Hey, You Darlin’ Things! So sorry it’s taken me so long to get back to you! I got in from Israel just in time to love on Melissa for 48 hours then hop on a plane and head to San Francisco. Then I got back, loved on Melissa 24 short hours before she jumped on a plane and headed back to Chicago. THEN, I studied all day Monday and Tuesday and taught Bible study last night. WHEW!!!! Like most of yours, my life is crazy but not usually that crazy. This morning was the first morning I’ve felt vaguely normal and time-adjusted in two solid weeks. Anyway, enough of the boring excuses.

I don’t know how long I’ll get to write because I am babysitting Little Mister Jones. He’s finishing up his afternoon nap while his mommy is on her way to the Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo to see Rascal Flatts with three buddies from our home church. (Keith and I get to have Amanda and Jackson all week because our dear Curt is ministering with a team from their church in Honduras.) Amanda looked so cute and youthful when she scurried out that door in her cowboy hat, jeans, and boots. If she’d only had a horse tied up to the rail on the porch, the scene would have been perfect. BUT, if she had to take wheels, at least it was a Suburban instead of some foreign model. That would be a sacrilege in a rodeo parking lot. The sight of Amanda heading to the rodeo pushed the rewind button on my brain to a time when she, a young adolescent, and her handsome, rugged Dad and Granddad did the 2-day trail ride on horse back. (At her insistence. Not theirs.) After riding themselves bow-legged, they made their coveted destination on downtown Main Street with all the other trail riders to take part in the big parade leading up to the most celebrated annual event in Houston. Such fun memories. Till his mommy gets home late tonight, Lil Partna will just be “riding little horsey down to town, whoops little horsey, don’t fall down” on Gran-Bee’s knees. (No, he hasn’t started calling me anything yet. Believe me, you’ll know when it happens.)

I haven’t forgotten that you want to hear some things about the Israel trip and rightly you should! You put in some serious prayer! I just haven’t had the moments of concentration I need to write it. I’ll tell you one thing now if Lil Partna will let me. We had a few minutes off while we were in the Old City in Jerusalem and I asked the team if I could have a little while to pray at the Wall. Of course, I could only go to the women’s side, well partitioned from the official side where numbers of Orthodox Jewish men prayed. Dressed in black coats, slacks, and hats with ringlets dangling in front of their ears, they rocked rhythmically and reverently, reciting their prayers. The sight is always very moving to me somehow. After preparing my heart for a few minutes, I stepped up between several other praying women and pressed my forehead against the cold stone. As I called out to God, I realized it had been exactly seven years since the last time I prayed at that Wailing Wall. In those few minutes, I recalled the searing pain that pierced my heart those years ago and how I cried out for healing. Fast forward seven years, I marveled over how God had heard my cries and restored my shattered soul. Life has never gotten easy – and much of the time it’s dang hard – but I realized my heart had received restoration I really didn’t think was possible. I thought I’d hurt just like that for the rest of my life. Other hurts will come. But Christ will also come…with healing in His wings. You don’t have to go to Israel to find a Wailing Wall. Any place will do. Just cry out to Jesus.

I am now typing with one hand. Lil Partna’s up. Got some grannying to do!

We felt it was right fittin’ to take this photo in front of Pa’s prize buck.

Shalom, My Sistas!! To the great glory of our God and in answer to your profuse prayers, my man and I pulled up to the house a little after midnight last night after about 24 (virtually sleepless!) hours (total travel time) home. Melissa was standing at our front door, smiling ear to ear, throwing arms around us, and the dogs were jumping wildly and spinning around the yard. Keith fell in the bed immediately but I stayed up and threw clothes in the washer. Then, after a few hours of sleep, my eyes cracked open and I could tell the sun was up. Only a woman can fully understand this but I had to get up and be with my house and my yard. (And, of course, the Lord Jesus, who I’d also been with much of the way home.) It was a gorgeous morning and my birdfeeders needed filling. I know my bird-friends have wondered what on earth has happened to me. I should have left Melissa some instructions for bird feeding but I felt that she might go over the edge if I added it to the three typed (single spaced) pages on dog care. I am absolutely delirious (which in Moore terminology also means stinking hilarious) and I laughed so hard with Amanda on the phone this morning that I nearly threw my back out. I said, “My birds have missed me so much…” and she interrupted me with, “that they want to nest in your hair?” (Laughing again)

I have so much to tell you but I am jet lagged beyond intelligible words and, also, Melissa is sitting across from me, hasn’t seen me, and isn’t in the mood to share her mother’s attention. God was SO WITH US and I know so much of that was in answer to your prayers. I’ve been all over Jerusalem in the past 5 days for Psalms of Ascent and in research for Esther. My throat is sore from practicing my Hebrew. Those gutturals are heck. Imagine them with my southern accent.

I love you, love you, love you, love you. And thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you. And I am so in love with Jesus right now. If there was anything I’d ever want you to pray for me, that, my Darling Ones, is IT. I’ll write you more soon but I wanted to let you know I’m home and deliriously sleepy and happy.

My darling Sistas, Keith left a little while ago to shoot clay pigeons in a tournament and I’ve been sitting out on my back porch all by myself with Jesus. It’s a gorgeous, cool day in Houston. Both dogs are sprawled out next to each other in the grass, taking naps in the sunshine. All I can think about is Jesus, the simulcast, and 150,000 women (and some courageous men) I want so desperately to be (permanently!) free. I have never been more burdened or felt more weight of the Spirit – brooding as I called it yesterday – than I did in the days and even weeks leading up to this event. I have never felt smaller or less adequate or more desperate for God to come. I suppose there are many reasons for all the feelings leading up to D-Day but one of the most obvious was that the topic was publicized in advance and I knew that women were coming for a SERIOUS work of God. I so deeply did not want to do anything to quench or distract from the delivering work of God or miss the direction He wanted us to go. Thankfully, my weakness can’t trump His strength. At the same time, I think the team and I would be nuts to feel up to a task like that. Sometimes if you want to go face to face with Jesus, you’ve got to go face to face with the carpet. This was one of those times. He is so mystifyingly merciful. So willing to work in spite of us.

As Amanda conveyed, my whole family (and staff!) entered into this one like a bunch of bird dogs on point. Keith had prayed with me for days and after I flew in last night, we went back to carpet again, thanked God, and pled for the lives of each participant. Please join me in continued intercession until God gives us a release. Enduring deliverance takes place in an ongoing day-by-day relationship with Jesus Christ. He isn’t simply the most important thing in life to the delivered. He IS life to the delivered. Divine invasion is the only map for pit-free traveling. I’m bursting with jealousy for that kind of passion, Presence, and permanence for EVERY SINGLE ONE of those participants.

Your comments were a great catalyst to a good cry. And to tell you the truth, I feel a lot better. This gathering was one of the weightiest things my family, Travis, and I feel that God has ever placed before us. When I awakened this morning, my poor, old body felt like I’d been hit by a Mack truck. I live to see captives set free in Christ and I’m willing to make a fool out of myself to encourage people to let Him do what it takes. Thank you so much for taking the time, not just to comment, but to spend precious hours before a screen, look past the annoying technology, and welcome the Spirit of Christ in such a peculiar set up. God worked miracle after miracle to put on that simulcast. To share just one: TEN MINUTES before it began, we had a rain storm in Tyler and we lost satellite power. You understand that if WE lost power, all 500+ sites would lose power. We went crazy in prayer. Not only did Jesus rebuke the storm, He blew away the clouds and brought out the sun. It was stunning. He intended to make sure we knew He was there. Jehovah Shammah!

After the event ended, Travis, the team and I returned to our knees and profusely thanked God. As I walked off that platform with the inevitable wish that this or that had been said or NOT been said, I was reminded by God that He doesn’t ask His servants to do their tasks perfectly. Just wholeheartedly. This morning I experienced an unsolicited show of God’s pleasure toward the simulcast through my devotional reading. (Our whole church is doing the one year devotional “At His Feet”) The reference was Matthew 9:13, “I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners.” Author Chris Tiegreen explained, “If He is extravantly merciful, so must we be. If He prefers the company of those who know their sinfulness over the company of those who don’t, so must we. If He dines with the unlovable, He will put it within us to do likewise. This God showed up on our planet in the form of a merciful Savior. He offers grace without rebuke to those who know they need it. His rebukes are saved for those who won’t acknowledge their need. He is purity that pursues the corrupt; mercy that hounds the needy; grace that demands only belief.” Praise You, Jesus.

Yesterday some 150,000 needy souls showed up for the grace of God. Some had been innocently thrown into a pit, others had slipped into a pit, and others had hauled off and aimed for one. I couldn’t see into the faces of those on the other side of the screen but I looked straight into the faces of several thousand women yesterday in Tyler, Texas and I did not see ONE who looked like she needed us to think she had it all together. Most of us were driven to all those locations, not by wheels, but by desperation. (Here’s the best part of all) And God was pleased. By His sovereign choice, He can’t resist any group of people who trade in pretense for Presence.

Jesus. He’s who I want. Any way I can get Him. He is everything. He redeems our lives from the pit and crowns us with loving kindness. Today I raise my left hand to a God reaching down with His right, ever looking to lift my feet lest they dangle near a pit.

Hey, Sistas! Amanda and I have asked her younger sister, Melissa, a couple of times to guest-author some entries on our blog. She stays so swamped as she finishes up her Master’s that we didn’t know when she’d ever find the time. Yesterday Melissa sent me something she had written for a different reason and it was so thought provoking to me that I asked if I could post it in our blog. After some thought, she gave me permission. May God speak.

Just a Christian’s feeble attempt to comment on American Idolatry

As I sit here and ponder the News as of late my heart becomes heavily burdened. From Michael Jackson and Anna Nicole Smith to the latest media frenzy, the rich and famous don’t seem to be holding up too well. I wonder if there isn’t some common denominator between these troubled souls. How could those who have so much fame, talent, and not to mention enough money to purchase for them their every object of desire, be so self-destructive? I can’t help but think of the fates of those such as Marilyn Monroe, Elvis Presley, and Kurt Cobain, whose status of fame may as well have been elevated to sainthood. And then it hits me, what if the common denominator is not solely their individual self-destructiveness, but what if it includes the destructiveness of American Idolatry?

It seems to me that idolizing a human being isn’t just unhealthy and destructive for the one doing the idolizing, but also for the one being idolized. If there is any truth in this notion, namely, that it simply is not healthy (or to use politically incorrect language, it is simply morally wrong) for a person to be worshipped and idolized, then the American population is partly to blame for the broken state and the troubled fate of so many bold and indeed talented souls. Can we not appreciate a person’s talent and beauty without obsessing over what clothes they have worn at the Oscars or what person they are dating this week as opposed to last week? Is any single person worthy of this excessive attention or infatuation?

In Romans 1, the apostle Paul condemns the human race for suppressing the truth of God; he says that we should have seen God’s invisible attributes through that which is displayed in the created world. He goes on to declare that we didn’t honor God, but exchanged the glory of the incorruptible God for an image in the form of corruptible man. We failed and continue to fail to rightly credit the Creator, and instead we worship and serve the creatures that he has created. When we gaze upon the beauty or marvel at the talent of another and we fail to recognize that it is God alone who is the author and the source, we are not only lying to ourselves but we are doing a great disservice to our fellow man.

To have the American masses track your every move, fall at your feet, and even scream and shed tears in your presence—knowing all the while that you yourself are subject to the same kind of sickness and eventual death as the common folk—may be flattering for a moment, but in the end it is merely isolating, oppressive, and repulsive. Our obsession with the rich and famous places them in an impossible position, for there is only one name under heaven that is meant to be adored and there is only one being who will not be destructed by our worship. There is only one who remains pure and holy despite His glorious, incomprehensible, and inevitable, yes, eternal fame!

God doesn’t have an emotional need for our worship. Believe me, he gets plenty of it! For even the angelic beings shouted as they watched him place the stars in the sky and even now as I, a small speck on this globe, push buttons on a key-board, the entire heavens and earth declare of his glory! It is He who measured the waters in the hollow of His hand. It is He who weighed the mountains in a balance and the hills in a pair of scales. To whom then shall we liken God? Or what likeness shall we compare with Him? We Americans, like, the craftsmen of old, are guilty of seeking out and fashioning for ourselves meaningless idols—we create them, we gaze upon them, we place hope in them, and then we condemn them when they don’t deliver and meet our needs and expectations. At the end of the day, idolizing a person is as futile as worshipping a wooden statue, for both are corruptible and they shall both return to the dust. God alone is incorruptible, and not only does he alone deserve man’s worship but he is the only being who is not corrupted by man’s worship. He is the one who reduces powerful rulers to nothing and makes even the judges of the earth meaningless…truly, he merely blows on them and they wither.

So I, a Christian who is guilty of having spent hundreds of dollars on People magazines, join my voice with the prophet Isaiah, “who shall we liken God…who shall be his equal?” And I am revitalized by the answer to this rhetorical question: no one. Let us lift up our eyes on high and see who has created the stars…for He calls them by name and because of the greatness of His might and the strength of his power, not one of them is missing. (Isa. 40:26) Only after first recognizing the Creator’s masterful hand behind every facet of life should we appreciate and savor the talents and the beauty of another…and even then, let us tread carefully, for ours is a jealous God. So then, I dare us (indeed I dare myself) to stop pointing fingers and asking why many who have phenomenal God-given talents, or extraordinary and dumb-founding God-given beauty, are so often hitting rock bottom. Yes, let you and me stop pointing fingers and actually claim part of the responsibility for their downfall!

Hey, my dear Sistas! I’ve missed talking to you guys! I’m captive for a few minutes at the hair salon with my head under one of those warmers while my color bakes. A Texas woman wouldn’t be caught dead without some kind of color on her hair. Besides all the wonderfully Spiritual things it obviously means, here in Texas to be rooted and grounded means that until your fresh-rooted, you need to be grounded. I may miss other things, but I do NOT miss my hair appointments.

I’ve been busy as a bee since the last I touched base with you. I had a lot of getting ready to do for our Detroit Living Proof Live event then hopped on a plane bright and early Friday morning to see faith become sight. The team and I totally dug our group. Though God was faithful and present Friday night, we spent most of it warming up then really sensed the power of the Holy Spirit drop on us first thing Saturday morning. I don’t know about them but I didn’t feel Him let up until after we left. (Still felt Him so strongly on the plane that I sobbed part of the way home.) Seventeen women (three over 60, two under 16) made public professions of faith in Christ Jesus on Saturday. I felt the freedom of God to do something really unusual for the last session. He had given me clearance to finish up our topic at the end of the second session and save the third one for personal testimony. It was Jackson’s first birthday and my heart was so tender over all the miracles God has performed in our family that I wept through much of the session. If you and I have known each other long, you know how unusual that is. I may tear up but I almost never cry out-right while I’m teaching but I did this time. I was overwhelmed over the faithfulness of my merciful God. I wanted the women to have hope, no matter how hopeless things looked in some of their families, that nothing is too hard for God. I wanted them to learn to pray BIG and to do everything it took to cooperate with God so that He could be loosed to work wonders. I am jealous for others to see the same transformation in Christ that our family has experienced and I KNOW if He did it for us, He will do it for anyone.

The event was calendared well before Jackson was born but, thankfully, ending the engagement at noon enabled me to make it to Amanda’s by late afternoon that day and well before the party the next day. I’m so grateful to Amanda for her understanding and willingness to save the big party for Sunday afternoon. It turned out to be such a sweet plan because Amanda and Curt, Curt’s parents, and Keith and I were able to have our own time with Jackson on Saturday to open presents and gush over him. He wasn’t so overwhelmed that he was oblivious to all he had gotten. We are so blessed! The affectionate little thing seems to love both sets of his grandparents so much and we love each other. Both families get along really well.

Sunday was the big party at the Gymboree and Jackson was the best little host you can imagine. HE LOVED IT! He laughed and showed off and played his little heart out. I’m such a baby nut that the party was the next best thing to Heaven. The room was full of Jackson’s toddler buds who’d come to celebrate his big day. I laughed my head off at all their mannerisms and expressions and the hilarious ways they interacted. The baby girls had huge bows on their heads and, oh, their shoes!!! No wonder we girls grow up with shoe obsession! I’ve come to love all of Amanda’s fellow moms vicariously through her. I had the biggest blast watching all of them together. I’m going to ask Amanda to post some pictures of the big day so I can go ahead and be completely shameless. Thank you so much for humoring me. Our weekend, from beginning to end, was deliciously wonderful and full of God’s grace. I’m honored to share this part of our family life with you and humbled that you would let me. Pray big, Girls. You’ve got a big God.

OK, you guys have given me speaking material for MONTHS. Or at least once a month. You are the funniest things. I have a hard work week well under way but I jumped on line to see if you were engaging in the echo: Please More Spirit! I am happy to see that you are fully engaged. Your acronyms were hilarious.

Our dear Star, I join so many of your sisters in saying how sorry I am for such a tragic and complicated loss. I was just floored. We extend our love and compassion to you in the bonds of Christ Jesus. My Beloved Ones, I paused just a moment before I mentioned Star’s prayer need because I am afraid to raise the expectation that I will always (or even often) be able to articulate specific responses on this blog. I will have to try really hard to keep this blog what it primarily is (a fun and personal way of connecting) in order to keep up with it. I think most of us can imagine that something like this blog could become all consuming and keep us from getting to the things God has called us to absolutely prioritize. I want to write a personal letter every time I see a personal need among your comments but I have to resist it or this will become a ravenous beast I can’t feed. I have to keep in mind that we really do have a prayer board at LPM and every single one of those requests DO get lifted up before the Throne of Grace. HOWEVER, I simply could not overlook Star’s need today. Please know that whether or not I mention something painful you wrote in your comments, I did hear it, feel it, and process it before the Lord Jesus. Know that I care so, so much whether or not you ever see such concern articulated. I dearly love you.

PS. Yes, Midol really works.

Since some of you Sistas brought up the subject of PMS (after all, we are sistas and if sistas have anything at all, it’s hormones), I feel compelled to tell you what I told a group recently. If you want to live those fretful days of evil principalities with any measure of victory, if, when the day of evil comes, you indeed want to stand, you have to get in your head that PMS means Please More Spirit! Need a reference? OK, how about John 3:34 – “for God gives the Spirit without limit”? (It’s a good thing.) Need another? Luke 11:13 – “how much more will your Father in heaven give the Holy Spirit to those who ask Him?” You know how furious we get when one of our loved ones makes the merest suggestion that maybe we’re a little hormonal? Like those times when waking up to an open bag of Fritos on the coffee table and a water ring left from a sweating glass of soda seem perfectly legitimate grounds for divorce? If, while we’re denying the remotest chance we could have PMS, we start looking for the nearest thing we could throw at them, we might want to see these words flashing in red florescent lights across the marque of our minds: Please More Spirit! Please More Spirit! This morning Keith drew my attention to a darling 12 year old girl at church with that look on her face and said, “I hope her parents are really keeping an eye on her. She really seems sullen.” “Honey,” I said, “All 12 year old girls are sullen. They are a hormone waiting to wreak havoc.” How could he have forgotten? Between his three women – Amanda, Melissa, and me – his skin was in jeopardy the greater part of any given month. But don’t think he wasn’t the kind to invite trouble. He’d say stuff like, “I’m so sorry, Baby. That zit really looks like it hurts.” Where’s me a lamp?? Good thing we have God. That’s all I’m saying. And good thing for THEM we have God. Next time around, remember two very important things:
1. Pray “Please More Spirit!”
2. Take Your Midol.