How do YOU pray?

How do you pray?  Y'all, that ain't a rhetorical question.....I really want to know.  I'm going to try to relate how I pray, and I want to hear from the folks reading this about how you pray, and what you pray for.  I've tried to fix the settings for the comments on this blog so that anybody can comment, but I've gotten some feedback that suggests that the comments aren't working as well as they should.  If that's the case, and you have trouble commenting on this page, then leave your thoughts on the Facebook link to this post, or drop me a private message on Facegbook, or shoot me an email.  I've already heard from a few people that they have read the blog post from yesterday, but so far, almost everyone is too shy to leave a written note.  That's okay, too.

From my post yesterday, it may have seemed (because capturing accurately my interactions with God is challenging for me) that God dealt harshly with me because I didn't directly ask for his blessing upon this blog.  If I gave that impression, I'm sorry, and I'll try to correct myself here.

Imagine, if you will, that your child joined the school baseball/softball team, performed well during their first game, thanked his/her parents publicly afterwards, and NEVER INVITED YOU TO THE GAME.  You'd be very sad, and very disappointed at not being invited, right?  Yesterday, in my alone-time with the Lord, I felt like the child being confronted by a sad, disappointed parent who had not been invited to participate and encourage me.  

Another way to look at the situation is to imagine being a teenager who, on the way out of the front door, says, "Dad, I'm going over to my friend's house, byeeeeeeeee" and runs out the door without giving Dad the time to say, "Okay, Son." or "Get your butt back here, you haven't done your homework, yet."

On the internet, anybody and everybody has access to this blog.  My witness of Christ is being put out there for anybody in the world to see, and so it is important that my Lord and Savior be a full participant in this process; not to bring attention to me, but because His precious name is being used in public.  

The idea that I want to get across is this:  My Lord spoke to me yesterday, clearly, unmistakably, and in the most deeply personal and loving way.  My brothers and sisters in Christ, I think, will understand exactly what I'm saying, here.  If you are reading this post, and you are not a Christian, of if you have never experienced that kind of communication with God and doubt it's reality, I honestly don't know what to tell you, except that if you message me privately, I'll be happy to prove it to you.  

God answers prayers.  Isaiah chapter 65, verse 24 says:

Before they call I will answer; while they are yet speaking I will hear.

Prayer is not a monologue.  When you talk to God, it is a dialogue:  God talks back to you.  It doesn't always happen by the burning-bush method through which God spoke to Moses, but when God speaks to you, there is no doubt; you won't be left wondering, "Did that really happen?"  Referring back to yesterday, I didn't feel angry, vengeful wrath, or fear of punishment.   Quite the contrary.  I felt nothing but love.  The feeling of shame came from within myself, in the knowledge that I'd thoughtlessly disappointed someone who loved me and wanted to be included in my life.

There's nothing special about me.  As I said in my first post on this blog, I'm not a preacher, prophet, teacher, or apostle.  God loves ALL of his children.  In looking for Scripture to offer as proof, I found many, many verses in the Bible which demonstrates God's love for us all.  Most of us are intimately familiar with John 3:16, but another verse seemed to fit my thoughts for today, from the book of Zephaniah, Chapter 3; Verse 17:

The Lord your God is in your midst, a mighty one who will save; he will rejoice over you with gladness; he will quiet you by his love; he will exult over you with loud singing.

Amen.  How do you pray?  

I had second thoughts, today, about continuing with this blog, and I'd better tell y'all why.  Before beginning it, I didn't really seek the Lord's input, at least not to the degree that I should.  Although I put some thought into the blog, and I did talk to the Lord about it, I forgot to ask for His blessing. I'm worried, really worried, about me and myself and too much of me, me, me being present.

By establishing a blog that deals with a walk with Christ, our risen Savior must be the most visible aspect.  I think in any endeavor that deals with our relationship with God, if God is not the central focus, and without His blessing, the endeavor is doomed to fail.  I had an idea in my head about something that I wanted to accomplish, and I'm afraid that's exactly what I'm going to get:  a personal accomplishment, and if that's what happens, then things will have gone seriously awry, and it will be all my fault.

If you haven't yet gotten the idea, I'm going to try to be even more clear:  The Holy Spirit brought me up short this morning, in the middle of my prayers, and showed me in no uncertain terms the error of my ways, and so this post is a confession that I messed up by not seeking God's blessing before getting started.  Some people may think "No big deal" but that is NOT the message that I received.

I asked forgiveness of God, and I must also ask the forgiveness of anybody who is reading this post, and those who saw my post yesterday on Facebook.  Y'all had every right to expect that I would have placed this endeavor in God's hands, COMPLETELY, but I did not.  It shames me more than you know to make this public confession, but it's nothing to the shame I felt when my Savior brought it to my attention.  I do not deserve a second chance to get this right, and I won't get that chance without publicly confessing that I messed it up.  I hope you believe me when I say that I have now, with all the humility that I can muster, sought the face of my God and asked that He bless not only this blog and the things that will be shared here, but also that he bless all of you, who read this and contribute your own thoughts.

I'll try to do better, y'all.

I was actually going to wait until tomorrow to create this blog and post on it, but I remembered that it takes a little time to set things up, and the first post is always problematic, so I'm posting tonight so I can get my reasons for creating this thing out of the way, and if I feel so inclined tomorrow, I can just start posting on the real reason for the creation of this space.

First:  I'm 47 years old, and I'm a caregiver to my Mom (who has Alzheimer's) and my Dad (who is a hospice patient) and I don't get out much.  If I'm not at the grocery store, the doctor's office, or at Church, I'm likely at home.  I don't own a car, I'm not employed, and I'm poor as one can be, financially.  My home life is incredibly stressful, as you can imagine, knowing my age and the age and condition of my parents.  Life is hard; harder than I've ever experienced life to be.

Now that's out of the way, I want to make it clear that I'm happier than I've ever been.  Am I crazy?  Well.....yeah, as the people who've known me for most of my life will attest, I am a little crazy, but no more so than most other people I know.  Even with the stress and difficulties of my daily life, I'm actually one of the happiest people that I know.  How is this possible?

My answer won't be a surprise to most of you reading this blog, because most of y'all go to the same church that I do, Eulaton First Baptist.  Those of you who are not Christians who mistakenly clicked this link from my Facebook page or my Twitter account will probably be navigating away from this page before you get to the end of this paragraph, and that's a shame; it really is.  Let's just get this part out of the way, then, so y'all can go about your business if you don't want to read anything about a real, personal, relationship with Jesus Christ, because He is the reason why I experience more joy on a daily basis, even in the midst of some of the worst crises that I've ever personally faced.

So why am I starting this blog?  Well, yesterday, I posted something on Facebook where I told everyone about an answered prayer.  It wasn't a big, dramatic, burning-bush sort of thing, but I was excited about it, and wanted really badly to share my excitement with other people.  I wanted to share it with people who would understand exactly why I was excited.  I realize that the majority of people on Facebook not only don't care about how we Christians feel about our personal relationship with our Redeemer, they absolutely HATE to see any kind of post that has anything to do with Christianity.  I don't have the luxury of removing all of those people from my Facebook list, because I'm in the entertainment industry.  With my brother, Marty, I do a political talk show on the internet, and I maintain my Facebook account for marketing reasons rather than purely social ones.  Facebook is where I engage more with Democrats, Atheists, Pagans, and Communists than with my fellow Christians.  I engage with those folks because God wants me to, plain and simple.  Some of those folks are actually reachable, and some of them are friends whom I love and refuse to abandon without doing everything that I possibly can to show them that, rather than existing in a guilt-filled pit of awareness of our sins, we Christians live with the joy of knowing that although we are guilty of sin, we worship a Savior who rescues us from our sinful nature and shows us a better, more joyful and abundant life.

I need a place where I can share my Christian life, and the amazing, wonderful things that I am learning from studying God's Word.  I need a place where I can tell my brothers and sisters in Christ about answered prayers, and I want y'all to share your joys, sorrows, trials, and answered prayers with me.  I'm not a preacher, pastor, prophet, teacher, Deacon, or elder of my Church.  I'm just a guy, a sinner like everybody else.  I don't really have wisdom to offer here, because when God was handing out wisdom, I overslept.  I'm starting this blog so that I can write things down without worrying about whether or not Facebook will delete the post, or lose it, or any of the other crappy things that Facebook is famous for doing.  Also, it's unlikely that any of the scantily-clad women who should know better than to put half-nekkid pictures of themselves on the internet will be sending me their friend-requests here.  (believe it or not, ugly as I am, every day I have to deny friend-requests from those type of women on Facebook.  Go figure.)

Sorry for the name of the blog.  All of the good Scripture-based web addresses were unavailable, so I went with the advice of my beard, which is getting bushy enough to have it's own personality.