Tag Archives: Prayer

x From my diary: Learning to pray

Career goals, Get on your feet, Homelessness, Job search/Job prospects, Motivations, OUR BEST POSTS, The Way of Peace, , , , ,

(Originally posted 05/12/13. Reblogged 04/18/24.)

Wednesday 04/24/13

Facing various issues as to how to spend my time. The current appearance of this blog is a far cry from what I want, but I don’t want time spent redesigning it to take away from job search. The same dilemma presents in choice of whether to use my tax refund to restore my former website on Yahoo! for $125.00/year, or instead rebuild the site as part of this blog.

My church is about to launch Saturday morning prayer services in which I will have a leadership role. I will be offering teachings on prayer; I think I have about two hours’ worth of material, and an issue rises of whether to try to organize that into 10-minute or instead 15-minute segments. And there’s an issue that what I would present to the prayer team members only, isn’t necessarily what I’d present to the general public.

This morning at McDonald’s I was reflecting on these things, and on what I might teach to an audience drawn from the general public. I began to understand why Ambrose Worrall fails to refer to Kabbalah.

Prayer team members will be principally interested in learning how to pray effectively for others. People who come from the general public will be principally interested in how to pray effectively for themselves — how to get their own prayers answered.

I presume to be pretty good at the former. That’s how I became prayer ministry coordinator to start with. I’m not so good at the latter.
Continue reading x From my diary: Learning to pray →

o Update 04/06/16 – Housing, Job search

Homelessness, Job search/Job prospects, Motivations,

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I am facing urgent, drastic changes.  To find new housing, I may wind up in a distant location.  It may be difficult to get to church; it may become impossible to attend; I may have to give up my offices at church.  I may have to move out-of-state.

Transitional housing now does not seem likely to become available to me anytime in the near future.  The most realistic plan will be to continue to stay at the shelter, but take other steps to facilitate finding and keeping a job.  The first job I get will most likely be part-time.  However, any job that gives me an income of $100/week — whether that’s 10 hours/week at $10/hour, or 12.5 hours/week at $8/hour, etc. — will render me financially independent.  Self-supporting.

My current cash resources will be exhausted come Sunday.

Topics here below:
– Logistics
– Smoking
– Specific housing resources
– Job prospects
Continue reading o Update 04/06/16 – Housing, Job search →

* Hope and vision

Get on your feet, Homelessness, Jacob's Ladder, Job search/Job prospects, Motivations, OUR BEST POSTS, Squalor, , , ,

As of March 7, I will have been homeless five years.

This morning I took first concrete steps to get myself into transitional housing.

This is essential if I’m to get job.  For some time, I’ve been living off life insurance policy proceeds, but in the near future, that money will run out.  It’s urgent that I get an income.

The shelter where I’ve been staying is extremely comfortable, perhaps too comfortable, but it has very rigid hours that make it nearly impossible to hold a job while one stays there.  Currently, having to carry my two heavy bags and backpack with me wherever I go, severely limits my ability to commute.  Transitional housing will spell having a place where I can stash my stuff, and freedom to come and go as I please.  I will, for example, be able to take a night job.

Related:  Obstacles to my prosperity

Continue reading * Hope and vision →

* Self-comfort

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I have suffered with obsessive-compulsive disorder and genetically-based clinical depression all my life.  I first became medicated for these conditions, with SSRIs, in 1991, and the improvement was so drastic I never wanted to be without those medications again.

On or about December 6, 2015, however, it seemed as if they abruptly became ineffective.  I was not in a position to find a medical doctor competent to change them.  So, on the one hand, I’ve lived with clinical depression from then till now and continuing.  On the other hand, a positive is that in this state I’ve obtained certain insights that I never could have “seen” any other way.

One insight in particular would have changed my entire course in life, had I only learned it as a child.

It occurred in four steps.  The blue block quotes below are excerpts from my diary.  However, I recall that C.S. Lewis referred to diary-keeping as a “time-wasting and foolish practice;” that a diary is, “even for autobiographical purposes,” far less useful than one might suppose.  As to the first two steps below, I lost a good deal of time and effort searching for diary passages that didn’t exist.

In mid-December 2015 …

Continue reading * Self-comfort →

✓ Some more prayer exercises

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Previous post:  Some prayer exercises

Monday morning, Pastor asked me to pray about some anger management issues among our youth.  Some have been somatizing their anger, e.g. having seizures; others have got in fights at school.  Tuesday morning it came to me that I have already reported a number of techniques to use, in the previous post above.  The new notions that came to me are here below.

It won’t be feasible for me to teach these to the children myself, since Youth Group meets on Sundays after the deadline for me to get back to the shelter.  But some of them may be usable in Children’s Sermons.

Continue reading ✓ Some more prayer exercises →

* Bootstraps

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Psalm 150:6:  “Let all things that have breath praise the Lord.”

At the homeless shelter where I stay, we’re required to attend chapel every night.  Monday, for the first time in months, Jervis Ray preached.  His text was Psalm 23.  However, he was soon enough back to his same old same old, haranguing us that we’re not grateful enough for our “blessings.”  “God woke you up in your right mind,” with the use of two arms and two legs.

He calls us to praise God that our bootstraps aren’t like others’.  “There are lots of people in hospitals who don’t know where they are.”

That stung me, as my oldest brother will be soon enough in just that state.

Continue reading * Bootstraps →

* Guilt porn

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My patience ran out when a display ad for Feeding America appeared on my e-mail inbox page.

I am seeing their ads and their public service announcements (PSAs) everywhere.  Like certain other charities, notably Autism Speaks and the Susan G. Komen Foundation, I wind up wondering if they engage in any activity beside fundraising.  In recent years, Breast Cancer Awareness Month had such media saturation it seemed impossible to be aware of anything else.

Continue reading * Guilt porn →