My Prayers

Today as I was praying through my various prayer cards that I developed, I decided that I would come upstairs and go on the computer and check in with my blog buddies, because I miss you and I thought that I would share with you some of the things that I have on my cards.

I have a prayer card on my body and body image and I wrote about that in my other blog this morning. (Go back to my dashboard to find it.)

I have 8.5 x 11 yellow sheets in plastic protector covers, each with a day of the week that has various prayers and Scriptures on it. Thursday has a big MBA across it, as well as our business names and future (hopefully) business names, a future project that I desire with my mother and grandmother, my daughter's next summer plans and several verses. Also, is a picture of fish that I developed after a conversation with my Pastor who advised me regarding the MBA (a degree program), to remind me of the Scripture verses and promise that he gave me. The verses are from Deuteronomy 17:14-20 regarding what rulers and leaders are supposed to do, and these verses:

"Blessed be the name of the Lord Jesus Christ who heard my prayers and lifted me from the ash heap." Well, that isn't a verse. It is taken from Hannah's prayer in I Samuel.

"Now to Him who is able to keep you from falling to the only wise God and Savior be praise, glory, honor, dominion and power forever."

"Whatever you do in hand or deed do all in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ."

""Whatever you find you hand doing, do all in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ."

"Not by power not by might but by my Spirit says the Lord of Hosts."

I have a series of index cards that I pray from, that remind me of my current prayers and concerns. One card is about my husband's 50th birthday party Dec 30. Another is about God's promise and the "law of use" and how I need to respect my husband and to honor him for the good things that he is doing and God will enable him to do more in time. Another card has the statement on it, "It is an honor to suffer for Him for the kingdom. Count it a privilege and I have written on it a couple of ways that I am inconvenienced because I am trying to be honoring to my husband, and consequently there are things that I endure that hurt me. A bright pink card is a prayer that my husband would have "SUBMISSION TO YOUR LAWS, to Who You are, to have bold, direct and accepted witness of Christ and to be a light to his family” and many of his family members would proclaim a saving faith and I have the people's names listed.

I have a church bulletin and from it, it reminds me to pray for their unity.

I wrote a devotional letter the other day that says in part, "Naked and empty I come...No, I am filled up with myself...and I ask God that the next 20 years of my life would be like Philippians 3:14, and be filled with His dreams and not my own, His pursuits, and not mine, and that I would spend it on the interests of Jesus Christ.

Another paper I have is a series of complicated pictures of the parts of myself and how God is bringing all the parts of myself together into a mighty and complete bullet for Him, in Jesus Christ.

Another sheet has my various interests and ministries listed on a visual diagram.

I have the MBA catalog that I look at and pray about and think about what God is doing and on it I have written, "I want to know Christ wherever He tells me to go."

I have a picture that I drew that lays out on two halves, one of the Bible Study ministry that God currently has, and the other half about my work and doing what God wants me to do there, including the MBA (if Lord wills) and between the two halves is a statement that reads,” God has a greater, fuller plan He will work our through you," meaning that beyond these things, God has more.

Then finally I have a large post-it note that has 7 items of prayer request regarding my husband. They state:

Magnify his ability to support emotionally the kids and me as a coach
Heal his grieved and troubled heart
Remove discouragement and bring encouragement
Bring him into the body of Christ functioning as a member and restore him and eliminate loneliness
Eliminate fears of being subjugated to a woman and fear of inadequacy. Christ makes us adequate.
Protect him from adulteresses
Have him to hunger and thirst for righteousness.

Finally I have a flip daily prayer calendar written by Stormy (forget the last name) on praying for your husband.

May God use this example to help you and inspire you my friends in developing an exciting prayer life with God.

After prayer time, then do Bible Study.

May the Spirit of God be with you all.

Going to a wedding

The retret was a blessing. It was a piece of heaven on earth. The week that just past was hard in some ways. My shower water is going right now, but I wanted to check in before I was away all weekend. God be with you all. Much love, Andrea

Overwhelmed with you

I am overwhelmed and feel so blessed of the Lord. The comments on the last blog I wrote were all so special to me. I feel overwhelmed because I love what God has given to me this morning through all of you.

After I wrote the last entry, this past week as I reflected from time to time about what I wrote, I thought about how I didn't provide much background information for the newcomers, ect. Little did I know that you all, my friends, responded to me with each bringing a great gift - more of yourselves.

This is a wonderful thing to me. I guess that is one reason why I like psychiatry because I like it when people give me, entrust me with seeing more of who they are, show me more of themselves.

I am taking off to go to a women's retreat for the weekend.

Today I will leave you with a copy of an email that I sent off to my first Pastor in the Lord, who I "ran into" when I was crusing Blue Letter Bible site and sent him this:
Dear Bob and Dini,

I only have less than a minute right now, but maybe that is a good thing! I won’t be mailing you a fifteen page letter today! This is Andrea, who used to go to Calvary Chapel Irvine about 100 years ago.

I was referred to Blue Letter Bible to look up some Bible helps and saw your "Day by Day by Grace" daily devotional there and was blessed to read it and see God’s faithfulness to you.

God has been faithful to me as well. For the past several months (I will share this with you in the Lord), I have been having the pleasure of getting up at 5 AM for my Bible and prayer time for about 90 minutes or longer each day, and God is showing me so many things.

There is a course of this world and we, in Christ are seated far above it.

Anyway, as always, here are my prayer requests (out of habit I will give them to you):

God continue to rescue my family from the apathy of this world into full and rich service into the kingdom of His Son. They are in His kingdom, praise God! But, like the time of Judges, it is a time of apathy in the land, including in my home. Everyone is lulled to sleep by the pleasures of this world and by these times.

That God would be in the Women’s Bible Study that is in my home. We are starting a ten week study in I Samuel through Precepts Ministries with Kay Arthur Bible Studies. I think that God has brought merely two hungry women to the group, and I want to be faithful to all that He wants to do through me. I think that He wants me to be faithful to Him in these times, because I think that many years from now, that He has more for me, but He wants me to be faithful in this at this time, and I am so excited to be sharing God’s Word.

Also, the Lord is opening a door and I think that He is leading me to go through it, to get an MBA through an extended distance program for Health Care executives. I wouldn’t have chosen this, but I think that God has called me to do it, and in that case, it sounds very fun because He has some higher purpose for it.

At this time in my life, I think that the Lord wants me to be faithful to day by day living by grace in Him, but I think that one day He has more for me. It is hard because I have a burden in my heart of a greater work, some unspecified greater work, but it is not for now.

One time I was writing a poem to the Lord and I wrote, that I think was from the Lord, “You will burn for me but will you wait for Me?”

Some personalities are ready, willing and able to burn for the Lord, but waiting is harder. God has filled my life with times of waiting. It is His way of shaping difficult personalities and stubborn, impulsive people.

All glory to God. By the way, lately I have also been studying Ephesians, and about God’s grace and have been reminded of my early teachings of God’s grace through CCI. Lately I have learned/been reminded of God’s grace being power to do God’s work that He has prepared beforehand that we might do it.

You probably don’t remember, but I remember, how when I was little in the Lord and I asked you for a verse and gave you a description of what I was looking for and you told me about this verse:

“By the grace of God I am what I am, but His grace to me was not without effect, no I worked harder than all of the other apostles, yet not I but the grace of God that is in me.”

God continues to bless my work in the psychiatric hospital with great provision for anything that I would ever need. He is with me in that and it is not a strain or an effort.

With much love and gratitude,

Andrea

Dana asked

Dana asked, "I haven't heard you say anything about adoption for awhile, is that something you still want to do or has your mind changed.

And how are your real mom and dad?"

My mind of adoption has not changed. However, God has shut that door at this time, but I think that He has something like that for my husband and me for the future.

Have you ever felt like God inspired you for something and it got you super charged up and excited? Have you ever felt like you had a burning bush experience like Moses?

Remember when Moses was inspired as a young lad of 40 years old to rescue the children of Israel from Egypt? God inspired him in that and then he tried to do it in himself. He wasn't being bad, just immature. Like a baby learning to walk. Takes a few steps and thinks he can run. If the stairs were nearby he'd fall down the whole flight.

Well, I think that God did inform me that He was going to be doing something like adoption in our family. Upon having this inspirational experience, I got so excited and preceded with adoption plans. The confusing thing about the whole thing was that the doors all seemed open for the process, so I figured that I was in the middle of God's will.

I remember at one point having a flash of a thought that Matt (the child we almost got approved to adopt - we were one of three families from a large stack) was not in God's will for us to adopt, but in my enthusiasm and earnestness, I did not pick up that red flag, but now in retrospect I know just when that was.

Moses failed when he tried to be the hero of Israel at age 40. He killed a guy in the process. He then ran away, like Simba from the Lion King running away from Scar - "Run away, run away, and don't ever come back!"

At age 80 while Moses was cruising the hills with his sheep, he noticed a bush that was burning but wasn't burned up. God spoke to him that he would in fact be a deliverer of the Israelites. Moses was older and wiser, and essentially, ready.

When God shut the door on the adoption process for us, to me it was just an indication that God was going to do an adoption or something like an adoption, in His own time and His own way and when that time comes, it was be really great.

Even now as I write this, God is comforting me, and that He is perhaps even re-assuring me that it will come, in His time.

At this time, God is not bringing about the adoption. I think it is for a later time. It may not be a legal adoption. It may be somebody that God brings into our family that we love like a child and who adopts us, so to speak.

There are many things that I want to do and that I would like to do for God, but He has really limited my path to a very narrow walkway. He has limited the opportunities and the things that I can do, because He is guiding me along a very specific path. Paul said that it is foolish for people to judge themselves, or to compare themselves with themselves.

At this time in my life, for reasons unknown to me, I think that God wants me to allow my work to be more prominent than I would otherwise have it to be. I believe that He has called me to use the gift of administration over the next several years, and to get this MBA and to let my light shine before men so that they may see my good works and glorify God who is in heaven. I believe that He wants to administer things in the course of this world that I can not see through His church (see Ephesians) so that He can effect some specific things for His own plans and purposes and He wants to use me.

So I will walk in His ways as much as I can. I will attempt to be lead by His Holy Spirit. I would rather hang around the house and teach home school to a boy who needs a home. I would rather my children didn't grow up. I am not in charge of my life. I was bought with a price. I am not my own. I serve at the pleasure of the One who made me out of His own image. I will go where I am called.

And if the MBA program is not of Him, that door will too close.

Regarding my "real mom and dad..."

Oh my! What a soap opera! How many chapters can I write? What to say now? Hummmmmmmm.......

Both my real and non-real (but I don't know which is which - do you?) fathers are dead. The sad thing is that it gives me peace to know that I don't have any obligations on me because they are dead, and there isn't anything that I need to do, other than pay respects to my step-mother and uncle, aunts, which doesn't require much.

It was sad when they died, and I cried and grieved for my father - oh, that's the real one, the one I cried and grieved over as I recalled how the little girl in me loved him, and how I recalled how the little girl in me bonded enough to him to cry and grieve. The adult girl didn't really cry for my father, because the adult girl didn't really have a connection with him, except for being criticized. The little girl missed him. And then that grief was over. Now things are peaceful.

Now, for my mothers....

My grandmother is 93. My second mother is 73. My original mother is 63. My grandmother is in pretty good shape. My second mother does a great job running her life and taking care of her, which is what she was born to do - take over and run and control every aspect of somebody else's life (just don't come near mine with those eyes of power and control). I am blessed that they are in good health and my mother really does pamper Grandma and she doesn't mind being "run."

The original mother is probably mad at me, as she has been for the past seven years or so, since I gave her the brush-off due to the mounting family problems since my second mother is insanely jealous and I figured she had the "right of ownership." (Is this how a child in a custody battle feels? A 44 year old child?) My original mother is nice on the outside. I'll stop there. She has an open hand and open pocketbook and is ready to suck up anything that looks attractive, but will always say "thank you."

Oh gee. I guess I have some issues. I didn't realize that they were all so close to the surface. Maybe God can do something with my issues. I think I need to pray more for them. That will help me.

Well, Dana, thanks for asking!

Today, I am nameless, but those who know who I am, know who I am!