I wanted to thank all of you who took a minute or two out of your day to pray for the little guy over the last two days.  I really appreciate it and I know his family does too!  I also wanted to give you a brief update on him as well.

Thanks for bearing with me through the vagueness of the last post, but I believe I can give you a little more information now.  My cousin Jenny Leboffe, her husband Nate and their daughter Selah are anxiously awaiting their second child Little Man Leboffe.  After an ultrasound they were given some pretty rough news about the baby’s heart.  It was looking like heart surgery would be almost a sure thing prior to age two.  But, as it seems many times (but never with you, dad), the doctors were uninformative and so Nate and Jenny were basically left in the dark.  After a great appointment today and a long ultrasound the doctor informed them that Little Man’s heart is fine and he is fine!  So, now our little girl will be looking forward to meeting her cousin Little Man Leboffe next time we head down to San Dieg0!

Once again, thank you for your prayers!  To read a much better description of everything visit the Leboffe’s blog.

One way that my family is extremely blessed is through prayer.  I’m not talking about me being an excellent pray-er, but rather the numerous people all over the place that are always praying for us.  People that we talk to often and people that I probably don’t remember their names.  But, they know us or are connected to us and love us enough to pray for us.  Many of you are part of that group as well.  We are IMMENSELY grateful for that.

But today, I would love for you to pray for a family close to us.  I don’t know that the issues are public so I’m gonna keep it on the DL, but I know that God is bigger than that.  This family is pregnant with a little boy and he is having some issues with his heart developing correctly and needs our prayers.  They are going in tomorrow to meet with a doctor about it.  I don’t know all of the medical stuff or the details surrounding it, but I know that they are an amazing, godly family and that they would absolutely appreciate being lifted up through this.

So please, today and tomorrow and on, join me and my family in praying for the health of this little man, strength and courage for his wonderful mom, dad and big sister, and above all peace, faith and trust in God throughout the whole ordeal.  Thank you all so much!

As you probably know, there was a 7.0 earthquake in Haiti Tuesday afternoon.  It was just outside of Port-au-Prince and was followed by 12 aftershocks, some which registered nearly 6 on the scale.  The pictures show how extensive the devastation really is.

When things like this happen, many times we sit back and feel sick, but nothing else.  I mean, what can we really do right?  Well, here are a couple ideas for you.

• Watch Twitter for prayer sessions on BabelWith.Me like we had Wednesday afternoon.
  
• Donate to the relief effort.
  
  
  
• Make a point to pray for them!

Last night as I was getting ready for bed, I was thinking and praying about the Kingsfield move to the theaters and all the details that are still being worked out.  But as I was praying I heard myself say “please help us work all these things out”.  That of course caught my attention and distracted me for a few minutes.  I wasn’t asking for God to work things out.  I was asking for God to help me work things out.  Praying with the wrong motivation is like praying backwards.  It doesn’t make much sense.

I’m not saying that it is a bad thing to pray help us work things out, but I think we do need to be careful of our motives.  Now when I was praying for God to help me work things out, I wasn’t really thinking about getting things to work out so that it will make me look better.  My heart was in the right place this time, but at the same time, it isn’t much of a step for me (a person that deals with trying to do things and work things out on my own) to be thinking and worrying about how I am going to make all these things happen.

So I want to pray that God work these things out.  I want to pray that I follow His lead and do the things He wants me to do.  Enough about me.  We already know that I am not capable of doing all this on my own.  That’s why He is in charge.  Now I just need to get out of the way and let Him do His thing.

Well, some of you already know this, but my wife and I are joining in with a group of my larger family and friends and taking a trip to Israel!  We are so excited.  We will be leaving soon and the packing has begun.  Fortunately I am not in charge of the packing because it would not have started yet.  I might have thought about some stuff I would need to take, but that’s about it.  But, I married a planning genius and therefore the packing began last week!  Over seven days early!  Wow.  Way beyond my abilities.

As we have prepared, many people have asked us about going.  It generally sounds something like this.  Oh, Israel?!  That’s great!  Have you ever been before?”  So nothing wrong with that, right?  Well, my confusion comes from the way it is asked.  I swear most of the times I have been asked if we have been before it comes out as more of a “you haven’t gone yet?” as if everyone makes this trip.  Well, for us it isn’t just a normal vacation.  This doesn’t happen to us that often and we see this trip as an amazing once in a lifetime trip!  Plus we get to visit many major airports too (yeah fun I know)!  I never have figured out why we have to go to so many different places just to get to one place.  Seems like if we did more no-stop trips that we wouldn’t waste as much gas in planes, but then again, I don’t work for them.  Oh well.  We are going to be briefly (and some for extended periods of time) visiting the following cities’ airports:

• Santa Ana, CA
• Minneapolis, MN
• Oklahoma City, OK
• Atlanta, GA
• Tel Aviv, Israel
• Amman, Jordan
• New York, NY
• Oklahoma City, OK
• Salt Lake City, UT
• Santa Ana, CA

We are very excited to see all these places that we have read about for so many years!  We are so excited about the things that God will do in all of our lives through everything we will see, learn and feel!  We are planning on blogging as many days as possible while we are there so stay tuned to hear about it!  I’m sure we will have a slew of pictures when we get back too!  Please pray for our safety.  Pray for our hearts to be open and teachable.  Pray for our feet!  My feet aren’t as accustomed to sandals as Jesus’ were (plus he was Jesus and when His feet hurt a little bit He could go walk on the water…sounds a lot better than Dr. Scholls to me!).

We are headed out to Israel!  Have you not been there yet???

I may have blogged about this before, but I really don’t remember.  I could look it up, but I would rather write it out since for some reason it is on my mind tonight.

Look at this picture.

Despite the awesomeness of this picture, what does it make you think of?  No I’m not talking about how insanely gifted you were at building the coolest Lego stuff as a little kid.  No heaven isn’t made of Legos (although I could play with them for all of eternity).  And no, the Bible wasn’t actually happening with Lego people either (also would be really cool).  No, I don’t know if Judas was the bald guy and that he betrayed Jesus because he was the only one without hair and Jesus didn’t give him a miracle of newly acquired long curly locks.  Well, maybe it doesn’t hit you like it hit me.  Maybe God is just teaching me something different than He is you.  I’m sure that is entirely possible.  For me, for some reason (this time), I saw this picture and I thought about how we try to build our own God and try to make Him fit into our own little box or our life.

How many times when we are faced with big decisions to we try to find a verse that in a certain version says “then God told them to go to the palm trees” or something else crazy like that?  How many times do we try to get our way with God?  We try to convince Him that we know what is best for us and that it should be part of His will.  Why does it get so easy sometimes to fall back into justifying why He should give us exactly what we want, when we want it?  Yeah, I know it’s a long way from Legos, but for some reason this is where God brought me.  Jeremiah 29:11 says that He knows the plans that He has for us.  He isn’t an idiot.  I’m the idiot!  He doesn’t need my help to plan crap out.  He knows what’s best for me and my family.  He knows what type of housing we will be living in come July.  He knows when we will have a baby.  He knows when my wife will quit her job and when she will find the perfect one.  He already knows all that!

So am I saying we shouldn’t pray for things?  No.  Should we pray vague prayers of “Lord, we love You, thank You for this food, oh and Your will be done. Amen”?  No.  I think being specific is good.  But where is your heart when you are praying specifically?  Are we truly seeking the will of God or are we just seeking to find some God stuff in our will?  I don’t wanna pray and have God fit into my plans.  He has proved time and time again that His plan kicks my plans butt really hard!  I don’t wanna build-a-God anymore.

I do want a Lego Last Supper, though!  Anyone ever actually seen one?  If you do, please buy it for me!

What kind of plans do you try to fit God into?  How has He taught you that He is bigger than your plans?

Well, my wife informed me today that my blog was boring.  Too much football apparently.  I (personally…or male…ly) don’t see anything boring about it at all!  I like football.  Heaven forbid!  HA.  But I love her.  And she knows that.  So, today, I won’t take up too much of your time, but just wanted to say thanks to all of you that are praying for us.  We really appreciate it all!  Maybe one of these days we will be able to really let you know that, but for now, this may have to do.  Thank you so much!  We love you all!

As I have talked about before, I have a one year Bible that I have been reading through.  Just recently I started reading through David’s psalms.  I have read these tons of times, but something hit me this time a little different.  As you read through them, its great to see that even David had major ups and downs and to see how he handled them.  We all go through those times in life but we don’t all handle it the way he did.  He would talk with God.  Not just praying like we tend to do.  I think in our culture we have trained ourselves to pray (and sometimes rather often) but when we do we are mostly praying the basics (forgive me, thank you, can this happen, prayer request).  I don’t believe that there is anything wrong with that at all, but what I am seeing from the way David prayed was that it was pretty much a constant conversation with God.  It wasn’t just the “ok we just sat down to dinner so we have to pray” prayer.  He prayed all the time.  When I say he prayed I mean prayed, sang, talked, yelled, cried, begged, etc.  

This was kinda a wake up call to me.  I mean, he when from times that he was expressing thanks to expressing grief or pain.  The one that hit me the hardest was one that he was demanding God hold up His end of the bargain.  I’m not saying we should constantly demand things of God, but that maybe David was on to something with this “talk to God no matter what is going on” thing.  I don’t pray like that.  It isn’t a lifestyle like that to me and I think it should be.  Sometimes I do great, but generally I get so caught up in my life and what is going on around me, I forget that God is really the center of it all.  When I don’t realize that, I get onto the detour that takes me in a different direction away from Him.

I want a prayer life not just a prayer time.