Hello friend,

I awoke this morning feeling as if I'd been hit by a truck, every muscle sore from weight training last night. It was hard to pray. I felt grumpy and stiff. I printed off the full version of the morning prayer and made myself start doing it. I made myself sing it. What an antidote to grumpiness that was.

So, while I still feel a little stiff this morning, joy spreads like a balm through my muscles, my countenance shines and, though I had to force myself to praise Him at first, He honored the effort of my will and met me in the prayers.

If you feel gloomy or discouraged today, try reading out loud the lesson below. Choose to mean it, even if you feel a huge discrepancy between how you feel and what the words say. These words have life in them. Believe them rather than your feelings. And lo and behold, your feelings will come in line with the Truth, you will begin to experience the fruit of the Holy Spirit instead of the grumbling, impatient, negative feelings we are so prone to.

Never wait until you feel like praying. Just pray! And, if you can't think of anything to pray, that's why I'm posting these beautiful prayers that you can enter into and make your own.

It is our will that God cares about, not our feelings. If our feelings are telling us we're harboring unforgiveness or critical judgements like a constant negative tape in our heads, then choose to feel differently by resisting those feelings, by believing that these manifestations of your "old man" or carnal identity are dead. Believe instead in the new identity you have in Christ.

These words from Ephesians 4:
20 But ye have not so learned Christ;
21 If so be that ye have heard him, and have been taught by him, as the truth is in Jesus:
22 That ye put off concerning the former conversation the old man, which is corrupt according to the deceitful lusts;
23 And be renewed in the spirit of your mind;
24 And that ye put on the new man, which after God is created in righteousness and true holiness.
25 Wherefore putting away lying, speak every man truth with his neighbour: for we are members one of another.



May you be renewed in the spirit of your mind today and put on the new man "which after God is created in righteousness and true holiness"

While I was praying, Jim, my chiropractor friend, called. We're getting ready to go with Fr. Carl to pray with the woman with MS tomorrow. Jim reports that Roma has done really well since we prayed with her last Friday. She has not had a seizure all week.

God is good. Oh to be able to praise Him with our whole hearts. What a gift that is.