Blog | Perils And Pearls

Welcome to my blog: Perils and Pearls

My heart's desire in this endeavor is to offer support and encouragement to the hearts' of women. That you would feel accompanied - not alone - as we travel together and find the jewels in our sometimes perilous journeys.

Jul 11, 20234 min read

Singing Prayers: Singing Them Thru

My last post – Standing in the Gap – was about intercessory prayer. Specifically, as I have experienced it, it is praying as someone, rather than for someone. It is a powerful form of laying down your life for another, of agape love. And I have experienced the deep joy of being the receiver of such prayer as well as playing that role for others.

If you have been reading my posts, or if you perused the pages of my Perils and Pearls blogsite, you know that music is integral in my experience of faith, God, and life in general.

I have a music page on my site for sharing the tunes and lyrics that move me. The name I gave that page is Sing My Way Thru, which accurately articulates how music is essential in my journey, and it has always been a primary channel of expression for me – that includes, singing prayers, or intercessory worship.

Music with a meaningful message can pull me through the toughest of times, as well as become an outlet for expressing my gratitude or joy.

It is also a means of supporting others for me. When I sing prayers for others, (many times it is scripture put to music), I am holding up their weary arms to God as they wait on Him to hear and answer their heart’s cry. I’m singing them thru.

I shared in my last post how it took time to learn and grow comfortable in praying for others, and then experiencing what it is to intercede for another. But what came more naturally for me, was finding prayers in (sacred) music.

As an Enneagram Practitioner, I believe that each of us identify, albeit uniquely, with one of the nine Enneagram Types; and likewise, I believe we are unique in the channel(s) of communion with God in which we are most comfortable.

Some people, like me, find an easy flow with using faith-filled music for relating our emotions and cares to God, and hearing His voice. Others prefer scripture reading and meditation as their go-to communication channel. While there are other faith-followers who feel closest to God in silence, or being in nature. I love picturing God being delighted by whichever channels each of us feels comfortable with in communing with Him!

When I enter God’s presence through worship music, someone may come to mind who is experiencing something similar to the writer of the song. I then picture the person singing this song, this expression of their heart cry, to God. Just as in intercessory prayer, I am singing as the person, rather than for the person. I am supporting them by singing prayers, or intercessory worship, pleading their case to God in their stead, through the message of the song lyrics.

My communion channel becomes my community channel!

I know I have felt the exhaustion – mind, body and soul - of a hard battle, or a long dark night, where my arms felt too weak to raise to Him. For instance, during over a decade of chronic pain, I had many times where the wear-down of the constancy and daily debilitation of pain brought me to doubting God’s goodness and good plan for me.

And yet faithfully, He would put my cause on someone else’s heart to pray, to lift my weary arms up; and upon hearing of their vital vigilance on my behalf, I would receive His reminder that He will never leave me nor forsake me – even when my feelings or fatigue tell me differently.

Here is a great story that creates a palpable word picture for the power of holding up the arms of another when they are in a battle of some kind and have grown weary:

Lifting up the arms of Moses – Exodus 17:8-13

The Amalekites came and attacked the Israelites at Rephidim. Moses said to Joshua, “Choose some of our men and go out to fight the Amalekites. Tomorrow I will stand on top of the hill with the staff of God in my hands.”

So Joshua fought the Amalekites as Moses had ordered, and Moses, Aaron and Hur went to the top of the hill. As long as Moses held up his hands, the Israelites were winning, but whenever he lowered his hands, the Amalekites were winning.

When Moses’ hands grew tired, they took a stone and put it under him, and he sat on it. Aaron and Hur held his hands up—one on one side, one on the other—so that his hands remained steady till sunset. So Joshua overcame the Amalekite army with the sword.

Thank you for allowing me to share an intimate part of my faith journey - the channels of communion and community that come easiest for me. I hope this and the last post have stirred your curiosity about the many modes we have for expressing and nurturing our relationship with God and our love for one another as we walk out our daily lives.

Wondering....Do you have an awareness of your go-to channel(s) for communing with God? Can you describe it? How might you develop it further?

Here’s a resource if you would like to explore this topic further: Sacred Pathways: Nine Ways to Connect with God (by Gary Thomas).

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Blessed to play a part ~

Jun 27, 20237 min read

Standing in The Gap

With that image at the top, you may be expecting something inside the topic of clothes shopping; and those who know me, know I do love to express myself through what I put on! But what I am excited to share with you is inside the topic of how we can support or love those in our lives: by standing in the gap for one another.

I did some googling and surprisingly, found several definitions for this phrase. The one that fits my usage here is:

To stand in the gap is to expose oneself for the protection of something (or someone); to make defense against any assailing danger; to take the place of a fallen defender or supporter.

ChatGPT answered the question of What is standing in the gap? with this:

To ‘stand in the gap’ for someone means to act as mediator or advocate on their behalf. It typically implies that the person standing in the gap is taking a position of responsibility and support for someone else, often in a difficult or challenging situation. This can be used in a variety of contexts, from religious or spiritual contexts, to more practical or everyday situations.

I’ll bet you have done this – many times – in your life for loved ones or a cause about whom or which you are passionate. Times when you took responsibility for the support of someone in crisis. Maybe you took meals to them, shopped for them, took them to appointments, cleaned their house, listened to them as they shared their pain, supported them financially...Maybe you did several of these acts of service for the same person(s)!

In the context of this blog post, I’d like to touch on the idea of prayer as one way of standing in the gap. This has been one of my top love languages to care for those God brings into my life. And - how precious the gift when someone who knows me, my heart, offers to lift up my causes to God on my behalf.

There are many types of prayer. I am not attempting a study of prayer in the small space of this post. But there is a specific type of prayer that is near and dear to my heart because I have experienced both sides of it – the giving and the receiving. I’m talking about intercessory prayer.

Once again, googling produced a plethora of definitions and concepts about intercessory prayer. I also did a cursory search in scripture on the topic. I’ll share just a few thoughts here...

My own initiation into this type of prayer came through a young moms’ group I was a part of when my kids were preschool-to-grade school age. We shared our zeal for learning more about God as well as our stage of life. We studied the topic of prayer together and then we practiced it as a group – standing in the gap for one another through prayer.

I can’t tell you how meaningful it was to know there were other moms praying for me, motivated by their own experiences of parental anxiousness, when my kids (and I) were up all night due to a high fever or a croupy cough. I felt seen, heard, known and cared for. I believe that tangible act of love – interceding on my behalf – got me through those early years of mothering.

Let me share one definition of intercession I found:

Pleading with one party on behalf of another, usually with a view to obtaining help for that other.

Another added this: Intercession implies, first, a distance between suffering believers and God that must be overcome and, second, a mediating party who bridges the gap.

So, you may be wondering, what is the difference between praying for someone versus interceding for them? Well, that doesn’t have a short answer, if you want a comprehensive one. It would be a worthy topic for study. There are dozens of scriptures that refer to prayers and intercessions as two distinct forms; and many books written on the topic of types of prayer.

One easy-to-grasp distinction that I found to ring true is in the duration. That is to say, we can pray one prayer for someone, at one specific time, and will have fulfilled the practice of prayer. But, with intercessory prayer, it almost always goes on for a longer period of time – days, weeks, months...even years of lifting to God a person or situation for which or whom He has given us their burden.

It was as a young Christian woman, I began the journey of learning how to pray, which eventually led me to this practice of intercessory prayer. What I found to be helpful for me to distinguish this type of support prayer from general supplication, was to delineate this concept:

I can pray for someone, or as someone. Hmm...perhaps the former is prayer, and the latter is intercession.

Reflect with me on the initial definition I shared for standing in the gap – it included this phrase: to take the place of. That’s what I’m talking about here: to be in the stead of, whether in the form of beseeching or thanking – to take the place of another before God. It is in this posture I learned to ‘take on’ the concerns or gratitude/glad heart of the one I’m interceding for; perhaps not unlike an actor becomes their character. The prayer intent and wording take on a different intensity and focus. It becomes easier to separate my desires for this person from what may be God’s will for her or him.

Perhaps an example would help convey my thought here:

Let’s say a friend shares her concern about some bullying her son is describing going on at school. I can pray for the situation: Lord, You see Sarah’s anguish re: this situation at school involving her son. I ask You to intervene on Tommy’s behalf, change the heart of the one(s) doing the bullying, and bring Sarah peace...Thank You.

But what also could transpire: The Lord invites me to take on Sarah’s burden. To step into her shoes – take the place of her - and view this situation through her eyes, her mother’s heart. I might start by asking myself this: What would my prayer sound like if it were my son who was the object of the bullying? That prayer will be impassioned – and will go on until I see the change for which I am praying.

May I share one other definition and analogy re: what intercession or standing in the gap (or the breaches) can look like? Both of these passages are speaking of the role of intercessors:

Ezekiel 13:5

You have not gone up into the breaches, or built up a wall for the house of Israel, that it might stand in battle in the day of the Lord.

Isaiah 62:6-7

On your walls, O Jerusalem, I have set watchmen; all the day and all the night they shall never be silent. You who put the Lord in remembrance, take no rest, and give him no rest until he establishes Jerusalem and makes it a praise in the earth.

I found a beautiful wall analogy by Reverend Linda Smallwood, that creates a simple image to illustrate the role of standing in the gap through intercessory prayer:

The word "intercede" comes from the Latin "inter" meaning "between" and "ced" meaning "go". So it literally means "go between".

(Now) think of a brick wall, in particular, the mortar in the joints between the bricks. That mortar "goes between", or "intercedes", between the bricks to bind them together and strengthen them. Without the mortar "going between" the bricks, the wall would collapse.

So when I intercede for another, my intercessory prayer is the mortar filling in those gaps = strengthening their spiritual wall for whatever battle they are or were in. I like that analogy; I can grasp that image.

There is so much more to say, and scriptures to dig into, about this powerful form of love through intercessory prayer...Such as: God sent Jesus to be our Once-&-Forever-Intercessor – first by taking our place on the cross (Isaiah 53); then after His resurrection, promising to forever intercede on our behalf with His (and our) Father. (Romans 8:34; Hebrews 7:25)

No one has a love greater than this, to lay down your life for your friends. John 15:13

There are an endless number of ways we can lay down our life for another, to stand in the gap as a form of loving them. Perhaps praying for others is one of your go-to ways of loving, or maybe your heart gets expressed through other venues or acts of service. Whatever the expression, our joy is sure to be full when we respond to an invitation from God to be used in His intervention in or pursuit of another’s heart and wellbeing.

[*Stay tuned! Intercessory Worship? ...In my next post.]

Might you consider...

What feelings, memories, images come up when you think about the topic of prayer?

Have you had someone in your life who has been an intercessor on your behalf? How did it feel to know another was spending their resources standing in the gap for you?

Maybe there are other ways that come easily for you re: standing in the gap for others. Can you think of one or two? What do you experience when you get to play a role in supporting another’s journey?

Blessed to play a part ~

Jun 5, 20235 min read

Arrow-dynamics

Have I stirred your curiosity with the image and title? I hope so, because the principle I am sharing in this post is a very crucial part of my faith journey foundation, and I hope it will become a tool for your journey as well. It represents my belief re: God’s work in my life, (*See note at end of post.), illustrated in one image. I am excited about the potential for this to be an aha for you, as it was for me many years ago – and continues to serve as a vital (re)orientation point for me.

When I was starting up my Life Coach practice, some eighteen years ago, I repeatedly found myself trying to distill the process of God making us new – to rightly reflect Him - down to one image of the lifelong, macro process for my Christian clients (and myself). And then the answer came...the visual that made it clear and straightforward: an arrow that starts with the ‘old self’ on the left end, and then moves towards the right end where ‘new self’ resides.

Take a look...

Let’s look at the different points on the arrow:

The first spot identified on the left end is not a passive point. I have to connect with what God wants to do – He wants me to choose His transformation process. He is waiting to hear my ‘yes.’ If He doesn’t, He is faithful to continue pursuing me! (Genesis 3:8-9; Lk 15:11-30)

Right after the ‘yes,’ I must surrender to His process, which means I am going to cooperate with whatever He brings to light, whatever He wants to change or remold. This is also the point where the specifics of what He is after – what He wants to transform in me – becomes known to me, to the point that I can put words to it- a misconception about Him, me, others, the world. In other words, something from my old way of doing, seeing or being (my false self) that He wants to make new (my true self). (2Corinthians 5:17; Isaiah 43:19)

Next, I will most assuredly feel like this false way of mine is everywhere I turn! Now that my eyes have been opened to it, I can’t not see its pervasiveness! Ugh...I guess I need this apparent inundation to really commit to the process of moving to a new, better way. (Romans 7:18-19)

Out on a limb is just what it feels like at this point on the arrow: I am in liminal space – between the old and new. I am disgusted at how much I see the false pattern at work, but don’t feel like I can quite pull the new way into focus. (See Romans 7 again!)

But, as I stick to my commitment to His process, I realize I am at the point of no return – the old way is no longer acceptable to me; it no longer serves me (even if it had served or saved or protected me previously, maybe in my formative years.) (Philippians 3:13-14)

Then, blessed is the day when for the first time, I actually notice and identify a NEW response coming out of me! Something truer, more generous – towards myself and others – comes out, instead of something inauthentic, destructive/self-destructive, defensive, selfish or uncharitable. I may even be able to start identifying my true self being expressed and feel the fullness of joy when I am being used by God in the lives of others! (2Corinthians 9:6-8; 1Peter 4:10-11)

But this next point is probably my favorite spot on the arrow: It starts as one single person makes a comment about what seems different about you, your response to something. And then it grows to a few people noticing a change...mmm. That’s the affirmation of His transformative work in me! And it is not short-lived, nor is it self-improvement. It is true change by His Spirit at work in me, just as He promises. (Philippians 2:13; Ephesians 2:8-9)

Eventually, after life brings more opportunities to work on upping my batting average, the new pattern will feel more natural. But I also have found that if the stress is turned up enough, or if the situation is a perfect storm of triggers for me, I can still fall make into the old pattern, the false self. That will always keep me humble. (2Corinthians 12:1-10)

...And then, there’s always the next old pattern to lead me back to the left end of the arrow, where again, God awaits my ‘yes’ to cooperate with His process of making me into the one He sees when He looks at me: who He created me to be, my true self.

You may be thinking: Ok, so what can I gain from awareness of this Transformation Process?

• Encouragement

• Accountability

• Conscious cooperation with God

• Seeing purpose in pain

I believe, if I have a Christian Worldview, I should be somewhere on the arrow all the time. This is how real change in me happens – not by self-improvement, but by the Potter's remolding of the clay (Jeremiah 18) – the continual process of becoming who He created me to be, reflecting that unique part of His character with which He imbued me before I was even conceived. (Psalm 139)

May I invite you to think about...?

Which of the points on the arrow can you identify with in your life now and/or in a previous season?

Where are you right now re: His transformation process? What misconception or false pattern may He be opening your eyes to?

What do you need to see, release, or invite for transformation in this moment or situation?

[*Note re: opening paragraph: I didn’t say God’s work in all believers’ lives or in your life. That’s an important distinction for me. I am very sensitive to and intentional about not making my experience into doctrine. How I have experienced God and His work in my life is personal- a personal experience, not a preachable doctrine. I believe the promises of His Word are true and unalterable; but how He demonstrates or makes good on His promises is as individually unique as He has created each of us.]

Blessed to play a part ~