Yesterday I introduced you to my “life prayer.” After I wrote that post, I went and read the other blogs that I read (68 of them), and found another prayer that I want to start praying daily. It comes from my church planting coach who doesn’t know me: Vince Antonucci. (I’m coached by reading his blog every day). Here is what he wrote yesterday:

God, I want more. I want to love, cry, smile. I want to be a radical. I want to pray. I want to sweat blood. I want to feel. I want intimacy. I want passion. I want power, resurrection power. I want to see You. I want to touch Heaven. I want to hurt, to suffer. I want to walk, run, and fly. I want to scream. I want to rejoice. I want to laugh till I ache. I want to ache. I want to care. I want to be in the rebellion. I want to lead the rebellion. I want to be the rebellion. I want to live with reckless abandon. I want to be astonished and afraid. I want to dream. I want to see visions. I want to hear the clatter of dry bones coming together. I want good friends. I want to love my enemies. I want holiness. I want to experience the sacred, the divine. I want to hallow Your name. I want to walk on water. I want to dance on water. I want to touch the sick, I want to experience their pain, I want to heal them. I want truth. I want to be set free. I want to be hungry, and I want to be full. I want the Spirit. I want to drink the Spirit. I want to be falling down drunk on the Spirit. I want guidance, direction, discernment, wisdom. I want to be a warrior. I want to never look back, turn back, or go back. I want to attack. I want to cause trouble. I want to induce fear. I want to turn the world upside down. I want to pour myself out and pour myself into today like there’s no tomorrow. I want to be comforted. I want to thirst for righteousness. I want to be an agent of justice. I want to shine. I want to blaze. I want to bathe in grace. I want beauty from my ashes. I want to seek first the Kingdom, I want to bring the Kingdom, I want the Kingdom to fill me up and spill out of me. I want to carry the cross till my legs burn and my shoulder bleeds. I want to see that the tomb is empty. I want Jesus. Lifted up, easy to see, leading my life, overwhelming my life with His life. I want Jesus. I want Jesus.

Thanks, Vince! I want that too. Thanks for being someone who can help show me the way.

Yesterday I made a post about how God is a stripper, meaning that He strips things out of our life to make us more usable for Him. I’ve been going through some trying times in my life recently, and amidst all of the frustration and questions of “Why, God?” it was as if God said to me, “Jeremy, it’s because you’ve been praying for it! I’m only answering your prayers.”

You see, one of my prayers while in seminary has been for God to make me into the kind of person He can use to reach the kind of people that many churches cannot or will not reach. More on that in future posts…  I guess that to make me into that kind of person, God has has to strip me of some things.

So the anwer to “Why God?” is “He’s answering my prayers.” 

In fact, He’s answering my “life prayer.” The prayer of my life is not found in the Bible. Oh sure, I pray the prayers in the Bible, and I pray Scripture, but the prayer I pray most frequently was penned by my favorite poet, John Donne. If I had realized how painful the answer to this prayer would be, I’m not sure I would have ever started praying it. 

Anyway, here is my prayer, as prayed first by John Donne in Holy Sonnet XIV.

Holy Sonnet XIV 

Batter my heart, three-personed God; for, you
As yet but knock, breathe, shine, and seek to mend;
That I may rise, and stand, overthrow me, and bend
Your force, to break, blow, burn and make me new.
I, like an usurped town, to another due,
Labour to admit you, but Oh, to no end,
Reason your viceroy in me, me should defend,
But is captive, and proves weak or untrue.
Yet dearly I love you, and would be loved fain,
But am betrothed unto your enemy:
Divorce me, untie, or break that knot again,
Take me to you, imprison me, for I
Except you enthrall me, never shall be free,
Nor ever chaste, except you ravish me.

God is a stripper. No, not that kind. (Though if you believe Jesus, strippers are probably closer to the Kingdom of God than many religious people – Matt 21:31.)

When I say “God is a stripper” I am reminded of a “looking for work” advertisement I saw in the newspaper a few years ago. At the top of the ad in big bold letters it said, “I’ll strip for you!” This ad was placed by a lady who owned a furniture stripping company. She was offering to strip and refinish your wood furniture. If you have ever tried to refinished your furniture, you know how valuable her services are. If I had to refinish the antique table my wife and I own, I would hire a stripper.

But all of us have something more important than our furniture, and that is our life. And in the life of every single one of us there are blemishes and defects. We all have areas of our life that need to be refinished, refined, or removed. And when we pray, “God, make me usable to you! Make me into the kind of person who can do great things for you!” He comes in and begins stripping away all in your life that holds you back and drags you down. He makes you into something useful.

Such a process is long and painful. It feels as if God has abandoned or forgotten about you. But when you emerge out the other side, you are beautiful and usable for His purposes.

For the past six weeks, I’ve had an all-out war with a family of squirrels. Sometime last fall, or over the winter, they decided to make our home their home. We certainly enjoy opening our home for guests, but a squirrel family, though cute, are unwelcome guests.

When I first discovered the holes they were chewing through our house, my thought was to get out my gun and shoot them. That’s what I would do if I were still in Montana. But being in a suburb of Dallas, I thought that the neighbors wouldn’t appreciate me shooting a gun next door, and so went down to Home Depot to get some poison. As it turns out, it’s illegal to poison squirrels in Texas. Instead, I was supposed to use to a live trap to capture them. So I went to the Irving Animal Shelter to get my trap.

I caught the first squirrel in about two days. I used apples and peanut butter as bait. Then I reset the trap and waited. For a week, I never heard another squirrel, so I figured they left. I returned the trap and got up on our treacherously steep roof to patch the holes, then went into the attic and put screen over the other holes.

The very next day, I heard the squirrels chewing new holes to get out of our house. Since I had closed off their exit doors, they decided to make new ones. So I went back down to the shelter, got the trap again, set it, and caught another squirrel, then waited and waited, and not hearing anything, patched the new holes, and returned the trap. 

The very next day, I heard the squirrels chewing new holes to get out of our house. Since I had closed off their exit doors, they decided to make new ones. So I went back down to the shelter, got the trap again, set it, and caught another squirrel, then waited and waited, and not hearing anything, patched the new holes, and returned the trap. (Yes, I meant to repeat the last paragraph. Do you see a pattern here?)

Two days ago, I got up on the roof and through some super-sleuthing, figured out where the nest was, and tore part of the roof off to get at it. I spent an hour or more pulling nesting out of my roof. In the process I found two dead squrrels. (I didn’t kill them, honest!) Today, I patched that hole in the roof and will return the trap to the Animal Shelter. Tomorrow, I fully expect to hear squirrels chewing holes in my house.

Why am I sharing all this? I believe that God wants to teach us things through nature. It is, of course, one of the four primary ways God teaches us things (the other three being Scripture, conscience, and other people). These squirrels have taught me that when a door is closed, sometimes you just have to chew a new one. If you throw up your hands in defeat and say “God’s not opening any doors for me!” you’ll starve to death.

I’m facing a time in my life right now when all the doors seem closed, and have been wondering why God doesn’t open one for me to walk through. “I’ve got a family to feed!” I tell Him. But I’m beginning to think that by listening to squirrels chew holes in my house, God is telling me He doesn’t want me to go through any of those doors I’ve been knocking on. Instead, He wants me to chew a new one. I’m excited to see where I come out, but I hope the owner of the house doesn’t get too mad…