Crazy Faith. We live in a world that can seem unfriendly to followers of Christ. Our Lord is aware of this and he knew that we, as Christ-like individuals need to be resilient and spiritually tough. In the parable regarding the persistence of the widow in both Matthew and Luke, Jesus demonstrates that this spiritual resilience is entirely the product of prayer. Unlike Jesus’ other parables, the main lesson of this one is that God wants us to pray and not give up, or lose heart!

“Losing heart” is a product of the weariness that comes from possibly living in a sinful, and sometimes hostile world. We may be tempted to lose heart because of the injustice we see all around us. Sometimes we consider just throwing in the towel, when we are mistreated or misunderstood. And other times, we can grow weary when we face negative circumstances beyond our control. Prayer is not something that we are permitted to do, or something that we ought to do. Prayer is something that we must do if we are to maintain a courageous, unwavering faith in a rapidly-deteriorating world.

Don’t get me wrong. There are many things that we should be grateful for. Yet there are still some things that may seem out of our control! Prayer is the only answer. When I can’t do it for myself, I have to leave it at the footsteps of our Heavenly Father. And never cease believing that He is working it out on my behalf! Crazy faith, maybe. But why not? Crazy is what makes others pay attention, and our God can handle all our “beyond crazy” prayers!

“In a certain town there was a judge who neither feared God nor cared what people thought. And there was a widow in that town who kept coming to him with the plea, ‘Grant me justice against my adversary.’ “For some time he refused. But finally he said to himself, ‘Even though I don’t fear God or care what people think, yet because this widow keeps bothering me, I will see that she gets justice, so that she won’t eventually come and attack me!’ ” Luke‬ ‭18‬:‭2‬-‭5‬ ‭

Dream Factory. There isn’t a person alive who hasn’t had a dream. We all imagine of what we want for our lives, the hopes we have for our future, and the dreams we truly desire. The creator of Atari video games, Nolan Bushnell really captures the essence of dreamers. “Everyone who’s ever taken a shower has had an idea. It’s the person who gets out of the shower, dries off, and does something about it who makes a difference.”

When my husband George and I started attending Bayside Church in 1999, we wanted to jump in, head first. We attended a “Get to Know Your Church – 101.” It introduced us to the various ministries available at Bayside. As we walked around, we saw a sign “Adventure Sports.” That was right up our alley. As we sat down, we met the Dream Factory of this ministry and pastor, Greg Weisman. He believed that he could connect with people outside of church in God’s creation, and through relationships and sports, he would bring this flock of people, many unbelievers to Christ. Greg’s idea but Gods’ dream. And so it was birthed. To this day, more than 25 years later, Adventure Sports is still going strong. I can only imagine how many unchurched people have been brought through such a back door. Bravo Greg, and thank you for allowing me to be a small part of this unique, yet God-honoring ministry.

When we have visions, and especially God-inspired dreams, it is up to us to make them come to life. By journaling, we can capture those thoughts and then, take the plunge. Most definitely it will take commitment, grit and determination, but doesn’t anything great require that! So start dreaming, be courageous and then, let God take the lead.

“Take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ” 2 Corinthians 10:5

One God-idea. Have you ever had a thought or plan you needed clarification with? Maybe you desired something so deeply, but just didn’t know how to start! I sure have, and that’s when a God-idea was born.

About ten years ago, I started my long-distance hiking career. I call it a career because it took over much of my free time. Prior to this, I would bring a paper journal and as I hiked to and fro, I would jot down my thoughts. Once back home, those writings were tucked away in some dusty closet and that was the end of it. No one read them, honestly not even me! But as I prepared for my first thru-hike, a friend of mine from church, suggested I started blogging. I wasn’t even sure if I knew what a blog was? Once I understood blog postings, I required a domain name. Lord, if I write a blog, how will I get others to read it? How can I glorify you? As clear as day, he told me I will hike with you and they will come. Really? I went online and was able to purchase the domain name “Kelly hikes for God.” The fact that the name was available was a gift from God. Truly what this platform allowed me to do, was to glorify the Lord in my writings, and bring others to Him.

Weekly, I would write about the lessons that the Lord was teaching me. I was learning so much about His love and grace, especially towards myself. He introduced me to the most beautiful people along the way, including wonderful Trail Angels that supported me and others. The Lord opened doors for me to speak about his love to hikers and many on the trail.

This was a post from my blog in August 2015 while hiking the PCT: “As I finished the last half of Oregon solo, I began to wonder if I was suppose to be out here? The Lord brought me Kathleen and Dwayne from Walla Walla, on my birthday no less, to minister to me. Kathleen prayed over me, prayed for my protection and comfort and reinforced that I was indeed, where God wanted me to be.” I didn’t have my family with me but I found brothers and sisters on the trail because of this bigger than life God-idea!

In the book Draw the Circle Mark Batterson states “one God-idea is worth more than a thousand good ideas. Good ideas are good, but only God-ideas change the course of history.” When we lean onto the Lord, and spend time with Him, we can see what God sees! And that changes us, which in turn, changes lives!

“But ask the animals, and they will teach you, or the birds in the sky, and they will tell you; or speak to the earth, and it will teach you, or let the fish in the sea inform you.” Job‬ ‭12‬:‭7‬-‭8‬ ‭

Put on waders. What is this all about? Let me unpack this idea. Think about Noah. Talk about an ordinary man with an extraordinary amount of faith. From my limited knowledge, rain wasn’t even a thing. But here this Man of Faith is building an ark, for an event that has not happened. There has never been a drop of rain, let alone a flood that will cover every inch of land, springs exploding with furry and every river overflowing its banks. This sounds like a movie scene, and was it ever! Noah built this Ark exactly as he was commanded, and God did the rest. Two-by-two every animal, great and small, approached and then, entered the ark, following the Lords’ urging. Think about that. Even the animals listened! They did not deny God’s presence, did not question His authority but followed his lead. Talk about faith.

As Jesus said, all we need is the faith of a mustard seed. That’s the absolutely smallest, tiniest seed in nature, yet produces one of the largest crops! Some plants grow as tall as 12 feet. I’m thinking what the Lord is asking of us is, why not dream? Why do we limit ourselves to small box items when He has big box opportunities for us! All we need to do is take a leap of faith, step into the water and let God be God.

“Because you have so little faith. Truly I tell you, if you have faith as small as a mustard seed, you can say to this mountain, ‘Move from here to there,’ and it will move. Nothing will be impossible for you.””
‭‭Matthew‬ ‭17‬:‭20‬ ‭

Shameless audacity. So really, how grand is our God? Can He handle our big audacious prayer requests? I’m talking about the ones that move mountains. Can my dear friend’s husbands’ forgetfulness be repaired? How about my adopted daughter’s gut, can that be healed after months of severe damage? Can that job that I’ve been dreaming of for years, finally come to fruition? What about the Prodigal Son who has walked away from you Lord and struggles with drug addiction and mental illness, can you help him? These are huge requests Jesus! Can you truly move mountains to answer these kind of prayers? Or should I just keep them to myself? It is written, God wants us to ask him anything and everything, so He can truly show His glory.

So many times I think about the prayers I don’t send up to heaven. I remember an Evangelist who came to our church years ago. She shared a tale of a man who kept to himself. Maybe a hermit or an extreme introvert. Whatever he was or was not, he said he loved the Lord, yet never shared much with him. As time went on, he became severely ill. During his illness, at no time did he ever ask the Lord to heal him, or give him relief from his constant pain. Not ever did he ask Jesus to send him someone to take care of his failing body. As time took its toll, he began to lose consciousness and fell into a vivid dream. He had died and arrived in heaven. As he approached the throne of God, he asked the Lord where were you? God explained that He was always with him, sitting and waiting for a single request, but never heard one. Then the man asked, but what about these presents? Who are all those gifts for? God said in his soft, quiet voice, those gifts were intended for you. If you only knew, the love I have for you. It is more than immeasurable. Suddenly, he woke up and cried to the Lord. Father, I am so sorry. If only I would have asked!

How many times have we considered keeping our prayers under wrap? What a shame it would be, to be at the feet of Jesus with countless gifts. Oh Lord, I want all that you have planned for me. Every revelation, every miracle, every good gift that you planned for my life. Please let me humble myself so I don’t neglect your best for me.

“Every good and perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of the heavenly lights, who does not change like shifting shadows.” James‬ ‭1‬:‭17‬ ‭

Write it down. Oh this speaks volumes to my heart. The Lord knows that we are, at times, forgetful. And unfortunately our tendency is to remember bad deeds but have lousy recall when it comes to good things.

I remember a friend of mine invited me to be in her inner circle of friends. Okay, I’ll bite. What does it entail besides being a good friend? Ends up that she taught me many lessons. One was on her 50th Birthday. She invited this Inner Circle of Friends and had all of us dress in white. When we arrived, she had a professional photographer who took glamour shots of all of us. This is your birthday Nanhee, not mine. But she insisted. Then she had us write ten things down that we hoped to come true in the upcoming ten years. Hmm, and place it inside her time capsule. Sure enough, ten years later I went to her 60th Birthday and she pulled out the Time Capsule with all our prayers, hopes and dreams. I had totally forgot about this. And wow, did the Lord answer my prayers. A total of eight times. 8/10 requests were met, which I had zero independent recollection of. It was such a great lesson on memory recall or lack of it in my case, and God’s promises. Thank you Nanhee for reminding me of all those answered prayers!

I hope you have a friend, a prayer journal or someway to remind you of all the past prayers that you prayed so fervently for. It is ever so easy to go on with life and forget to acknowledge how the good Lord hears our daily petitions. Sometimes we receive a definitive yes, others not now, and there are prayers that are plainly not God’s will. The latter is always the hardest, but if we consider all the goodness, grace and gratitude that we accept from Jesus, this may just soften the hard answer of no. Thank you Jesus for your heart, and for the many answered prayers. Even the no’s and the ones I don’t remember.

“Write down the revelation and place it on a tablet” Habakkuk‬ ‭2‬:‭2‬ ‭

Don’t pray away. Such an interesting concept. Do we typically ask God, well let’s be real, plead to God to take this pain, this obstacle, this situation away. Rather than consider that God may be teaching us to hold onto hope, faith, acceptance, maybe even build a bit of perseverance, so that when this comes up again, and I’m sure it will, we will be better equipped to walk through it? Maybe He wants us to help someone else navigate an illness or a loss of a child or a messy divorce or who knows what? I can only speculate but golly, there have been too many times I wanted to get out, instead of getting through!

Take for instance my illustrious backpacking treks; the ones that always have some sort of pain, suffering and agony attached to them. Seriously, there is not a single trail that I have hiked that didn’t have some component to it that made me second guess my love for long-distance hiking. The Pacific Crest Trail was over five months and the last 200-300 miles was nothing but glorious rain and snow, in mid-September. Then the illustrious Appalachian Trail had much more mud, muck and rocks than I had signed up for! I kid you not, I was asking God why in the world and who was I to testify to? This sucks! Yet when I look back at these arduous months, the endless ribbons of dirt, I can assure you that the Lord was walking me through it daily! I seldom felt lonely or even scared, as most people seem to think a solo hiker would feel. At the end of each journey, I never said, “Lord why did you take me through that?” Rather I thank Him for each skinned knee, twisted ankle, punctured knee, and all the Poison Oak that I found along the way. Well, maybe not in regards to Poison Oak. That stuff is miserable!

In the end, I want to make sure I experience every bit of pain, suffering and discomfort that is needed for me to appreciate what is to come. Think of what you are experiencing right now, at this moment. Is there a purpose for it, is there a chance that instead of fighting it, you can lean into it? As Jesus was questioned in John 9 regarding the blind man, “Who sinned, this man or his parents?” Jesus set the record straight by saying what really was in play. “This happened so that the works of God might be displayed in him.” Isn’t that beautiful! I can only hope that as I am walking in whatever this world throws at me, instead of praying my way out of it, maybe I can redirect my prayers and ask God to walk me through it.

“The primary purpose of prayer is not to change circumstances; the primary purpose of prayer is to change us!” Mark Batterson author of Draw the Circle

Amazing things. What is the Lord up to? It’s easy to worry or be concerned by the world’s affairs. Wars, famine, floods, hurricanes, earthquakes, oh my. I could go on and on. But really, is this something that I have any control over? Thank goodness the resounding answer is no! Yet, so many of us, myself included, consume ourselves with things so out of our control. Why do we feel that we should cloud our minds with such things that only make us anxious? Today, all we truly need to trust, is that the Lord has a plan!

Our job is simple and actually quite painless, surrendering all of ourselves to be in God’s will. The word consecrate has many meanings but the one I lean on is letting God do for us what we can’t do for ourselves. It is a complete and utter surrender to Jesus, completely. Not just for one thing or one purpose, but for all things, big or small. So what does that look like, you may ask? Knowing that your perfect and wonderful Creator came to earth, to make all things right. To forgive us, to cancel our debts, to free us from the burden of guilt and shame. To set us apart and to know that we belong to Him!

Prayer is the action, the catalyst that allows us to let go. When we share, when we yell or scream, when we cry to the Lord, He is not offended. He is the one we can pour our heart out to, who honestly knows what we are going through, usually way before we even do. There is not an emotion or feeling that Jesus has not felt. He has been rejected, whipped, beaten and nailed to a cross, while his dearest disciple and friend, Peter rejected him. Not once but three times! This is an extreme illustration but when I consider what I have experienced in life, it makes me pause. How can I deny the love that has been given to me, way before I was even born? So surrender, Lord, I can do that!

“Consecrate yourselves, for tomorrow the Lord will do amazing things among you.”‭‭Joshua‬ ‭3‬:‭5‬ ‭

Established by God. I love this. It reminded me of the story of Job when God started questioning Job, his faithful follower.

“Who shut up the sea behind doors when it burst forth from the womb…Have you ever given orders to the morning, or shown the dawn its place, that it might take the earth by the edges and shake the wicked out of it?” Job‬ ‭38‬:‭8‬, 38:13‬‬‬. The Lord continued to provide a commentary of who He is, what He created, and reminds us of where we would be without Him. Lost!

Thank you God that you are in charge and I am not. So many times the plans I’ve made, are redirected by the Lord. I love the one sentence “In a Pit with a Lion on a Snowy Day” that states “God is in the business of strategically positioning us in the right place at the right time, but it’s up to us to see and seize those opportunities that are all around us all the time.” Countless times, He has brought me to the well, and then I miss the water that is staring me right in the face! Lord, open my eyes so that I can see what you have intended for me to grab hold of. Direct me in the ways that are Christ-like, that place a smile on your face as I walk in your presence.

When my heart is open, I can hear Jesus prompting me to follow His lead. So I’ll end with this. When the Lord places someone on your heart, do you call them or text? When your neighbor is outside, do you go out and talk with them or walk inside? When someone is having trouble, do you help or assume someone else will? These divine appointments are invitations to be the hands and feet of Jesus. Our job is to do what He would do. He makes the appointments, and then all we need to do is follow through. So what appointment has our sweet Lord placed on your calendar today?

“In their hearts humans plan their course, but the Lord establishes their steps.”
Proverbs‬ ‭16‬:‭9‬ ‭NIV‬‬

Get Ready! What a first day. I grabbed my coffee and outside I ventured. I have a lovely patio in my front yard that Zoey, my dog, and I have a daily ritual of sitting, reading and listening. There are a few birds I’ve started to recognize. They always arrive in pairs, doves, swallowtails, small black birds and one solo hummingbird which investigates my flowers. It’s their routine.

Today when I began my Forty Day Challenge, I had no idea how God would show up. But did He ever! The premise of today’s reading was “get ready.” As I read the story of a Christian Camp Counselor turned Political Leader, I was taken back by the sheer fact of his namesake, Lankford. My Dad’s last name is Lankford and he also was born in Oklahoma. No, that’s not a coincidence Lord. The story continues as God kept placing on his heart to “get ready”. Get ready for what? And then the Lord followed it by announcing “this is it”. What? You want me to run for office? Before long, James Lankford ran for Congressman and eventually, State Senator of Oklahoma. To this day, he meets with his constituents, and other leaders and is frequently found in the hallways, leading prayer.

So what does this have to do with me? Well the more I poured into Day One, I kept hearing the word “NEIGHBORS”. What Lord do you want me to do with the neighbors? Surely not lead a Bible Study? Well, maybe you can start with a BBQ. When I finished reading, I check my calendar on my phone and start typing BBQ and before I could write anything else, it self-populates “for neighbors”. And that’s how God takes over. You are something more than spirit-like. Yes, He surely is. To be exact, he is the Holy Spirit and He knows how to use I-phones!

“If you pray to God regularly, irregular things will happen on a regular basic.” Mark Batterson