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Prayer Requests 10-29-20

It’s Thursday, so don’t forget to pray for Jo, her former students, and the people of PNG.

Anyone else?

Psalm 80

1 Hear us, Shepherd of Israel,
    you who lead Joseph like a flock.
   You who sit enthroned between the cherubim,
    shine forth 2 before Ephraim, Benjamin and Manasseh.
   Awaken your might;
    come and save us.

3 Restore us, O God;
    make your face shine on us,
    that we may be saved.

4 How long, Lord God Almighty,
    will your anger smolder
    against the prayers of your people?
5 You have fed them with the bread of tears;
    you have made them drink tears by the bowlful.
6 You have made us an object of derision to our neighbors,
    and our enemies mock us.

7 Restore us, God Almighty;
    make your face shine on us,
    that we may be saved.

8 You transplanted a vine from Egypt;
    you drove out the nations and planted it.
9 You cleared the ground for it,
    and it took root and filled the land.
10 The mountains were covered with its shade,
    the mighty cedars with its branches.
11 Its branches reached as far as the Sea,
    its shoots as far as the River.

12 Why have you broken down its walls
    so that all who pass by pick its grapes?
13 Boars from the forest ravage it,
    and insects from the fields feed on it.
14 Return to us, God Almighty!
    Look down from heaven and see!
   Watch over this vine,
15  the root your right hand has planted,
    the son you have raised up for yourself.

16 Your vine is cut down, it is burned with fire;
    at your rebuke your people perish.
17 Let your hand rest on the man at your right hand,
    the son of man you have raised up for yourself.
18 Then we will not turn away from you;
    revive us, and we will call on your name.

19 Restore us, Lord God Almighty;
    make your face shine on us,
    that we may be saved.

29 thoughts on “Prayer Requests 10-29-20”

  4. Cheryl (re: your comment to me last night) – Yes, I do understand that. That is why I continue to pray for godly men (or at least “good”, decent men in the meantime) to be in Boy’s life.

    My point about how tough Nightingale is was that she is not babying him, which I think must at least help somewhat. He’s not being raised to be a “Mama’s boy” who resists risk or responsibility because “Mama” will take care of him.

    Sadly, if X is true to form in the coming years (and I pray he will get saved and not be), he will encourage his son’s disrespect of his mother. 😦

    My question is: Where do I come in? I can “hear” how Hubby would react if he heard Boy being disrespectful to Nightingale, because he would stand up for me quite strongly with our girls, so I know he would do that for her, too. But I am merely another woman, not a strong man that Boy would inclined to listen to. On the other hand, I have read of men who tell of their godly grandmothers who had a strong influence on them. Well, either way, it is all in God’s hands.

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  5. Kizzie, you may not be able to teach him from the Bible, but you can teach him wise sayings that align with the Bible. Remember hearing about, “What goes around, comes around?” If he gives bad treatment to others at home or anywhere it will become a lifelong habit and will be how others will treat him back in the long run. He gets the priviledge of practicing good behavior at home before he goes out in the world to find out the more difficult consequences he will face later if he mistreats others. Reason with him. He sounds quite bright.

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  7. Janice – I’m working on it. 🙂

    One thing I have tried to teach him recently is treating others how he would like to be treated. (Like when he has told Gabby that he’ll be out in five minutes, then gets caught up with something else and leaves her waiting.)

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  13. 6 Arrows – That made me smile. Yes, I just have to be myself, and let the chips fall where God wants them to fall. 🙂

    Speaking of timers – Nightingale uses a FlyLady trick of setting a timer for 15 minutes and then doing as much as she can in that time in cleaning a certain room, and has Boy do the same for his room.

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  17. Kizzie, that does make sense, and I almost even said last night that having lived in the inner city with mostly single parents, I saw the results of mamas pampering their little boys. I even heard one mother whose children were grown lecturing other mothers and telling them we have to stop pampering our boys, assuming they’re going to get killed in their teens or twenties and so we can’t expect anything of them, and creating a self-fulfilling prophecy since we raise boys with no resistance to peer pressure. She said we expect our daughters to be strong and have some self-control, but we’re raising weak boys and we have to stop it.

    BTW, I do think that you should use Scripture with him. Our own words have little power or authority, but God’s Word has power. Not that you should be beating him over the head with it or insisting on family devotions against his mother’s wishes, or using Scripture as a series of moralistic lessons, but simply that you are a Christian and Scripture is your authority.

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  19. You can use Scripture, just don’t quote it. I think about how sayings my mom said have stayed with me, like “Sticks and stones will break my bones but words will never hurt me.”

    That’s not true, of course, but my mom said it so it must have been true. 😦

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  20. I would use Bible verses, too, of course, Kizzie, but thought you had been restricted from doing so. That is why I did not suggest that. It is superior of course. And you could always use the general wisdom sayings and compare them to what the Bible says so it would be like a reinforcement and show that the Bible has worth to him.

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  23. Janice, she may well have been restricted from doing so, but that’s where “we ought to obey God rather than man” comes in, and where a child’s grandmother who is also his full-time sitter cannot be refused the right to teach him biblical truth. (Now, his mother always has the right to remove her child from her mother’s care if she “crosses a line” in how she talks to him about God, but you simply cannot choose a caregiver and insist she not talk about the center of her life.) Especially by the time a child is old enough to have give-and-take conversations, you just cannot say, “Answer his questions, but leave God out of it.” If I ask a vegetarian a cooking question, she isn’t going to tell me how to cook meat. If I ask a Christian a significant life question, then her answer should reflect that she is a Christian. A caregiver must always do so in a way that respects the mother’s authority, but God’s authority is greater.

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  26. I really thought they had an agreement so I based what I said on that. It sounds like it is evolving which I think is GREAT! I am thrilled if Kizzie can now discuss things in the Bible in a subtle way with him. I did not think the restriction should have been required in the first place based on my outside point of view. But people usually have more considerations than I can possibly know or understand. I have prayed for Boy to have Christian influences so this will be a wonderful start.

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  27. Yes, now that he is older and has heard about God, I can talk to him (but not in a way that would seem like outright witnessing to him). Unfortunately, because he is being taught that God is not real, he is resistant to the little things I try to say. Once, while reading one of the Narnia books, I tried to explain to him what the analogy was pointing to, and he didn’t want to hear it. But I continue to keep myself open to any little opportunity that may come my way.

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  28. Michelle – How do you use scripture without quoting it? Do you mean paraphrasing it? Or using the verse without mentioning that it comes from the Bible?

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  29. Paraphrasing and tell him briefly and broadly if he asks where it came from. There are countless Scriptures that are part of common expressions.

    https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/61964/18-everyday-expressions-borrowed-bible

    https://unlockingthebible.org/2012/03/37-common-english-sayings-from-the-bible/

    I just googled and came up with them.

    Or, you could say something like, “That’s as hard as it would be to be a camel going through the eye of a needle.”

    He’d say, “What that does that mean, Grandma?”

    THen discuss it. People say that when a task is really hard, it’s just an example.

    “Where’d you hear that?”

    Bible.

    Or, “You just beat her by the skin on your teeth!”

    “What does that mean?”

    You barely made it. People say that.

    Who says that?

    Oh, an old man named Job who lived a long time ago who had a lot of terrible things happen to him. Some of the awful things he barely escaped, and he said, “by the skin on my teeth.”

    I’m saying this off the top of my head. Maybe I need to confess sin for scheming . . .

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