A New Direction

  I've been reading on prayer.  Why pray if God already knows what is going to happen?  Does prayer change God or does it change me?  Does it bring my will more in line with His or am I praying to change His will? In my struggles to understand prayer more, I have come across one complete truth - God's love.  God doesn't withhold things from us because he loves us less.  He Loves us completely and His love will never fail.  Things we pray for may not be in His will.  He may allow hard times in order to teach us to lean into Him more.   Truth - bad things happen.  We live in a fallen world.   Truth - God loves us.  His love will never fail. When we don't get the answers or results we want, we think God loves us less than others.  We think our sin is keeping us from His blessings or from His favor.  If you read the Bible you will see that God used BROKEN, messed up people to carry out his ministry....

Psalm 23:6 (msg)  "Your beauty and love chase after me every day of my life" Wow!!  That verse in that version stood out to me today.  We all know Psalm 23 - The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want...in a way it has become the go to Christian verse quoted when someone is going through a hard time, is experiencing difficult circumstances and we don't know what else to say.  We even pray it ourselves.  But, reading it in a new context, in a different version of the Bible, it shows me how much God CHASES after ME! Yes - he chases me.  What an awesome feeling.  He has made a way for me of soft bedding and abundant resources - he feeds me and gives me living water "You find me quiet pools to drink from".  He is at my side, guiding and directing my steps, even when the way seems dark. When I start to stray, he gently pulls me back with is Shepherd's crook.  When my head hangs in shame or in sadness, he lifts me up and fills my cup wi...

I've been in a situation where I've had to deal with difficult relationships.   We all go through it at one point or another in our lives. As parents, we want the best for our kids.  We want them to have healthy relationships that build them up, that encourage them, that are positive and caring.  But sometimes they allow people into their lives that are toxic.   This toxicity causes problems with parents, with siblings, with the other friends they have.  It brings them down and turns them into someone we don't even recognize. I'm seeing it happen  - evil corrupts good more often than good changes evil.  Lies are told, secrets are kept.  Nothing about the relationship is healthy.  What, as parents, do we do?  How  do we get our youth to see what we see? How do we protect them from the inevitable hurt we see coming?   I don't have that answer.  I pray.  A lot.  I counsel and say the hard stuff ...