Wake yourself up!

What sound does your alarm make when it goes off in the morning? No matter what pleasant tone I choose for mine, it always sounds pretty loud and rude to me. I am always convinced it went off in error, that for some reason I set it for the middle of the night. But no...it really is time to get up. I want to hit the snooze button. Sometimes I do. Sometimes more than once. And I know you do too.

While getting up late might result in some minor inconveniences or make my morning more stressful than it has to be, it probably won't be life-changing. But I've been praying really hard lately for a particular segment of the body of Christ: those who are content with hitting the snooze button on their faith.

I read these verses the other day and they burned in my heart:

"Wake up, wake up! Put on the strength of the LORD's power. Wake up as in days past...wake yourself, wake yourself up! Stand up, Jerusalem!...put on your strength, Zion!...Stand up, shake the dust off yourself!...You have forgotten the LORD your Maker." (Isaiah 51:9-17, 52:1-2, selected, HCSB)

See, we can hit the snooze button on our faith by just going through the motions. Church on Sunday. Life for six days. Repeat.

But God made each of us for a unique purpose here on earth. Our lives, our walks of faith, mean something in eternity. We were made to be part of the "us" that is the community of believers down here on earth. We were made for intimate, personal, daily relationship with our Creator through His Son Jesus and the power of the Holy Spirit. We were made to know and walk with Him every day.

I refuse to be ordinary or normal in my walk of faith. Yes, I spiritualize everything, which causes no end of groaning from my sons (and ask one of my future daughters in law what angle I took when I overshot Siri's directions on the way to a baby shower). Yes, I get up in the dark every morning and read and pray through the dawn. Yes, I really do set my cell alarms with hourly prayer reminders on busy days. But I want to leave this earth walking in all that God made me to do and be while I'm here for this breath called life. 

"But Moses entered the thick darkness where God was"--Exodus 20:21

Do I have it all together? A firm and quick no. My family will tell you that I fail every single day in any number of areas. And I'm often shy in front of others and have a hard time speaking what God speaks in my head and heart--which is why He made me a writer, I guess. I yell at my kids, get grumpy with my husband, and am often blindsided by fears or doubts. 

But that's just the point---I'm no different from anyone else. 

I don't want anyone to walk away from church on Sunday and go through a busy week and then come back next week for a fill up. God wants to be our everything. He wants to walk and talk with us and fill us in all the ups and downs of our days. To imprint His Word on us when we open it every day. To hear our prayers, whether they're for a parking space or a dying loved one.

Don't leave Him in church on Sunday morning, hit the spiritual snooze button, and "forget the LORD your Maker" till you walk back in next week. 

You, too, can have a heart that burns for---whatever God made your heart to burn for. You too can fall in love with His Word, worship for real, connect with Him, hear His voice.

Want more than you've got in your walk right now? Ask for it! Get down on your knees and ask Jesus to fill your mind, heart, soul, and strength with oomph for what He put you on this earth to do. Ask Him to give you the Holy Spirit to sanctify you and teach you. Then

• Read your Bible every day--even if it means getting up in the dark or spending lunch at your desk. 
• Pray for your family--set alarms on your cell if you need to! 
• Worship Him--put on praise music at your desk or in your home or through your headphones. 

Wake yourself up! And if you do, message me and tell me what happened. I'm praying for you!

Why pray for our youth?

As I am embarking on my pinterest career, I created a board about praying for youth--since that is one of my primary passions--and looked for pins to build it. Um, I didn't find much. Maybe I'm searching with the wrong keywords, but I don't see much about why it's so critical to pray for our teens.

For the past 10 years, I have led an intercessory prayer team for our youth ministry simply known as the "prayer moms." We are a group of ordinary women who have no special training in prayer, no special qualifications. We are just moms of teenagers who feel that God wants us to stand in the gap and pray for them. We meet weekly to do so together, but also pray individually every day for our youth pastor, youth leaders, and youth kids. How we specifically do that is subject matter for another blog, but the point is that we believe the young people of this generation need consistent intercessory prayer as they begin and grow in relationship with God prior to heading out into the world of college and beyond.

Here are the main reasons we do so:

1. Kids need truth. Ever since the Bible and prayer were removed from our public schools, secular humanism has crept in. Relative truth has replaced absolute truth and created an atmosphere of confusion for teens who need firm boundaries and parameters for decision-making. Kids need the absolute truth of the Bible to steer their lives.
2. Kids need salvation. Statistics show most Christians make their decisions for salvation before the age of 18. Kids need to have real encounters with Jesus while they are still in their formative years. 
3. Kids need sustainable faith. Not only do teens need to have real relationships with Christ, they need to be grounded in active faith. They need to know their Bibles for themselves, and pray for themselves, and apply godly counsel to their own circumstances. 
4. Kids need spiritual protection. The enemy is real and he never takes a day off. His goal is to steal, kill and destroy--and at all costs prevent our kids from walking out into the world saved, walking in sustainable faith, and knowing absolute truth. He plays dirty and hits below the belt. They need intercessors to step out onto the spiritual battlefield and ask God to help them. 

Encouraging moms to pray for the youth of their churches--or neighborhoods--or whatever--is my passion, because I believe it makes a difference. We have seen many answered prayers during the past 10 years as we have consistently and diligently interceded for the youth of our church. If you want to know more about this, email me at momspray4youth@yahoo.com.