Calling All Cracked Pots! It's Patsy Clairmont!

Today on Words to Go, Patty chats with Patsy Clairmont about "Praying From a Surrendered Heart"

Patsy Clairmont is a wildly popular speaker with Women of Faith conferences, an opportunity that's allowed her to speak to over three million women. She has authored over seventeen books including her first fiction book Stardust on My Pillow. Her next soon-to-be-released book is entitled Catching Fireflies. She’s also written five books for kids. Through faith in Christ, she was set free from the prison of her own home as she left behind the pain of agoraphobia and embraced a life of fullness and joy. She's the funniest lady in the world, but best of all I'm so honored to call her my friend. Welcome, Patsy to Words to Go.

PATSY: Thank you, Patty, for inviting me.

“Though he was God, he did not demand and cling to his rights as God. He made himself nothing; he took the humble position of a slave and appeared in human form. And in human form he obediently humbled himself even further by dying a criminal’s death on a cross.” Phil. 2: 6-8

PATTY: Patsy, this is one of those meatier scriptures that bears some dissection, it seems. When you approach God in prayer, what does it mean to you to make one’s self nothing?

PATSY: Patty, making one’s self nothing means understanding that I am NOT God. I am NOT in control, I do NOT understand the greater plans of God, and it is ONLY because of Jesus that I am allowed to approach the throne of grace. When I have those truths securely fastened in my brain and then believe it, I am hidden behind the cross. That means my identity is in Christ and He in return represents me to the world for His purposes. Talk about a marketing plan. We are nothing and He is everything...how can we go wrong?

PATTY: Yes, but it’s taken me a long time to feel truly identified IN Christ. I misunderstood what that meant as an early Christian. Can you give us an example?

PATSY: I am a slam-dunk cracked pot. Anyone who has known me for over an hour and a half will sign an affidavit agreeing with that proclamation.

PATTY: Ha!

PATSY: Okay, okay fifteen minutes. The point is God has made space for even the most unqualified and broken among us. He understands our inherent weaknesses, our tendencies, and our wanderlust hearts. Imagine that He who is sinless and holy gets us, Little-ol’-nothing-us. Not only does He get us, Christ gives us internal dignity, external purpose, and holy poise. And His generosity doesn’t stop there. He transforms evil into good and death into hope.

PATTY: I think I’m still holding out for some of that holy poise. What a gorgeous picture of transformation, though!

PATSY: Yep, I have no trouble owning “nothing” as my title and calling, because once I relinquish my right to call the shots and bend my knobby-knees to Christ with a contrite heart, I rise up strong in Him. And HIM folks is what it’s all about.

PATTY: I’d like to ask you one more question, Patsy, if you don’t mind. It’s a temptation to treat prayer like a fire hose—only use in case of emergency. What has God or life taught you about the need for prayer as a daily occupation?

PATSY: Years ago I attended a once-a-year gathering of Bible studies from my community. It was a large group and I had not seen many of the gals since the last big gathering. One particular time I was startled by the dramatic change in a woman’s countenance I’d known before. It’s not that I had known her well, but I had observed her through the years on different occasions. She appeared to have a neurological disorder that caused her entire body to shake in tremors. So you can imagine my surprise when I saw her standing quietly, without tremors, watching the milling crowd. In my mind I wondered if the doctors had found a medication that had stilled her shaking or if they had done something surgically to help her.

PATTY: I have to admit, my mind would reach first for the logical too.

PATSY: Finally my curiosity got the best of me and I sidled up to her. “I can’t help, but notice a change in your health,” I probed. This once timid woman turned full face and smiled. I had a sense she wanted to tell me.

“Over the years,” she began, “the medications I was taking did not help my tremors, so I tried a different approach. Then I began to sit quietly in the presence of the Lord for periods of time everyday until gradually the shaking stilled.” Her eyes softened with gratitude.

I wanted to know more. I encouraged her to go on.

“At first I could only sit five minutes and then my anxiety levels would drive me off to fuss over something,” she confessed. “So off and on all day I would go back and make myself sit down again. In time I was able to stay still for longer periods. I didn’t always verbally pray, sometimes I just presented myself to the Lord, and then sat quietly. I often thought, I can’t sit here, because every nerve ending was screaming to move. But after weeks I saw that those moments were crucial to my well-being and sweet to my spirit. I was months into this discipline when others began to notice my tremors were easing. I knew I felt inwardly calmer. Eventually my tremors ceased, although if I get stressed I notice twitching, which is my cue to Be still and know that He is God.”

PATTY: That’s one of those miraculous healings that can’t be refuted. That woman found the source of her healing.

PATSY: Yes, talk about a billboard for prayer! I have never forgotten that woman. I feel like I saw the results of a miracle. It wasn’t only her lack of outward tremors, or her grateful eyes, but her new confidant spirit. She had been like a nervous sparrow and now, well, she was...a mounting eagle.

PATTY: That’s such a faith building story, Patsy. This week Neta reminded us to praise God like warriors. Thelma reminded us to pray with the mind of Christ so that we’re walking in God’s will, praying his will. Then Jan taught us to meditate on and practice the presence of God. Today, Patsy, you taught us that faithful prayers bring bountiful results. Could you leave us with a scripture?

PATSY:“...They that wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength...”

PATTY: Ah! A perfect way to finish off our chat. Patsy, you know I love you so much and continue to pray for you as you minister to millions of women around the world. Thank you for chatting with us today at Words to Go.

PATSY: I loved it!

PATTY: We’d love to hear your feedback, friends, to our chat with bestselling author and communicator Patsy Clairmont! Please leave your feedback any time, all day.

Tomorrow, we have a special treat for our Mystery Guest Friday. A bestselling and beloved novelist will discuss the difficult yet blessed responsibility of praying for our kids. When will the “mystery” be revealed? See you tomorrow, on our special MYSTERY GUEST FRIDAY!

Bonus Saturday: Wilderness Knees

There are a few gems in the Words to Go archive that were published before a readership started gathering here in cyberspace. Because Monday launches our first "Ask the Expert Week" and the week's theme is prayer, I'm pulling out a past fuel for thought to top off our tanks for the week's challenging discussions. Monday please join bestselling author Neta Jackson (Yada Yada Prayer Group) and I as we discuss the power of prayer and praise.

"Wilderness Knees"

I believed for much of my Christian life that in order to be able to pray effectively, that I had to follow the guiding principles of Mark 18:20, “For where two or three are gathered together in My name, I am there in the midst of them.” Jesus was giving the believers an assurance, knowing they would eventually gather fearfully at times after He had ascended to heaven. But it was an erroneous assumption on my part that my prayers alone were not potent enough. . . that I had to have a partner or a group of people to reach the ears of God.

That was until the year I discovered the power of wilderness knees. I use this term to describe the times of hard-fought spiritual battles, the ones that are fought invisibly in the heavens on our behalf because we have spent some knee time before God and often in isolation. I think of John the Baptist crying in the desert and his words falling on only the sand and the wind. But it was in the isolated wilderness that God lifted him up and used him like a town crier. . . Make way! Make Way! God is come to earth!

And so it happened that I had read an article one year in a local newspaper about a mother who was asking a librarian to remove a pornographic magazine from the eye level of her young child. She wasn’t trying to be prudish or fracture anyone else’s rights but was asking that the magazine be removed from plain sight of her young child as they entered the library door. Emotional intelligence ought to prevail. But instead the librarian refused to move the magazine out of sight claiming First Amendment rights. The story was buried on the back page of the local newspaper. I bowed my head at my desk at the office where I worked and prayed. I asked God what he thought ought to be done about it. I then quietly picked up the telephone and called the local mayor’s office. I asked him about the article and if he had gotten any complaints from parents.

“No, none at all,” said the mayor. He seemed sympathetic but told me that without a consensus, he had no call to act.

“Would you respond if it seemed that more parents cared?” I asked.

“Of course. But no one cares. You’re the only one who’s called,” he told me.

I got off the phone and studied the matter thoughtfully. I took some time during my lunch hour to pray some more and called church offices around our town. I summarized the article to each secretary and told them what the mayor had said, that no one seemed to care.

After an hour, I went back to work. By the end of the day, I wondered if my quiet prayer and the hour spent in phone calls could have possibly done any good. After all, I was a nameless mom. Out of curiosity, I called the mayor’s office before the close of office hours. I was surprised to find his office in a frenzy. “What’s wrong?” I asked.

“Little woman, I don’t know who you are but we have been getting phone calls not only from local parents but from all over the country. Even the ACLU is calling and a TV news magazine. What kind of strings did you pull? You must have a lot of clout,” he told me.

“No,” I told him quietly. “I prayed and made a few phone calls. “Are you pulling the porn out the library?” I asked.

“It’s gone,” he told me. He never gave out my name to any of the media. I was glad. I liked the solitude of wilderness knees.

I welcome FaceBook guests to Words to Go. Please post your thoughts with Neta Jackson on praise and its power Monday!

The Most Important Thing

There’s a lot of activity that goes into moving a group of people from scattered to unified, from loose cannons to the Body of Christ. That activity is translated differently by many Bodies that become the Local Church. One particular pastor has placed on his website a list of these activities. They are typical of what we see—children’s ministry, youth meetings, discipleship and membership classes. But then there was this one strange activity that drew my eye. It was labeled only “The Most Important Ministry.” When I clicked on that, the page opened to a gathering to pray. It had replaced the midweek service normally reserved for group studies and children’s meetings. Imagine that: the most important meeting was not ministry to the poor or to children or to one another, but ministry to God.

Oswald Chambers said:
“When a man is born from above, the life of the Son of God is born in him, and he can either starve that life or nourish it. Prayer is the way the life of God is nourished. Our ordinary views of prayer are not found in the New Testament. We look upon prayer as a means of getting things for ourselves; the Bible’s idea of prayer is that we may get to know God Himself.”

When ministry becomes about anything else, I get sidetracked. When ministry is focused on ministering to God, then out of it springs life and fruitfulness.

“Call to me and I will answer you and tell you great and unsearchable things you do not know.”
--Jer. 33:3

Mercy, Mercy

With my spirit full of Anne Lotz’s teachings, I’ve returned to Nehemiah chapter-by-chapter. What I glean is a lot. In chapter one, Nehemiah is in an intercessor’s posture; he has become cupbearer to King Artaxerxes. While many of his fellow Jews have been taken captive by the Babylonians, he has a peachy job in posh surroundings. His brother and a group of men from Jerusalem come to him to tell him that a remnant of newly returning exiles have found Jerusalem’s walls torn down and the gates burned. He now prays to God that Artaxerxes will allow him to return and help his fellow Jews rebuild the wall and remove their reproach.

I’m often an observer of other’s pain. I sit at my desk in my comfortable neighborhood writing, studying, and then I receive an email or a phone call that someone I know or love is in distress. What is even more troubling than calamity is when I know some insider’s scoop, that the person’s pain was at one point, avoidable; but at a crossroads, they made the wrong choice and fell into a quagmire. That is exactly what has happened to Nehemiah; he references a warning from the Jewish leader Moses and recalls when the Israelites crossed over that line into disobedience. But even in knowing that his neighbors have sinned, he takes the posture of an intercessor meaning that he is confessional on behalf of the whole group. The reason that he can do that is because of his influence among the people and the unity he shares with them. He knows that an exiled people are a humbled people.

It’s very difficult to intercede for a proud person. I find myself asking God simply for mercy. But Nehemiah is repenting for them. That’s a curious prayer. I can repent for myself, but to repent for a whole group takes a shepherd’s burden. I see that burden in my husband, a pastor. Then when I watch a person I love going pall-mall over a cliff metaphorically speaking, I sense that burden creeping into my prayers. It’s painful. I can’t prevent it and no amount of counsel prevented it. I think of how I could spend my prayer time praying for Africa, but no; I’ve got to painfully watch a friend get their ox out of the ditch even though they ran straight into it on a joy ride. Until they decide that they’ve gone the wrong way, I serve as cupbearer to the King. I have to work at not running off the cliff myself on a daily basis.