The Hardest Prayer...
What do you do when you are faced with something that you would have never imagined in your darkest dreams?  Is God still God to you when everything you know to be your life hangs in the balance?  I sat and watched yesterday as my best friend, my sweetheart, my wife, lay in a hospital bed fighting back from a major brain tumor surgery; and what now appears to be a subsequent stroke, and tried to figure out what it is that I am supposed to do next.  The mind wants to think that this can't really be happening to us, but it is.  The husband and dad inside me wants to figure out a way to fix it, but I can't.  The emotions just want things back the way they were, but they're not.  But in my spirit I desperately want my God to be glorified and I want our family to be a good commercial for Him; and that we can do if we will learn to pray...

The Hardest Prayer

We pray dear Lord for healing

We need your grace and peace

We plead for things that we think best

We petition for release

From the trouble and the burden

And the pressures that they bring

Crying out for mercy

When we’ve lost the will to sing

Our prayers can be so limited

By the circumstance we face

Teach us Father to lift our eyes

And bring us to the place

Where we learn to pray the hardest prayer

When the trials and struggles come

Beyond these things that we request

Not my will but thine be done

Lu 22:42-41  And he was withdrawn from them about a stone's cast, and kneeled down, and prayed, saying, Father, if thou be willing, remove this cup from me: nevertheless not my will, but thine, be done.

How often do we, as Christians, talk about wanting to be more like Christ...But then, how many of us shrink and complain when the struggle or trials come.  I don't want to be that guy.  We serve the same good God in the trial that we serve in the blessing.  My savior finished the course that the Father had set for him, and because of that the whole earth has been impacted by the gospel.  I want to finish the course the Father has set for me and pray that someone else will be impacted for the kingdom by my life.

The Next Step...
Although this site was never intended to just be a personal journal,  the poems that come to my heart are almost always a result of what God is doing in my own life.  We learned the full diagnosis for my wife Karen last Friday and it came as no surprise.  Just as the doctors had thought, it is a late stage, high grade cancer in her brain, and so now the real fight begins.  The thing that God is doing in the heart of my wife and myself is this; that no matter what comes, He is in control and we can trust Him to always and only do what is best, even when we don't understand.  If we keep our focus on Him, He may not show us the entire journey but he will surely show us...

The Next Step

Life can change in an instant

In a moment all your plans could be gone

We may think it could never happen to us

But the trials come to everyone

The truth is this that only God knows

If we will take the very next breath

And the only life that makes any sense

Is to find our peace and our rest

In the creator and sustainer of life

Walking daily in His grace

Fully committing our lives to Him

Pressing onward in the race

Making the most of each moment

Living with an eternal view

Submitting to his sovereign care

Trusting His mercies each morning are new

So no matter what you are facing

Make no room for worry or fear

And trust the heart of the Father

He will make the next step of the way clear

Pr 3:5-6 Trust in the LORD with all thine heart; and lean not unto thine own understanding. In all thy ways acknowledge him, and he shall direct thy paths.

2Ti 1:7 For God hath not given us the spirit of fear; but of power, and of love, and of a sound mind.

La 3:22-24 It is of the LORD'S mercies that we are not consumed, because his compassions fail not. They are new every morning: great is thy faithfulness.  The LORD is my portion, saith my soul; therefore will I hope in him.

For those of you who are following the story, last night we called for the elders of our church and asked to have Karen anointed with oil according to James chapter 5.  It was the most precious time I have ever been a part of in my 40 years as a Christian.  It was as if we were actually sitting in the throne room of the Father as the men prayed for my wife and family.  

We are obviously praying for a complete healing, but more than that, we are praying for God's perfect will to be accomplished and for Him to get the glory.  No matter what the outcome, we firmly believe that people all over the country are being impacted by what we are going through and we want to be a good commercial for our Awesome God!

The Storm...
Some of you already know about the trial that our family is facing.  We learned last week that my wife, Karen, has a rather large mass on the left side of her brain that has been causing increased weakness on her right side.  We go in today for more testing, and by the end of the week we will know just what it is and what we will face in the days ahead.  But here's the thing ... whatever it is, God already knows and it comes from His hand.  The grace that He has given and the peace that we are experiencing are truly amazing.  We are certainly not the first to go through something like this, and we surely won't be the last,  But we are determined to give God the glory in everything and we are grateful that we have been counted worthy to ride...

The Storm

Counted worthy

To ride the storm

The trials that come

Take many forms

Life doesn't always

Turn out like we planned

But one thing is certain

It's in God's hand

Some may grow bitter

But we will praise

Our Loving God 

In all His ways

And when in heaven

The battle finally won

Our reward will be

His words "well done"

Isa 26:3-4 Thou wilt keep him in perfect peace, whose mind is stayed on thee: because he trusteth in thee. Trust ye in the LORD for ever: for in the LORD JEHOVAH is everlasting strength: 

We have been blessed so far with some really great doctors and nurses.  It has been interesting to see the looks on some of their faces, when they see the peace in our eyes, they must think that we don't understand the seriousness of the situation.  But I look at them and think, they don't understand the greatness of our God.  The bottom line is this...it's a sovereignty issue!