Since moving to Northwest Arkansas, one of my favorite times in winter is to wake up to an overnight snow.  The simple beauty of the untouched snow.  Seeing it before tire tracks make their grooves or foot prints mar the untouched beauty. 

It is picturesque to say the least and as I witness such wonder I can’t help but notice the purity of it all.  Almost as if it is a glimpse of innocence soon to be lost.  For when the world awakes it will trample through the purity of the profound whiteness.  The sheer beauty of untraveled fields and untouched lawns. Oh, the wonder of nature and the marvel of it’s Creator!

My mind races to an Old Testament passage that describes the purity of a Savior mixing with the impure soul.  The blood that causes us to be pure again.  What an amazing picture of redemption!

Isaiah 1:18, “Though your sins are like scarlet, They shall be as white as snow; Though they are red like crimson, They shall be as wool.”

The multitude of our impurities were made pure.  Covered by the unspotted blood of the Lamb of God.  We were born in innocence but guilt and shame soon overtook us.  We were born into sin and would quickly learn its grip.  Yet provision was made by the Redeemer in which He would declare us innocent again.  New creations in the image of God.

I walked to work this morning through the snow, leaving my mark on this beautiful ground.  I had marred the perfection of untouched snow.  A couple of hours passed by and I looked out at where my tracks had been.  They had been covered again by fresh snow.  My footsteps were remembered no more.

This is the way it works with our Savior.  Our lives stained by sin. Our transgressions mar our lives and the purity of our hearts, yet when we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and cover the tracks which we left.  Though our sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow.  As far as east is from the west, so far has He removed our sins from us.  Oh Great and Glorious Redeemer!

Though I was born in the days after Martin Luther King Jr. and his fight for de-segregation, I can still remember reading about this great champion of equality.  He wasn’t looking for superiority but equality.  He believed in the premise that God created all men equal and they should be treated as such.  Our nation today remembers this great man. A man who died for the principles he held.

As a preacher, I have admired the great oratory skills of MLK.  He was a master of the pulpit.  His communication was above most of our greatest orators today.  This wasn’t because of his training.  It wasn’t just because he was gifted.  His speeches were great because you could feel his speeches.  All great messages must be tempered with passion.  A passion for the subject in which we speak.  MLK believed in what he spoke about.

My favorite speech of his was his last.  It was delivered on the eve of his assassination.  If you read it in its totality, you can sense the prophetic nature of its content.  He knew his time was short.  He knew that he would die in the fight for the freedom of his people. 

When MLK spoke of going to the mountaintop, you knew that he had already been there.  You could sense it in his voice.

He was murdered the next day.  Most of us remember this man for what he did for his people and in reality, for our nation.  America is a better place because Martin Luther King Jr had a dream.  A dream for freedom!  A dream that all people, regardless of race, would be treated the same.

Many years have come and gone since these days in 1968.  Yet, his legacy lives on.

For us, do we have a cause worth fighting for?  Are we willing to give our lives to lead people to Christ?  Are we willing to stand firm in the midst of the demoralization of America or will we stand up for morality?  Would be willing to stand in the face of  persecution for the cause of Christ?

Just read this on Justin Buzzard’s blog.  Great challenge for all of our lives.

“You are building your life on somebody’s words.

Words form the foundation of every life. Whose words are you building your life on? There are many options. You can build your life on:

• Your non-stop negative self-talk
• What a false friend says about you
• The lies Satan whispers
• The idea that you can earn enough credit to get God and other people to love you
• Belief that there are many gods, nobody’s truth claims/words are true in an absolute sense–what  you believe doesn’t really matter, there is no ultimate accountability in this universe

Those are just five of the options. These days most people are building their lives on a mixture of words.

Words matter. You’re standing on words right now. Do you like where you’re standing?

“Everyone then who hears these words of mine and does them will be like a wise man who built his house on the rock. And the rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew and beat on that house, but it did not fall, because it had been founded on the rock. And everyone who hears these words of mine and does not do them will be like a foolish man who built his house on the sand. And the rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew and beat against that house, and it fell, and great was the fall of it.” –Jesus”

When Hannah woke up this morning, she looked out the back door and exclaimed, “What’s taking God so long?”  You see, she prayed for God to bring her a horse the other night and God hasn’t brought it yet.

I replied to her, “Sometimes God takes a while to answer because the time is not right.”

So Hannah passionately retorts, “I already prayed once, and I can’t keep praying until I’m all out of breath!”

So I gently said to her, “Sometimes that is what it takes.”

Seeing God answer prayer often takes a while.  He doesn’t always answer us on the first prayer.  We, many times, pray coulntless prayers until He finally comes through.  The Bible tells us that we must keep on asking, keep on seeking, keep on knocking and God will answer.  We must be persistent in prayer.

Too many times we lose heart.  We think God does not care or that He does not hear.  God, however, works in His own time and always comes through when it is best for us or when He sees that we need it.  I always call Him, “Jehovah-Nick of Time.”  He always comes just in the nick of time.

As we observe a week of fasting and prayer, I believe it is fitting to discuss the topic of prayer.  It is important for us to continually sharpen our prayer lives.  I came across this article by Pastor Joe Thorn.  It is a thought provoking article about the importance of praying early.

Joe Thorn writes, “The longer I follow Jesus the more I realize how important prayer is to the Christian life. During the first 10 years following my conversion, if asked, I would have elevated the reading of Scripture over prayer. Given the opportunity to engage in one over the other, I would have chosen the Bible. Things are different now, but I wouldn’t say the pendulum has swung the other way. Pendulum swinging is never healthy, always resulting in an overreaction to a problem while creating another imbalance. I was not over-valuing the word, but undervaluing prayer. Now I would say that what is most important is prayerful meditation on the word, or word-saturated prayer. Someone once challenged the pitting of the two disciplines by saying something like, “What’s better– an hour in the word, or an hour on our knees? Better an hour in the word on our knees!” That’s closer to where I am, but obviously I think prayer should be bigger than one spiritual exercise during the day.

The longer I follow Jesus the more critical I find prayer to be, because it is the primary way I can “practice the presence of God,” staying in regular and vital communion with him. I have been preaching this to myself lately saying, “You can’t live for God unless you’re living with God,” and the greatest means of doing so is prayer.

But I have found there are two things in my life that work against the cultivation and maintenance of a vital prayer life: busyness and distraction. We are all busy these days, and the pace of life is fast. From work, to family and house responsibilities, to church life, to personal hobbies and interests, our days quickly fill up. Added to our busy and full lives is a culture that provides an endless stream of distractions that rob us of any remaining minutes. Well, robbery is the wrong word. Being this busy we are often happy to hand over what little time we might have left to distraction just to get a break from what we are, or have been, working on. Busyness and distraction can overwhelm me and lead me to a virtually prayerless day.

For most people cultivating a strong and authentic prayer life is helped along by having a plan. I know I benefit from one. Over a few separate posts I will be writing to encourage the practice of prayer throughout the day. As I share my thoughts, feel free to share yours as well in the comments.

Start Early

But I, O LORD, cry to you; in the morning my prayer comes before you.
(Psalm 88:13 ESV)

It’s not that God commands his people to pray before they do anything else that day, but there is both a biblical example for praying early as well as great reward in doing so. The Psalms often emphasize such devotional acts as prayer happening early in the morning because the morning itself is often the evidence of Gods’s grace (he sustains me), as well as the reason to plead for more grace (I need him to give me strength for this day).

Jesus also modeled this for us in his early rising to pray to his Father in Heaven.

It is good for everyone to start the day early (a somewhat relative term), and with God. I understand that some of you are not morning people, but keep in mind I am not suggesting that you spend an hour working through a long inductive Bible study. If that’s a part of what gets you going, then get on it. I am arguing that you should make your first meeting of the day with God.

Since many of us have have such a commitment before, only to give up after a week of half-hearted attempts, here is some practical advice for starting your day with prayer.

1. Sleep when you’re tired, wake on time.
Go to bed when you are tired, but get up at the same time every day. If you are sleepy at 9:30pm, hit the hay. If it’s 11:00pm, turn out the lights then. Ultimately you have to figure out how much sleep you need to be fully functional the next day, and how much time you need to get ready and take care of morning responsibilities. So adjust your bed time and stabilize your wake time to allow for solid prayer time before hitting everything else on your to-do list.

2. Do NOT turn that thing on.
Do not turn on anything electronic. My immediate temptation when I wake up is the grab my iPhone and check email. If you share my temptation commit to not starting your day by looking at texts, email, Twitter, Facebook, or the even the news. At best, you will waste time you need to meet with God. Worse, you will find something to distract you from prayer, or even steal your affection from God. Email can be a great tool of the devil. A criticism, complaint, or problem expressed electronically can undo your day before you get started. I have found that communication with God first thing prepares me for what I might find when opening email.

3. Have a prayer objective in the morning.
In this morning prayer, let it be a time of worship where you focus on God’s attributes, and a time of preparation as you seek grace to handle all that God has in store for you that day.

4. Start with Scripture.
Begin with a reading from God’s word. You just can’t go wrong here. Psalms are great for morning prayer, as are Proverbs, but you can work through any book of the bible. Make sure you read passages of appropriate length for you and the time you have set aside. Scripture, as the revelation of God, guides our thoughts to Him and prepares us to cry out to and seek him.

These simple guidelines help me to set aside a great time of prayer in the morning– when I follow them. Do you set aside time in the morning to meet with God? When and where? What advice would you give people to start the day with prayer?”

As we enter our week of fasting, remember that fasting is a time of discovery.  Some might ask, “A time of discovery?”  Any period of fasting allows us to discover the things we are dependent on and even addicted to.  Just a half day into any fast reveals what you have become dependent on. 

Our bodies begin to scream for food or caffeine, while others might be having withdrawals from TV or computer.  When we begin to lay down our fleshly cravings and desires, we become ready to hear from God more clearly.  Granted, for the first few days of a fast, many will not hear a lot because  they are still going through the withdrawals, but the longer we fast the more prepared we are to hear from God.  His Word becomes alive to us, His presence seems real and we sense His nearness.

I encourage you to press in and hang on.  It will get better! 

While we are fasting, it is a good time to search our hearts.  Some questions that I use for a Spiritual Health Test may help you as well:

• Am I being honest with God and myself?
• Do I love God’s Word?
• Am I Praying Faithfully?
• Am I looking for opportunities to share Jesus’ love with others?
• Do I hate sin?
• Am I obeying the greatest commandment, to love the Lord with all my heart, soul and mind?
• Am I looking for Christ’s return?

These questions will help you know where to start in changing your life this new year.

The stats helper monkeys at WordPress.com mulled over how this blog did in 2010, and here’s a high level summary of its overall blog health:

The Blog-Health-o-Meter™ reads Wow.

Crunchy numbers

A Boeing 747-400 passenger jet can hold 416 passengers. This blog was viewed about 6,200 times in 2010. That’s about 15 full 747s.

In 2010, there were 169 new posts, growing the total archive of this blog to 805 posts. There were 372 pictures uploaded, taking up a total of 145mb. That’s about 1 pictures per day.

The busiest day of the year was October 26th with 79 views. The most popular post that day was Show Me The Money.

Where did they come from?

The top referring sites in 2010 were rogersag.com, facebook.com, search.aol.com, mail.yahoo.com, and google.com.

Some visitors came searching, mostly for mortgage burning, life of a pastor, signs of a dead church, the life of a pastor, and jejus.

Attractions in 2010

These are the posts and pages that got the most views in 2010.

Show Me The Money October 2010
4 comments

Signs of a Spiritually Dead Church July 2008

Saying The Same Thing Different Ways May 2009
4 comments

Mortgage Burning November 2009
4 comments

The Passion of God July 2009
1 comment