My guy won. What now?
I posted this on my Facebook page today, the day after the presidential election. I wrote:
Like many of you who stayed up most of the night last night, I am operating on fumes. I know many of you are rejoicing in this outcome, but today my heart has returned often to those—and they are many—who voted for Mrs. Clinton, for Gary Johnson, for Jill Stein…or who left the “president” section of their ballots blank.
I’ve been praying for them. I know they feel hurt, devastated, even broken, and I don’t revel in their pain. They are part of this wonderful American experiment and we NEED them.
If you are so inclined, join me in praying for those who now feel like some of us felt in past post-election days. God has NEVER called us to gloat or mock the pain of others, but rather to love, to minister to, and to pray for them.
Friends don’t always see eye to eye; families may experience strong disagreement among themselves; but we are called to peace as we pursue our future with confidence and an eye to Him who cares for the sparrow.
Remember this: “A bruised reed He will not break and a dimly burning wick He will not extinguish” (Isaiah 42:3). If God doesn’t crush someone when they are down, then we have NO right to do so, either.
May God bless and bring His peace to us all.
Dorothy
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Response to a lawless culture
I wrote this post on my Facebook page today concerning the lawlessness that all of us are facing in this nation, and in particular, in my own region:
With Officer Snyder’s senseless death yesterday, and with Officer Flamion’s life-changing assault earlier this year, I wanted to share something I observed this morning on a Starbuck’s run in my beautiful north county neighborhood.
It’s glorious outside, and my windows were open. I was driving the slow residential speed of 25, and I heard the voice of a lone young man loudly speaking to someone on his phone. As I approached him, I could tell he was agitated and angry. I felt compassion come over me for him and I began praying for him as I passed him, asking God to help him with whatever he was upset about, to cover him with the peace that passes understanding. I asked God to send him godly intervention and clear thinking….I sensed that he could get in serious trouble without God’s intervention.
As I think about him now, I still sense that compassion of God prompting me to pray for him.
Jesus said that in the end times because lawlessness would increase (and man, has it ever!!!), the love of many will grow cold.
I challenge you (and myself!) to pray over every police car pulled over behind someone and pray for both officer and civilians. If you see agitation in an individual or a group, pray for them boldly, asking God to intervene. We have more impact through prayer than we realize!!!! Some of us are called to intervene personally; all of us are called to intervene on our knees. 🙂
When Jesus said “the love of many will grow cold,” it was NOT permission to despise those who you feel are wrong. It was a warning: DON’T LET YOUR EFFECTIVENESS WITHER BECAUSE OF THE LAWLESSNESS OF OTHERS…whoever they are.
I believe all of us were born for such a time. We have the opportunity to witness Divine intervention as we refuse to fear, hate, or cower. We can actually LIVE in the wisdom and love of God in a lawless generation….with God’s help.
Dorothy
Setting your compass aright
If you’re anything like me, you get distracted all too often. Not too long ago, I sat at my computer from morning until late afternoon, only to break away to eat, feed the cats, and use the restroom.
And what did I have to show for my time? I had commented on several Facebook posts, I joined an online “I ♥ Cats” club; I watched several cat videos; I stumbled onto some “prepper” sites; I learned about homemade compasses; I caught up on the latest political conspiracies; and some stiffness in my spine and “sitter” returned. Productive. Yeah, right.
Needless to say, I was a tad disgusted with myself (although I was pleased with the “likes” and comments I received on the post and pic of an old cat I once owned); so when I drove to church that evening for a prayer meeting, I was telling myself and the Lord, “Something’s gotta change! Help!”
In these particular prayer meetings, my pastor gives us about a half hour or so to pray on our own before we come together as a group, so there I was, still irritated at myself for allowing technology to so perniciously consume my time and my life. Therefore, as I walked the sanctuary I continued my quiet complaint to God. Out of nowhere, I heard this:
“Set your compass aright in the morning, and you will maintain the right direction throughout the day.”
“Set my compass in the morning,” I muttered to myself. “Set my compass in the morning!”
The lightbulb came on. DUH! I thought to myself; my day will go the way I set it first thing in the morning! I knew that; I’ve lived that. But I had gotten sloppy again.
But here’s where my earlier technology marathon came into good use. The instruction I had wandered onto about homemade compasses drove this fresh revelation home.
HOW TO MAKE YOUR DAILY COMPASS IN THE LORD
You see, to make a compass at home, you first need to magnetize a tiny piece of metal. The metal is not a magnet, but by contact with a magnet, it will start acting like one. You do this by rubbing a bit of wire or a needle against a magnet—rubbing it the same direction several times. Then the metal, which was once not magnetic, is now magnetized, and will, if floated on water, point due north.
You also, as you come into close interactive contact with the Lord each day, will become “magnetized” with a godly magnetism. Remember, a sewing needle is not a magnet, nor are you God. However, with close interaction, that needle acquires a measure of the magnet’s properties, and you acquire a fresh measure of the divine nature.
A magnetized needle will point due north when carefully placed on water, and again, although the needle is not a true magnet, its association with a magnet gives it the ability to be a reliable compass.
You yourself will more likely find true direction easier to access as you daily interact closely with your Father.
And here’s an interesting tidbit about many hand-held compasses that I didn’t know: Most of the traditional ones contain liquid. The reason? The needle moves more smoothly and less erratically when suspended in liquid.
Think about your life. You spend time with God, worshiping and interacting with Him, but for some reason, you may find receiving direction from Him to be a bit erratic for your liking. What do you do? Suspend that needle in some water!
Paul analogized the Word of God to water (see Ephesians 5:26), so follow me as I continue this analogy: Just as the liquid in a natural compass brings smoothness and enhances true direction, so too does daily access to the Word of God, along with worshipful interaction with the Father, stabilize and enhance smooth direction for your life day by day.
“Set your compass aright in the morning, and you will maintain the right direction throughout the day.”
Dorothy
Read MoreUrgent update: Impact to the left temple
First of all, then, I urge that entreaties and prayers, petitions and thanksgivings, be made on behalf of all men… 1 Timothy 2:1
You have a massive prayer assignment. It is because of this that God has armed you with secret weapons to accomplish your task. Praying without ceasing (see 1 Thessalonians 5:17), praying in the Holy Spirit (see Jude 20), and staying alert in prayer (see Colossians 4:2) can work together within you, whether you are in your prayer closet or just going about your daily routine. As you move through your day, you can pray quietly within yourself, whether in the Holy Spirit or your own language, trusting that God will toggle your understanding when necessary with important and urgent updates in the Spirit about this man or that woman, this nation or that situation. As you allow yourself to participate in the process, you recognize that God wants you to be available and ready so He can give you His insight for the purpose of prayer. This empowers you to do your part in praying for all men.
I encountered one of God’s urgent updates in 1997. As I was driving home one night after a meeting at church, I experienced an unnerving sense of impact to my left temple as if I was about to be struck by gunfire. I found the nearest semi-truck and drove right next to it for cover against flying bullets! Thankfully, as I precariously hugged that truck, I realized the Lord was giving me an intercessory assignment for someone. I entered into prayer as I pulled back from the semi, entreating God for safety for myself, my relatives, my friends, my colleagues, and anyone else in danger of impact. The sense of danger lingered, so I continued praying both in the Holy Spirit and with my understanding until it lifted.
When I arrived home I called my friends from a neighboring church, John and Janet, who had joined us earlier that evening. No one answered, so I left a message.
The next day John called and told me that he and Janet were involved in a head-on collision on their way home from the meeting. He was fine and Janet would be released from the hospital that day. John explained that upon impact, Janet, who was not wearing a seatbelt, flew over him and shattered the windshield with the left side of her head. She fractured her wrist upon impact in an attempt to protect herself, but her head was unharmed. In fact, for the next few days as she combed her hair, she pulled out clumps of it along with fragments of windshield, leaving an unscratched, quarter-sized bald spot on her left temple! Fifteen years later, she and John are alive and well and very involved in effective street outreach and missionary work. (From my book First of All Pray, copyright 2013.)
Praise God for the urgent updates from the Holy Ghost! Help us, Lord, to heed them.
Dorothy
UPDATE: Now 19 years after the accident, John and Janet are still going strong in the Lord, serving Him in remote regions of Alaska for months at time among the Inuit people.
Read MoreSeptember 11
Sometime in 1997 I awoke with a jolt in the dead of night. Trembling, my heart pounding in my chest, and my skin covered in the cold sweat of fear, I leapt out of bed to shake the dream out of my mind…
The dream started innocently enough; I was sitting in a field with several of my dear friends on a beautiful late summer morning. Soon a Christian convert from Islam appeared, interrupting our pleasant conversation, eyes filled with terror.
“They just hit New York City!” she panicked.
I started to make a joke of it, but looking to the horizon I saw tops of skyscrapers exploding in the midst of the famous skyline.
I rarely have nightmares. But this, so vivid and horrible, knocked the wind out of me. I spent the rest of the night pacing my living room in my pajamas, praying with urgency, pleading for mercy, wondering if any of it was real…
All that week I prayed. I couldn’t shake the urgency. I knew two things: 1.) New York City was a target; 2.) Muslims were involved.
Sharing it, however, didn’t help to bring wisdom or ease the burden. Instead, those I told assessed the dream lightly as something to simply “bind” and forget. I felt the lead weight of self-doubt crash upon me; who was I to presume God would speak to me about anything of import? I summarily blocked the urgency tightly bound in my belly and went about my life.
Fast forward to September 11, 2001. My eighth grade pre-algebra class was finishing up a test. One of the girls returned to the room from the restroom and whispered to me, “Ms. Frick, was there an accident at the airport?”
“No, honey. Why do you ask?”
“Mrs. McDuffy and some of the other teachers are in the hall crying, and I heard someone say something about an airplane.”
“No; I don’t think anything has happened,” and I sent her to her seat.
But when I poked my head out of the classroom door, I saw tears streaming down my colleague’s beautiful dark cheeks. “What’s going on?” I whispered.
“Girl, they’ve hit the World Trade Center! Looks like America is under attack!”
As I reentered the room, I paced the rows of desks, privately consumed by restless agitation, waiting for the last few students to finish up. I had to know more.
After what seemed like an eternity, the last test was face down on my desk.
I stood in front of the class and quietly told them what I had heard. I decided that since they were 13 and 14 years old, they would be able to process—at least as much as any of the rest of us—what was going on in our country; in fact, I felt they needed to know—and I had to know. I turned on the classroom TV bolted high on the wall in the back of the room, and all of us watched in shocked silence as we stared at the screen.
And there I saw it before my very eyes…my dream of horror, playing out on breaking network news.
I have learned that God is no respecter of persons; He doesn’t choose to speak to us because of our pedigree, our ministry title, or even due to whether we exude the “it” factor which naturally draws people to us. No; He speaks to whoever will listen; to whoever is available. He warned many about 9/11 before it happened; for some reason, we didn’t thwart it.
I am convinced that His warning came to so many of us so that we could thwart this vicious attack on our soil. But living, as we were, in relative “peace and safety”, I guess we didn’t take His warnings as seriously as He intended.
We find ourselves today not much different than we were on September 10, 2001—things are fine. Life is good. But on September 11th that year, the veil was stripped away, and we were forced to behold the hideous face of evil.
My prayers for the last few years have largely been directed toward awakening vigilance and alertness in the American people and particularly the American church. I know the burden of “seeing” evil before it happens yet being considered odd or peculiar—even paranoid, negative, or in unbelief—when sharing that burden with others.
But, praise God, things are changing. The sleeping giant is shaking itself and is starting to stand up. In this hour, we must pray all the more as we find our way in this shifting, changing landscape. We need God. We must hear from Him, individually and corporately. Lives and souls depend on our sober response to His leading.
It is time to pray.
Dorothy
Read MoreDealing with worry and fear in prayer
Be anxious for nothing, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God. And the peace of God, which surpasses all comprehension, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus. Philippians 4:6-7
How do you deal with worry and fear in prayer? All of us deal with it at times. I wrote about this critical but all too common dilemma in the following excerpt from my book First of All Pray: