Day 12

Tonight a friend’s husband who is a semi-practicing Jew but who more honestly calls himself an agnostic — asked Dan and I to pray for him. Here’s his deal, something he’s stated openly for the last year: If God heals me of my chronic health condition, I will become a faithful believer and member of your church touting all its merits.

So we prayed for him — openly, in a public restaurant, eyes closed, hands held. No one could mistaken we were praying. And that’s the interesting thing.

Jake (I’ll call him Jake for anonymity’s purpose) asked US to pray for him. He brought it up. We talked no religion the two and a half hours previous, but now after coffee and dessert, he laid it out.

He reiterated that he acknowledges that God possibly exists because there is no other logical explanation for the creation of the universe. But outside of that he concedes nothing. A Jew, he cannot understand why God, if he really does exist, would allow the atrocities of the Holocaust and many of the other horrors of world history. However, this chronic condition has plagued him since childhood and IF God healed him, Jake would concede everything.

What did I say yesterday (Day 11) about tests? As much as this sounds like a test of God, it really is not so much a test as a request. A request with a familiar ring, a New Testament ring.

Many people came to Jesus because they were at the ends of their ropes. In Matthew 9 we see in succession: a paralytic, the father of a dead daughter, a woman with the 12-year hemorrhage, two blind men, and a demon possessed man. They sought out Jesus because he offered the possibility of hope when all else had failed. These were not tests of God’s existence or power. They were real cries for help. Just like Jake’s.

So we prayed for him. Nothing has happened yet. Maybe when he wakes up tomorrow something will have happened – maybe not. We don’t know if or when God will heal Jake of his physical condition. Yet I know God wants to heal Jake of his spiritual condition, and I think God will because I could see in Jake’s eyes a willing desire to make good on his pact. He wants to be healed, and if he is healed, that’s enough for him to follow Jesus. It would be a good thing if Jake were healed.

I think Jake is a seeker. He wants to believe but he doesn’t have a reason. He’s witnessed his believing wife’s experience but he seeks an experience and reality of his own. Don’t we all.

Jake doesn’t want to believe because people told him to or because it’s smart or fashionable. He doesn’t want to believe by default or because it seems like a good idea. Jake wants a reason to believe, something he can give first-hand testimony about and attest to down to the core of his being..

Therefore he came to us—not, I think, because Dan’s a pastor, but because he feels he can trust us. He can trust us with his weaknesses. He feels safe expressing his doubts. And (I would like to think) he perhaps sees in us an authentic, ongoing experience of Jesus Christ that he could fit into his life.

That’s a compliment. That’s the kind of pray-er I want to be—someone to whom others feel okay bringing their worst and not just their best. Not just complaints but honest, deep in the hole, help-me-if-you-can-Lord, requests —the ones that say, “Change me.”

If you have read this and have a chance, would you pray for Jake with me? I’ll let you know what happens.

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Day 11

Test or Testament
Is your underwear showing?

Today’s 1st Prez E-100 devotional, written by Drew Hulse, was on Gideon [online at http://fpchawaii.posterous.com/first-prez-e100-day-28]. I love Drew’s observation: Gideon had grown up in a land of unfaithfulness.

He explains in full: Most of us tend to pick up the story of Gideon with him hiding in a winepress, threshing wheat, and hoping the Midianites don’t see him and take his crop. [Judges 6:1-7:25] We see Gideon as weak and afraid, and he might be. The question is, why? What put him in the winepress? Gideon had grown up in a land of unfaithfulness. God had delivered the Children of Israel out of Egypt, given them the land and a future, and had called them to worship Him as God alone. They proceeded to fall in love with the gods of the Amorites and to abandon the One True God who had given them life. God, whom Gideon had only heard about but never seen at work (due to the lack of faithfulness of his elders), was now the one calling Gideon to faithfulness.

We often question “nature versus nurture” in considering just how the heck we got to be the way we are. Nurtured by family and friends who had acted unfaithful towards God, Gideon grew up in an environment where no faith was demonstrated. The result was that Gideon himself was not so much unfaithful as faithless.

He had heard old stories, but seen no evidence of God. Everyone around him had abandoned God. So when the angel comes and tells Gideon that God is going to use him and act through him, Gideon puts God to the test.

People still put God to the test with, “If you really exist, God, give me a car, help me pass that test, find me a spouse, get me out of trouble, make my life easier.”

The problem with that, however, is the test. Those tests are not so much about proving The Man but getting The Stuff, and The Stuff will always get in the way of seeing The Man.

That being the case, instead of answering a test, God more often uses a testament. God won’t perform upon command, but he will point to evidence of his existence—our lives.

The longer that we live with God, the less he becomes the garment we put on—the clothes we wear when we decide, when it’s convenient, when we remember, when it’s expected or commanded.

The more familiar and comfortable we become with God, the less we see him as “dress clothes,” ill-fitting special occasion apparel that make us look good but which we can’t wait to get off when we get home.

The more at home we are with God, the more he feels like a favorite shirt, well-worn sweater, nubby socks, that we don’t want to change into and not take off.

God becomes the thing we feel naked without—our underwear. He becomes the first layer, close to the skin, that we put everything else over. And that’s what we want to show: God whom we wear under all.

That becomes or most powerful testament. Beyond what we preach or pray, do or say, our underwear is the truest evidence of God’s existence.

Are we read to show it, though?

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PICT0144

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Day 10

Tonight I am contemplating the age-old question: Does prayer change things?

I started scanning the web for insights and was reminded that Philip Yancey wrote on a book on that very topic. Prayer: Does It Make Any Difference? I’ll have to borrow that one from Dan’s library if he has it.

If nothing else, praying changes me. My praying – the act of prayer – changes ME. Whether I am praying for someone else or praying for myself, whether long or short, public or personal, I come away from the space that prayer creates as a changed person.

Maybe in our prayers, that is the starting point: our attitude, understanding, and response when transformed by leaning into God shapes our interactions with others. We are the beginning of their chain reaction, or should I say “change” reaction.

James writes in his epistle (James 5:13-16):
13Is any one of you in trouble? He should pray. Is anyone happy? Let him sing songs of praise. 14Is any one of you sick? He should call the elders of the church to pray over him and anoint him with oil in the name of the Lord. 15And the prayer offered in faith will make the sick person well; the Lord will raise him up. If he has sinned, he will be forgiven. 16Therefore confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you may be healed. The prayer of a righteous man is powerful and effective.

James instructions are about taking the initiative and responding in prayer whatever our current condition. Prayer is about taking steps in God’s direction. Maybe when we open the door a smudge wider, others get a wider view of the other side, and that then changes them.

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Day 9

Oswald Chambers’ reading yesterday (October 26) for My Utmost for His Highest  - read one day late, caught my eye this morning. It says:

WHAT IS A MISSIONARY?
"As My Father hath sent Me, even so send I you." John 20:21

A missionary is one sent by Jesus Christ as He was sent by God. The great dominant note is not the needs of men, but the command of Jesus. The source of our inspiration in work for God is behind, not before. The tendency to-day is to put the inspiration ahead, to sweep everything in front of us and bring it all out to our conception of success. In the New Testament the inspiration is put behind us, the Lord Jesus. The ideal is to be true to Him, to carry out His enterprises.

Personal attachment to the Lord Jesus and His point of view is the one thing that must not be overlooked. In missionary enterprise the great danger is that God's call is effaced by the needs of the people until human sympathy absolutely overwhelms the meaning of being sent by Jesus. The needs are so enormous, the conditions so perplexing, that every power of mind falters and fails. We forget that the one great reason underneath all missionary enterprise is not first the elevation of the people, nor the education of the people, nor their needs; but first and foremost the command of Jesus Christ - "Go ye therefore, and teach all nations."

When looking back on the lives of men and women of God the tendency is to say - What wonderfully astute wisdom they had! How perfectly they understood all God wanted! The astute mind behind is the Mind of God, not human wisdom at all. We give credit to human wisdom when we should give credit to the Divine guidance of God through childlike people who were foolish enough to trust God's wisdom and the supernatural equipment of God.

*     *     *     *     *     *     *
I translated and reinterpreted that into “What is an Intercessor?”  - the second line striking a chord:

“The great dominant note is not the needs of men but the command of Jesus.”

I realized that in praying for others, we can so easily get caught up in their needs rather than God’s answer. Mercy, or maybe more accurately human sympathy, makes the best of us and we want their prayers to be answered just as they requested it.

Today in our staff meeting, Jenny who is 9 months minus 2 weeks pregnant (she’s due Nov 13) asked, “Pray that my labor starts right after I drop Grant off at preschool in the morning. That way I’ll be all dressed, Grant will be taken care of while I’m in labor, and basing it on Grant’s 8-hour labor, I should have the baby just in time for Carl to pick up Grant from school and then visit me in the hospital.”

Jenny was kidding – okay, only half kidding because it would be really convenient for it to work out that way – but she was honest enough with her friends to share her specific request with God, and we loved her for it.

God doesn’t mind; but he also doesn’t always answer in those specific ways. Because then Who would be God? Who would be in control and without knowledge and understanding of how all the other pieces of the puzzle fit. As Oswald writes, we want the answer to be “our conception of success.”

Now it’s one thing to request that of God – and that’s totally okay because we are limited in our perception of the possibilities out there, so we plan and ask for what is possible.

But an intercessor, if we want to truly pray the best for those for whom we intercede, we need to lay down the request and ask for the even more that is God’s answer to prayer.

There is no way that we can anticipate God’s better, fuller, more complex, elegant, indescribable solution. I am learning that the best we can do is anticipate a semblance of what that might look like but leave the details up to God.

As intercessors, we must cultivate a playfulness, a willingness to change the rules, the rewards, the winner. It’s what Chambers says in the last line: [we must be] childlike people who were foolish enough to trust God's wisdom and the supernatural equipment of God.

That says to me that we can delight in God’s answers if we trust him.

The other thought I have been playing with today came up in my Sunday small group as we talked yesterday about Predestination and being chosen – or in non Presbyterian terms, knowing that we have an eternal life with God. We know the end story. We know what will happen at the end of this earthly life, and we know that God will make a new heaven and earth at the end of the world’s story.

If we know the end, then, perhaps our concern should be not what happens at the end but our journey there. How will we spend that journey? God has given us extreme freedom in getting to the end, and we can choose how will we work through the process. Will it be with Him or without Him? Will it be alone or with others? We can choose to fight God and others all the way. Or we can choose to appreciate the company God’s given us and laugh, cry, learn together. We can choose to disagree with God and act the distasteful contrarian. Or we can indulge ourselves in the myriad of experiences that God wants to see us through.

Who would have thought this 40  Day Fast would hold so much? At the outset, I thought of it as a desert, a deprivation, a getting through. But I am learning to much, its like every cactus has a flower, every desert an oasis, and I’m learning to walk in the cool and dark of the night.

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Day 8

Day 8
As God would have it, Day 8 was a Sunday and spent in the active practice of prayer at our church. Interesting, huh?

It came in two parts. Dan’s sermon was on Samson and his misuse of his gifts. He challenged us to consider whether we were using the gifts God has given so generously to each of us for ourselves or for the kingdom. At the end of the worship service, Dan he an invitation to people to either make a first time commitment to following Jesus Christ.

Oh me of little faith, I was startled in the third service, the smallest of our services, to see people jumping out of their seats and streaming down the aisle until there was no room at the front. They came alone. They came hugging spouses and friends. And there were lots of tears.

Seeing that Dan did not have enough elders and prayer team members to pray with people, I went forward to help and ended up praying with two women. I never know exactly what to pray with these people, not knowing their stories and not wanting to assume anything. But it is always a privilege to welcome their further step into God’s arms.

I know that every step is part of the process of God unfolding our lives. Moments like these are markers – but I am always praying, hoping that they don’t become plateaus. Decisions to follow Christ are not accomplishments but opening a door. I asked the Holy Spirit to become even more real in the two people with whom I prayed. He really is the best teacher, and His powerful filling is the fastest way to discovering intimacy with God.

The second part was our healing service in the evening. I was disappointed that the two men, as it turned out, didn’t have an obvious health problems that we could test for healing right away. Instead, they had long-term issues, one a chronic health condition, the other a long separation from his children because of unresolvable marital difficulties. Those were hard. I had no answers, no wisdom. I felt no overwhelming passion or strong connection.

But I guess God just wanted me to pray with them and offer comfort. I’m hoping that God used my gift of a listening ear and a comforting word.

I’m learning that as a pray-er, I don’t have the answers. That’s not my job or responsibility. They thirst but I don’t have the contents, only the cup that I can carry to their lips.

I am learning to become detached and not be anxious for the answer they want.

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Day 7

End of the first seven days and first week of our church fasting

What I’m Learning About Prayer
Most prayers aren’t answered the way we want them answered. We want our problems to go away immediately and without any residual aftereffects as if the need for prayer never existed. We want a miracle and we want it now.

But it just doesn’t happen that way. That’s a statistical fact. Few people are healed instantly, even less raised from the dead. Financial worries don’t disappear over night. That prodigal son or daughter returns home but with most of the same baggage. Traumas leave scars. Yet, prayers are still answered, and they are no less miraculous.

I’m learning there is always a cost—time, space, resources, emotions, strength. The answers to our prayers take time, not just the minutes, days or years ticking away, but time from others who sit down with us while the answer comes to completion. They require moving things around. They requires others to give. They task us, and tire us.

Couldn’t God just zap it!? He could, but what would we learn – about others and about ourselves? We develop patience because we have to wait. We become compassionate because we begin to feel deeply. We find wisdom when the answers are not easy. We love others when we walk slowly through their lives with them.

Prayer is a gift. That we could talk to the Creator and know that He is listening, that we could pour out our feelings to Someone who can absorb all the pain and frustration and helplessness that wracks our bodies, that we can know that when we have reached our human limitations we can reach toward the Divine — that and the even more of prayer is a continually unwrapping gift. We can never empty out the gift of prayer.

And intercessory prayer, I am learning, is not the onerous, laborious, heavily depressing task that it appears. Praying for others and their needs is helping me understand eternity and how long God’s arm is. Praying for my friends does not drop like a heavy stone into my life, as if the answers were my responsibility. Instead, praying for those whom God has called me feels like a gift because I can help them carry the weight. Carry the weight, not hold the weight – carry it to God.

How do I know God answers prayers? Because he has answered prayers in my life, few the way I demanded, but perfectly in the way He deconstructs them and reconstructs me.

Prayer does change me, and when I am changed I can do the thing I could not, would not do before. It enables me to give without thought of myself, to love others with the mirrors faced outward.


*      *      *      *      *      *      *      *     *
On my prayer list
My financial advisor and his staff as they help clients be heavenly minded with our earthly treasures.
A young friend getting married next week whose job future is uncertain
A daughter whose mother has a critical heart problem in need of surgery
Friends whose employers have announced job cuts
A mom who learned recently that both her adult children have genetically based auto-immune disorders
Our country, the upcoming elections, the candidates and their families and staff
My family, my children, Dan my husband
The healing service at 1st Pres Honolulu at Koolau tomorrow (today), October 26, 2008

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Heaven will work backwards

Excerpt from “The Great Divorce” by C.S. Lewis, one of my very favorite books.

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Day 6

“Ladder up.” The phrase popped into my head on waking this morning and stuck al day.

It started yesterday (see Day 5) but grew from a noun to a verb phrase overnight  - changing from an image to an action, from a concept to a conduct, from an understanding to an undertaking. It grew from a word from God to the word of God:

Genesis 28:
10 Jacob left Beersheba and set out for Haran. 11 When he reached a certain place, he stopped for the night because the sun had set. Taking one of the stones there, he put it under his head and lay down to sleep. 12 He had a dream in which he saw a stairway resting on the earth, with its top reaching to heaven, and the angels of God were ascending and descending on it. 13 There above it  stood the LORD, and he said: "I am the LORD, the God of your father Abraham and the God of Isaac. I will give you and your descendants the land on which you are lying. 14 Your descendants will be like the dust of the earth, and you will spread out to the west and to the east, to the north and to the south. All peoples on earth will be blessed through you and your offspring. 15 I am with you and will watch over you wherever you go, and I will bring you back to this land. I will not leave you until I have done what I have promised you."

16 When Jacob awoke from his sleep, he thought, "Surely the LORD is in this place, and I was not aware of it." 17 He was afraid and said, "How awesome is this place! This is none other than the house of God; this is the gate of heaven."

When God told me “ladder” yesterday, it framed two constructs. First the idea that God and we operate on two different levels. No wonder what appears impossible for us is absolutely possible for God. It is in the impossible, miraculous things, in fact, that God shows himself.

God is, as my friend Jeff Schulte puts it, “wholy (or holy) other.” He is not of this world, He is Creator OF the world and, therefore, outside and beyond the creation. We can’t relate to Him because he exists on an entirely different plane. That’s why he can do things that are supernatural. He is super natural – as the word implies, above nature.

Second, while the ladder demonstrates there is a gap, it is at the same time the connection bridging the two planes of existence. God has provided a way for us to access Him and not merely and forever live apart from him.

However “ladder UP” goes even further. Ladder up tells me that I need to look up, reach up climb up. Ladder up instructs me to carry the impossible concerns of this world to God.

I’m not to scheme or solve but to ladder up.
I’m to have compassion but to also ladder up.
I wont’ find the answers here on this plane so need to ladder up.
I can strain over pleas of prayer and pleasing prayer, but how much more freeing to actively ladder up.

Laddering up is active, it’s external. But right now, I’ve got to ladder down. Let’s see what God does tomorrow.

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Day 5

Today I am thinking about impossible situations.

The readings this week in our church’s E-100 devotionals (the Essential 100 scriptures) were rift with impossible situations:

• How to cross the Red Sea when Pharoah’s army is hot on your tail
• How to convince people that you have a good plan (the 2 spies entering Canaan)
• How to lead a nation of people when you’ve never had any experience and don’t know where you’re going
• How to cross a river when an army is not chasing after you
• How to conquer a city (Jericho) with people who have never fought before
  

At the same time, I am hearing from friends whose lives are filled with impossible situations. A mom with terminal cancer. Parents crushed with a mountain of debt. A spouse with Alzheimer’s who can’t remember where the bathroom is. A woman who dies every day when her heart stops beating for a few moments. A dad facing a 40% cut in his company’s work force.

How do we get through this? How do I pray for my friends when there aren’t ready answers?

The examples of the first set of scenarios set precedence for answers to the second. God’s answers impossible situations with impossible solutions. The impossible can only be matched by something of equal or greater impossibility: part the Red Sea, dry up the waters of the Jordan, collapse the walls of a great city with trumpets and shouting.

We’ve tried the possible, so now it’s time to try the impossible.

What am I praying for? I guess for the miraculous. I need to seek what I cannot see. I need to ask God to reveal His angle and perspective. I need to stand aside and get out of the way of forces beyond my awareness. I need to prepare myself for the extra-ordinary and the super-natural. I may need to get my feet a little wet. I may need to do something stupid, look foolish, entertain the ridiculous.

I may need to get my game on in a new way. I may need to fight, I may need to yell, I may need to stand up and do something I’ve never done before but bank that God will carry it through. I will likely have to change my game plan, alter my goals, adjust my expectations. Maybe I’ll learn I’m in the wrong game.

I think I’ll be doing something I’ve never done before, something I thought not possible. And I don’t know what that is. If I did, I guess I’d be God.

Prayer: God, I need you to be God. You are going to turn my world upside down. I am allowing that - as if I really had a choice. Help me to hold on to you while you give me new bearings. Help me to let go of the things that cause pain in the holding on. Break through, Lord, with your Holy Spirit. Empower me with the obedience that makes the impossible possible.

Answer from God: It’s in the Day #5 graphic. Get a ladder. That’s what prayer is – the means to reach up, the connection between you and Me.

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Day 4

Sitting with God
When I pulled the first stroke of my regular swim, all I wanted to do was sit with God, sit with God, sit with God. I’d spent the morning doing with God, for God, with God intentions. I had had good results. But I had enough of the doing. I just wanted to sit by him. All I could imagine was being close to him. So I swam and sat, swam and sat, swam and sat, sat, sat. Not a Mary/Martha distinction of Mary choosing the better by sitting and listening to Jesus, I sat for the presence and feeling of being close. I wanted nothing but to be by God’s side. No running or trying or asking or seeking approval. It was time to sit.

Strength
Something happens when you just sit with God. It’s like osmosis. You suddenly feel stronger, like plugging yourself into a battery charger but without a current. How is that possible? I don’t know. It just happens. The strength comes from the inside, not the outside. I guess one could call it feeling whole or healed. I swam harder and the strength began to build without dissipating.

Questions for God
Feeling better, I asked God the question of the week (see Days 1-3): Do my prayers matter? Do you hear me? Are you answering me?

It came back a resounding yes. And he gave me example after example: You wanted me to show you if it’s My will that your Chinese “godson” come and visit the family to experience Christmas – and as of yesterday, he’s coming on an affordable airfare. You asked if you have a calling as an intercessor, and I’ve sent people asking you to pray for them about difficult, real, personal issues. You asked how does an intercessor pray, and I’m showing you how now.

Big ears
My friend Christy got an image of me over the summer. She wrote: "I saw Pam with very big ears. Asked God what that was and I sense again that He’s going to speak in ways that are louder and louder to her – and to trust your gut Pam – it’s Him. Perhaps gifts of 'hearing' – prophecy, revelatory gifts too?"

"Yeah, yeah, yeah. I know I hear from God," I thought not quite dismissively. But I take any “prophetic” word for me not so much cautiously but without expectation. I know that if I focus on that word, I will obsess, or maybe I will make it a self-fulfilling prophecy with no credit to God.

But today I heard: I have given you big ears so that you will know how to pray. If you want to pray with efficacy, you will want to hear what I am saying. That’s how your will, your prayers, meld with my will. That’s how your questions get answered, how what you hear become my answers.

Whoa. I heard that. Now I’m learning how to pray.

One last thing
I heard God reminding me: Remember, Pam, when you were young, when you were a little girl and maybe even a long time after that, you thought you were small. You aren’t tall, never were, but you also felt small. You felt like no one saw you, that people looked over you. And that hurt because no one should be looked over. You cried because you wanted to be seen. You tried because you felt you ought to be seen, but even then you were never sure that you were. I see you. I see you. I see you. And you know that now.

Yes, I do know that, Lord. When I was little, I caught glimpses. And I am no bigger, no smaller than who you made me to be. And I'm hearing this:

When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put childish ways behind me. Now we see but a poor reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known. (1 Corinthians 13:11-12)

*Hint: To get the fuller impact, read all of 1 Corinthians 13.

And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.

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Day 3

Fasts always start with good intentions and quickly wane. Here we are at Day 3 and I’m hearing the song and dance: Old habits are hard to break.

I have to be extremely intentional – which is why implementing a new spiritual discipline (the heart of fasting) best involves something that gets not just my Intention but my Attention. Today that something is abstaining from games on my iPod.

Stopping, holding back – having to forcibly use my strength and feel my will turn away from that one little game – really required muscle. Don’t reach for it, don’t, don’t, don’t! Arrgghh, and why am I doing this? Oh yeah, so I will focus on my relationship with God. Bingo! Pain and loss work well in our lives because when we feel it, we have to figure out what to do with it.

The other part of my fast, praying for my friend, my financial advisor, I really had to think about. What would be a good prayer? What is going on his day and in his office that needs more than a Band-aid. Where and how might the Holy Spirit make a felt difference? How does God want me to look at my friend as I am praying? Beyond his occupation, I think, and beyond results to where God is moving him.

Today, my small group talked about Joshua 1 where the Lord gives Joshua command over the Israelites to take them into the Promised Land. God tells Joshua three times, “Be strong and courageous.” That’s a word for us. Every move forward is a step into new territory that takes strength and courage. And God says, “I am with you.”

What I am learning:

• Interceding in prayer requires seeking God’s eyes, perspective, and truth.
• We are never alone.

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40 Day Fast

Every fall, our church family engages in a 40-day fast that ends on Thanksgiving Day. The object is to seek greater intimacy with God by giving up a practice that can distract us from his presence in our lives. I've decided, therefore, to use this blog to observe, record, and reflect on what happens during these 40 days.

Day 1
Okay, so I thought about the fast. Actually, I had been thinking about it for at least a week and what I would do for it. These fasts always have a very positive impact on me. Sometimes I abstain from something. And sometimes I engage in something.

One time I went vegetarian and did not tell my family - on purpose. That was part of my deal. They never did find out. Something I learned on that round was how much attention my husband and kids really pay attention to me - ha! ha!

Several times, I have abstained from buying anything I really don't need. Makes me think twice, thrice about my needs vs. my wants and also makes me appreciate how much God already has supplied me.

Once I completely abstained from visual media: no TV, no magazines or newspapers. That meant that when I went to the doctor's office or hair cutters, all those piles of People Magazines were off limits. What a mind purger that was!

On a more recent fast, I tried, I really tried, to go to sleep every night before midnight. Note I said I tried. No further comment.

End of Day 1: Just don't do anything stupid that I might consider for a fast.

Day 2
That's today.
Realized that my best fasts are those that God calls me to. In other words, when it’s His idea and not just mine. Maybe that's why the "sleep before midnight" thing didn't work. Getting enough sleep's just plain good for my health. Maybe I'll instigate that anyway, not for the fast but just as a health discipline for my own good.

God did tell me something today that I feel called to undertake as part of my fast:
Pray daily for my financial advisor and his office staff.

This is not just because of the current market turmoil, although my advisor said when I told him that he would like the prayers to help him think clearly through the financial smog. I just have never consistently prayed for him. And I should. He and his staff have a ministry to me and the people connected to me. It’s not about the money but about God’s future for me and my family and others we impact:

• God’s provision of college educations to equip my children to use their gifts and serve others with greater capacity
• resources that we can use to support churches and ministries
• investing God’s treasures as in the Parable of the Talents in Matthew 25
  

And how do I know it’s his idea and not mine? Simply, because I would not have thought of it on my own. I’m just not that good.

End of Day 2:
I am thinking about whether intercession is a spiritual gift. Are there really gifted intercessors? Or:

1. Are the people who others consider “powerful prayers” seen as more effective because they are further along the road in spiritual growth and, therefore, have their wills more frequently and more closely aligned with God’s will?
2. Do they make others feel better by giving the sheer assurance that one is being prayed – and that in turn or comforts and gives peace?
3. Knowing that we are not alone and that someone else knows our concerns allow us to be more willing to accept God’s answers about a situation, even though we may not have liked it before?
4. Are we all called to pray for one another (yes, duh) - but when we actually engage in prayer with true love and concern, does that change every thing?

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