WalkerFamilyLife Blog

Don Whitney has provided us some very helpful questions as you think about 2010. The original can be viewed here: http://biblicalspirituality.org/newyear.html

The beginning of a new year is an ideal time to stop, look up, and get our bearings. To that end, here are some questions to ask prayerfully in the presence of God.

1. What’s one thing you could do this year to increase your enjoyment of God?

2. What’s the most humanly impossible thing you will ask God to do this year?

3. What’s the single most important thing you could do to improve the quality of your family life this year?

4. In which spiritual discipline do you most want to make progress this year, and what will you do about it?

5. What is the single biggest time-waster in your life, and what will you do about it this year?

6. What is the most helpful new way you could strengthen your church?

7. For whose salvation will you pray most fervently this year?

8. What’s the most important way you will, by God’s grace, try to make this year different from last year?

9. What one thing could you do to improve your prayer life this year?

10. What single thing that you plan to do this year will matter most in ten years? In eternity?

If you’ve been following the heartbreaking journey of Jake and Rebecca Mutz (Dennis and Barbara Rainey’s daughter and son-in-law), you may know that they recently lost their second child. Rebecca has been keeping a blog called What’s Cooking? through the process and it has much to teach us about faith in the midst of suffering and how best to minister those who are going through suffering. Articles like this one can be so helpful in learning how to help when you don’t know what to say.

The Valley of Vision: A Collection of Puritan Prayers and Devotions by Arthur G. Bennett

My review

Devastatingly humbling book of prayers from Puritans that will take you deeper in your faith, help you see yourself more accurately and put all your faith in an exceedingly glorious God.

View all my reviews.

I know that there are morning people and night people, and that I fall into the former category. But I’ve found it so important to build each day on a firm foundation. There is simply a palpable difference between the days where I lay a foundation of praise and quiet reflection to start the day and those in which I just launch off into the storms without first settling my heart.

Tonight, Chris returned from her trip to Broken Arrow Bible Ranch in New Mexico. She was so excited to return but sad to leave. We’re still getting the details, but it sounds like a great trip with a lot of ministry. Gene’s plane is due in at midnight tonight, but he’s back in the USA now. I spoke to him an hour ago from the Minneapolis airport.
Thanks to all who prayed and gave to help them with their trip.

Molly Ann Mutz went home to her Savior a few moments ago. What an impact this 7-day life has had!

The Lord gives and the Lord takes away. Blessed be the Name of the Lord!

Oh, the depth of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are his judgments and how inscrutable his ways!
“ For who has known the mind of the Lord,
or who has been his counselor?”
“ Or who has given a gift to him
that he might be repaid?”
For from him and through him and to him are all things. To him be glory forever. Amen.
Ro 11:33-36

Continue to pray for this family. Thanks.

Please be in prayer for Dennis and Barbara’s daughter Rebecca (Rainey) Mutz and her husband Jake. On Saturday morning, their first daughter was born, a precious girl named Molly. However, something was wrong: She didn’t cry.
What they found out over the next day was that their daughter had been born with a significant brain anuerism that makes her condition very critical. Hard days are ahead. Please be in prayer for them.
Read Barbara’s comments about it on the Empty Nest blog.

Steven Curtis Chapman has been a friend to orphans both personally by adopting 3 children and through Shaohannah’s Hope, which has worked closely with the folks here at Hope for Orphans. This is a heart-wrenching tragedy and they need your prayers:

Daughter of Christian music star killed by car

Wed May 21, 11:50 PM EDT

The 5-year-old daughter of Grammy-winning Christian music star Steven Curtis Chapman was struck and killed Wednesday by a sport utility vehicle driven by her brother, authorities said.

The girl, Maria, was hit in the driveway of the family’s home Wednesday afternoon by a Toyota Land Cruiser driven by her teenage brother, said Laura McPherson, a spokeswoman for the Tennessee Highway Patrol.

The brother, whose name and exact age weren’t available, apparently did not see the girl, McPherson said. No charges are expected.

“It looks like a tragic accident,” she said.

Several family members witnessed the accident, which happened in Williamson County just south of Nashville. The girl died later at Vanderbilt University Medical Center in Nashville, hospital spokeswoman Laurie Holloway said.

A publicist for Chapman’s charity organization said the family was expected to release a statement later Wednesday night.

Chapman, who is originally from Paducah, Ky., and his wife have promoted international adoption and have three daughters from China, including Maria. They have three biological children.

The singer’s Web site says the couple was persuaded by their oldest daughter to adopt a girl from China. The experience led the family to adopt two more children and create Shaohannah’s Hope, a foundation and ministry to financially assist thousands of couples in adoption.

The Chapmans did missionary work at Chinese orphanages in 2006 and 2007, according to the Web site.

“After our first trip to China, my wife and I knew our lives were changing — our eyes and hearts were opening to how big God really is, and we have wanted to experience more of that,” Chapman says on the Web site.

“We’ve really wondered whether or not we should just go to China and stay there. But I don’t think so. I believe God is saying, ‘I want you to go, get your heart broken, your eyes opened, and then take this story back to the church in America and around the world.’”

The 45-year-old singer also has released a book about being a father entitled “Cinderella: The Love of Daddy and his Princess.” He has won five Grammy awards and 51 Dove awards from the Gospel Music Association.

Do you ever struggle with frustration in your prayer life. Read what Charles Spurgeon wrote:

“It was the early church father Ambrose who used a wonderful illustration concerning believers’ prayers. He said we are like little children who run into the garden to gather flowers to please their father—but we are so ignorant and childish that we pluck as many weeds as flowers, and some of them are very noxious.We carry this strange mixture in our hands, thinking that it is acceptable to him. The mother meets the child at the door and says, “Little one, you don’t know what you have gathered.” She unbinds the mixture and takes from it all the weeds, leaving only the sweet flowers; and then she takes other flowers, sweeter than those the child plucked—and inserts them instead of the weeds. Then she puts the perfect posy in the child’s hand, and he runs with it to his father.Jesus Christ in more than otherly tenderness, thus deals with our supplications. If we could see one of our prayers after Christ Jesus has amended it—we would hardly recognize it! Jesus has such skill that even our good flowers grow fairer in His hand. We clumsily tie them into a bundle—but He arranges them into a lovely bouquet, where each beauty enhances the charm of its neighbor.If I could see my prayer after the Lord has prayed it, I would discover so much missing and so much there that was none of mine—that I am sure its fullest acceptance with God would not cause me a moment’s pride. It would rather make me lush with grateful humility before Him, whose boundless sweetness lent to me, and my poor prayer—a sweetness not my own.”

So, just be faithful to offer your best and trust in the good hand of the Master to make it acceptable to the Father. We so much need your prayers.

Valentine’s Day weekend is always a busy time at FamilyLife. Typically, it is a full schedule of Weekend to Remember conferences and this year is no different with 10 conferences. However, this year is special. This is also the first weekend of our newly renovated Weekend to Remember schedule.
Based on feedback from our past attendees, the new conference is a little shorter and has additional time for couples to complete projects. But more importantly, it’s been updated with multimedia and a fresh look. Please be in prayer for our speaker teams as they learn the new format.