prayer life and there life

Not only is it totally necessary to have friends who you can pray with and have alongside you to pray for each other, but it is also very necessary to have friends who are “there” too.

Not only are we spirit beings that need this prayer connection, trust and value, but we are all humanity with hearts that need to have people in our lives too- to just ‘be there’.

I have found that as much as I love praying with people and “getting down to business”, it is also crucial for my heart to be able to connect in “there-ness”. Life is so full and busy that it becomes so much easier to not meet up with others and so when we do meet with each other, the cost that is paid (spending time, money, effort, energy, sorting the kids out etc) all goes into the investment of each other which raises the value that we have for ourselves and therefore others.

When we value each other and pay beyond the cheapness of convenience we start to appreciate more and more the value that God has for us. We feel the value that others have paid, and this can impact us in deep ways.

A lot of us wouldn’t want to put people out of their way because maybe we don’t believe we are worth the cost of what getting together is now. (The cost has gone up in more than just petrol and shops.. since 2020, the cost of being together with others costs us our comfortable locked down selves.)

When the Bible says that we shouldn’t stop meeting together I believe that this is massively important so that we are full human beings and not lacking in worth or value (which the enemy of our souls would love to fill with his lies and fake-fillers).

Let’s be high value people with a high value prayer life.

new year’s resistance

Each New Year I ask God for a word to have for the coming 12 months and it is so interesting that as I look back, the words that I’ve had have been the exact opposite in what has either been ‘manifested’ or even come anywhere close to the word. I’m not sure if this is pure attack, or if the word has produced but in a different format to what I expected, or if it is even deeper still and was just given in seed form
in the at year that will produce over different time periods..

This year (and we’re only 4 days in at the time of writing this!), my ‘word’ has almost tormented me and kept me awake at night and it has been SO crazily difficult to fix my mind and position to align with God. 

As I’m trying to organise my thoughts, I find it interesting to think that as soon as we move into an assertive stance or position to grow or expand, the resistance increases massively! When our intention is set then it seems that everything within us goes into revolt and wants to then start taking away the little ground that we had!

To engage in growth we must be so aware that we have a real enemy that is against us- the devil and all his demons- as well as our own flesh and comfort zone (or even pain zone- whatever is most usual and accepted as our normal). When we go from passive to assertive, we will always find that the path of least resistance is trying to lead us right back to where we are trying to move on from!

Let us not become discouraged or fatigued as we move forward and let us fix our eyes on the goal. If things don’t look like what we expected then that’s fine- as long as we are investing our all into what we believe we need to be doing, everything else is out of our control.

the offence of Love

God is Love.

He wants us to have life in all fullness so He is not afraid to challenge our unforgiveness, bitterness, anger, selfishness, pride… but in a world where challenging someone is seen as not loving them and as hate-speech, this is now totally twisted.

If someone you love is planning on slowly dying would you really be loving them by agreeing that “that is what they want so I’ll respect that”? Is love truly that insincere and weak, feeble and pathetic??

Does love really look like agreeing with something that sees people binge on selfishness and be totally consumed by self? 

Doesn’t love look more like being kind when we totally disagree? Or staying friends and respecting people while having opposite ideas in life?

Love shows itself best in hard times. In times where we have to make decisions.. to lovingly call out the crap we see in each other as well as the gold.. To stay faithful to our word when we want to run, to be committed and fully respecting to our spouse when they are not as ‘exciting’ as so and so..

Love is absolutely resolute. It is not weak or flimsy. It is strong and painful. It is patient and faithful. It is being honest when that will create pain instead of a fleeting pleasure.

Let us never make the mistake that agreement equals love. It absolutely does not.

Love is self-sacrificial, truth, challenging, patient, kind, compassionate, painful, persevering, clear, uncompromising with death, faithful.

Remind you of Anyone?

learn, don’t try

A lot of us will say “I’ll try to do that” and it kind of gives us a sense of possible expected failure or get out clause to the commitment of completion or
arrangement.

However, if we are to change “try” for “learn” then this gives a totally different opportunity- to give ourselves permission to grow into something new and not set
out expecting that it will not actually happen.