Thank You!

The only thing I can really say when I stop and think about all of you who are coming here and reading and praying for us is “Wow!” I am so blown away by it, and so grateful! I tell you what, if I ever start thinking “I’m not half-bad at handling crisis” or something ridiculous like that, all I have to do is think about the countless prayers that are being lifted up for me, and I know without any doubt that I am being carried by your prayers with God’s strength. To say it is humbling wouldn’t quite cover it all. It’s also convicting! Now that I am depending not only my own prayers, but also the prayers of others to help get us through this storm, I feel a sense of sadness that I have not had the urgency in my life before this to pray fervently for others when they are going through a crisis. In fact, I think in the past I have found myself analyzing the individual situations that come across the prayer request sheet more than actually lifting them up to Jesus and asking Him to carry them through and give them what they need. I pray that this will not be the case anymore, as God continues to give me new eyes for viewing the world around me.

Yesterday I was reminded of Frank Peretti’s books This Present Darkness and Piercing the Darkness. It has been years since I have read them, but I remember so vividly the powerful picture he paints of prayer warriors. He helps us see the work of prayer with human eyes by envisioning the demons and the angels gearing up for battle and being ever present in our daily lives. If you have read the books, you know that the angels are always praying to God and asking Him to lift up saints to give them “prayer coverage,” and as people pray, more and more angels are allowed to come and do literal battle with the demons who fight so desperately against them. I can picture a similar thing going on right now in our lives. I can see the demons like Despair, Anger, Bitterness, and Jealously all vying for the opportunity to sink their claws into us, but they can’t because the angels of heaven are standing guard around us, protecting us from their poison. I don’t know if this is exactly how it works, but I also don’t think it’s too far off the mark, and I take comfort in it!

I want to leave you with a few more things that I would like to ask you to pray for. I haven’t really doubted that God was going to use Poppy and her life in a beautiful way, but I haven’t given a lot of thought to how He was going to do that tangibly. Then yesterday it hit me that, in my eyes, the most amazing thing that could come out of this would be for someone to come to know Jesus as a result of Poppy’s life. This is going to be one of my prayers from this time forward. Also, please pray that God will give me wisdom in knowing how to share what is going on with people who haven’t yet heard. Just a few days ago I ran into a girl I used to work with, and she asked me what was going on. I froze. I didn’t want to just unload on her, yet at the same time the classic “not much” just didn’t seem to cover it. I know that I will face more situations like this in the future, so please pray that God will show me how to deal with this in the right way. Thank you, thank you, thank you for your love and prayers!