“Lord, Bend Me”

Giving Prayer New Priority

It turns ordinary mortals into men of power . . . It
brings fire. It brings rain. It brings life. It brings God.
There is no power like that of prevailing prayer.
Samuel Chadwick, The Path of Prayer1

His name was Floyd King, but we called him “The Wizard of Ahs.”

It wasn’t a nice name, and he didn’t deserve it.

Pastor King had come out of retirement to shepherd the Nazarene church in the sleepy desert town of Holtville, California. I was thirteen when I met him. My older brothers and I would sit in the fourth pew from the front, counting the number of times Pastor King would hesitate and say “ah” between points in his sermon. Like Joseph’s brothers, we meant it for evil, but God meant it for good.

It made us pay attention. And as we watched and listened, we were able to observe a true believer in the twilight of his life. Little did I know that his impact on my life would last well beyond his years.

Not long after Pastor King’s arrival, my father was hospitalized for major surgery. Pastor King would travel over twenty-five miles every day to call on Dad and to pray for him. He even took the time to give Dad a shave each morning. After that, my brothers and I dared not breathe a word about “The Wizard of Ahs.” Dad wouldn’t have it.

When I began to question my faith a year later, Pastor King was there again, patiently listening to my doubts (I had a lot of them). He and his wife quietly made themselves available, answering my questions when they could and praying for me when they couldn’t. That summer I wore a path to their door and found it open, even if I hadn’t called to ask if it was okay if I came by. After each visit, I somehow always found us praying together.

It was one summer evening as I sat on my old Schwinn ten-speed bike outside their home saying goodbye that Pastor King remarked, “We think God may be calling you to be a pastor someday.” At age fourteen, being a pastor was the farthest thing from my mind. It would take me more than six years to catch up to what the Kings came to realize in the quiet moments we spent together in prayer. God, in His kindness and humor, had given “The Wizard of Ahs” a special place in my life. It wasn’t courage or a brain or a heart that I found. It was a calling.
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This excerpt was taken from The Lost Art of Praying Together: Rekindling Passion for Prayer
©2009 by James Banks
978-1-57293-351-4
Pages 61-62

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More Than An Aspirin

by M. Gay Hubbard

A client whose daughter had been murdered came to me for help in the early weeks of her grief and struggle. In her first appointment she noticed a Bible lying open on my desk and burst out in angry tears.

“Don’t read me Bible verses about praising God or verses that say God took Lindy because He wanted her with Him. I don’t want a therapist who will read me verses like that.”

“No. I won’t read you verses like that,” I told her gently. “I understand this is not the time for that.”

Our first hour together was clearly not the time for that. Nevertheless, rightly understood, and in the right time, James’s characteristic bluntness expresses a radically wonderful truth. God means for us through His grace to redeem our pain—to use it as a journey into joy and maturity. He means for us to be more than survivors; He means for us to be conquerors in every circumstance of life, however difficult that circumstance may be. No matter how terrible the events through which we must live, it is God’s intention for us to be transformed, not destroyed. Now that is good news.

However, we have a part in bringing about God’s remarkable intended outcome. Transformation is not a matter of heavenly magic. Neither is it solely the result of human will power. It is a mysterious joint project in which God invites us to participate. And invite is precisely what God does. While God desires our participation, He does not coerce. We discover that at the core of participation lies something far different from a blind obedience to rules. Participation is relational; it is a call to know God andthe fellowship of His suffering (Philippians 3:10). And it is this participation through relationship with Him t at changes our hearts, alters our view of the world, and transforms the outcome of our pain.

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This excerpt was taken from More Than An Aspirin: A Christian Perspective on Pain and Suffering
©2009 by M. Gay Hubbard
978-1-57293-257-9

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If you’re following @discoveryhouse on Twitter, you may be wondering where some of the quotes are coming from. Here are some of the most recent and most common (you may click on the bookcovers to link to more information).

Our Daily Bread: Daily Readings from the Popular Devotional (Volume 2)

Contributors: Mart DeHaan, Dennis DeHaan, Richard DeHaan, M.R. DeHaan, David Roper, David McCasland, Julie Ackerman Link, Henry Bosch, Dave Branon, Vernon Grounds, Dave Egner, Bill Crowder, Dennis Fisher, Herb VanderLugt, Cindy Hess Kasper, Albert Lee, Joe Stowell, Anne Cetas, Joanie Yoder, Paul Van Gorder, Haddon Robinson, Marvin Williams, C. P. Hia, Philip Yancy

My Soul Thirsts for God: Reflections on the Psalms from Our Daily Bread

Contributors: Mart DeHaan, Dennis DeHaan, Richard DeHaan, David Roper, David McCasland, Julie Ackerman Link, Henry Bosch, Dave Branon, Vernon Grounds, Dave Egner, Bill Crowder, Dennis Fisher, Herb VanderLugt, Cindy Hess Kasper, Albert Lee, Joe Stowell, Anne Cetas, Joanie Yoder, Paul Van Gorder, Haddon Robinson, and Marvin Williams

 
Also by DAVID ROPER…

 

 

 

 

 

Also by JOE STOWELL…

By RAY STEDMAN…
 

By GREG DUTCHER

By JOLENE PHILO

By SHELLY BEACH
   

By OSWALD CHAMBERS

Crossing the Bridge Between You and Me by SUSAN LENZKES
Friendships just aren’t built the way they once were—event by event over a lifetime. Making friends today requires that you consciously do things that allow others to get to know you.

As one who’s had friends to share the joys and the difficult times of life, Susan Lenzkes offers helpful suggestions for building sturdy bridges of friendship and ministry between you and others.

Who Calls Me Beautiful? by REGINA FRANKLIN
From the magazines at the grocery store checkout to home shopping, from billboards to TV shows, it’s hard to escape the world’s idea of a “beautiful woman.” The seduction to be beautiful is strong, but rarely is the question asked, “What is God’s ideal?”

Who Calls Me Beautiful? helps you to identify the forces that influence your life and affect how you understand “beauty,” and encourages you to embrace a biblical and spiritual balance that honors the God who created you.

“I am an ordinary woman who has faced the same struggles that other women face,” says Regina Franklin. “But we have an extraordinary God who sees us as His beautiful vessels.”

Something’s Wrong with Your Child

The Lord is near to the brokenhearted
And saves those who are crushed in spirit.
Psalm 34:18 (NASB)

“Do you want a girl or a boy?”

I heard that question often when we were expecting our first child. My pat answer was, “I don’t care, so long as the baby is healthy.”

I was convinced God would honor my desire since my husband, Hiram, and I were model parents-to-be. We’d planned for this child. We attended every pre-natal appointment and practiced Lamaze. I ate right, exercised, and dreamed about the birth of our perfect new baby.

The first clue that my dream was not God’s plan came the morning after our son, Allen, was born, when the doctor sat down in a chair near the foot of my bed. (Over the next few years, I learned it’s not a good sign when a doctor sits beside a hospital bed.)

“Something’s wrong,” he told me, and with those words, my dreams evaporated. Love for the child who had grown inside me pressed heavy against my heart until it broke. Fear of what lay ahead crushed my spirit.

When the doctor told you something was wrong with your child, your life changed, too. The world you dreamed about before your baby’s birth—of diapers and breast feeding, sleep deprivation and exhausted joy—turned into a nightmare of Life Flight transport and neonatal intensive care.

Or perhaps the days you once spent chasing a healthy toddler were replaced with hours beside a hospital bed holding a still, small hand.

Or your busy soccer mom afternoons spent driving from school to lessons to practice became a dizzying blur of technicians and lab tests and painful procedures.

This new world of hospitals and doctors and medical abnormalities breaks your heart and crushes your spirit. You can’t bear to see your child because the hurt on that small face pierces your heart. But you can’t stay away because you want to comfort your child. So you stumble along, desperate for a God who will strengthen you so you can support your child. But you wonder if the God who allowed your child’s suffering cares enough to meet your needs.

Those thoughts shook my faith the day the doctor sat beside my bed. Would a loving God allow this? Does He care about our child? Are you there, God? I wondered.

Then my husband arrived, heard the news, and sensed my despair. He asked a few questions before the doctor left. When we were alone, he said, “Jolene, let’s pray.” I nodded, and he took my hand. “Thank you, Father, for giving Allen to us. He’s yours, God, not ours. You loved him before we knew him, and he belongs to you. Be with him when we can’t. Amen.”

Hiram has always been a man of few words. He struggles to speak his thoughts and often doesn’t try, knowing that I have enough words to fill any silence. But on a day when my heart was broken, my spirit crushed, and my faith gone, God gave Hiram strength to speak the words I couldn’t say. And clinging to my husband’s hand, in deep silence and through many tears, I sensed that God was very near.

Dear God, my heart is breaking for my child today.
My spirit is crushed by fear of what lies ahead. I
can’t find words to pray, Father, so please pray for
me. Be near to my child and be near to me today
as your word promises.

Take Time to Reflect

How has God used people to strengthen you when your spirit was crushed? How can the Bible help you pray when you can’t find words? Who could you ask to pray for you when you can’t?
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This excerpt was taken from A Different Dream for My Child: Meditations for Parents of Critically or Chronically Ill Children
©2009 by Jolene Philo
978-1-57293-307-1

Click here to order a copy of A Different Dream for My Child.

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I was washing my car one evening as the sun was preparing to kiss the earth goodnight. Glancing up, I impulsively pointed the hose at it as if to extinguish its flames. The absurdity of my action hit me, and I laughed.

Then I thought of God’s laughter in Psalm 2. Wicked nations were plotting to overthrow God’s anointed, thus ultimately opposing the Almighty himself. But He sits in the heavens, calm and unthreatened. Man’s boldest efforts to oppose such awesome power are ludicrous. The Almighty doesn’t even rise from His throne; He just laughs in derision.

But is this a heartless or cruel laughter? No! His same infinite greatness that mocks man’s defiance also marks His sympathy for man in his lost condition. He’s the same God who takes no pleasure in the death of the wicked (Ezekiel 33:11). And He was the incarnate Savior who wept over Jerusalem when His own people rejected Him (Matthew 23:37-39). He is great in judgment but also in compassion (Exodus 34:6-7).

God’s laughter gives us the assurance that Christ will ultimately triumph over evil. Any defiance of Him and His will is futile. Instead of opposing the Son, we should submit to the Lord Jesus and Take refuge in Him.

~Dennis DeHaan

Excerpt is taken from My Soul Thirsts for God: Reflections on the Psalms from Our Daily Bread
©2009 by Discovery House Publishers
978-1-57293-324-8

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Be sure to check back frequently to keep up-to-date on our author news and reviews.

What can friends do during the crisis stage to help grief sufferers accept and actualize their loss? Above all, friends should be there. People suffering grief need to know that they are not alone. As needs arise, friends can take care of them. Babysitting, phone calls, food, laundry, errands, transportation, and scores of the other details of living may be overlooked unless a friend steps in.

Friends also listen. While it is important to lend a hand, close friends also give an ear. A grieving person often wants to talk about death, but such talk may make others feel uncomfortable. Because of that, some people are tempted to change the subject to get the grief sufferer to “think about something else.” But there is nothing else to talk about that matters. A good listener gives the grief sufferer permission to express thoughts and feelings by asking, “Tell me how things are.” Or, “Would you like to talk about it?” Those who hurt often want to repeat what went on just before and after they heard the shocking news. That is healthy, for that is how people come to accept the reality of what has happened. Sometimes the details are related again and again, and it is a loving act to listen thoughtfully. Of course, a good friend also respects the need for silence and for privacy and will not force a conversation that is not wanted….

Unfortunately, although listening is essential in the crisis stage, we are tempted to talk too much and listen too little. When we are uncomfortable with grief we feel that we have to say something. Religious people struggle to say something Christian. “She is at home with the Lord.” “God must have loved him to take him so young.” “Jim is better off in heaven.” “He wouldn’t want to come back.” All of these platitudes may be true, but they seldom provide much comfort. After all, people grieve not for the loved one who has died but for themselves and the loss they have sustained. A brief, honest expression of how we feel, free of pious  phrases, can be offered if a grieving person opens up, but generally our presence speaks more than our words.

Excerpt taking from Grief: Comfort for Those Who Grieve and Those Who Want to Help
©1996 by Haddon W. Robinson
All rights reserved.

 

 THE STEALTHY HUNTER 

Anybody Got a Silver Bullet?

Werewolves are outside of our house, savagely scratching at the doors and windows. My older brother Andy and I hastily barricade ourselves in our bedroom. Two young kids can survive this terror only by sticking together. The one thing that gives me comfort is that Andy is with me. At this moment he’s no longer my annoying older brother, bullying me, teasing me; he’s now my hero. We frantically work to insulate ourselves in our room, when the sounds of the werewolves suddenly cease. My heart is pounding like a jackhammer, but I’m beginning to feel some relief. I turn to Andy, hoping that he too thinks we’re safe when . . . Have you guessed it? Yeah, he’s turned into a werewolf, and he looks really hungry.

This was an actual recurring nightmare that haunted my childhood for years. I think the reason it so unnerved me was the unfairness of it. Sure, a kid expects to be torn apart by ferocious monsters that live outside in the woods or a cave or a pit. But it just doesn’t seem right that the monsters can live in your own house—or be your own brother!

I think the reason idolatry gets so little attention today is that we are not truly convinced that it is something that’s “inside the house.” Like we saw in the last chapter, idolatry is something we think happens only in the jungle or in remote villages in developing nations. Idolatry is the stuff of National Geographic—not USA Today.

Sadly, most of today’s spiritual diagnosticians do not include idolatry in the list of maladies threatening the church’s health. Several other problems have been identified: declining church membership, unwholesome relationships, dysfunctional families, pornography—and the list goes on and on. But rarely, if ever, do we hear about our insatiable desire to trade in God for anything and everything. Whatever happened to idolatry? Frankly, we shouldn’t be surprised that we so often feel immune to idolatry. The Scriptures warned us how easily we can be duped.

The Deceitfulness of Sin

The nightmare version of my brother seemed like a good guy. He helped me cordon off the bedroom and helped secure my safety. The things I feared were “out there,” not in the sanctuary of my room. But nightmares are made of blind spots and poor judgments, aren’t they? Had I been more alert, maybe I would have noticed Andy’s face morphing into something wolfish before I was trapped.

 

The Bible is packed with warnings to look beneath the surface, to detect the slightest signs that something may be awry. Consider the following passages:

Matthew 16:6 (NIV) “Be careful,” Jesus said to them. “Be on your guard against the yeast of the Pharisees and Sadducees.”

Mark 13:23 (NIV) So be on your guard; I have told you everything ahead of time.

Luke 12:15 And he said to them, “Take care, and be on your guard against all covetousness. . .”

Colossians 2:8 See to it that no one takes you captive by philosophy and empty deceit . . . (emphases added in preceding verses).

P. T. Barnum allegedly said, “There’s a sucker born every minute,” and the Bible seems to agree. We are people who can be easily swindled. This is why the writer of Hebrews warns the church about the way sin works: “But exhort one another every day, as long as it is called ‘today,’ that none of you may be hardened by the deceitfulness of sin” (3:13).

Sin—idolatry in particular—is not a showboat. It does its best work in subtle ways. Like a puma lying low in the gentle grass, taut muscles held in place like a coiled spring, sin waits in the “safest” of places. If someone approached you and said, “Hey, I’ve got a bag full of idol statues. Would you like to trade Christ in for one of these?” then idolatry would be a pretty easy thing to resist. But remember what Ezekiel said: The capacity for idol worship is alive and well in our hearts. Sin knows this, so it waits patiently for a chance to creep in unaware. Consider the famous plight of the Israelites in their departure from Egypt.

 Taken from You Are the Treasure That I Seek
©2009 by Greg Dutcher

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JUST RELEASED!

You Are the Treasure that I Seek – But There’s a Lot of Cool Stuff Out There, Lord

by Greg Dutcher 

 In the Old Testament you could spot idolatry quickly, and throwing an idol into the fire or knocking over a stone altar seemed to be an easy solution.  What about today?  Are idols just a part of the Old Testament past or of an Indiana Jones adventure?  

In You Are the Treasure That I Seek, Pastor Greg Dutcher takes a new look at an old problem with witty and relevant insights to help you identify idolatry in this modern world. 

What captures and holds your attention?  Discover the true treasure that you seek: the incomparable beauty of Christ.  You’ll find questions at the end of each chapter, making this a great book for individual or group use.

Greg Dutcher is a senior pastor of Christ Fellowship Church in Fallston, Maryland. He and his wife, Lisa, have four children.

Binding: paper
Page Count: 144
Price: $11.95
ISBN:  978-1-57293-309-5
Product Code: SE365

 ”Greg Dutcher’s book serves as a set of ‘night-vision goggles’ to help us root insidious idols out of our hearts. Then he goes further and restores and renews us in full-fledged adoration of Jesus.” ~Kris Lundgaard, author of The Enemy Within

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Monday, May 4th: A bright and beautiful spring day beckoned as many employees from Discovery House Publishers and RBC Ministries joined nearly 800 people from around lower Michigan at Sunshine Community Church in Grand Rapids. It was a chance for us to meet those in the area that have partnered with us over the years. It was also a chance for the community to see the national and international efforts of the RBC Ministries family.

People gathered to worship in song and to hear Wintley Phipps‘ beautiful voice singing songs such as No Need to Fear and How Great Thou Art. A number of Our Daily Bread writers joined a panel discussion on what inspires their devotional writing, and Joe Stowell, President of Cornerstone University, shared a brief message on Psalm 1. In the entry, people could see samples of the various ministry efforts in which RBC participates: Day of Discovery TV productions, Words to Live By and various other radio programs, Our Daily Bread devotionals, Christian Courses.com, church ministry resources, sample materials from our international ministries (that in 24 countries), our volunteer service partners, the print services, and, of course, Discovery House Publishers’ books and music CDs. With plates of fruit and desserts, people mingled for over an hour visiting and learning.

This first rally in Michigan encouraged all of us at Discovery House Publishers and RBC Ministries and, we hope, those who attended from the community as well.

Maybe next year I’ll see you there?