I read once of an elderly woman who went to her priest for advice because she still wasn’t experiencing God’s presence after praying faithfully for years.  He instructed her to stop talking to God and instead get quiet and just knit before the face of God for 15 minutes each morning.  After struggling for a few days, something happened as she began to realize that in the silence God was there with her. This awareness changed her life.*
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I have always loved that story because it did for me what I believe this book can do for anyone with desire for more of God or frustration over their prayer life. Simply put, Where Prayer Becomes Real charts a path that sets us free from religious constraints, and redeems duty-driven spiritual practices that have not been as life-giving as prayer is meant to be.

The best thing about this book is that it is heavily practice oriented. While the second part is devoted to unpacking specific practices, Coe and Strobel carefully interweave Part One-What We Need to Unlearn about Prayer-with meaningful invitations designed to peel back the layers of our good Christian prayer assumptions. For example, Chapter Two addresses ways we avoid God, even as we offer up prayers. When we think prayer is up to us or feel obligated to do it well, we focus on the doing, and hide the true state of our soul. The practice for this chapter opens a way for us to think more deeply about what it means to be with God in truth.
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​To be honest, I never realized how much I talk to myself in prayer until I read this book.  Coe and Strobel point out that we can tend to ignore the messiness of our own hearts because we think God wants us in an improved state. As a result, prayer becomes an internal conversation about how to do better. I have found a new level of freedom in prayer as have begun to recognize the ways I do this. 

For Strobel and Coe, intercession centers around being present—to the people we intercede for, to our own hearts and to God.  They note that often: “(1) I am absent from the person I am praying for, as I name requests to mark off a list; 2) I am absent from myself, since I am not actually entering into the heart of the request; and 3) I am absent from God because I am not with him with these requests. I’m just lofting them at him.” (page 157) The art of presence as they refer to it, has brought a refreshing energy to my practice of intercession.
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This book is about the most important relationship in the world and that alone is reason enough to get it now. But beyond that, When Prayer Becomes Real makes us want to pray, drawing us in with the simple invitation to be ourselves with God. This, plus the many practices ensure that there is enough help to keep anyone growing in prayer for years to come. 
     *told in School of Prayer by Metropolitan Anthony of Sourozh.

PURCHASE HERE.

READ MORE HERE.

As a SoCal weather wimp, I’ve felt perpetually chilled for weeks as our nights have dipped down into the low 40’s.  So, when the sun came out after a stormy interlude last week, I took my morning coffee break to sit on a rock with the local lizards and soak up those rays. 

​It felt glorious, until I glanced around and saw the incredible weed infestation that had sprung up overnight (whoever told us that rock gardens with indigenous plants are low maintenance was sorely uninformed!)

​Weeds are amazing, when you think about it.  They shoot up unbidden, having powered through layers of protective plastic, rocks and even boulders, and then they spread profusely, wreaking havoc like kamikaze warriors. I have never been able to figure out why our regular plants demand such care--fertilizing, balancing the soil, watering enough, but not too much—while weeds seem to flourish with no help from us at all. 

Getting rid of the weeds in my soul feels like a never-ending task.  Cynicism or judgement or self-pity or pride or anxiety or a hundred other sins can spring up unbidden and before I know it, that garden within where Jesus has made his home, is a mess. 
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This is one reason Lent is such a special season for me.  It offers a time to journey with Jesus through his suffering, opening my soul to his tender care and boundless love, as he rips out the weeds that threaten to choke the flora of grace and virtue that he’s planted there.  In the shadow of the cross, Jesus himself comes to water the dry places, till the hardened soil, and turn the budding plants into a profusion of beauty whose fragrance brings him joy. Nothing drives me more than the unfathomable privilege of bringing pleasure to my Lord.    

I hope you'll join me in a soul-gardening venture this Lent! 

RESOURCES

• Contemplating the Cross: a Forty-Day Pilgrimage of prayer: CLICK HERE 
• Lenten Scriptures and other resources: CLICK HERE.  
• ​Fasting Guide for Lent: CLICK HERE

​I woke up with a tension headache again this morning.  While I’d like to think I can manage stress at this point in my life, the knots down my neck and across my shoulders are telling a different story, one forged through the twists and turns of a global pandemic that we all thought would be a thing of the past by now.
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This week San Diego went into lockdown again, forcing Joe and me to pare down Christmas until it feels like the Grinch himself is calling the shots.  For decades we have hosted our family Christmas Eve celebration, replete with a panorama of Danish traditions my mom brought into our home as a young bride. 

​Letting my friends and family know we wouldn’t be hosting this year has been ​excruciating for me—not only because of my own sense of loss, but the disappointment I knew many of them would feel.  I didn’t realize how much this weighed on me until this morning as I read these words from the prophet Isaiah: “And the government shall be on his shoulders.”  

​In this prophecy of Christ that was penned hundreds of years before he came, the Hebrew word for government suggests wrestling until one wins the power.  In that agrarian society, where most people survived through manual labor, the image of that fight being hefted like a load onto one’s back, spoke volumes. As I massaged my tense shoulders, I pondered how Jesus came to contend in my place, to wrestle to the point of death so that he could lift the burdens of brokenness and disappointment and sadness and sin from my shoulders. 
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​Tears began to flow as I envisioned just that—all the weight I have been carrying for days, sliding off of me and onto his shoulders—and as I did, the headache gradually disappeared.​
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​I am not under the illusion that I’ll be stress-free from now on, or that headache won’t come back, but today, in this moment, my heart is captivated by the eternal beauty of a Savior who came to earth to carry our burdens and fight for our souls.  COVID restrictions have lost their capacity to cancel my Christmas joy in light of this. 

12 DAYS OF CHRISTMAS DEVOTIONALS
CLICK HERE

Joe started putting up lights a week before Thanksgiving and hasn’t stopped yet—we’ve never had such a display! It’s not yet December, but this morning I am sitting here looking at the stockings hanging from our mantle, because the truth is, we’ve just needed a little Christmas.
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everything in the stock market crash of 1929, she called for her household to begin celebrating Christmas immediately; to “haul out the holly, put up the tree before my spirit falls again.”  ​
​While we cannot compare our own dark chapter in history with the Great Depression, this global pandemic that has claimed almost 1.5 million lives to date, has cast its shadow over every aspect of our daily existence.  

MAVERICK CITY CHRISTMAS: The best Christmas worship experience I've had-great album!
​     Amazon playlist: Click here      Youtube sample: Click here    Itunes album: Click here

12 DAYS OF CHRISTMAS DEVOTIONALS: Experience Jesus’ birth through the stories of those who were there.  A great way to focus on those final days before Christmas: Click here.

THE CHOSEN SPECIAL CHRISTMAS EPISODE: Expect tears and be deeply moved in this 24 minute portrayal of Christ's birth: Click here.

And if you just need to sing along, join the iconic Johnny Mathis as he sings 
​NEED A LITTLE CHRISTMAS: Click here

My brother Chris took his last breath 15 days ago in a skilled nursing facility and by some shockwave of sheer grace, we were granted bedside access for two full weeks prior as he slipped into semi-consciousness. Grief, as anyone who has lost a loved one knows, is no respecter of persons or time.  It can go underground and then come crashing in--a rogue wave, tossing you around like a rag doll in its turbulence. This happened to me this morning as I was reflecting on my Scripture reading.

So then, those who suffer according to God’s will should commit themselves to their faithful Creator and continue to do good.  1 Peter 4:19

Theological disputes about God’s sovereignty and sickness aside, I watched my brother suffer terribly for almost three years after a stroke paralyzed and partially blinded him. In his better moments, he told me he was certain God had him in that place for a purpose, and in his final days, as nurses, doctors, aides, therapists and fellow patients streamed through his room to say goodbye, I understood the power of those four words, continue to do good. 

Chris always loved people, but the stroke left him with an unusual brain condition dubbed la belle indifference—the beautiful indifference—that uniquely put this on display.  (You can read the story about that here).  After the stroke, Chris was brilliant, fun, savvy and sane as ever, with one exception—he could not connect the dots from the present to the future.  Like the proverbial Groundhog Day, he woke up most mornings with the sense that he had landed temporarily in the hospital and would get out soon. 
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So, through multiple illnesses, surgeries and ER visits, while enduring unbearable pain month after month, it seems to me that Chris just continued to do good--connecting personally with the lives of every person who walked through his door, insisting regularly that I take Joe out to dinner on him, sharing his snacks with the staff, and ordering birthday gifts on Amazon for me to give out to the family he loved.  Even in his semi-conscious state at the end, he labored to squeeze people’s hands or blink three times for I love you.  

So as I grieved and read 1 Peter again this morning, I felt a reset in my soul, a path forward that I think I can follow through the landmines of pandemics and presidential elections and civil unrest and upheaval like I've not seen in my entire life.  Continue to do good.
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Such a simple mandate that flows through the pages of Scriptures:
Trust in the Lord and do good…Psalm 37:3
Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you…Luke 6:27
Jesus of Nazareth...went around doing good…Acts 10:38
Let us not become weary in doing good…Galatians 6:9
Therefore, as we have opportunity, let us do good to all people…Galatians 6:10
Command them to do good, to be rich in good deeds…1 Timothy 6:18
Remind the people to be …ready to do whatever is good…Titus 3:1
And do not forget to do good and to share with others…Hebrews 13:16

The reset God had for me this morning was to remember how he treasures every little act of goodness I might extend—in my home, my neighborhood, on the road, in the grocery store or gas station or online.  In times when it feels like everything is being shaken and uncertainty is the new normal, this lovely little mandate will anchor my soul and correct my course--continue to do good.
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​Chris came out of his semi-conscious stupor for a few days at the end, laboring to mouth words or raise his hand or turn his head our way.  The last thing he said to me in his garbled, toothless whisper was “I sure do love you.”  Like a soothing balm, that moment and the sheer exertion of strength it took for him to speak, has comforted me through the grief.  It was his final act of goodness toward me, and one I deeply treasure.  Chris’s final years were brutal, and ones I would never wish on anyone.  But from him I learned the beauty of that simple command:  Continue to do good.  It was just the reset I needed today.