The Kingdom, The Kids, & The Cowboys

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Category: Prayer (Page 1 of 30)

Open the Curtains!

April 16, 2026 / / 0 Comments

I believe God calls us to regular and serious self-examination, but my experience with this is that serious self-examination can be both difficult and dangerous. It’s very easy for the enemy to turn my thoughts against me. I avoid silence and solitude–just me and our Lord–because of what gets very quickly revealed about me and my soul. I find it easier to pray about others and minister to others and work harder and produce more than to deal with my own stuff. It’s better when I remember that the enemy is a big fat liar. But I do struggle with this.

Introspection and self-reflection is hard. It can be confusing, maybe even chaotic. Are these gifts from God or is it arrogance? Am I passionate or am I a bully? How mixed are my motives? Am I really making any kind of a difference in our church? Is my own level of discipleship to Jesus too inconsistent to be a preacher? Man, I can get twisted up inside myself pretty fast.

Thomas Chalmers, a 19th century Scottish pastor and theologian compared self-examination to walking into and sitting in a dark room. You can’t see what’s inside the room because the room is dark. So how do you see? How do you brighten the room? Not by straining your eyes or looking harder. Not by sitting longer in the dark and taking more time. Not by squinting. Not by concentrating.

You can’t see yourself more clearly just by focusing more intently on yourself.

Chalmers says you must go to the window and open up the curtains! Let the light of Christ, he says, break into the darkness of whatever’s going on in your soul. And Chalmers says the light is the Word of God.

“If we derive no good from the work of self-examination, because we find that all is confusion and mistiness within, then let us go forth upon the truths which are from without, and these will pour a flood of light into all the mazes and intricacies of your soul, and at length will render that work easy, which before was impossible.”

Self-reflection is difficult and dangerous. Don’t attempt it without soaking in the sunshine of God’s Word. Listen to the voice of the Lord. Learn to look more at Christ than at yourself. You’re not changed by focusing on yourself, but by focusing on Jesus.

God knows the very worst about you, and he still loves you. He does not deal with us according to our sins. He promises that if we confess, he will forgive us and cleanse us and transform us. You must be secure in the love of God for you before any self-examination can be confident or fruitful. Know how precious and honored you are in God’s sight, know the glory of who you are in Jesus, know the guaranteed future you have with God in Christ. Remember that God is for you!

Now.

Now you can identify where God is at work in you. Now you can keep going with the assurance that he who began a good work in you will bring it to completion.
Now I can identify where God is at work in me. Now I can keep going with the assurance that he who began a good work in me will bring it to completion.

This post is more about me than you. Let’s both try to be better at this.

Peace,
Allan

To the God of Peace

March 3, 2026 / / 0 Comments

To the God of Peace, in the name of the Prince of Peace,
We ask you to bring your peace to this world.
We pray for your peace in Iran, in Israel, and for us in the United States.

We pray in the name of the Prince of Peace,
who came to this earth to obliterate everything that separates us from you
and from one another,
to bring your peace to this world.

We pray for protection for the soldiers
and their families
in Iran, in Israel, and in the United States.
We pray for safety,
for comfort,
and for calm.

We pray for those who are disproportionately affected by war:
the innocent children,
the abandoned women,
the defenseless elderly,
the immigrants without a home,
and the poor.
These dwell in the center of your heart, Father;
these are the ones you command we protect and love.
We pray for them, O God of Peace.
Protect them.
Provide for them.

We pray that those in charge in Iran, in Israel, and in the United States
would cease their wars.
We pray for armies to put down their weapons.
We pray for the killing to stop.
We pray for an end to greed, anger, and the lust for power and control.
And we pray that your Holy Spirit would bring all things and all people
in heaven and on earth
together,
as is the stated mission and will of you, our God, and your everlasting Kingdom.

To the God of Peace, in the name of the Prince of Peace.
To his eternal glory and praise.

Peace.

 

Together 4 Midland

February 22, 2026 / / 0 Comments

I’m still in awe of the grace of God that he would allow us to experience together what we experienced at the “4 Midland” Ash Wednesday service at First Baptist. Our Christian brothers and sisters from all four churches–First Baptist, First Methodist, First Presbyterian, and GCR CofC–worshiped together, sang and prayed together, confessed our sins and repented together, administered and received ashes together, and entered the Christian season of Lent. Together.

How beautiful. How powerful. What a blessing. An honor. What a generous gift of God’s grace.

 

 

 

 

 

The sanctuary was packed with what seemed to be a fairly equal number of us from each of our four congregations. I always joke to GCR that “it’s not a competition; but we want to win.” No, we were all pretty evenly represented Wednesday. And while my brother Darin, the pastor at First Baptist, worries that they just don’t have the chops when it comes to traditional Christian liturgy, they definitely have the music covered. My goodness, the orchestra! And the 85-member choir made up of the choirs and worship teams from all four churches!

It’s a glorious thing when God’s children can put aside their denominational differences to worship and serve together as the one Body of Christ. It’s an undeniable testimony to our community and a tremendous blessing for us. And it’s one way to physically answer the prayer of our Lord.

 

 

 

 

 

I always offer to take our GCR youth group out for ice cream after the 4 Midland Ash Wednesday service. I don’t know how appropriate it is to eat ice cream immediately after entering a season of prayer and fasting, but it gets our kids to the service and it gives me an opportunity to hang out with the coolest youth group on the planet. And, yeah, they are the best.

Over the past dozen years or so, Ash Wednesday has become a vital part of my walk with Christ, an indispensable move in the rhythms that guide my discipleship. I hope it’s that way for you, too. We’re following our Lord now to the cross, to the tomb, and then out of that empty grave. But the journey begins with this season of confession and repentance, reflection and transformation, fasting and prayer. What a gift from God that, for us, it begins with four Midland churches. Together.

Peace,

Allan

Praying on Mission

January 30, 2026 / / 0 Comments

Interesting tidbit to begin this post. Eight teams qualified for the divisional round of the NFL playoffs this year: Rams, Seahawks, Bears, Pats, Broncos, Texans, ‘Niners, and Bills. Seven of the eight quarterbacks who started those games weren’t even born the last time the Cowboys won a divisional playoff game! The lone gray-hair, Matthew Stafford, was seven-years-old in January 1996–a cute little 2nd grader in Highland Park with a Troy Aikman jersey. Sam Darnold, the starting quarterback for Seattle in next Sunday’s Super Bowl, wasn’t born the last time the Cowboys made it to the postseason’s third week–and he’s already played for five NFL teams!

This 30-year drought is moving out of the realm of a generational thing and into oblivion.

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In Ephesians 3, the apostle Paul prays this beautiful prayer for the church. He prays about transformation, that God may strengthen you with power through his Spirit in your inner being, that Christ may dwell in your hearts, that the church may be rooted and established in love, that we would have power together with all the saints to grasp the love of Christ, to know the love of Christ, to be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God.

“Now to him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to his power that is at work within us, to him be glory in the Church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, for ever and ever! Amen!” ~Ephesians 3:20-21

The prayer is for God to do a whole lot, for God to do incredible and unimaginable things with his power that is at work in the Church. This prayer is not a wide-open request for God to demonstrate his power in random ways. This is a specific request for God to act in spectacular ways through us, through his Church. The transforming power of God belongs to us. So, we’re not asking God to do great things while we sit in the pews and wait on it. And study it. And talk about it. And agree that it’s good. The Kingdom of God is not a matter of talk, but of power!

In Matthew 9, Jesus tells his followers to pray for workers to send to the fields. Pray about it. This is what we want the Father to do: raise up workers. Then in the very next verse–one verse!–he’s giving them the authority and giving them the power and sending them into the fields to do the work! Have you ever noticed that?

Be careful when you pray. The answer to your prayer might be God moving you into his mission.

If you pray for God to use your church, or to work through your church, you’d better be prepared to get off your pew and into the mission. If you pray for the hungry and the sick, if you pray for God’s will to be done in your town just as it is in heaven, you’d better open your eyes, your ears, and your heart to how God wants to work through you to do it.

Peace,
Allan

 

People of His Light

December 10, 2025 / / 0 Comments

I am posting a prayer by Walter Brueggemann that is blessing me tremendously this week. I pray it blesses you, too.

WE are still people in the dark,
and the darkness looms large around us,
beset as we are by fear,
anxiety,
brutality,
violence,
loss–
a dozen alienations that we cannot manage.

WE are–we could be–people of your light.
So we pray for the light of your glorious presence
as we wait for your appearing;
we pray for the light of your wondrous grace
as we exhaust our coping capacity;
we pray for your gift of newness
that will override our weariness;
we pray that we may see and know and hear and trust
in your good rule.

That we may have energy, courage, and freedom
to enact your rule through the demands of this hour.
We submit this time to you and to your rule,
with deep joy
and high hope.

Amen.

Blessing a Minister

September 9, 2025 / / 0 Comments

The boys turned two months old yesterday and they are still awesome. In fact, I think they might be a little awesomer.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Once a month, our ministry team here at GCR spends a whole morning together at my house. We eat breakfast, spend some important time in Word and Prayer, check in with each other, and then take an hour and a half or so planning whatever needs to be planned and deciding whatever needs to be decided. Yesterday, after some honest reflection together on that enormous canyon in Nowen’s prayer (see yesterday’s post), we went around the circle and blessed one another with these words from 2 Thessalonians 2:13-17.

If you are wondering how to encourage one of your ministers or elders at your church, I would suggest sending him or her a note with these words, inserting her or his name in the blank. Remind him that, no matter what he’s enduring at the moment, he is loved by God. Remind her that, no matter what she feels, she is chosen by God. Tell him he is called by God. Tell her she shares in the glory of Christ. Bless them with the holy words of Scripture.

I thank God for you, ____________, loved by the Lord, because from the beginning God chose you to be saved through the sanctifying work of the Spirit and through your belief in the truth.

He called you to this, this ministry, this church, through the Gospel, that you might share in the glory of our Lord Jesus Christ.

So then, ____________, stand firm and hold to the teachings.

May our Lord Jesus Christ himself and God our Father, who loved you and by his grace gave you eternal encouragement and good hope, encourage your heart and strengthen you in every good deed and word.

Amen.

I can assure you by my own experience, these are powerful words that mean the world coming from someone you really love.

Peace,
Allan

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