Category Archives: 2026

Old Cars, Achy Backs and Undisciplined Prayer Lives

Posted on by under 2026

I think I’m right in saying that most people who know me would agree I’m a pretty disciplined person. I’m a to-do list girl and methodically, sometimes neurotically, work through a list nearly every day.

And then there are those areas where I am inexplicably, undeniably, and intensely undisciplined. It’s illogical and unhealthy. It’s like there’s some rebellious thing in me refusing to comply. Recently my son informed me that one area in which I am characteristically undisciplined (an area we share) actually has a clinical name: Rebellious Sleep Disorder. It’s like some part of me simply refuses to do that which I should and go to bed. If you wake up in the night and need a friend, you might as well call me because I’m likely still up anyway.

There are other areas too.

I’ve had some problems with my back and hips. In discussing things with my therapist he explains that my body, like a car, is not only getting older but I put quite a few miles on this old thing every day. I even seem to be requiring longer and more demanding efforts from it. And old, overused things need more maintenance. He tells me there’s no reason why I can’t continue to run long into my coming years but I have to learn better maintenance.

So I did what he said and spent time every day stretching appropriately as I’ve been taught. I did a diligent job…until I had gotten through the next few races and hit my little 9 week hiatus. And then I stopped. I could tell you all the “reasons,” aka excuses, for why I have been doing such a poor job of it lately but the truth is that I am just not exhibiting the discipline I need to get it done each day.

Now why might this information be worth your knowing? I actually feel there’s a chance my pain may go away entirely today because I finally saw some deeper truth in it all. Recently at church, the preacher spoke on prayer. Specifically the power of communal prayer and the profound impact it did have on the early church and could/should have on todays Church.

As he spoke I began to see a harsh similarity between what I do with my undisciplined stretch therapy and what I and others do with prayer. I leave the ‘easy’ and passive instructions that lead to guaranteed results undone. I, instead, opt for some new plan of my own design that involves more active elements that require more of me and guarantee no positive results. Or I may just do nothing and assume doing something so inactive and ineffectual as stretching really doesn’t matter anyway. Prayer could well be considered a passive and ineffectual thing; you sit still and quiet, you talk to the ceiling or yourself, you try more than anything just to keep from returning to the grocery list in your head. And communal prayer? Who has time for that and why would someone make the time for it? If I can pray in my car or at my dinner table, why plan some other time to do it just so someone else can be there when I do? Others don’t have time to listen to you talk to Him. Do they really need to hear you pray for them when they know what their needs are better than you do?

Why do we fail to do the easy thing God requires of us when it is so easy to do? Why do we refuse to believe that the results we desire could possibly come about by doing less rather than more? When will we place the highest priority on that which He deems of greatest need? When will we learn that in doing less – surrendering in prayer – we accomplish so immensely more?

What God requires in prayer looks about as busy as me lying on the floor in dead mans pose. And yet He guarantees that is the path of purpose, progress and perfection.

As a people we fail to exhibit the discipline of prayer, specifically corporate or communal prayer, in exchange for a new (as in not the original church model) way that includes more ‘active’ components we believe will, should, could, can demonstrate similar or even better results. Or we simply leave the passive discipline undone, assuming since it’s so inactive it probably isn’t that important or effective anyway.

Rather than laying aside our heavy yokes, we strap on the arduous thing and swear this way is best. And we fall in pitfall after pitfall with that burdensome load for our trouble.

By dismissing the more passive path of prayer in exchange for the more active road of action we challenge and threaten so very much. First, we pose a direct affront to the Gospel. By believing I have to (or can) work actively in order to achieve that over which I refuse to pray I am asserting the idea that I can do…anything. The heartbeat of the Gospel lies in my inability to save myself and my profound and assured need for Another to sacrifice and save me. By dismissing the need to bring all to the Lord in prayer I am taking on the burden of doing things myself–something the Gospel assures me I am unable to do.

Second, this failure to prioritize prayer over activity promotes pride and inhibits humility. When things go right, it was my actionable works that brought about the good. Third and likewise, it diminishes thanks. When I work to get paid, I’m unlikely to thank my boss for the paycheck. I earned it, he didn’t give it to be nice, he gave it because it’s mine. Likewise, when God does something beautiful but I worked tirelessly in the process of His doing it, I don’t say thanks because in the convoluted mess I’m more inclined to believe I’ve earned it. Another related fourth, it creates a disunity in my relationship with the Lord. When I work tirelessly and things don’t go as I’d intended and hoped, then it’s His fault for derailing all my hard work.

The list goes on. And all these potentialities exist and find there origin in my attempting to do things without first presenting them to the Lord that He might do them…heaven help that He might change, take, morph, or NOT do them.

To state it simply: Am I living with pain and heartbreak, brokenness and discontent, longing and aches simply because I’m refusing to do the submissive and ‘easy’ thing and following the proven example of those who have gone before me? How often and with disciplined regularity do I begin with and prioritize prayer? Am I doing the same thing in my spiritual life that I’m doing in my physical one and refusing like some headstrong child to spend time daily doing the calming, peaceful, ‘passive,’ God-honoring, obedient and guaranteed thing that would actually land me at the point I so long to find myself?

Let us not only take on the lighter yoke, the peaceful path prayer offers. Let us not simply leave the path of frenzied doing. Let us not merely submit in obedience to the demand and example of our Lord.

Let’s do it together. The Lord’s Prayer uses plural pronouns, not singular ones. Let’s create communities that prioritize God’s work over our own.

It’s time to taste and see.

To Think I Could Stand in God’s Way

Posted on by under 2026

Acts chapter 10 tells of two stories that collide to create one directive from the Lord. The chapter begins with a Gentile man named Cornelius seeing a vision of an angel who tells him to send to Joppa for Peter who will come and tell him what he needs to hear. The story then jumps to Peter in Joppa on the following afternoon. This is the famous sheet of unclean animals story. God reveals to Peter in a vision that what God makes clean is clean, not what tradition specifies as such. Enter Cornelius’s messengers.

So Peter is told that what to him had been ultimate and eternal reality was actually tradition that, in Christ, was being clarified, seen in the fullness of its intention. Tradition that in Christ was upended. The very next minute God asks him to go into the house of a Gentile man. The message of the vision wasn’t meant to end with food in the body. God was preparing Peter to see, understand and embrace that what He said was law–not what Peter had been taught, told, or led to understand in his religious tradition.

The stories then merge and Peter enters the home of the Gentile Cornelius and immediately upon hearing the Word, the whole house full of willing spirits received the gift of the Holy Spirit.

Peter returned to Jerusalem in Acts 11 where he caught a ton of flack for entering the home of a Gentile. Peter explained to them: God told me that what He says is clean is clean, what He says is worthy is worthy, what He says is useful is useful, what He says is a housing through whom He can work and move is an appropriate vessel. Because He says so.

After explaining how it all went down Peter ends by saying, “So if God gave them the same gift He gave us who believed in the Lord Jesus Christ, who was I to think that I could stand in God’s way?”

Having heard Peter’s story, they didn’t just reason and begrudgingly vote to allow it or turn a blind eye to it, they praised God for having bigger plans than they had understanding.

The questions that may need to be posed and humbly considered in the coming days are these: Is God challenging religious tradition, attempting to upend errant inclinations that, in Christ, are proving to ‘stand in God’s way’? Is there the seal or evidence of His Presence and ‘way’ being exhibited outside the purview of those traditions He’s challenging?

(I do realize that the use of “traditions” will seem a faulty representation to some. After my own humble consideration of the Word on the issues at hand, I see there may be the need for a preliminary question that must first be addressed: is it tradition or is it biblically valid, clear and unassailable truth? I would simply ask anyone with opposition to my choice of wording to begin with this precursor question. Might my beliefs on these issues, in fact, be more shaped by tradition than biblical reality?)

One more question: If God is giving the same gifts to one subset of humanity as He is to another, who would we presume to be that we would stand in God’s way and disallow their use?

I really don’t want to step into a hot debate about who should do what under what title and within the interpreted definition of “function.” I cannot emphasize enough: I do not want to and am not offering myself up to. And so I believe God isn’t here asking me to do that at all. He is, most assuredly, asking me to do something, but what that is isn’t debate or fight or argue or coerce. God doesn’t generally like people who’s words are their weapons of choice. He tends to be a God attuned to action.

So rather than theologically debate or exegetically defend, I will only attempt to reveal. What made the way clear for Peter and the council in Jerusalem was evidence. Was God the One calling, using, sanctifying, saving, gifting, equipping, ushering into HIS BODY those others who had not previously been deemed the right people for that distinction? It was the fact that the Holy Spirit showed up that signified God was in the movement. So, as a female Bible teacher, is there evidence of God being in the room when I expound on God’s Word?

I was in Kenya. We were doing a women’s conference. I was the leader of our team that included males and females. Upon arrival, the eldest male in our group was invited into the pastors office to chat and eat breakfast. The pastor never actually spoke to or acknowledged me. Before beginning I asked him if he would be willing to be my translator so that the female translator who had worked the other elements of the morning could sit and simply partake of the lesson time. He agreed. And I literally felt the Spirit seize and surprise him beside me. He thought he was just acquiescing as a generous gift so someone else could enjoy some teaching. He had no idea from that first sentence that he was about to feel the consuming Presence of the Holy Spirit in that place. It was one of the most powerful and overwhelming encounters with the Holy Spirit I have ever had the privilege of being a part of. He was humble. He was passionate. He was kind and he, like Peter, seemed to have the understanding that what God was doing–not just in the women of his congregation, but in him–was of the Lord’s design and who was he to say God shouldn’t do that.

I had an adult male in my Sunday Bible class a year or so ago. He was in class regularly for a number of months before moving for his job. I didn’t know about his move and reached out to tell him we’d missed him in class. He responded. He was so gracious and kind, and on fire for the Lord. He told me that hadn’t been customary for him and his greatest aim in his new home city was to find a church home and someone to teach him the Word like I had. Under my teaching he had discovered passion for Scripture and a love for the Lord that was far more real than he’d ever known it could or should be.

It’s not just me. I have an older female friend who a handful of years ago heard the voice of the Lord more clearly than she ever had in her long and faithful life. He told her of a ministry He intended to see come to fruition. She immediately and actively set out to discover what man God intended to have bring the ministry into existence. After much prayer, many refusals and endless frustrating confusion, her prayer partner asked her whether or not God might have given the idea to her because she was the one He wanted to do it. She was challenged to her core but the notion that God might call a woman to such a high and noble thing as to lead a ministry of His design. I recently emcee’d the group’s anniversary gathering and I sat in awe of the Lord and the work He was doing, the passions He was igniting through the work of this sweet ministry. And while my friend made it clear she wanted no recognition that night, man after man after woman and man told their stories and then turned to her and said thank you for being the leader and vessel through whom this ministry was born and sustained.

I could go on. If God is putting the Seal of His Spirit approval on something, who would I have to be to stand in God’s way?

I have a Boss. He makes the rules.

I used to tell my kids when they got into trouble that even though they had not done the job God gave them to do of obeying their mom, that didn’t mean I wasn’t going to do the job God gave me to do of showing them the need to. God tells me what my job is. God equips, calls, empowers and directs me in the auspices of my job. Whether any other does or doesn’t do their job, I will, in obedience to the Boss who governs me, do mine.

Mixed In With The Old Stuff

Posted on by under 2026

So I’ve been writing the Bible. It takes quite a bit longer than you might imagine. I’ve been doing it for about 10 months and I’m hoping to finish Leviticus in the next week or so. Anyway, sidebar. So today I was writing in Leviticus 16 and for some reason these middle chapters have taken me much longer than anything has up to this point. I had decided to finish that chapter last night but ended up leaving the last few paragraphs for this morning. So glad I did because I think I would have missed this beautiful word in this beautiful Word if I had done it on a tired brain just looking to check off a to-do item.

So here’s what I saw: Chapter 16 is about the Day of Atonement. It’s told to Moses from the perspective of what Aaron or the high priest was supposed to do on that day. It has a very do this then do that sort of feel to it. We’re told what clothes he should put on and take off when and who should bathe with water after doing what things.

Once the day has been thoroughly mapped out by the Lord we read in verse 29 that on this day you are to “deny yourselves and not do any work.” Now we know that to “not do any work” in levitical terms was to not do much of anything, do only that which could never be deemed ‘work.’ So they were told to do nothing. On that day, you do nothing.

Why was it so important that the people do nothing on this day, you might ask. Well, let’s read on and find out more.

Because on this day atonement will be made for you, to cleanse you. Then, before the Lord, you will be clean from all your sins. Leviticus 16:30

We do nothing. We can do nothing. We are powerless to save ourselves, to “cleanse” ourselves.

BUT, on that day! Without any work on my part, atonement was made for me! I was made clean–while I do nothing and Another did all.

And now, before the Lord, I stand clean from all my sin.

Prior to this astounding picture of grace, sweet grace we are told of the scapegoat. While two goats were brought in for this momentous day only one was killed. The other took the sins of the people and ran as far as the east is to the west and separated those sins from their sinners.

It took two goats to show what my One Savior did: He paid the price for my sin with His blood (Romans 6:23: the ‘wages’ of sin is death) and by doing so He took my sin and sent it as far as the east is from the west.

So you read about the mold and the bodily discharge and the parts of the bulls burned or eaten and you might just miss that this amazing Word isn’t old stuff. These aren’t old rules that told people who aren’t us what they were and weren’t allowed to do. This too is living. This old Word too is active and penetrating and beautiful and life-giving and pertinent to me in this very moment. In the moments when I feel I surely have to ‘work’ just a little. For the moments when that old sin feels so close I can still smell the stink of it on my skin. In that day when it’s simply too hard to believe that I am a dearly loved child invited into the presence of a God who sees me as clean.

Mixed in with all this old stuff is the most eternity altering truth ever told.

And it’s there in pictures and stories, in metaphors and allegory. It’s there waiting to feed your soul and expand your faith.

Lord, don’t let us miss all the greatness of encountering you simply because it’s mixed in with the old stuff.