Do you know how easy it is to live a life filled with limits? If you think about it, when we limit ourselves, our dreams or our families it sets us up to live a life with no risk. Living a safe, risk free life is pretty darn easy.
At times, I see myself falling back into easy living -- I wind up my dreams and then tame them down a bit. I have a big dream of writing a book and I tend to tame it down and settle for a new blog post. I dream that Madison would seek God with all her heart and sometimes settle for a short prayer spoken at dinner time. I pray so hard that God would heal my children's minds and bodies, yet I often settle for small change.
Living a risk free life is so easy.
I don't know about you, but I'm not really into easy. I long for amazing, over the top and down right miraculous. I recently finished reading Mark Batterson's The Circle Maker. As much as I love to write, I often have a difficult time sitting down and reading. Any good writer knows this is an issue. If you want to write well, you need to read -- and read a lot. So in an attempt to do just that I picked up this book -- and finished just three days later.
Although I'd love to, I can't possible explain this book here in this post. But the main gist of this book is this -- God honors bold prayers and bold prayers honor God. I love this saying. So often we limit God by living a safe and easy life. God loves us to dream big and ask him to do things in our lives that, to the human mind, seem impossible. He specializes in the impossible.
We have a few impossible situation in our life right now -- we all have those situations. For us one of those situations is our house and the failing septic system. God has really challenged me to pray bold prayers in regards to our house. I want to pray prayers so big that when the miraculous happens there will be do doubt that God made it happen. I want to pray big over my children. I don't want Angela's seizures to just decrease in frequency -- I want them gone completely. I don't want Jayden to just walk a few steps -- he will run.
God honors bold prayers and bold prayers honor God.
Of course we, like many people, are well aware that not all prayers get answered in the way we would like, but it simply doesn't matter. Its not about what the answers are -- it's about being in a place of total trust and surrender -- that's when the true miracles happen.
A risk free life is simply not for me. Our family dreams big.
6 comments:
BOLD Prayers from now on :-)
LOVE this post....exactly what i needed today!
I really needed to hear this today. I'm in a "safe" zone right now, and definitely feel the need to pray and dream big. Thank you.
Love how big you hope, pray, love and live!
Love it! Praying for Jayden. Praying for Angela. Praying for Madison. I'm always surprised how these things turn out—not so much as we imagined but in ways we never imagined that they could. I'm trying really hard right now to find that strength to leave it up to HIM and come back to HIM, but I'm also realizing how much strength and amazing-ness HE already gave me. It's not easy, but I always say an easy life is just that—easy. There aren't any rewards for easy and look at how much we learn with challenges. Look at how much deeper and more amazing we become. You and your family are testament to that. Prayers, prayer, prayers I pray will be all around you and yours—and that septic tank.
I just wanted to tell you- you and your family are one of the many reasons I want to adopt special needs children. You and your husband are so inspiring, and Madi too! She obviously loves her siblings. I'm still a teenager so of course I won't be adopting anytime soon, and I get a lot of people telling me I would be in over my head choosing to adopt a child/children that need extra help. But I feel like there aren't too many people that are fit for the job, and I know I am. Thank you for sharing your life with us.
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