Each week the team prepared a different Beatles song and I tied the lyric into our life and the events surrounding the birth of Jesus.  Often our culture is willing to bring up tough issues and ask really good questions, especially in music and media. However, culture doesn’t always provide us with the answers to those questions. That is where we as Christians look to the Bible for those answers.

Last Sunday the band at Hope Summit sang “Let It Be”, written by Paul McCartney in 1969.

The popular lyric says,

When I find myself in times of trouble, mother Mary comes to me, speaking words of wisdom let it be.

Until a short while ago, I always thought mother Mary was referring to Mary, the mother of Jesus.  Actually the Mary that McCartney is speaking of is his own mother, her name was Mary and the night before he wrote the song she appeared to him in a dream.  Apparently the timing of the dream was a stressful time for the band, and Mary died when McCartney was very young.  The dream gave him great comfort and inspired him to write the song.

The lyric goes on to say,

Yeah, there will be an answer, let it be.

There are many challenges we face in life, and there is great suffering in our world. The responsibility we have as people of faith is to let others around us know that there already is an answer! We have to show others around us that Jesus is that answer.  When Mary and Joseph presented Jesus in the temple Simeon immediately recognized the identity of this special child, Luke 2:28-32:

²⁸ Simeon took him in his arms and praised God, saying:

²⁹ “Sovereign Lord, as you have promised,
you may now dismiss your servant in peace.
³⁰ For my eyes have seen your salvation,
³¹ which you have prepared in the sight of all nations:
³² a light for revelation to the Gentiles,
and the glory of your people Israel.”

Simeon immediately recognized God at work. He knew it was beyond his desire for a Messiah to return and saw that Jesus was also for the Gentiles. Take some time to recognize God at work in your life, and share that message with others this Christmas. There already is answer!

The last two weeks have started off as a powerful experience for me and for our church.  It’s resulted in visitors, life change for believers, community, and even some baptisms.  I’m looking forward to what God does next! Take a look at one of our first videos below.

A friend once asked me, How can you believe my great-grandparents who brutally suffered and died in the Holocaust won’t go to heaven just because they didn’t believe in Jesus? They were loving, God-fearing people.” I didn’t have a good answer, and the lack of an answer that sounded loving and moral troubled me immensely.

I think many Christians feel like Brian does and he does a great job sharing his story and the tension he’s felt about this topic. He also walks you through how it has impacted his faith today as a spiritual leader.  You don’t want to miss this book!

If you missed the interview with Pat Robertson you can see it below:

When we look to the gospels and how Jesus used prayer we can see that it was very much a lifestyle.  He weaved prayer into his relationships, ministry, family, and friendships.  Here are four things we see Jesus do to maintain a lifestyle of prayer:

1. Jesus Prayed For Others

Matthew 19:13-15

¹³ Then people brought little children to Jesus for him to place his hands on them and pray for them. But the disciples rebuked them. ¹⁴ Jesus said, “Let the little children come to me, and do not hinder them, for the kingdom of heaven belongs to such as these.” ¹⁵ When he had placed his hands on them, he went on from there.

Praying for people is a big deal.  It’s unfortunate we don’t act like it is important as we say it is.  I can’t tell you how many times I’ve seen, heard, and been told, “I’ll pray for you.”  Someone will share a need and make themselves vulnerable and we walk away!  Sure we’ll say, “I’ll pray for you” and that phrase somehow gives us permission to walk away and forget that there is someone who shared pain in their life.

In the verses above a group of children approached Jesus for prayer and the disciples tried to get rid of them.  Not only did Jesus demonstrate a love for children but he also showed us how important it is to pray for others.  How different would your relationships look if you stopped and prayed for someone right in the moment, instead of walking away?

2. Jesus Prayed With Others

In Luke chapter 9 Jesus is predicting his death.  After he shares this news with his followers we see he continues to pray.

Luke 9:28,29

²⁸ About eight days after Jesus said this, he took Peter, John and James with him and went up onto a mountain to pray. ²⁹ As he was praying, the appearance of his face changed, and his clothes became as bright as a flash of lightning.

Jesus knew the value of praying with others. I think our churches know this too, many churches gather for corporate prayer as a part of worship, but do you do this as a part a normal day? Praying with someone is different then praying for someone.  In order to make prayer a lifestyle don’t just add it on your to do list so you can check it off like another task.  Build prayer into your lifestyle.  That means taking a hard look at the relationships you already have and including prayer in them.  In the above verses Jesus took Peter James and John with him to pray.  These were relationships he already had in his life.  Not some task on a list.

3. Jesus Prayed Alone

Luke 5:12-16

¹² While Jesus was in one of the towns, a man came along who was covered with leprosy. When he saw Jesus, he fell with his face to the ground and begged him, “Lord, if you are willing, you can make me clean.” ¹³ Jesus reached out his hand and touched the man. “I am willing,” he said. “Be clean!” And immediately the leprosy left him. ¹⁴ Then Jesus ordered him, “Don’t tell anyone, but go, show yourself to the priest and offer the sacrifices that Moses commanded for your cleansing, as a testimony to them.” ¹⁵ Yet the news about him spread all the more, so that crowds of people came to hear him and to be healed of their sicknesses. ¹⁶ But Jesus often withdrew to lonely places and prayed.

Sometimes life can get hectic.  When I get home my kids want my attention, we’ve got a full family calendar, I want time with my wife, there’s so much work at the office that I’ll never catch up.  Life is always hectic.  That’s why prayer is essential!  Jesus knows what a busy life looks like and we see that in the verses above and in other stories where he’s completely surrounded by people as they learn of the miracles taking place in his presence.  What does Jesus do? He withdraws to be alone with God.

Find a place away from family, away from friends, away from work, away from distractions and just be with God.

4 Jesus Prayed Regularly

Luke 5:16

But Jesus often withdrew to lonely places and prayed.

Jesus did this often! Prayer was a regular part of his life.  There is no doubt that jesus merged the prayers on his knees with the life that he lived. It was natural for him and the relationships he maintened to include prayer.

As followers of Christ we should be pursuing his likeness.  If you could sit down with him and review you’re the last two weeks of your daily schedule, what word would he say to describe your prayer life? Often? Sometimes? Rarely? Almost never?

The wonderful thing about prayer is that as long as your breathing there is always time to change!  You can begin right now and the next time you read through the gospels start looking for the moments where Jesus uses prayer and think about how you can pray more like Jesus.

Matthew 28:
18Then Jesus came to them and said, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. 19Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, 20and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.”

In this final teaching moment Jesus aligns obedience and baptism with discipleship, I don’t think I’ll ever understand why some choose to ignore it.

July & August 2009 Baptisms from CHRIST'S CHURCH OF THE VALLEY on Vimeo.

We see this demonstrated for us all over the Bible. There is probably more documented confrontation with Paul than any other person in scripture. God regularly used Paul to instruct and correct the early church, but how does that translate to the present? How do I really know God is using someone to tell me something important?

I think the key to knowing (or maybe I should say attempting to discern) this is from God is that the information being communicated is usually something you DON”T want to hear… here is an example:

I love my brothers. They have always been there for me when I needed them most. After leaving the military I brought Shelli to New York with me to be closer to my family, but it was sooooo challenging. She was working full time at a law firm as a legal secretary and I actually had two jobs so we could make ends meet. I felt bad about it because she was often alone while I was at my second job. Thank God for my brother Pete. He was there for us any time Shelli needed a friend or I needed someone to lean on when the crap in life seemed overwhelming. God used Pete to express care and concern for us through a tough transition.

After a challenging 9 months in New York I had a difficult conversation with my brother Dave that completely took me off guard. We were at my parents house for a Sunday dinner and he asked,

“Frank, why are you still here?”

I replied, “What do you mean?”

“You should just go…”

“Uhhhh.. go where Dave?”

“To college Frank, just leave and go to college.”

“Yeah sure, hehe, its not that easy bro.”

“Frank, it is that easy. You said living here is killing you financially and you know you want to go to school for ministry so why not just go. If your money situation is going to be bad, why not go to PA anyway and at least be productive. It has to be better for you in PA.”

I don’t know if I ever thanked my brother for that confrontation. God used him to change the course of my life in that moment and we moved to PA on New Years Day. I know it sounds cliché but, January 1st, 1998 was the first day of the rest of my life. It is kind of weird reflecting back on that day because I never expected God to tell me something through my brother. It was almost as if it wasn’t my brother speaking to me, but I think that is the key to recognizing God’s voice. Plus, as I reflect further I don’t think I’ve ever noticed it in the moment… its often sometime later when I can see the impact that person has had on my life.

When these sorts of things happen (to me) it seems to come from a source that I don’t expect and they often will tell me something that I don’t want to hear.

Has God ever used someone to tell you something that you didn’t want to hear?

For this very reason, make every effort to add to your faith goodness; and to goodness, knowledge; and to knowledge, self-control; and to self-control, perseverance; and to perseverance, godliness; ⁷and to godliness, brotherly kindness; and to brotherly kindness, love. For if you possess these qualities in increasing measure, they will keep you from being ineffective and unproductive in your knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ.

Peter is so clear in his explanation: if faith, goodness, knowledge, self control, and these other qualities he mentions, are growing in your life you will actually be productive as a follower of Jesus.  What that means is that we have to take time for self reflection.  We need to stop and take a moment out of our busy lives and do the hard work of self-evaluation.  Often I think we are afraid to evaluate ourselves.  At least I am.  I want to avoid asking myself the hard questions like, “Am I demonstrating brotherly kindness more frequently in my life?”  Or, “Am I able exersicse self-control more effectively?”

I think we can fall into the trap of becoming a lazy Christian and get stuck in routine.  We go to church, maybe attend a small group, or serve as an usher or in a kids classroom on Sunday and think, “God and I are on good terms!”  I think following Jesus is more than that, and we need to get our act together and be productive Christians.  We need to hold ourselves accountable and make sure these qualities are increasing in our lives and be certain we are not maintaining status quo.

Tim Stevens has a blog that I follow and he recently pointed out that the show Heroes about good, evil, and out creator. Here is how this particular episode began and concluded:

Opening narration:

“On the sixth day, God created man in his own image. Now it’s up to us to figure it all out. Right… wrong…good…evil. In each of us is the capacity to decide what drives our actions. So what is it that makes some choose selflessness–the need to devote one self to something greater–while others know only self-interest, isolating themselves in a world of their own making? Some seek love even if requieted, while others are driven by fear and betrayal. There are those who see their choices as dark proof of God’s absence, while others follow a path of noble destiny. But in the end, good, evil, right or wrong, what we choose is never what we really need. For that is the ultimate cosmic joke…the real gift that God has left behind.”

Closing Narration:

“There is good, and there is evil. Right and wrong. Heroes and villains. And if we are blessed with wisdom, then there are glimpses between the cracks of each where light streams through. We wait in silence for these times, when sense can be made, when meaningless existence comes into focus and our purpose presents itself. And if we have the strength to be honest, then what we find there staring back at us is our own reflection–bearing witness to the duality of life. And each one of us is capable of both the dark and the light, the good and evil. Of either. Of all. And destiny, marching ever in our direction, can be re-routed by the choices we make, by the love we hold on to, and the promises we keep.”

This is another one of those posts. You know the type. The kind where I start out trying to put my jumbled thoughts into some semblance of order and by the time I get to the very exhausting end it looks more like a dictionary threw up. I apologize up front for the chaos.

Secondly this post may require a hankie or two. I suppose it depends on the reader, but some of you are more sensitive than others. You know who you are. So read at your own risk.

And now I begin…

I grew up close enough to the beach in Southern California that our house didn’t require air conditioning. I remember only a very few times when it was hotter and more stagnant than usual, but for the most part a/c simply wasn’t necessary. And generally no matter how warm the day was, the night was always pleasantly cool.

Imagine my horror when I moved to Arkansas in June of one of the hottest, most humid summers on record to date. The stifling, oppressive humidity did little for my confidence in my new future. Evening didn’t bring any relief as it was usually as heavy as the day had been. I moved there for Todd and I loved him, but I sure didn’t like sweating profusely every time I opened the front door.

By October, however, the humidity and temperatures started dropping. The air became cool and crisp and the leaves started turning the most beautiful colors. I felt like I was being rewarded for enduring such a brutal summer. At nearly 23 years old I was finally experiencing my first true autumn. October became my favorite month.

In yesterday’s post I mentioned how seeing my latest reconstruction procedure just stirred up unpleasant emotions. October did the same thing this year. I don’t remember this last year, but maybe it was because those feelings were still so close to the surface.

My response to a breast cancer diagnosis at the age of 39 was pragmatic. I hated it, but I knew it would eventually be over. I felt confident that between surgery and chemotherapy I was going to beat the monster. I never panicked, never truly thought I was going to die. I had my bad days and my moments of utter despair, but on the whole I went through it as well as possible because I didn’t feel I had a choice. I also had a little supernatural help through the whole thing, if ya know what I mean.

My head tells me all that should be behind me. I AM A SURVIVOR! And for the most part it IS behind me; the crisis over. But I wasn’t able to escape it last month. Everywhere I looked; every magazine I flipped through; every channel I surfed over; every station I listened to; every news program I watched – they all talked about breast Cancer Awareness.

When you’re in the midst of treatment your every thought is consumed with cancer. There’s no escaping it. It’s there with every spell of nausea or the fatigue or the aches and pains or the loss of hair and eyebrows and lashes.

And then you finish your treatment; your hair starts to come back; you’re not as fatigued as you were; and all of a sudden you realize you went three hours without even thinking of cancer. Those three hours turn into five hours and so on until you might go the entire day with hardly a thought to the disease.

But in my case I went through reconstruction a year and a half after my mastectomy. It was a long and tedious surgery and a long and very unpleasant recovery. My entire day without a thought to BC was brought back to every minute because everything I was enduring was a result of the cancer.

Each procedure I’ve been through has been a little like pulling a scab off a healing wound. There’s a little less pain and oozing each time, but it still hurts. Eventually the reconstruction is completed, the trips to the oncologist are farther and father apart and life resumes a bit of normalcy.

You think to yourself, “I’ve finally moved on.” Then October comes along and everywhere you look is a plea to help find the cure. And you desperately want a cure to be found because you’re tired of hearing about yet another woman diagnosed with breast cancer or another recurrence. But even more than that, you have a daughter and even though you know it’s not your fault, she’s at higher risk now. Especially since your mother was diagnosed a year after you were. There’s truly a family history now.

Selfishly, however, I don’t want to be reminded of what I’ve lost every time I turn around. I don’t want to be overwhelmed with emotion when I see huge pink ribbon balloons in the grocery store because they’ve taken on a whole different meaning for me. I don’t want to face the reality that my daughter will always have the niggle of fear as she gets older unless a cure is found. I’m a contradiction of emotions. I’m proud to be part of a sisterhood of some of the most incredible women I’ve ever known – including my mom – but at the same time I don’t want to be in that sorority. I don’t want anyone to be in that sorority. So I want a cure to be found and the support for BC research is astounding. But I don’t want to hear about it at every turn. There’s just no pleasing me.

I also get angry when I see the “Breast Cancer Checklist”. You know, “You’re at a higher risk for the disease if you check off however many of the following.” BAH! Three years ago I couldn’t check off any of them. I had no family history at all, I very rarely drank, I wasn’t obese, I was under 40, etc. I wasn’t even old enough for routine mammograms. Thank God I found my lump when I did.

I worry women will dismiss the possibility of breast cancer if they can’t check off anything. . Did you know that while having a family history may increase your chances of breast cancer, the majority of breast cancers are found in women without a family history? Sounds crazy, but that’s the way of it. The bottom line, people, is it doesn’t matter whether you can check off anything from the risk list or not. You must be diligent in monthly self exams and yearly exams by your doctor.

I also had more than just a moment or two of profound sadness last month. Memories were stirred without invitation. Every person who has had or has breast cancer has a similar, yet different, story to tell. My battle was compounded when Todd had to relocate to Pennsylvania ten days after my mastectomy. The difficulty of treatment was greatly magnified by having to go through it without him for the majority of the
time.

One memory in particular brought up emotions I didn’t realize I still had. I received my treatments on Thursday and the following Thursday I always had a very low white count. Because of this I received Neupagen injections Thursday and Friday and sometimes even throughout the weekend, depending on how low the counts were. As thankful as I was to have this wonder drug available to me, I hated those shots. Neupagen is like fertilizer for your white blood cells, putting your marrow into hyperdrive which, in turn, causes pain in your bones and joints.

One of these Saturday nights when Todd wasn’t coming home sticks in my mind. I was so exhausted talking was a chore and my back, knees and shoulders ached so badly I felt like I had the flu. What I wanted to do was go to bed, but instead I stayed awake with the kids until they went to bed. I tossed and turned and couldn’t find a comfortable position, but I was so fatigued and desperately wanted to sleep.

After making sure the kids were asleep, I closed the door to my room, crawled into bed and sobbed. Todd would have taken care of the kids if he’d been home. He would have rubbed my back to ease the aching. I missed him so much and worried about how hard it was for him being so far away, all alone, wondering how I was.

Between my parents, neighbors and two church families I had all the help I could ever
want. But there were some things no one could do for me – only Todd. The treatment and its effects were not pleasant, but having my husband living 1,200 miles away was much worse. Sometimes when I look back and think of the many times such as this I can’t imagine how we did it.

I suppose the memories, however painful, serve a purpose even now. It’s good to remember where we were, how God carried us through those horrible times and how He’s brought us through that valley to where we are now. Still, I’d rather be in control of those memories and not have them thrust upon me when I’m not prepared.

My suspicion is I’ll eventually love October as much as I used to, but it’s just going to take time. Next year my reconstruction will be completely done, I’ll probably only see my oncologist every six months or so, my gynecological problems related to the breast cancer will be so far behind me…

So if any of you found it curious that I didn’t post something about breast cancer awareness last month, now you know why. I started to several times and the posts came out so angry and bitter and I was afraid I’d cause more fear than encouragement.

In the end I do offer this encouragement to anyone who may be where I was two years ago. It DOES get better. Much better. Time heals both physically and emotionally, but it doesn’t forget.