Father

 (by Lorie Codispoti)

Prayer has always been an important part of my life. (I can’t imagine a day without it.)

I can still recall my earliest prayer, and all the emotions involved in crying out to God for help. It wasn’t anything fancy, but it was the heart-cry of a little girl who took her deepest desire to the only one who could answer her request. Every night I asked God to bring my daddy home safe from fighting in Vietnam. Somehow I knew that God was my daddy’s only hope of escaping that horrible war.

“OUR FATHER”

When people prayed to God before Jesus came they addressed Him as “Yahweh,” “my Lord,” “my God,” or “God of my father.” For Jesus to address God as Father was revolutionary. And for Him to instruct His disciples to also address God as their Father, was a seismic shift for the religious community of the day. With his instruction, Jesus Christ was affirming that He embodied this exclusive right because He was the Son of God.

Due to the finished work of Christ, every believer has been grafted into the privilege of addressing the God of all creation as “Father.”

THE CHALLENGE

Jesus said, “But you, when you pray, go into your room, & when you have shut your door, pray to your Father who is in the secret place; & your Father, who sees in secret will reward you openly.” (Mtt.6:6)

The other day I read something that has challenged an area of my prayer life that needed challenging. The writer asked a pondering question: What if, when you get to Heaven, your reward is directly tied to all the prayers you prayed for those who never knew you were praying?

Wow, what if the time I spend on my knees, crying “Thy will be done on Earth as it is in Heaven” is connected somehow to the measure of glory I will experience in the presence of Christ? Talk about "fullness of joy!"

Give me Jesus

Give me Jesus

You can have all this world

But give me Jesus

As a child, I addressed the Creator as “God,” because that’s how I knew Him. But, when I surrendered my life to Christ, an intimate relationship began and I was given the right to call Him my Father. 

My daddy came home from the war, but what I’ve learned is that there are many links left in the chains that bind others to the suffering of this world. If my heavenly Father wants to use my prayers to transfer those links to the chain that will forever bind Satan and his forces, then I’ll gladly reenlist for another tour of duty.

GloryUsGate.blogspot.com

The Real Ideal

 (by Lorie Codispoti)

A smiley-faced border expressed my enthusiasm as it framed the “Welcome back to school!” announcement on the dry-erase marker board. Our first day of school was always our favorite. The smell of new textbooks begging to be opened, mingled with the colorful bouquet of sharpened pencils excited both students and teacher. Each desk housed a goodie bag filled with special supplies that I had collected. Underneath each bag were new notebooks, whose empty pages would soon house all the creative sentences my children would gleefully pen. It was the kind of ideal day that fills a yearbook with wonderful pictures.

The thing about ideal days, though, is that they are more like the exception rather than the rule. Reality sets in when you realize that that your children aren’t going to enjoy marching to the cadence of the ABC song for 180 days.

So, what’s a teacher to do when the newness wears off - when life removes the “i” in “ideal” and your forced to “deal” with those days when your perfect plan begins to run sideways -when you feel like erasing the board, selling your books, and biting the erasers off every pencil in that bouquet? Yearbooks are wonderful, but be realistic; the pictures that did not make the cut always outnumber the ones that do.

Four words: “HE RESTORES MY SOUL!” (Psa.23:3)

The soul that needs restoring is depleted. It needs to be nourished in order to continue. And the 23rd Psalm reminds us that we are sheep in need of the daily oversight and gentle, loving care of our Shepherd. He feeds us with green pastures and satisfies our thirst with still waters. He restores us for the mission.

Have you ever seen a happy sheep? They are the ones that dance after the Shepherd sheers off the weight of their heavy wool. The idealistic burden has been removed, and the sideways day becomes a path of discovery rather than dread. When your daughter decides that all the circles on her CAT test look prettier if they're all filled, instead of freaking out you figure out another way to get the results needed. When you’re convinced that your son has some kind of new, no-name learning disorder you find a way for him to learn the material.

Nobody wants to talk about all the pictures that didn’t make it into the yearbook, but you know what? Yearbooks are overrated. Pull out the scrapbook and fill it with all the rejects. It’s the place where reality lives. It’s where we can show off the restorative work of our Shepherd. When the good, the bad, and the ugly coexist you know you’ve got the ideal yearbook.

GloryUsGate.blogspot.com