Powerful Prayer by Wendy L. Macdonald

 Recently, I had an over-the-moon answer to prayer. It prompted one of the most intense praise and worship happy dances I’ve ever done. Save for when I got married, for when God healed me of eating disorders, and when He opened my barren womb, I haven’t been so excited about an answered prayer as I was about this one. But before I share the answer with you, I want to talk about powerful prayer.

What makes one prayer more powerful than another?

I believe a three-strand prayer is irresistible to God. 

When we weave passion, purpose, and petition together, our hope isn’t easily broken. If our passion is to please and glorify God, if our heart is focused on His purpose being fulfilled in our life, and if our petitions are humbly submitted with the understanding He will open and close doors according to what’s best, we can’t lose. We will have peace whatever happens because we’ll believe and rest in the serenity of His wisdom being played out in His answers to our prayers.

I’m lousy at guessing what God’s up to. So lousy. I waded through the slough of infertility for a dozen years of tears. A few months after I told God, “I choose to trust You,” I got pregnant again and didn’t miscarry that time.

I’m not saying the three-strand prayer is a formula for getting what we prayed for. I’m saying it’s a win-win petition that brings us peace while we wait. When we submit our passions and desires for His purposes, He is able to do amazing things because we walked in obedience and relinquished our will to God. It’s wise and fruitful to exchange our will for His will. And because we chose to trust, we’re nestled against God’s chest and are comforted immeasurably if we find out our prayer wasn’t answered in the way we had hoped.

God knows best.

He sees into the future and knows what we need to be fruitful and blessed.

Now for my exciting answer to prayer: In my June InScribe post, I asked for prayer: “I covet a prayer or two as I attempt to complete my proposal on time. I’m almost done. Thank you from the bottom of this writer’s heart.”

I did complete my proposal on time. Oh my, it wasn’t easy. But I believe in the project. Although I’d had the idea for several years, my passion for it hadn’t waned. My problem is: I’m not a leader. I’m a follower. I adore being led by a person of integrity. This is why I haven’t attempted self-publishing. I wanted a literary agent who believed in me—who leadeth me. I craved to have someone choose me because I’ve never been good at choosing friends, never mind a “business partner.” My best friends are the ones who chose me. They are the forever friends God blessed me with.

And that’s what happened with my book proposal. I entered it in the book hook contest, and although it was shortlisted but didn’t win the final round, it did win me a contract for representation. On August 20th, I discovered it won the attention of a godly and talented literary agent who also happens to be an award-winning author. I’m so pleased and blessed to be represented by now Cynthia Ruchti of Books & Such literary agency. I’m over the stars grateful God answers powerful prayers. 

Now I need to keep praying I complete the project in the way God and my agent desire it to be done. I also need to grow my platform and newsletter subscriber list to an impressive-to-publishers level. My work has only just begun. But you know who. God. 

The following Bible verse was the one my husband and I put on our wedding invitations for August 19, 1983. (It seems appropriate to share it here too.):   

Take delight in the LORD, and he will give you the desires of your heart. Psalm 37:4 NIV

I’m nosy-to-know what you’ve noticed to be the most powerful way for you to pray?

Blessings ~ Wendy Mac       

 PS If you enjoyed my from-the-heart inspiration, please consider subscribing to my monthly email newsletter here: Wendy’s Newsletter.  

The Stuff Dreams Are Made Of - Marnie Pohlmann

We all dream of changing the world to be a better place. Some dream of accomplishing change by raising children to be compassionate and kind. Others dream of working hard to achieve success, so they have the riches or the influence to change the world. Writers dream the words they put to paper will touch someone’s life and cause them to feel, see, or be better in the world they live in.

In my sleeping dreams are nightmares.
Dreams. My personal experience with dreams is that they mostly turn into nightmares. Those are not the kind of dreams we desire. Thankfully, dreams for our lives are not made of memories. Dreams for our lives are dependent on the choices we make each day.

The first choice that will lead to the best life dreams is to take the step of choosing God as your Saviour and Lord.

Psalm 37:4 teaches that if I delight in the Lord, He will give me the desires of my heart. I have not studied the original language of this verse, but I doubt it means God is like a genie-in-a-bottle and when we do what He approves of He will give us what we want. Our relationship with God is not based on what we do, what we do is based on our relationship with God; it is a gift because God loves us. I think this verse means God will give me the desires of my heart. Did you read that the way I hear it in my mind? The nuance is that God sets into my heart what I desire. God places His desires for me into my heart, so they become my desires for Him.

In my waking dreams are for the future.
Have you ever wondered why you dream of doing or being what you have claimed as your dream? I was young when I said I was going to be a writer. Even when I figured out writing would probably not provide for my physical needs, and it is not easy, still, when I grow up, I want to be a writer. I have often wondered why that has always been my dream.

Psalm 139:13 says God has knit us together in our mother’s womb. God chose our mother and father to knit us into one He knew we would be.

Ephesians 2:10 explains God prepared works for us to do for Him, so He not only knit us together physically, but He also planted the seeds of our personality. Then we were given life circumstances and experiences that would mold us into one who could do that work. Many people and times influence us, train us, and encourage us to develop into one who at some point chooses to be a child of God who will begin that work He has prepared for us. Our dream has developed because God knit it into our very soul.

Not all the growth to prepare for our dream, our calling, is easy or enjoyable. Sometimes the path may even feel like a nightmare.  Has God ever led you to do exactly what you do NOT want to do? How is that the desire of your heart? We can be sure it’s not the desire of our heart, it’s the desire of God’s heart. Still, we want to run from it. Jonah did just that - and ended up in the belly of a whale, miserable and whining until He agreed to do what God had prepared him to do. I relate to Jonah. What God calls us to can be hard!

In my ageing dreams are elusive.
Sometimes our dreams don’t seem clear. I often have more questions than answers when it comes to walking with God. I believe He has placed on me a calling to write. What am I called to write? Fiction? Magazine articles? Copy for advertisements? Poetry? Am I called to share it publicly, or just locally, for my friends and family, or maybe in the church bulletin? Am I supposed to pursue traditional publishing or figure out how to make an e-book? And then there is marketing. Speaking. Selling. Yuck! So ultimately, I’m back to “Do I have to?”

Time goes by so quickly I feel I should already have reached the pinnacle of my dream. Like Jonah, I make choices to do what I think I want rather than what God asks me to do. I take the whale-of-a-time path that will eventually, I know, lead right back to where I can choose to obey.

But in my faith my dreams are secure.
It is because God has given me the desire to write that I can dream of being a writer. It is because He has led me along the steep and rocky path that I have something to write about. And it is because I trust His training and His Spirit in me that I can be confident in all that being a writer means - even the parts I don’t like.

How do we make a dream come true? We know dreams don’t become reality until we make them goals then take practical steps toward the goals which will make the dream come true. Today is the day to reach for your dream. Head in that direction, one step at a time. As we follow the path God has laid out for us, the desire will grow. The skills will grow. The opportunities will grow.

And one day we will look back and see how God has led us to the mountaintop, the fulfillment of our dream. He has given us the desire of our heart and He will give us the desire of our heart.

Marnie Pohlmann dreams of being a writer when she grows up. In the meantime, she practices and learns and grows with God.
Phosphorescent

*photos courtesy of Pixabay.com CCO license.

Remembering and Celebrating by Sandi Somers

According to our Blog Archives, November 7 marks the thirteenth anniversary of InScribe Writers’ Online.  The first blogs in 2006 included book reviews, short stories, essays, devotionals, tributes, and poetry. Marcia Laycock even included the opening scene of her novel-in-progress, One Smooth Stone. (You can review some of the blogs here.) 

This month we celebrate our progress. We also celebrate God’s faithfulness in our lives and/or writing, using this verse as a prompt: “…you shall remember the whole way that the Lord your God has led you” (Deuteronomy 8:2 ESV).

~ ~ ~

(Free Bible Images)

My thoughts on celebrating began recently when a friend told me about his Bible study with a group of young teens and pre-teens. After discussing how King David danced as he celebrated the Ark of the Covenant coming home to Jerusalem (2 Samuel 6:6-19), my friend asked his participants, “What do you celebrate?” Most celebrated their success at school.

“Anything else?” he asked.

They didn’t have much to answer until one teen said, “Celebrating is different from being thankful.” They learned that it takes more thought to celebrate than it does to give thanks.

~ ~ ~

Recently my devotions focused on the desert wanderings of the Israelites. There was a repeated theme: God miraculously provided for them to encourage their faith. However, instead of remembering and celebrating, they complained and rebelled at each step of the way until God brought permanent judgment.

Forty years later, with the younger generation on the cusp of reaching the promised land, Moses encouraged his followers, “Remember how the Lord your God led you” (Deuteronomy 8:2, NLT). Moses was reminding the people to focus on God in leading and sustaining them.

Remembering is important because it is easy to miss God and His significant gifts. 

 So for me to remember, I listed major events in my writing journey.  My list pointed out God’s many gifts along the way and how He spoke to me. I share some of them with you.

The gift of His purpose. How often I’m drawn to God’s words to Jeremiah, “I am your Creator, and before you were born, I chose you to speak for me” (1:5 CEV). God has chosen us as writers to speak for Him in the genres of our abilities.

The gift of seed desires to write. When I think of the verse, “He shall give you the desires of your heart,” (Psalm 37:4) I know that He not only gives us desires, He also planted those desires in us in the first place.

The gift of creativity. I think of how God used Brenda Ueland, in her little book If You Want to Write, to expand my creativity. She exudes tenderness and warmth as she encouraged, “You are talented, and you are original…This creative power and imagination is in everyone, and so is the need to express it.”

The gift of practice and breakthroughs in confidence in my writing skills. I noticed specific times when God gave me beautiful breakthroughs—writing became more fluid, I took the next step of faith, and opportunities opened up to me.

The gift of wisdom in knowing which desired projects to leave and which to pursue. We all have unfinished projects in our computer files. I’ve discovered some are unworkable and need to be set aside, while I need to work on others, revise and polish, and submit for publication.

The gift of His presence, especially when we struggle with doubt or uncertainty. Once when I was groping for a solution to a difficult issue, God spoke to me: "I am with you in your struggles." How He lifted my faith through this encouragement!

The gift of His prompting, along with His promises. These two often go together. When He asks us to take steps of faith into the unknown, He promises at the same time to be with us and give us strength. I’m reminded so often of how God commanded and promised Joshua: “I will be with you; I will never leave you nor forsake you…Be strong and courageous” (Joshua 1:5, 9 NIV).

I next asked: “How can I celebrate how God has led me?” Whereas thanking God often means speaking or praying our thanks, celebrating is a conscious action. Ideas gradually came to mind:

Buy roses or other flowers and design my own arrangement

Write an ode to God for specific ways He has led me

Take photos of God’s beautiful creation

Enjoy art works of the masters   

I also decided to borrow ideas from Nina Faye Morey and Susan Barclay who earlier this year wrote on the importance of celebrating each day’s writing successes. (Be sure to read their articles here and here!)

~ ~ ~

And now, how about you? How has God led/is leading you? How can you celebrate? Be creative…

God Grows a Writer by Bobbi Junior

“Is it a sin to hate yourself?”

At thirteen years of age, these words began my first journal. I couldn’t know this statement would lead me on the path to become a writer. As a young girl, all I knew, or thought I knew, was that I had no worth. I came to the page profoundly alone, yet crying out to the one I instinctively knew was listening.

For me, journalling deflated an agony of heart that often threatened to push me over the edge. I would never have called myself a writer. Journalling was simply a way to cope. The act of putting pen to paper diminished the power of my misery enough to keep me alive one day longer.

I hid my journal carefully, although no one sought to read it. My pain wasn’t as invisible as I believed, though. God saw it. God read it. God cared.

I couldn’t know back then that the Lord was honing my craft. Such private, uncensored, expression gave me freedom to write my story unhampered by literary constraints. Day by day, tear by tear, pain designed my words, my style. 

With God my only audience, I became a writer.

In my twenties I wrote a series of children’s stories that were published in the Edmonton Journal. Confidence began to grow until they hired a new editor who critiqued my next submission. I didn’t know that critique meant I should now revise. With no writer to turn to for advice, I simply stopped.

In my forties, my stable life tipped. This time I knew Jesus was my willing audience. Once again I journalled voraciously as I dragged and fought my way through the ensuing tumultuous decade.

Eventually life settled, but with a significant change. Psalm 37:4 says, “Delight yourself in the Lord; and He will give you the desires of your heart.” The desire Jesus gave me was to write, but with a new purpose. I attended a Women’s Words writers week which showed me I was on the right track. Then, and to this day I don’t remember how, I came to attend the 2012 InScribe Fall Conference.

The rest, to use a timeworn cliche, is history.

Writing saved my life as a teen, and again as an adult. 

Writing about what I was saved from, saved for, is now my calling. 

God is good.

Bobbi’s book,The Reluctant Caregiver, was published in 2014. Since then, Bobbi has been invited to speak on caregiving, dementia, and the needs of seniors in a number of venues. She’s excited to see where God will take her in the coming years. Download a chapter at bobbijunior.com.