Tag Archives: I hear God

Daily Bread

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Daily Bread

In previous blogs, I’ve mentioned that when I started my relationship with God, I had some strange, self-fabricated ideas about prayer. For instance, I would say things like, “If there is such a thing as prayer, I think we get a limited supply, so don’t ever ask me to pray for your dog.” I admit, my attitude was flippant and disrespectful. In hindsight, I’m sure this served several purposes. First, it deflected any honest discussion about religion or prayer. Deeper than that, however, it allowed me to push aside any feelings I had about God, His existence, or the fact that if He did exist, it was more than a little evident that He didn’t care about me.

All of this fit very neatly into my belief system, that was, until God began to pursue me. Suddenly, I was faced with confronting my ideas about prayer. I brought this up to Jacob in the context of a situation that was taking place with my roommate. I was completely bedridden at the time. My daughter would pack food into a cooler for me before she left for work in the morning. We had a pretty casual food sharing arrangement with our roommate. Sometimes she would eat our food and stick her head into our room and say, “Oh, if you’re looking for your frozen lasagna meal? I ate it.” Other times, food would just go missing. We behaved in kind. It was not unusual for me to find one of her Hot Pockets or other snacks she had purchased in my cooler.

Our budget was really tight. For the two of us, we budgeted $50 a week for groceries, which included paper goods and personal items. When my daughter would, for whatever reason, have shorter hours at work some weeks, we would have to cut back even further. There were times I would open my cooler to find only stale, cold rice for the day. During those times I was happy to have warm rice with a spoonful of peanut butter stirred into it, if my daughter happened to be home at mealtime. So I had to fight to accept His direction when God sternly instructed me each time my daughter would bring me a food item that belonged to our roommate, “Do not take anything that is not yours.”

My excuses for not doing what He commanded were plentiful:

► My daughter was actually the one taking it, I mean, it wasn’t my decision to “steal” it, so why did it matter if I ate it?
► Our roommate did the same with us, so it was really a non-verbal agreement we had with her, so how could it be wrong for us to take her food?
► I was hungry, I’m sure she wouldn’t want me to be in my room starving when there was food in the refrigerator. If the situation was reversed, I’d want her to take our food.
► I didn’t mind (all that much) when she took our food when we had some, and she probably felt the same.

Yet, I could feel God’s displeasure with me every time I accepted and ate our roommate’s food, so I started telling my daughter that I didn’t like the food our roommate had purchased, and instructed her not to bring it to me. When she continued to bring it to me (because there really wasn’t any of our food left in the apartment), I finally told her that this was a message from God. I was not to take anything that wasn’t mine, and that included our roommate’s food. She wasn’t happy about it, but she adhered to my request and stopped bringing me our roommate’s food. I told this story to Jacob and he asked if I had prayed for God to provide food for us. I explained to him that I didn’t know how to pray for things for myself. His response was, “Have you heard of the Lord’s Prayer?”

I replied that I had. Then, as was common with our text conversations, there was a pause before his next message. I sat there looking at his message, thinking. I knew the Lord’s Prayer, although I hadn’t prayed it a long time. So, I began to pray wondering if I even remembered the words. “Our Father who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name,” I prayed it with the strong reverence that I had developed for our Almighty God. “Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven,” again I prayed the words earnestly, allowing myself to express the depth of my desire to be part of God’s kingdom. Deep in prayer, I continued, “Give us this day our daily bread…” as I finished saying those words, as clearly as I have ever heard God’s voice, He said, “It has been done.”

I immediately felt joyful and so thankful! Without knowing how my need for food would be met, I knew God had answered my prayer! He was going to provide! Excitedly, I rushed to text Jacob and tell him about what had happened, to tell him that my prayer had been both asked and answered through God's grace. Then, suddenly as I tapped "send," I felt God shinning His love and approval down on me. I have never felt so loved or so much joy! It was beyond anything I thought was possible. It flooded me, covered me, filled me. I had expressed my faith that He had answered my prayer even before I had any outward sign that this was true. and He was pleased. I just knew it was because I had demonstrated a sincere expression of my unquestioning faith in Him.

I looked up at the text message above mine, the one Jacob had sent while I was having this moment with God. It read, ‘You don’t have to pray it, my point is to use it as a template for how you should pray.” I laughed to myself knowing that God had found a way for me to pray for my needs despite the fact that I felt I couldn’t, and then He answered that prayer. What an amazing and perfect God!

A couple hours later, my daughter came home from work with 3 big trays of Panda Express. Her employer had provided lunch for the staff, and these 3 trays of food were left at the end of the day. They offered them to anyone who wanted to take them. My daughter was the only one who showed interest, so the food was given to her. Moreover, there were 2 trays of chicken based meals and the third tray was a completely vegetarian dish, and my daughter doesn't eat meat. God provided for both of us!

The next day a friend had gone out for pizza and afterward decided she wasn’t going right home, so she dropped off a large pizza with only one slice missing to our apartment. She didn’t want the pizza to be wasted by going bad in her hot car. Day-after-day for weeks things like this kept happening. We somehow got another round of Panda Express. My other daughter lived in town and her refrigerator stopped working. Could she give us all her frozen food? “Of course you can!” There was so much food, the freezer was full and we had to start cooking things so we could store some of it in the refrigerator. Every day when I opened my cooler, it was filled to the top with a bounty of food inside!

Of course, this was a wonderful example of God showing me love and understanding. He knew where I was in my immaturity with prayer, so He gave me the prayer to pray and then answered that prayer with an abundance of food. That part of the experience alone is enough to astound me. However, so much more amazing was the feeling of God’s love and approval filling me, covering me, all-encompassing. It’s hard to find the words to describe how it felt, "glorious" is the closest I can come. I never think much about heaven. Maybe I’m just not there yet in my religious development, but in that moment, from the bottom of my heart, throughout my whole soul, every bit of me ached for the day I will feel the unimaginable joy of being in His presence for all eternity.

Conversation with Jacob – Praying the Lord's Prayer

Me:
I think I still have some praying misconceptions and inadequacies I need to work on. :/
Jacob:
Well you aren't ever inadequate for prayer, but maybe we can clear up those misconceptions.
Me:
I'm still working off some of my made-up prayer rules. That can't be good. L I have glitches like how can I pray prayers for myself if I’m praying for something other people are lacking too? Why should it be okay that I put my needs above theirs?
Jacob:
Why can't you pray for both? Have you heard of the Lord's prayer? It probably is the most famous Christian prayer, many non-believers even know it.
Me:
I did know it. I have not said it in a very long time though. I'm not sure I ever prayed it.

[pause in texts]

Jacob:
You don’t have to pray it, my point is to use it as a template for how you should pray. Jesus said that prayer after someone asked him how to pray. Even if you don't say it word for word, there are good pointers.
Me:
Something just happened!!!!!! I couldn’t make myself pray for food for us when I know there are people suffering so much more than we struggle. There are people who don’t even have rice, you know? Then you sent the Lord's Pray text and I prayed it in earnest. When I got to the "give us this day our daily bread" part, I got this big message from God, "It has been done!" Jacob, He gave me the words to pray and then answered my prayer!

“I Brought You to Now”

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“I Brought You to Now”

Excerpt: Spoken firmly, with assurance and compassion, God said, “I brought you to now.” In that moment, those few words flipped my perception of my past upside down...


It was late September, 2014. I'd known Jacob for less than a month, and here I was already asking him for extra support in the days ahead. We were approaching the anniversary of my infant son's death, always a difficult time for me. I'd been through so many difficult experiences in my life. Earlier the same year that my son passed away, my mother had died of leukemia, I had given birth to premature twins, each weighing barely a pound, and four months after that I was holding my lifeless son in my arms.

On the day of this message from God, I was texting with Jacob, describing to him what had happened on the night of my son's death. My eldest daughter, my son's twin, had grown more quickly and had been home from the hospital for a few weeks while my son remained hospitalized. That night, she woke and continued crying even after her physical needs for a diaper change and warm bottle were satisfied.

I walked her as I thought about my son. At four months old he was not improving. They had moved him from the incubator to a full-size crib hoping that being exposed to more than the inside of a plastic incubator would help, but nothing changed. He was frequently agitated, and the nurses had to restrain his arms to keep him from pulling the IV tubes from his body. As his mom, I loved him so much and wanted him to get better and come home, but as I slid down the wall and sat on the floor with my daughter, I prayed that if God was going to take him, that He take him soon. If he wasn't going to live, I didn't want him to suffer any longer. I was still sitting on the floor, my cheeks wet with tears, when the phone rang. It was the hospital calling to say our son had taken a turn for the worse.

My husband and I got ready to leave. dropped our daughter off with my sister, and drove to the hospital. My prayer was forgotten in the midst of the anxiety I was experiencing, fearing what we were about to face. As we sped to the hospital I prayed and prayed that my son would be okay.

When we arrived at the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit, a doctor met us in the hall and showed us to a small room where she gave us the devastating news that our son had passed away. It was hospital policy not to give news like that over the phone, but to ask parents to come to the hospital. The truth was that he had died before they had called us. A nurse brought him to us, his tiny body wrapped in a hospital blanket. My husband and I both held him, told him we loved him and said our heartbreaking final goodbyes. Feeling that my desperate prayers for my son's life had been pointless, I questioned the existence of God. I had prayed so hard and in my pain believed that if God existed, there would have been a different outcome. I angrily disavowed any belief I had in God.

I told Jacob this story, wracked with sobs as I thought about this painful time in my life. Then I began thinking about all the sadness and pain I'd experienced, starting with my early life placed in foster care for several years while my birthmother made up her mind to put me up for adoption. I thought about difficulties I faced as a child, my mom's death, my son's death, the end of my marriage, my struggles as a single parent, and in the midst of trying to make a better life, I sustained the injury that put an end to so many of my goals and dreams. I sat on my bed sobbing when I heard God's voice.

Spoken firmly, with assurance and compassion, God said, “I brought you to now.” In that moment, those few words flipped my perception of my past upside down. With those few words, I realized that my life had not been a series of tragedies and misfortunes randomly dealt by fate. Nothing I had been through had been in vain — God had His hand on my life with every step. With those few words from God, my life suddenly made sense.

Before that moment, unable to see God leading me through these tragedies, my past seemed like a sad tale of repeated abandonment, pain, and defeat, but everything changed with those words. With the sudden awareness that God had been directing my life, bringing me to this moment, to now, the experiences from my life transformed. They became lessons in faith and compassion for others.

If I told you I haven’t had any bad days since then, it would be a lie. I have days when I slip back into feeling sadness and depression over my past and I feel great emotional pain being so isolated. However, that only lasts as long as it takes me to remember that God has brought me to now for His purpose. When I remember that everything I have been through and everything I am going through is for His glory, I feel my strength and endurance restored.

I'd like you to think about this… whatever your life has been like, He has brought you to now. He has brought you through those experiences for a reason. He has faithfully brought us to this now, with the continued promise to bring us to the next now and the next after that for as long as we live and beyond. Please try to understand this message and the peace it can bring you. God has always had a plan for you and for me. He has always walked beside you on your journey just as He has walked with me on mine. Yes, even in your most devastating times, God has been with you. The Bible says:

“Have I not commanded you? Be strong and courageous. Do not be afraid; do not be discouraged, for the Lord your God will be with you wherever you go.” Joshua 1:9

The Lord said to Jeremiah, “Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, before you were born I set you apart..." God didn't pick out only a few people to work for His glory. He didn't say, "Okay, let's see... I'll take her [pointing], and Jeremiah, and... I don't know, just throw in a couple others in case we run out." No! Each one of us was "fearfully and wonderfully made," created for His purpose:

"For we are God's handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do." Ephesians 2:10

He has created us to do good works, and He walks beside us on every step of our journey. Once you accept that He has a plan for you, you will start seeing your life differently — blessed by God for His purpose, blessed, even when we face the most difficult experiences of our lives. With the utmost love, mercy and grace for you, directing you to the path of everlasting joy in His kingdom, He has faithfully brought you to now.

Conversation with Jacob – "I Brought You to Now"

Me:
The anniversary of my son's death is hitting me harder this year, maybe because I am alone so much and I have more time to think about things.
Jacob:
How many years has it been, if I may ask?
Me:
A long time... he was a baby.
Jacob:
It doesn't matter how long it's been, it is still a very emotional experience that you never really get over.
Me:
I hope you don't think I'm crazy, but I hear God. Is that crazy?? It hasn't happened to me often, but now it’s like I suddenly know how to listen for Him.
Jacob:
I don't think you are crazy. It isn't how I hear Him, but I don't think you are crazy one bit.
Me:
The only things He has been saying to me are "Work." and "No." But, just now, God said, "I brought you to now." since we've been talking, I've been so upset, and suddenly I feel so calm knowing that everything that has happened to me has been part of God's plan. He brought me to now...
Jacob:
Wow! I wish I could hear Him like that.
Me:
I live with a lot of silence, perfect for listening I guess.
Jacob:
After all the distractions in my life, I would welcome the silence.
Me:
I feel like He is revealing his power to me, even in the smallest things. The other day I had an inspiration that I should be writing down my experiences. I thought, "I don't have anything to write in," and that afternoon someone gave me a blank journal, brand new! So now I'm writing all my God experiences down. It keeps going that way. He shows me a need, I realize I can't fulfill it myself, and then He provides what I need. He has a plan, I'm sure of it.
Jacob:
Wow! Man, He is working in your life! :)
Me:
I’m new at this, but I’m already seeing that when God puts a plan into action, there is no denying it.



My first "God journal"

The Thing That Happened

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The Thing that Happened

It was Wednesday, October 8th, 2014. It had been over a year since my injury, since I had been able to walk. I was perched awkwardly and uncomfortably at the end of my bed, about to practice standing, when I got a text from Jacob. It had been a month since Jacob and I met, and we had become what I termed “God friends.” I talked to Jacob about every part of my journey with God as it unfolded. He knew my struggles, including my self-acknowledged weakness in prayer. So when I realized he was texting me to ask me to pray for someone, I had a flicker of skepticism;You really want my hopeless, second-rate prayer?

The text from Jacob explained that there was a woman in his church whose niece, Amy, was 29 weeks pregnant and she needed immediate heart surgery. They had attempted the procedure the day before, but it hadn’t gone well. The surgery had taken twice as long as expected and now there were complications. Along with addressing her heart problem, the doctors were hoping to buy more time for the baby's gestation. Would I pray? I answered, “Absolutely!” and without hesitating to move back onto the bed or get in a more comfortable position, I immediately began to pray.

My prayer started like all my prayers had begun in the past, hesitant and stumbling. I tried to piece a prayer together, but as usual, there was no mistaking how bad I was at praying. I began thinking about Amy and her baby, who was at risk of being born preterm, and I thought about my experience with the death of my son who had been born prematurely. I felt my sadness and grief at the loss of my child welling up. When my son was born, I had prayed for him, not the prayers of a Christian who had faith, but the desperate, desperate prayers of someone faced with agonizing loss.

I felt a connection with God growing deep in my heart as I prayed for Amy. Then it became something more—God showed me His love for His Son as I loved my son. He showed me His pain that joined with my own. In that moment, I became a believer in Jesus Christ, the Son of the wonderful God who first pursued me; I believed in God and, now, He had introduced me to His son in this most intimate, personal, powerful way.

As I sat on the edge of my bed still trying to pray, I suddenly felt the power of God move within me. I have no other way to describe it. Then, as God's Spirit filled me, I started saying the words to a perfect prayer. There was no hesitation, no awkward silences. The words lifted up for Amy and her child, through me, were no longer my words. I was only aware of what I was saying for the first time as I heard myself speak the prayer and even then, although in English, I still only understood half of what was being prayed. Most significantly there were references to promises God has made to those who have faith, promises I knew nothing about.

At the same time, I felt energy building behind the perfect prayer that was escaping my lips and somehow I felt the prayers I had prayed for my own son years ago, combining with the prayer I prayed now, amplifying my prayer for Amy. (Trust me if I was making this up, I would have left that part out because it makes no sense to me, but I'm telling you exactly what I experienced.) Then, suddenly, I felt the energy leave me as if it was speeding towards Amy. If in that moment someone had told me Amy was healed, I would have had no hesitation believing it. I knew it was true, she would be healed.

That would be a nice place for this testimony to end, but that is only the beginning of the story. In that moment I was changed. Through that experience with God, and His expression of His love for His Son, I became a believer in Jesus Christ, deep in my heart where God had forged a connection with me over the past few months. I was sobbing, and as I began to calm myself, I realized that I felt differently. I didn’t feel like myself anymore. It was confusing. What had happened to me? Later, when I approached Jacob about this, I called it “the thing that happened,” because there were no words in my lexicon for what I was experiencing.

My prayers changed immediately after that experience. They were no longer interspersed with silences when I didn’t know what to pray, or stammering as I tried to find the right words. For the first time, the right words started coming to me easily each time I prayed. If I didn’t know how to pray for someone, I would call on the Holy Spirit to take over the prayer for me. Since that day, this call for assistance with my prayers has never gone unanswered. Through the Holy Spirit there is power in my prayers. God took me, someone who couldn’t pray, and made prayer my calling. I have seen so many of my prayers answered, I’ve heard the Holy Spirit whispering to guide my prayers, and leading me, constantly leading me, to know what to pray for people. When I’m at a loss for words, the Holy Spirit takes over and prays the prayer for me.

It’s difficult to find a place to end this blog, because this was the beginning of my life with Christ. I want to rush into telling you everything that has happened—my struggles, my calling, my heartbreak, my joy—my whole journey given to you as evidence of Our Living God. Thankfully, if the inspirations I get to write these blogs is any indication, in time you will find my whole journey represented here and through it you will learn there is never a reason to doubt that we have a living God in heaven who wants to be in relationship with you as He has with me. "For we are the temple of the living God. As God has said, ‘I will live with them and walk among them, and I will be their God, and they will be my people.’” 2 Corinthians 6:16

If you're already a Christian, I ask that you keep your heart and ears turned to God. We may not all experience God in the same way, but His message is the same for all of us—through a life of faith, faithfulness and prayer, learning by reading and studying the Bible, through serving others, and following His commandments, we will experience final victory in Christ.

If this is new to you and you feel a twinge of hope or joy when you read that scripture, or if you just want it to be true, that is God calling to your heart. How can you respond? You can reach out to someone you know who is an active Christian. You can make plans to attend church. First, though, you can pray right now inviting God into your life. Even if your prayers are stumbling and halting and you don’t know the right words to pray, pray anyway—trust me, God will understand.

Conversation with Jacob – The Thing That Happened

Me:
Since you're going to be busy this weekend, if I have something I want to talk to you about, would now be okay?
Jacob:
Yeah, you can talk to me now. Plus, I should have my phone on all weekend. I just may be very distracted tomorrow. What's on your mind?
Me:
Well, when I was praying for Amy something happened. I started praying and then I felt what I can only describe as God's power and suddenly the words that I was praying were the right words, not words I was thinking of and saying, but just there for me to say and the feeling got really big. There is more than that, but I don't know what is important to tell you and since then I feel different. I can't say better or good, but different.
Jacob:
I think this is wonderful! I think you are feeling the Holy Spirit guiding and filling you. You feel different, huh?
Me:
Yep, different in a "Huh, what is this odd feeling?" kinda way. I've never experienced anything like what happened when I was praying for Amy and you know I'm bad at praying, so that part sure didn't come from me.
Jacob:
Like I said, I don't think there is a bad way to pray as long as your heart is in the right place, and it was when you prayed for Amy? I'm excited for you! :)
Me:
I'm feeling some confusion/turmoil too. Normal?
Jacob:
Normal is a hard thing to say because, as we are learning from the Bible Study book [Hearing God, by Dallas Willard], everyone experiences this in different ways. But I'm very happy you have been praying more. Is there something troubling you? That's always worth praying about.
Me:
L Everything troubles me, Jacob! We live in a difficult world, I feel for everyone who suffers and I have a difficult life myself. I am praying a lot. I find myself praying at times when I don't even remember deciding I was going to pray, yet there I am praying.
Jacob:
That is awesome!