Stretch Me. Ruin Me. Heal Me.

Remember January? I do. Every year for the past five years I've been doing the One Year Bible Reading. I've been a little slack on keeping up on the exact date in my One Year Bible... but I have been reading lots of other scriptures to make up for it. So, I won't have read the entire Bible this year like I have the past four years... but I have been doing my regular praying.

Every year I come up with a short prayer to start my day with. In this article I shared what my prayer for 2009 was. After reading the book IT by Craig Groeschel I followed his advice and have been praying every day that God would stretch me, ruin me and heal me! And boy oh boy has he ever been doing an awesome job of that! :-)

I feel like God has taught me SOOOO much this past year. He's been teaching me so much about following him, about being a husband, about being a father and about being a Pastor. I'm definitely far from perfect (I can hear you're shouts of AMEN from here!) but I'm trusting God more and more that he is going to continue to do everything that he wants to accomplish in me and through me!

God continue to stretch me beyond myself. Continue to ruin the things in me that keep me from following you completely. And heal in me the wrong attitudes and emotions that prevent me from loving you with my whole being and loving everyone around me as myself!

Comments

DuaneA said…
Stretch me, ruin me, heal me. Those are 6 simple words that make one powerful prayer. I've personally been walking through some of that myself and I can identify with what you've shared in your post. I was recently talking with another pastor friend of mine about some of these issues. I told him that the process of God changing me is sometimes quite painful, yet my prayer is, Lord please don't stop.
Stretch me? Yea, I got that going on. Ruin me? The closer I look... the more I'm thinking that I was ruined already and God just needed to reveal it. Heal me? Oh yea... that is what I'm in need of. And there is a peace inside that's whispering, that healing is coming.
12:58 AM
samthemacman said…
Whenever we create our "belief box" and assume we "know" God, God has a way of breaking the box, usually through crisis points in our lives, adversity, and trial, only to whisper in our ear, "You cannot contain Me. Each time you create a box, to box me in, I will break out of that box, and through that, you will continue to discover My heart and My passion. Embrace the hard places, for I am found in those places!"
10:53 PM
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Practical Atheist

Image
Over the past few weeks our church has been doing a preaching series called Practical Atheist. This is based on the book The Christian Atheist by Pastor Craig Groeschel. I've been blown away by how God has worked in the hearts of so many people over the past few weeks. Mind you, I guess I shouldn't be surprised. Pastor Craig's ministry has had such a huge influence on my personal walk with Jesus so just is just a continuation of that blessing. This week we're probably going to hit the hardest topic for me to preach on, I Believe in God but I Pursue Happiness at All Costs. I'm going to be using Jesus' parable of the sower and look at how our pursuit of happiness causes us to miss out on truly how God wants from our lives. This topic hits me right between the eyes as I'm being open and honest with God about what allow to be entertainment or how I go about trying to be happy. Do I allow myself to be entertained by sin? Do I pursue the world's view
Read more

Revitalized Pastors and Leaders

Image
On March 15, 2023, the Barna Research Group released the "The Resilient Pastor Initiative". Its goal was to explore and share the state of pastors in America in the post-COVID climate we find ourselves in. According to the data, the state of pastors may not be as good as it appears from behind the pulpit. From 2015 to 2022 Barna notes the following where pastors responded "Excellent" in a number of categories: Spiritual well-being dropped from 37% to 14% Physical well-being fell from 24% to 9% Mental and emotional health plummeted from 39% to 11% The overall quality of life dipped from 42% to 18% The level of respect they felt from the community tanked from 22% to 10% Level of ‘true friends’ dropped by 50% from 34% to 17% The data also showed that this drop in wellness was more prevalent in younger pastors! Older pastors are riding it out to retirement. Now, before anyone from my church begins to panic, I'm OK. As shared in a blog post from January 2023 entitled
Read more

The Worship of our Worship

Image
  Every once and a while an idea pops into my head that I just can't shake. It keeps me up at night. It consumes my waking hours. It turns around and around in my head. It shows up in my dreams. It starts coming up in more and more conversations. I pray that God would just get rid of this idea because I know a lot of church people are not going to like what I have to say. This doesn't happen to me often. When it does, it's usually because I need to get this out of my head and into the world. Because I always find that I'm never alone. Others have been wrestling with the exact same idea.  I don't put this out to be confrontational or to cause division. I write this as a simple man who loves Jesus, who trusts in the teachings of Scripture, who tries hard to listen to the Holy Spirit for guidance, and who has been pastoring a local church for 14 years. What Started It Recently I heard the current COVID-19 pandemic's impact on the Christian Church compared to the Ba
Read more