The Most Powerful Prayer I Ever Heard

Katie and I were out of answers.

We had done everything we could think to do, but still our foster son was out of control.  We knew that foster care wouldn't be easy, but neither of us expected it to be this hard.

Photo Credit: Jesslee Cuizon (creative commons)

One Sunday during the altar call I went forward to pray with the pastor. I explained to him the emotional anguish our son was experiencing and his resultant destructive behavior. Then we kneeled to pray.

I expected him to pray like I had been praying: to ask for healing for our foster son, to ask God to give us wisdom, patience, and solutions to our problems.

But he didn’t.

He may have said a few of those things, but there was one thing he prayed that was so powerful, I can’t even remember anything else. It was four words:

How Joseph Was Able to Resist Potiphar’s Smoking Hot Wife

It's the classic interview question:

Where do you see yourself in five years?

Before the employer hires you, he wants to know where you are headed. If you tell him that you see yourself in Seattle on a house boat whale watching, but you're applying for a job in Ohio, he's probably not going to hire you.

He wants you long term, not just for a year or two.

More importantly though, the answer to that question also reveals what's important to you.

You Need A Vision

Even if you're not prepping for a job interview, you should still ponder the answer to this question. If you don't clarify in which direction you want to go you will either be stuck in one place, or even worse: you will move in the direction someone else wants you to go.

Even Superheroes Need Jesus

No matter how awesome you are, I bet you're not as awesome as a superhero.

You probably can't leap entire buildings in a single bound. You don't have telepathic powers. You probably can't hit a two-meter-wide thermal exhaust port with your targeting computer turned off.

Yet as great as superheroes are, they have flaws too.


"Can you wipe out that much red?"

In The Avengers Natasha Romanoff, AKA the Black Widow, tells the story of how Hawkeye spared her life when he was charged with her execution. Now it was Hawkeye, under the spell of Loki, who needed saving. So Black Widow inquires of the villain how to free him from the spell.

Loki chalks this gesture up to sentimentality, but Black Widow says, "It's really not that complicated. I've got red in my ledger, and I'd like to wipe it out."

In response Loki asks her, "Can you? Can you wipe out that much red?" To the dismay of Natasha, he then begins to list off all of the horrific things she did before joining S.H.I.E.L.D.

The normally thick-skinned spy is brought to tears, because she knows that Loki is right. She can never make up for all of the bad things she did in the past (even though she tries).

Our stories are very similar. No matter how awesome we are, no matter how much good we do, we all have red in our ledgers—negative balances in our karmic bank accounts. Though we may not have murdered innocent people, we have all done things we regret—things we know were wrong. We are all liars, thieves, adulterers, and backstabbers:

Indeed, there is no one on earth who is righteous, no one who does what is right and never sins. Ecclesiastes 7:20

And no matter how hard we may try, we cannot make up for the evil we have committed.

Depressing story, right? But there is a more excellent way.

The Real Reason You Feel Incomplete

Admit it.

Sometimes you feel like something's missing. You feel like there's something or someone out there that will make you feel whole.

Tower of Babel by Pieter Bruegel the Elder

You can't really pinpoint it, but you feel it; you feel incomplete.


We Are Unfinished

Have you ever heard a musical scale?

Listen to one where I stop on the seventh note of a C Major:

Doesn't it sound weird? That last note is begging to be resolved by the eighth and final note of the scale.

Listen to it again, but this time I'll finish it out.

Do you hear how the eighth note releases the tension with the completion of the scale?

Humans are just like that penultimate note in the scale.

So You Want to Stop Sinning?

I wasn't sure I could make it home.

Of course, I hadn't wanted to go to the doctor in the first place. I assumed it was a bad cold, and we all know there’s no cure for that, right? What could I do but treat the symptoms and let it run its course?

The only thing I'd get out a trip to the doctor was a co-pay.

But as I started to feel worse, I decided to go to an urgent care clinic just in case.

By the time I made it back to the examination room, all I could feel was my head and my joints pulsating with every heartbeat. I had to lie down to keep from passing out.

I could barely sit up when the doctor came in.

Why Wearing Deodorant Is Biblical

God says to sacrifice burnt offerings as “an aroma pleasing to the LORD” dozens of times in the Old Testament (Numbers 29:8 for example).

We no longer have to sacrifice animals under the New Covenant, but Romans 12:1 tells us to “offer [our] bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God.”

So if sacrifices give off a pleasing aroma, and we are supposed to be a living sacrifice, that means we should smell good, right?

Wear deodorant. Take a shower.

For God’s sake.

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Is the Fourth Commandment Still Relevant?

The word “Sabbath” appears ninety-six times in the Old Testament.

That might not seem like that much, but consider this:

The words “repent” and “forgive” (or any form of these words) combined only appear eighty-three times in the same space.