially exciting.

Take a moment and think of what it was like to be the disciples during this time. Think of what it was like to see your friend and the person you believed was the Christ sent from God die in such a violent way. Your whole being would be quivering with fear, which would affect everything you do.

What a joy it is to have the sight of the empty tomb through Lent, but what a joy it was also to see the first Easter. Blessings and Joy are all around us everywhere in every way and all the time, from the beginning of time to the end there will be blessings and joyfulness all around us. We just have to engage in the ability to have the sight.

So I pray today that we engage ourselves, immerse ourselves in the loving grace and faithful love of Christ. Immerse yourself in it…don’t just slip your toes in the water, but immerse yourself in the oceans of His grace. May we see as He sees, love as He loves, and be as He has called to be.

Amen.

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Day 5: Something Loved

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Day 6: Something Loved.

During Lent this year Amy and I decided that we would engage in prayer more as a couple, and it has been quite an awesome experience to wake up every morning and share morning prayers together and end each day with praying evening prayers together before we go to bed. It sets our day in motion by first recognizing the sovereignty of God and when we come home by recognizing what God has done during this day. There is a particular narrative that has blessed me deeply that I would like to share with you. 

Morning Prayer

May the peace of the Lord Christ go with you: wherever he may send you; may he guide you through the wilderness: protect you through the storm; may he bring you home rejoicing: at the wonders he has shown you; may he bring you home rejoicing: once again into our doors. 

Midday Prayer

Lord, make me an instrument of your peace. 
Where there is hatred, let me bring love;
where there is injury, pardon;
where there is doubt, faith;
where there is despair, hope;
where there is darkness, light;
where there is sadness, joy.
O Divine Master, grant that I may not
so much seek as to be consoled as to console,
to be understood as to understand,
to be loved as to love.
For it is in giving that we receive,
it is in pardoning that we are pardoned,
and it is in dying that we born to eternal life.  

Evening Prayer

O gracious light, 
pure brightness of the ever-living Father in heaven,
O Jesus Christ, holy and blessed! 

Now as we come to the setting of the sun,
and our eyes behold the evening light,
we sing your praises, O God: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

You are worthy at all times to be praised by happy voices,
O Son of God, O Giver of life,
your glory fills the whole world.

O Lord, you have taught us to call the evening, the morning,
and the midday one, and you have made the sun to know its
going down. Dispel now the darkness of our hearts, that by 
your brightness we may know you to be the true God and
eternal light, living and reigning forever and ever.

May the Lord bless us and keep us all from harm, and may
God lead us to eternal life. Amen.  

I have found that when I don’t do these prayers with Amy that my day is not the same as it would be when I do, do these prayers. I pray today that you are blessed by these prayers because they truly connect us to the ever-living Father through Christ our Lord. 

Amen. 

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Day 3 & 4: Something Lost & Gained

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Day 3 & 4: Something Lost and Something Gained


Years ago something amazing happened. Jesus died for us, and we cannot talk about this enough because we are human beings and we are fallen from grace, sinners, and always in need of Jesus and his mighty love and grace. 

Ponder on that for a moment. 

There is never going to be a time where you will not need Jesus. You are always going to be in need of Him. 

Jesus however does not want to leave us there. The other side of this is that we are never alone. 

I was watching the Acton UMC services today because I am working from home from a long weekend of going to a Mavs game with my students and worship and mission trip signups on Sunday. Yesterday and during the season of Lent Acton UMC in all their morning worship services is talking about “love.” Also yesterday my wife, Amy was preaching so this was another great reason to watch their services.

So during the worship there was this video about the “Christ Story” featuring DeeAnn Hall, a friend of ours and a vibrant young adult member of Acton UMC. About halfway through the video she is talking about the christ story in her own life and how it has affected all areas of her life, personal, as a parent, as a wife, etc. After talking about this for about a few seconds she uttered a phrase that struck me deep.

“This Christ story is so fresh. It happened thousand of years ago, but even now it is still so fresh.”

Whoa.

Didn’t that resonate with you? The freshness of Christ’s story seems to be more powerful during lent, or is it that our hearts and our minds are attuned to the power more? The power of the gospel is the fact that it is fresh, alive, vibrant, expansive, external, internal, and on and on. It is one thing and it is all things.

Mind boggling right!?

Your mind is truly boggled right? (movie reference anyone?)

This picture above was taken by me for this photo challenge but it was also captured at Fusion Worship Wednesday at FUMC Cleburne Student Ministries where we engaged in prayer stations for the message that night. You will notice that the words are in different color. Being that I was there I know why. It’s because each of these words were written by different people. This was written on a prayer station called the journey, where you are encouraged to write words or draw symbols that symbolize your journey with Christ. To basically conceptualize your Christ Story. When we first started this part of worship tonight one of the first words that was written was “Alone.” This grieved me so I began to be in prayer for the person that wrote this word down and ask God to be with them and to send them the encouragement that they needed and equip the people in this person’s life that they needed. 

Near the end of the night I saw a new word. 

“Never.” 

Making it “NEVER ALONE.”  

May you know that the Lord of creation still has a story that fresh and vibrant in your life right now and may you additionally know that you are never alone.   

Amen. 

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Day Two: A Sorrow.

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Day Two: A Sorrow. 

During Lent we trying adding things or giving things up to draw us closer to God. During this time the Young Adult group and Youth Ministry at Acton United Methodist Church are engaging in this time by doing the “7” Challenge. The “7” challenge is a challenge that came out of the book, “7: a mutiny against excess” by Jen Hatmaker, it is a 7 week challenge so it works great for Lent and during these weeks we focus on an area of excess. Last week was food and now this week is clothes so this week we have been dressing very simply to reflect on what it means to only have 1-2 outfits of clothes to wear and then through the process of this look at going through your clothes and giving some of them away.

Today was that day. I began to feel sorrow and somewhat embarrassed by all that I had while others had so much less than I. A majority of the world lives on one dollar a day and we are obsessed with having more and more. Recently I have also taking Financial Peace University with my wife and many people at Acton. Here is a statistic from the budgeting lesson we had:

“Automatic overdraft loans netted banks more than $29.5 billion last year.” —Time

29.5 million dollars in just overdraft fees.

We flushed down the toilet 29.5 billion dollars from being lazy.

There has also been an overarching rhetoric in this class of what would you do if you had no debt? Well, what could we do if we had no debt. No student loans, credit card bills, car loans or any loans of any kind? We could really change the priorities of the world. Or we could just keep going into debt and be lazy and give more of our banks more millions every year.

So during Lent where can we adjust our priorities?

What possessions do we have need and what do we want?

We are not alone in this world and sometimes I do think that we think we are, but maybe during Lent we think about ways to look around and see where needs are needed and ask God to help us help those that don’t have what we have.

Create in us a clean heart O Lord and renew a right spirit within us.  

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YW Movement Lent Photo Challenge

Pictures have always spoken to me. There is something about imagery and seeing a visual representation of growth in God that has always spoke to me. So, naturally I love doing photo challenges because they really allow me to embrace this type of growth journey through Lent.

So, during Lent this year I will be doing the YouthWorker Movement Lent Photo Challenge: #YWMoveLent.

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So, let’s start things out already right!?

Day One: A Joy. 

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A Joy. If I am limited to one joy in my life to show visually it has to be one with my wife, Amy. I take a lot, and share a lot of pictures with my Amy. Of course it’s because I love her but also it’s because I believe that this year at Lent it will be much different than it ever has been before.

My wife is a phoenix.

A phoenix in the world of mythology which I realize is not based on fact, but myth, my Amy is a phoenix for many reasons but I will stick to two.

1. This past year was not an easy one because earlier in the year Amy was hospitalized with acute pancreatitis and was in the hospital for over a month. This was a hard time for us as you might expect, but now she is reborn like a phoenix that rises out of the ashes. Amy is now a lean, mean, preaching machine :), and everyday I am later for all that God has given me in her.

2. Amy is my phoenix because God has used her in an amazing way to teach me that I am and all of us really are accepted for who we are but through his son we are reborn in the newness of life. The past is gone, whats done is done and now we press on and look to God. This lesson has been a hard one to learn as it is for anybody because just like anybody we all have things in our past, mistakes that we have made that we would like to fix, but if we could do that then none of would be in the present. We would be too busy fixing the past to enjoy in the newness of life in the present. I thank God for giving me a visual representation of this in my wife, my best friend, and my favorite person to laugh with.

So today as I start my lenten journey my joy is for my wife, Amy, my phoenix.