Weekends are made for kneeling at prayer altars

ISAIAH 56:7 (NIV)
⁷ these I will bring to my holy mountain
and give them joy in my house of prayer.
Their burnt offerings and sacrifices
will be accepted on my altar;
for my house will be called
a house of prayer for all nations.”

PSALM 43:4-5
⁴ Then I will go to the altar of God,
To God ^[c]my exceeding joy;
And upon the lyre I shall praise You, O God, my God.
 O send out Your light and Your truth, let them lead me;
Let them bring me to Your holy hill
And to Your dwelling places.



      Amy and I are at Cove in Asheville NC. We are on a prayer retreat! For the last month we have been meditating on John 15.  During our free time today we hiked down to the prayer altar in the woods.....the light was just beginning to lower itself through the tallest trees I have ever seen.
We bend...........and open ourselves up to the king...............we laugh and we cry......praying to be the broken.
And in the warming sunlight flowing down into the trees we find passage..................and our hearts yearn for more of him.
We hang on to the words that cry out WORTHY is the Lord..................we soak in verses from Isaiah..........and Psalms as the light flickers through the trees.
We stay bowed as the earth moves in it's own "spiritual rhythm." The trees seem to dance in the sunlight as if they were praising the King themselves.
We stand at the veil where it is torn............WAITING on our Lord.

Screaming............"My house will be a house of prayer."
We are to pray EVERYWHERE without ceasing................May your weekend be one of finding your prayer altar.......bringing thanksgiving in everything you do.

all of grace,
Robbie

New Day

 He lives at our house.....not sure why?  He has been here for a while....the kids and I love to come home and see our green little friend greet us at the back door.

The days fly by again this week...........I inhale trying so hard to breath in his grace. I exhale slowly wanting so badly for time to stand still. So much to do not knowing which way to go first.....it is then that I decide to praise the most high!
I ask myself daily what would it be like to be a companion of Jesus today?
But it's me that continues to seek his hands instead of his face......am I simply blinded? By my own flesh.................not able to see his grace that is right in front of me. Maybe I am simply CHOOSING not to see!  Especially when there is people hurting it is me that questions the most High God........instead of  kneeling on my knees to praise the King.
   
     I so long to love him in a NEW way that pleases him! Learning that up is really down and down is really up when your seeking the most high?  Isn't the point to DIE the flesh DAILY? 
I walk weekly through the hospital seeing the pain and sometimes death of others. It is then that I question Him who died for us......the one who was fully human and fully God at the same time.......He who sweated BLOOD at the thought of what was ahead! I think about my wavering faith being tossed around in the sea. How unfaithful I have been.
     Sometimes I want to scream.........how do I turn it all around? And it is then that I wonder, "who am I to question the King?"
     Sometimes the nightmares haunt me of the new widow who had to say good-bye to her husband of 63 years.......the mom who loses her teen that was driving while intoxicated. The son who watched his 77 year old father fall from a 12 story roof......The young mama who is newly diagnosed with stage four cancer and the doctors tell her there is nothing else they can do for her............. the HIV patient who had a stroke and all family and friends have disappeared since the end is near.  And I wonder where is God?................... as I run as fast as I can to my car and speed home to take a shower and try SO hard to wash the pain and the smell from my body, mind and soul. Does He see?
     It is the me who has cried out in despair I don't want to do this anymore.........but I have been called to be the humble servant to the sick and the hurting.  But some days the hurt and pain of others is what  blurrs my vision. It is then that I forget...........that I could live every moment as HOLY. Maybe ripping my clothes and putting on sack-cloth would help me to see.

    It may be next week or even tomorrow I will forget again........because someone will come through that hospital that rips a hole right through my heart...........it is then I will revert back to choosing to see through the eyes of reason instead of seeing every moment as HOLY.
     But for now I am begging please...........more of your grace. And I will say it to you and to me...........God is a good God.....His ways are not our ways...........His thoughts are not our thoughts and for now I will bend the knees and praise the most high King!


all of grace,
Robbie

 Tomorrow Amy and I traveling to Asheville, NC for a prayer retreat.........we have made a commitment to seek......seek.....seek. Daily I have spent time praying for over 300 names of beautiful women who will be there seeking the face of God! Praying hard for us as a group to have our hearts peeled back so far that we are exposed.............the kind where the flesh shows...........wanting more of him in a way I have never known. Asking kindly for your prayers too.

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a river runs through

Why is it that I have been chosen to witness the dying? I can sometimes smell the stench...the stench of death......my 13 year old asked me tonight if I thought God was a little selfish?

I look at her the woman-child who has grown so beautiful and I think to myself:  "Have I failed you?"  "Where have I gone  wrong?" There were the days when I was living the tired all the time and I was short......the kind of short with the power of words.

Life is raw sometimes muddy sometimes dirty but it continues to flow until it reaches its destination..............flows until the clogged up part stops us like a road block stopping us- dead.............dead in our tracks.

"Living water,"............I keep going back to the well.....................the well of  "living.....living water."  

Genesis 21:19  

19 Then God opened her eyes and she saw a well of water. So she went and filled the skin with water and gave the boy a drink.

What am I giving to my girls to drink? Is it the living kind? The living water?

Doesn't the God who is omnipotent provide us with the water everywhere?

But how? how do I make myself and these teens drink? Drink from the well of living water?

How easily we forget in this life.......forget what God has done for us!   I am blinded but do I really want to see?  
 the tail spin of life..... the emptiness of it all................emptiness is what I feel when another looses their life? As I stand there in the door-way of  a hospital room to someone who is terminal and I feel the nothing......Is it the nothingness that I stay in because it's safe and I am protected from the caring.....because does it really matter anyway? Maybe I am wearing my nothingness to HIDE all my sadness............
Although the water is there...........you have to want it...........you have to want to drink of the living water.............you have to want to never thirst again...........God can and will show us the well.........but it is us who has to do the drinking.......in His generous grace..........He who is the living waters is offering........offering us a drink.......a taste of heaven.
Will we drink?

     Praying that I don't forget..... what God has done.......praying not to feel such emptiness - wanting to get rid of the emptiness ............even if it is all I know........and praying for me the wretched mama to stop trying to see through the eyes of reason..................I lay my hand on the woman-child and gently take her face into my hands and I remind her that God is a good God and his goodness is full of grace.................and that we are to cling to his goodness
and I gently whisper how can I help these girls that you have entrusted to me if I can't even see?
praying..............open the eyes of my heart Lord..........I want to see what you see!

all of grace,
Robbie



(a quiet repost, while Amy and I are in the ICU's today. Thank you for your grace)

Stillness

       A stillness before God.....................waking in the wee hours of the morning tired and worn out to the work that is never done. Is it just me who sometimes resents............resents my very own fleshing blood?     Grace I whisper............more please.............more of your grace............just to endure another day in this cycle of life that can seem so repetitive............ like "ground-hog," day.
     Where is it? I ask myself............the gratitude that I am supposed to feel in the mundane of the everyday life?

Me with my outstretched hand only for the taking... from the one who lived only for the dying for me.

      What does it feel like?  Simplicity?   As the earth keeps spinning.....and the people keep aching..........looking for the one true thing that could bring happiness. Am I simply missing it?  Missing the one true way to happiness-  which is simple- the old rugged cross.

      Who am I ? The woman with unclean lips..........praising the King with one lip and screaming at the kids with the other.   What must I do to please the Lord?
And in His word He so gently takes my hand and whispers............"follow me,"..............."abide in me."  Do I really want to be a disciple? To have to deny self daily? 
My heart is pumping...........palms sweating............I am a little girl again playing in the water hose at my grandmother's house..............under a tiny car-port that looked so big at the time.
Where did the time go?  Just as our days are the numbered...............so are the hairs on our head.
    Time is ticking...........and we are the waiting.........waiting to see the king.
No-one knows the hour nor the day but the seasons are upon us..............and what must we do? But SEEK............SEEK.......................SEEK with all of our hearts...........and God himself will show us!
He will show us what time it truly is!

Is is 5 minutes to midnight? And am I just sleepwalking?

     As fall is in the air have I lost it?........lost all sense of the seasons to come........life is bearing down on us now.........not letting up..........the aching is more and more with the changing of the seasons........I have lost the stillness in him.  Time is marching on........and I am no better than a nicely wound watch.  I just keep winding and moving forward in a time that the king of the universe is screaming.........stop, look and listen to me.
     Is the everything all around me just more important than him?     It is time for stillness.   Resting in him is the way.   All else is futile.  The one who rests in him is the one who will find their way........in a broken world.......simply by........slowing down........spending time with the "Great I AM."

     Sometimes stillness is when you will see His grace fall like the leaves on a fall day. The seasons are changing...........There is beauty from ashes........the vinedresser is pruning................. the branches need to bear much fruit.


And he shall be a sanctuary.
                                                   Isaiah 8:14


     Where is your place of stillness?............Your sanctuary?
Where in the turmoil of this life?  In the busy cares of our homes?  In the hurry and the confusion of our fast paced lives.......where shall our souls find the stillness........to simply pray?
   "He shall be a sanctuary,  closer to thee than breathing, nearer than hands or feet." At any moment during all the hurried day we can be hidden from all earth's eyes, and STILL from all the earth's craziness we call life! We only have to abide in him!

all is well,
Robbie
    




Slowing down a bit this season........less time in the era of technology. Need your prayers and grace please. thank you

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Life is sometimes messy

Sometimes I wonder how many posts can I write about what a mess I am? But it is the things that God himself is drawing me into.......Sometimes this thing we call "LIFE," can be exhausting.

Sometimes I lay in the dark and I pray...."How God?" How do I go on in this race of "life?" As I prepare to go back to work tomorrow the smell of death still haunts me? Last week a 35 year old who must have been battling her own demons... a person who is a mom? a friend? a sister? a daughter? took a drug that is so harmful that it blew her heart out. Why?   She was found on the floor by her drug-dealer friend not breathing? How long did this child lay there?  Where was her 10 and 14 year old children? The 14 year that won't come and see her mom on life support...... Did they see? Do they know what happened?  Life can be so messy at times. Sometimes I feel like I am only going through the motions, and at times even feeling numb with so much life and death all around me.. Our level one trauma hospital holds over 800 patients. and yet we have over 900 patients. Sometimes I want to run out and scream.....never returning to that place where Life gets messy.........where I know God has me.......While I am tending to this precious 10 year old the son of my patient...I hear the scream of a man at the top of his lungs: "GET A NURSE, SOMETHING IS WRONG WITH ME....."Then I hear the alarms that scream loudly onto the unit that something had gone terribly wrong, as I walk over to see if anyone needs any help I stop and see the man's son watching his dad take his last breath. As if I was moving in slow motion....seeing........10 people work frantically to save his life......(but God has other plans)...nurses who had cared for this man for days working on him with tears streaming down their faces screaming NO please NO not him......and this race called life comes to a STOP for another.
     my mind races forward in a thousand pictures at once, quietly praying; father please stand up in this boat and calm these storms.......gaze down upon us; "humans," and please help us save him.....but He doesn't why?
Hebrews 2:9;
 But we do see Jesus, who was made lower than the angels for a little while, now crowned with glory and honor because he suffered death, so that by the grace of God he might taste death for everyone.

    I started a new book last night that has helped me with my messy life........it is called "Somewhere More Holy"...............it is a must read; author; Tony Woodlief... He says in the first part of his book; what is it about us "Christians?" that we think God should be devoted to our earthly happiness!!!!! Why is it so hard for us to understand that God is so much deeper than that...This is a man who has been broken... He had a perfectly healthy child who at a very young age was diagnosed with a brain tumor.
He even quotes at one point that "he was the dog that returned to his own vomit"...how many of us can relate to that harsh statement? But yet he so gently reminds us that there is grace after sin......................So how do we go through this race bearing the moments of silence from God? How do we continue to believe in miracles as we stand by screaming out in pain please God stop this? Even in the weeks before, at work, where a young man in his early 30's comes out of the OR from brain surgery...a tumor....the kind that wraps its tentacles deep, into your vessels...with a wife who is expecting and a baby at home....Why? God where are you? or the man who is driving , and a teenager hits him and his life is forever changed....as I stand in the doorway of the entrance into his room in the ICU...as the doctor tells this 50 year man, "you will never walk again, you are paralyzed." Where? Where are you God?
 Grace does abound.....even in sorrow.......yet sometimes God is still even when we scream out please MOVE....now....he is quiet when we cry out "WHY?" Although God never fails us sometimes it can seem as though he does.
     I guess it truly depends on where your cards fall in this "life," or how you see it, feel it, and live it.
So why is it that I crave the easy? Do you crave the easy? Maybe being in the dark soul of the night leads us to the light. Maybe it makes us run to the light...
Isaiah 61: 3;and provide for those who grieve in Zion—

to bestow on them a crown of beauty
instead of ashes,
the oil of joy
instead of mourning,
and a garment of praise
instead of a spirit of despair.
They will be called oaks of righteousness,
a planting of the LORD
for the display of his splendor.
Beauty for Ashes.
Out of our suffering just maybe, we can and will create beauty too......and maybe in the pain we can start to praise Him.....After all He did suffer greatly for us to be dead to ourselves and alive in him.
Genesis 50: 20-21;
²⁰ You intended to harm me, but God intended it for good to accomplish what is now being done, the saving of many lives. ²¹ So then, don’t be afraid.
  Eventually you and I will hear an answer.....maybe not the one we want but an answer.....sometimes it is as simple as: "it is not for us to understand"......When we are wounded,  He is wounded. He who suffered so much for us His children also suffers with each and every one of us.
So I humbly open up my hands today and very shyly with my eyes squinted tight so maybe it won't hurt, ask:   use me Lord, use me as you sit fit tomorrow.  I do feel like I am walking into the Lion's Den, when I am walking into that Hospital (a different kind from Daniel's) but one that can devour me just the same... I commit myself to your hands...use me Lord.
humbly His,

all is grace,
Robbie

The Cross

I have always heard that salvation is free it costs you nothing but to pick up your cross and follow Jesus will cost you everything.
Maybe your even wondering what this little saying means:
You can be a believer without carrying a cross, but you cannot be a disciple!
     Jesus' army is all VOLUNTEER! Not all Christians carry crosses. I know we have all seen hypocrites in churches, workplace, etc. A lot of Christians have opted to live their life for them with lots of material gains. And I am sure that many of them will make it to Heaven. But will they really know Christ?   If Jesus is the gate then He is our only access to God. (Christ is our protector!)
     We will have to carry our own crosses until we learn to die our flesh daily! Remember the flesh and the Holy Spirit cannot co-habitat. One will bow down to the other. The flesh is strong it will not give in easily. Look at this scripture:
Matthew 16:24: Jesus said to the disciples, "If anyone would come after me, he must deny HIMSELF and take up his cross and follow me.

Back in those days Crucifixion was a common Roman method of execution. Criminals had to carry their crosses through the streets to the execution site. So to follow Jesus was a true commitment that could even mean death. In this day and time in the world as we know one day it may mean death to us as well. After looking at scripture and listening to some sermons from different pastors; I found something very interesting. Jesus could not carry his own cross the whole way and neither can we. That finding was amazing to me. It made so much more sense to me. He became to weak physically from being tormented, I can't believe I never noticed this. The bible doesn't tell us how far Jesus carried it but it does tell us that Simon the Cyrene picked it up and carried to the site where the Crucifixion would take place.
This gives me amazing hope that Jesus knows that our crosses are going to weigh us down at some point and we will not be able to continue on our own strength. So you see he already knows that not one single one of us can pick up our cross and carry it on our own. So he asks us to pick up our cross and follow him, he knows we can't do it alone, he knows he is going to help us. He is fully aware of the agony, the helplessness, and the burden the cross can cause. Look at the verse:
John 15:5 apart from me you can do nothing.
     It is not by our might, power or strength, but by his power. So when you start to struggle with your own cross remember that the Bible says his strength is made perfect in our weakness.

struggling with my cross,

Robbie


(asking for grace this week, working 3 straight days in ICU....tired.)

Weekends are for refueling

May your weekend be one of refueling, and

being open to let him replenish you with his grace.

Only He can establish in you peace and joy.

Cling to him.

Rest in him.

Leave every concern entirely to Him.

Refuel........recharge............. simply ABIDE in Him..............remember your name is engraved in His palm.

Your soul and body are redeemed by His blood.

all is grace,

because He is our perfect peace.

Robbie