CoffeePods
A series exploring Christian healing in a handy coffee-break sized podcast. Plug yourself in, pick up your mug of coffee, and let's go.
CoffeePods
The Stronger Legs Prayer: Finding Resilience in Life's Journey
It's time for another episode of Coffee Pods with Acorn Christian Healing Foundation and your host, lisa Way, and the Reverend.
Speaker 2:Chris Kramer, grab a brew and make yourself comfortable. As we explore what's happening in the world from the perspective of christian healing. Good to be back for another episode of coffee pods, which is pretty special. Hello, where are you?
Speaker 1:I'm in front of the garage I found my favorite garage. Well, actually, I'm lying, I'm uh, I'm actually. I'm actually in the Swiss Alps, swiss Alps, this is a pretty cool place. I've made it to Interlaken, switzerland. To be more specific, I am in Böningen. You must say it, böningen with an umlauted O, but it's a beautiful little town that's in between Interlaken and Lake Breen, so the beautiful lake is actually just behind me over here and people are kayaking.
Speaker 1:Today the temperature is supposed to get back up into the high 20s in Senegre. That's almost 80 for you Fahrenheit people, but it's beautiful. It's a good day to be in Switzerland. We had two services in English yesterday we're the only English speaking church services in the Interlaken area for the summer and so we had a service at the main church in Interlaken in the morning, and then I went up the mountain to Grindelwald and made some new friends on the train. As you can imagine, I turn into Chris Kramer tourist guide on the train and then we had church at the Roman Catholic Church up in Grindelwald and it was very hot up there. It was a record temperature for yesterday in the mountains, and so the rivers are really growling because all the melt from way up high, um, but but yeah, it's good to good to be here and, by the wonders of technology, it's good to connect with with you. We have a guest today, don't?
Speaker 2:we, we do so. We've got diane with us.
Speaker 3:Hi diane hi, lisa, hello, chris, hello in switzerland.
Speaker 2:And where are you right now, diane? I'm in surrey, where it's very hot.
Speaker 3:I think it's going to reach 33 degrees today in surrey oh my goodness very hot already.
Speaker 1:Although it's only 10, 15 it's uh yeah, so I'm sitting in a giant fan one of one of my hobbies is to go to the local sainsbury and walk around the aisle where all the frozen food is and just stand near the freezers.
Speaker 3:It's a good place to be on a day like today.
Speaker 1:Now you had something you wanted to talk about, lisa. What was this meme?
Speaker 2:I do. So if you are listening to this podcast, I'm going to recommend that you now go to YouTube and turn it on to the video version, because I wanted to put something on the screen, which I'm going to do now, just as a discussion point, because we love having discussions about what's going on in the world, in our lives, and that's also why we asked diana to be a part of it this morning. So I've got a lot of little bits on my screen here, but the thing I want us to focus on is this as christian switzerland, uh, this chinese proverb here. It says a full praise for an easier road. A wise man prays for stronger legs. So a fool prays for an easier road, a wise man prays for stronger legs, and I just thought we could discuss this together.
Speaker 2:I'm going to turn the screen share off, stop sharing and just hear one another's thoughts on it, and if those of you listening as well want to share anything, comment, send, send us a message. Um, we'd love to know what you think, but I mean, it kind of got me thinking initially when I first heard that. Um, we talk about like our, our um thorn in the flesh, don't we?
Speaker 2:um fools thorn in the flesh and it just kind of made me go there and I can't tell you why it just they just seem to link. I just wondered what your guys initial thoughts are on that, not not on what my thoughts are, but on the proverb what do you think, diana?
Speaker 1:I'm curious your your thoughts on stronger legs and and uh, what do you think?
Speaker 3:well, I'm a social worker by background and I've studied um psychology in. You know various forms and um the first things that came to my mind was the kind of differences between different kinds of therapy. That and psychotherapy will go backwards into people's history and unpack the root causes and the you know the reasons in people's childhood or the trauma they've experienced, and they will do that in a lot of detail, a lot of over a lot of sessions and a lot of time um. But there are more um, perhaps behaviorist therapies like cbt that will actually focus on how does this impact you right now and how can you change the way you think about it. So I guess that's having the stronger legs, you know. That is actually how you actually react and respond right now and how can you make yourself more resilient to cope with the cards you've been dealt Wow.
Speaker 3:So that's, what it made me kind of think of None of us have a choice, really, about the cards we've been dealt, and sometimes, you know, even our history, our childhood, can be in the hands of other people. Our parents, our grandparents, our circumstances are dealt to us, aren't they? As children and even as adults sometimes. So we're not always um, you know, we don't have choices sometimes in the cards we are dealt, but we do have choices in the way we deal with those. Those cards, the way we move them, the way we perceive them, can shift and change. Um, and I guess you know that's what came to mind.
Speaker 3:Wow, I, I you know in terms of healing, um, I don't know, sometimes it's a bit of both, isn't it? Because, um, you know, people do need to go back in history when they've suffered some awful um trauma, um, in their lives. They do sometimes need to go back to that and to unpack it and to give it to invite jesus in and to bring healing to that, that situation or that memory.
Speaker 3:And I remember praying with someone online once, with Acorn, who had been abused as a very young child and she was in her 70s now and it still was hurting her and still holding her back and causing depression and nightmares and anxiety. And that's exactly what we did with her. We went back and Jesus came into the memory of what had happened to her as a child and taught her healing and she was transformed.
Speaker 3:It was an amazing experience and you know, she looked, even physically, she looked 10 years younger. She just it was an amazing healing by uh, by the lord's grace. So sometimes people do need to go back and unpack or just bring the love of Jesus and the presence of Jesus in um, which was amazing. But sometimes not, I mean sometimes actually, it's more about today and the impact. What is it, does this mean or do to you today? What would you like to ask, ask the Lord for today, wow. And people say, I don't know, sometimes unexpected things. It's not going back into all that history and trauma, it's, it's actually just um being able to cope the anxiety today it's the stronger leg prayer yeah, it really is like yesterday.
Speaker 1:I mean I I started my journey to switzerland on saturday from london um and got to Basel and then stayed in, and I stayed in a youth hostel. I'm too old to be staying in youth hostels, but it was that it was the cheap option and it was hot and I ended up in a top bunk in a bunkhouse in Basel, Switzerland, but I had to walk three miles from the station to get to the youth hostel and then in the morning I had to walk back to the train station and then I had to walk. I mean yesterday, I think, I put 10 miles on my legs and I thought, if all I did was sit around and say, Lord, give me a different destination, he'd say, well, just go home. I mean, just go back to your house and sit there with your dogs. But the destination was set. And so the funny thing is, you know, the wise man says don't give me the easy path, but give me the strength to walk the path that you've given me.
Speaker 1:And so then, when I got to the church in Interlochen and all of a sudden the bell started ringing and this lovely lady who's the sacristan at the church came out and she called me by name and and I told Lisa, she gave me a piece of bread. I mean it was. It was like oh, I'm home, I'm with Christians and we're here to praise God. There's a. I think one of the pictures that you have, lisa is, is a picture of the front door of the church and it says Jesus is the light of the world. But it it says it in a in German. I think it's like one of the first pictures of that right there. I think it's like one of the first pictures that right there, that picture Ich bin das Licht der Welt I am the light of the world, and it says Jesus speaks, christ speaks, jesus says, and to think you can come all the way to the middle of the mountains in Switzerland and find yourself in the middle of your, of your church family, and uh, and it was glorious, and and uh.
Speaker 1:Then I went up the mountain again, my legs were tired and I wasn't asking God for a different path, but just to give me the strength to keep going and keep going, because I know, as I keep going, that, um, there will be new surprises and new people that I meet, and so I love the idea that healing, in some ways, is not leaning into denial. Healing is leaning into truth and then finding the redemption of all the broken pieces. And how can I be a stronger person today? And it's kind of like by being more authentic and aware of who I was, so that I can be more in charge of who I will be, and I think that's what Diana's getting at. I love that. I think it's great it really is.
Speaker 2:I also, um, I'm so glad that we're talking about this because there's been something that was personal. You know, when you have those moments with with God where, uh, you just know he's spoken to you so intimately at the right time. I remember years ago and I was really in a dark place with depression and I was taking my dog for a walk and it was actually very similar to the weather today it was hot, dry, and I remember walking on this path and it was the. The soil had cracked, it was stony and that's, and it was like that's how I felt in myself. I felt like I was just dried out, falling apart, and it was a hard path to walk on and I was praying as I was walking and God directed me to a scripture and I was trying to remember where I could actually find it in the bible earlier, but I found it and it's in Habakkuk, chapter 3, and it's verse 19, and it's all about you know, god um providing and saving us.
Speaker 2:But verse 19 says the sovereign lord is my strength. He makes my feet like the deer, the feet of a deer. He enables me to tread on the heights and I remember being directed to that and thinking the path can feel really rocky and hard and difficult, but he prepared my feet, he makes my feet like the deer and so the most heights. And actually I think that kind of feeds into what we're saying here, that we actually we are given stronger legs, aren't we? By seeking the Lord, his wholeness and his healing, and he provides for us and I, and then you're out there in switzerland and you've been walking these difficult and you know I was going to tell you something, lisa, you know the, and I brought you out to the street here.
Speaker 1:let me come back this way. Have you got me now? Am I back on with you? Okay?
Speaker 1:So the reason I'm coming out here is, if you look up behind me, you can see a place called the Sienega Plata, and when I was up there I guess it's been over 30 years ago I was up there and I was similar to you in a dry place and nothing felt so dry in my life. And I sat down on a bench, which is located right at the top of the Shenandoah Plateau, and I was praying and I said, lord, I just need something a little more kind of in my face in terms of a sign to let me know that you haven't abandoned me. You know, it's that feeling when you get really dry and you reach out to god and I. It was like this giant swiss ram, that um, that jumped out in front of the path where I was and he sort of. I felt like I was in the movie deer hunter, if you remember the last scene of deer hunter, and he looks through the scope and sees the big deer.
Speaker 1:So so this, this ram, like, blows his nose at me, shakes his head and then and then jumps off the trail. And he jumps off the trail and then keeps going down. Well, but I kept looking at these animals and they their feet are designed to cling to the side of the mountain so they won't slip. And when I read all these passages in scripture about how God fashions us in a way to keep us upright and to keep us from falling into the abyss off of a mountain, and I thought you know, isn't it great that God reminds us that he's faithful and that he's equipped us with the gifts and the things that we need to function on a daily basis, whether we're in Switzerland or in the heat of Surrey, or in the mountains of North Carolina or in Africa? I mean, the idea is that God is never abandoning us to live lives with sore legs and sore feet, without hope to keep us moving towards our destination, and I love that.
Speaker 3:Sorry to interrupt that. I think just last time I was at the Bertham Hub, we only prayed with, I think, two ladies came for prayer and afterwards we continued to pray for them and we we don't go into detail, but we just said, oh, it was this situation or that, but um, it was really. Um, meant you know that that the Lord had. It was just fluke that they came through the door and who was allocated to pray with them. It was just like, oh, you're nearest, would you go and pray with this person? But, um, two people in the hub actually shared that. Um, what the person had brought that they prayed with was something that had happened to them. There was something you know that. There was something like you know something that was really quite a label that this lady had shared, that she'd been labeled with a certain label and one of the people praying said I had an issue with that label, you know so she
Speaker 3:had amazing empathy and heart for that person she was praying with because she, you know, understood what it was to live with that label and, you know, the other person had gone through, you know, it was a kind of life crisis, you know, but it was a, you know, quite an upsetting thing, but just a life crisis, but it was a very similar situation. And so the you know, the heart and the empathy was in the prayer because we could share those feelings and those emotions attached and it was just the Lord's doing that. He put us with the right person at the right time and so even our wounds are, you know, challenges in life and the Lord turns to good, doesn't he? He gives us that heart or that empathy to, you know, to just obviously we didn't share that with our guests, but you know it just gives us that heart as we're praying and holding that person. I remember in the hospital, diane.
Speaker 1:I was in the hospital and we had a patient and we prayed for healing and there was a real miraculous, unexplainable kind of change of circumstances. And the nurse was just going about her business and she laughed and she said you've been praying for her, haven't you? And I said yeah, yeah, I have, and her church is praying for her. And I said it's really incredible.
Speaker 1:I found myself sort of dumbfounded that this person's condition went from terminal death imminent, you know to to a person who suddenly rallied. And the nurse looked at me and she goes why do you act so, surprised that God actually answered your prayer. And I looked at her and I said that really probably is a sign of my humanity and my doubt and my unbelief. I couldn't find the courage to let God do the very thing that I was asking God to do. And you know, I got a true story. I got an email from this person about three years later, the same person, and she wrote me and she got the beginning of the email is the best part about it. It says you probably don't remember me, I died about three times. That was the beginning of the email.
Speaker 1:And she was trying to reconnect with me to let me know what had happened in her life since God had saved her from death, and I thought to believe in a God of that level of compassion and mercy is the kind of hope that I'll need today, when I'm walking that direction and I have to climb up about half a mile to the top of a waterfall which seems I mean earthly things that are trivial.
Speaker 1:But it's nice to reframe life in the terms of physical struggles in life compared to spiritual battles that we wage to try and redeem our past and to find the forgiveness that God offers so wonderfully freely. Because I think we beat ourselves up when God says, hey, I've already forgiven that sin. Why do you keep confessing it? You just can't believe that God would restore you. And yet that's the promise that makes this podcast relevant. That's why we do Coffee Paws is to try and tell the world hey, stop beating yourself up. You know, pray for the strength for the journey, Don't pray for a new. You know a new, lighter path, a way to avoid the things that come along the way Just resilience. Lighter path, a way to avoid the things that come along the way, just resilience. What diane said resilience is the key to say lord, give me the resilience to deal with what comes my way.
Speaker 2:Yeah and I, like diane that you talked about, there are some practical things we can do, like getting therapy or cbt, you know whatever it might be. And then there is also the prayerful support that you can receive through your church or through the healing hubs, and they all just complement each other and I think that's really nice. And, chris, you mentioned sort of trivial, earthly things like walking walking to your beautiful waterfall, which I'm really jealous about, but also that's how God talks and communicates with us and helps us learn. You think Jesus teaching through parables the Psalms talk so much about you know the kingdom of God, or actually that's Jesus, isn't it? But being like this or like that, so that we get an understanding, and also I think it reveals the character of God in those moments. Even though you are getting to walk to a beautiful fountain and all that, you know you're going to experience the goodness of God in climbing and enjoying it as well.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's, it's wonderful. Hey, there's another meme.
Speaker 2:There is. I wanted to touch on that. It's crazy.
Speaker 1:I think that this meme is relevant to the conversation we've had. I think it is.
Speaker 2:So it's, this one.
Speaker 1:At the top there.
Speaker 2:Monk Okay, a monk once said imagine being bitten by a snake and instead of focusing on healing from the poison, you chase the snake to understand why it bit you and to prove that you didn't deserve it.
Speaker 1:Gosh, that feels very like it's right on the money, though, because you know, we spend our lives chasing the snakes instead of embracing the healing power of god, and I think that the idea is that when, when someone comes your way and says, uh hey, I just want you, you to know that this snake over here bit me and doggone it, I'm so mad and you say, well, what are you going to do about it? Don't you think you need to get some intervention? You've been bitten by a snake, I'm not worried about that. I'm going to chase that snake and I'm going to show him who's boss. I'm going to chase that snake and I'm going to show him who's boss.
Speaker 1:And imagine living your life chasing the evil that has come upon you, instead of actually doing the things that we've just mentioned over the last 20 minutes, doing the things which build up our strength, build up our minds, the cognitive behavioral therapy that can come from a good therapist, or praying in a healing hub. All those things are positive things to deal with the poison instead of chasing the snake. And yet the world is so filled with people telling us that the right way to live your life is to chase the snakes and to cut their heads off. Yeah, that you. You chase the snakes in your life and you expend all the energy to show that you're not a snake. I'm going to show you who's a snake and who's not a snake, and the way I'm going to do that is by destroying snakes. Meanwhile you've got the poison going through your system, debilitating you and robbing you of your journey. Debilitating you and robbing you of your journey, because if you don't deal with the stuff in you that has been when because of the bite, then you yourself will have no strength in your legs for your own journey, but you'll have a dead snake, you know. You'll say, see, I told you, see that dead snake over there, I took care of it and meanwhile you can't walk anymore because the snake has robbed you of the joy of life.
Speaker 1:But I think that fits so perfectly with what we talked about today, because it's saying I declare that the Lord wants me to be the healthiest version of myself I can be, and that means that I just have to let the Lord deal with the snakes and I have to deal with my temple and who God has made me to be.
Speaker 1:And today that means that we have to be where we are and to shine like the stars of the universe, so I'm sure I'm going to find somebody. This morning I had this young family from San Francisco that were here waiting for a bus and the kids were playing on their phones. They were playing like video games on their phones and the parents looked at me and I remember what it was like to be parents of young kids. And and they said you know our kids, we came all the way from San Francisco to Switzerland and our kids just want to sit on their phones. And and so I said well, the good thing is they'll lose their internet signal here in a minute and then they'll be stuck and they'll have to pay attention to the beautiful things around them.
Speaker 1:And then I thought, right before they got on the bus, I looked at the kids and they were kind of distracted. And the father goes, listen to him. And he pointed at me and I looked at his children and I said when you're old like me, you'll look back on this and you'll say do you remember that time when mom and dad took us to Switzerland? And I said you'll remember this trip when you're old like me. And I said so, make the most of it. And he got teary and he looked at me and he said thank you for telling my children.
Speaker 1:And they were just about to go see the most beautiful waterfalls in the world and the kids were playing this candy crush video game thing on their phone and, um, the little kid kind of looked at me and he was like gee, I didn't think about it, it's. It's just one of those things about being salt and light where you are and, uh, and I just hope that wherever people are listening to this podcast today, that when they when they this podcast, that they'll say you know what? I'm going to spread a little bit of joy. Today, I'm going to tell people that the snake doesn't win, and I'm going to say make sure that you get strong legs, because God has exciting things on the path ahead of you.
Speaker 2:I love it. I love it. What an amazing start to the week. Like that hope and truth. It's so good and to share it with you both, like the three of us that's just been really good. Thank you.
Speaker 1:It has.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Wonderful.
Speaker 2:Well, let's, let's say goodbye to our listeners and Di, thank you so much for just sharing real nuggets.
Speaker 1:We need her back again. She brings quality to the podcast.
Speaker 2:I think we do another day. We'll catch you all at the next episode awesome thanks for listening to Coffee Pods today. Don't forget to like, follow and subscribe. This podcast is made possible thanks in part to the generosity of PeopleWise.
