Getting the Law on Your Side with LegalShield

The photographer was angry. And with good reason.  Several months before she had been contacted by a magazine to publish a picture of one of the children she photographs as part of her business.

                She agreed to release the photograph for a single printing for $500. The magazine signed off and ran the picture in the magazine.  She waited for the check to arrive…and waited…and waited. Finally, she wrote the magazine requesting payment.  She wrote twice more.  The magazine ignored her requests.

                Finally, the photographer contacted LegalShield to facilitate the collection. One of the benefits of the LegalShield membership is that a law firm will write letters or make phone calls on your behalf. Since she lives in Maryland, the law firm of Weinstock, Friedman & Friedman represented her and contacted the magazine by letter. Businesses can request as many as 10 collection letters per month sent out of its behalf by the law firms through the LegalShield program.

Almost immediately the photographer received a check from the magazine and a letter stating that the matter had been mistakenly overlooked and they were very sorry.

LegalShield -- “Equal Justice for All.” It used to be that only the wealthy could afford a lawyer. Now with LegalShield, both individuals and small businesses can be protected by a respected law firm for a reasonable price. LegalShield has been working with the Baltimore firm of Weinstock, Friedman & Friedman for 24 years to help protect individuals and businesses in Maryland and Washington, DC.

I recently completed A Praying Life by Paul E Miller. The book is a refreshing, honest journey in the journey to get to know God better through conversations with Him. The book encourages us to have those conversations even when they don't feel that spiritual. I know I will be quoting this book for months to come. I have highlighted some of the more meaningful passages below.

"If we think we can do life on our own, we will not take prayer seriously. Our failure to pray will always feel like something else--a lack of discipline or too many obligations. But when something is important to us, we make room for it. Prayer is simply not important to many Christians because Jesus is already an add-on. That is why , suffering is so important to the process of learning how to pray. It is God's gift to us to show us what life is really like. "

"A praying life isn't simply a morning prayer time; it is about slipping into prayer at odd hours of the day, not because we are disciplined but because we are in touch with our own poverty of spirit."

"The Enlightenment has captured the West, obscuring our view of what the world is really like. Now, we see a flat two-dimensional world that relegates God to the sidelines as a feel-good cheerleader. Prayer is private and personal, not public and real. If it makes you feel good, then pray for sick people or commune with God, but don't take it seriously or make it public."

From Einstein's biographer: "Einstein said his science was driven by a belief in a "God who reveals himself in the harmony of all that exists."

To teach us how to pray Jesus told stories of weak people who knew they couldn't do life on their own. The persistent widow and the friend at midnight get access, not because they are strong but because they are desperate. Learned desperation is at the heart of a praying life.

We don't like God who is too close, especially if God is a deity we can't control. We have a primal fear of walking with God in the garden, naked, without clothing. We desperately want intimacy, but when it comes, we pull back, fearful of a God who is too personal, too pure. We're much more comfortable with God at a distance.

"If you are going to enter this divine dance we call prayer, you have to surrender your desire to be in control, to figure out how prayer works. You've got to let God take the lead. You have to trust. Then God will delight you not only with the gift of himself but also with amazing answers. No one works like him!"

p. 149

Here's a partial list of kingdom prayers that we seldom ask

· Change in others (too controlling, too hopeless)

· Change in me (too scary)

· Change in things I don't like in the culture (too impossible)

We can't pray effectively until we get in touch with our inner brat. When we see our own self-will, it opens the door to doing things through God. Instead of singing Frank Sinatra's song, "My Way," we enter into God's story and watch Him do it His way. No one works like Him.

God customizes deserts for each of us. Joseph's desert is being betrayed and forgotten in an Egyptian jail. Moses lives in the Midian desert as an outcast for 40 years. The Israelis live in the desert for 40 years. David run from Saul in the desert. All of them hold on to the hope of God's Word yet face the reality of their situation.

On protracted, unanswered prayer:

The theme of the desert is so strong in the Scripture that Jesus reenacts the desert journey at the beginning of his ministry by fasting for 40 days in a desert while facing Satan's temptation. His desert is living with the hope of the resurrection yet facing the reality of His Father's face turned against him at the cross.

The Father turning his face against you is the heart of the desert experience. Life has ended. It no longer has any point. You might not want to commit suicide, but death would be a relief. It's very tempting to survive the desert by taking the bitterness offered by Satan--to maintain a wry, cynical detachment from life, finding a perverse enjoyment in mocking those who still have hope.

When God seems silent and our prayers go unanswered, the overwhelming temptation is to leave the story -- to walk out of the desert and attempt to create a normal life. But when we persist in a spiritual vacuum where we hang in there during ambiguity, we get to know God. In fact, that is how intimacy grows in all close relationships. p. 192

Sometimes when we say "God is silent" what's really going on is that he hasn't told the story the way we wanted it told. He will be silent when we want him to fill in the blanks of the story we are creating. But with his own stories. the ones we live in, he is seldom silent. p. 201

Gospel stories always have suffering in them. American Christianity has an allergic reaction to this part of the gospel. We'd love to hear about God's love for us, but suffering doesn't mesh with our right to the "pursuit of happiness." So we pray to escape a gospel story, when that is the best gift the Father can give us. p. 214

"I need to tune in to my Father's voice above the noise of my own heart and the surrounding world -- what C.S. Lewis called "the Kingdom of Noise." p. 245

Prayer is where I do my best work as a husband, dad, worker, and friend. I'm aware of the weeds of unbelief in me and the struggles in others' lives. The Holy Spirit puts his finger on issues that only He can solve. p. 257

We live in many overlapping stories, most of which are larger than us. Each of us will die with unfinished stories. We can never forget that God is God. Ultimately it is His story, not ours. I've come to realize that the more distant I am from a story, the less I know what God is doing. God will help me with my story, but not with someone else's. p. 266

Comments on "Stop Saying You're Fine" by Mel Robbins

Stop Saying You're Fine by Mel Robbins

Discover a More Powerful You

I highly recommend this book as a great guide for refining your goals, accomplishing your goals and helping people who are stuck in life and don't really know what their goals are. Excerpts from the book follow.

Being stuck is the feeling that you are trapped by the life you have created is terrifying and infuriating. Deep down, you know you want something more, but maybe you don't know what it is or you simply don't have a clue how to get it.

If you can reclaim control over 5 percent of your life, and spend that time doing something productive, energy-inspiring, and action-oriented you will quickly restore order and balance to your life.

There's a battle going on in your brain, and it's keeping you from getting what you want. To win any fight you have to know what you are up against and how to fight back. Your brain is a formidable opponent and it fights dirty. At crucial moments throughout your day, your brain is putting the brakes on your desire for action and inserting thoughts and feelings in order to keep you from moving forward.

Your brain is constantly producing propaganda to project a false sense of your personal limits. Think of it as an overeager natural defense system that is designed to protect you from stepping into situations that involve too much risk. You need to develop tricks to outsmart your brain at its own game, by devising tricks that let you accomplish higher goals.

Admitting to yourself, let alone others, that you're stuck can feel monumentally difficult. Unless you are actively attacking your problems and impressing your friends through your efforts to fix things, frequent conversations about feeling stuck can be a major social downer.

It might seem that shrinking your dreams makes them easier or more manageable, but the truth is that when you shrink your dreams you kill them. The smaller version is not what you desire. It's a lie. The little thing is not what you want, the big one is."

The test of your goals and dreams

Test #1: Is it embarrassing?

Test #2 Is it selfish and a little crass?

Test #3 Is it specific and detailed?

What if I truly don't know what I want? You need to get out into the world and do something new and exciting and big. What you need is action, not thought. So stop thinking and just pick.

When you announce to other people what your dreams are, you enlist the outside world in holding you to your commitment. There are three simple reasons why you must do this. 1) you can't get anything done in life without the help of other people. 2) Other people accelerate your pace and broaden your ideas. 3) Your relationship with people is the most important aspect of your life.

Get people to help you. Describe your desire to them, then ask the following questions

1. If you were me, what specific things would you be doing to get started/learn more/etc.

2. Do you have any books that you would recommend I read?

3. Do you know anyone who come give me some more advice/counsel?

There's no faster way to accelerate this process of changing your life than to surround yourself with people who do the same thing that you are interested in. You cannot underestimate the power of proximity when it comes to forming connections.

The longer you wait to get started on your goals, the more you think and the more you lessen the impulse to take action.

Life will back you into a corner. The only way out is through. As soon as you see multiple ways to have what you want, you will push through. Remember to be like water. If something gets in your way, flow around it.

Action removes doubt. The moment you take stock of the situation and start actually doing something about it, you begin to feel better. You feel a sense of control returning to you.

Euology for Lindsa MacDonald

Eulogy given on Oct. 29 at Evangelical Presbyterian Church in Annapolis.

Presented by her husband, Chuck MacDonald

Lindsa MacDonald loved Jesus, her family and the St. Louis Cardinals. She had a zest for living and a love of life that was contagious. People wanted to be around her to absorb some of that vitality.

I recall when we lived in S. California, we would frequently invite a bunch of singles over to our house on a Friday evening. Lindsa would whip up a meal for 10: French market soup and cornbread was a favorite. We might even all go to a local high school football game. After people left we would get enthusiastic thank you's for days, saying what a great time they had. We would look at each other and say, "What did we do, that was so special?" Just being around her made things special.

She had insight and a quick tongue that cut through emotions and feelings to get to the heart of the matter. And if someone was not serious about their relationship with the Lord or their talents that God had given them, she was quick to let them know about it. If she detected bad doctrine or squishy ethics she would correct them in a hurry.

I remember many times seeing her wrestle with a decision about what God wanted her to do or a lesson He was trying to teach her. She would converse with the Lord about the situation, meditate on it a bit, then converse with the Lord a bit more. She would not give up until she understood what the Lord had for her. No slackers around her!

One of Lindsa's favorite things to do was acting. She returned to college focused on getting her degree. even though she was 38 at the time with three small children. It meant some late hours and difficult commitments, but she hung in there and worked alongside "kids" 15 years younger. She was in several stage plays along the way to getting her theater arts degree from Cal State San Bernardino.

Lindsa loved to use those dramatic skills to have an influence for the Lord. Through our church in Redlands, Calif. and later in St. Louis, she was able to act in numerous skits and full-scale dramatic performances that highlighted faith in Christ and the outworking of faith toward personal godliness.

The most memorable ones were "Good News Scrooge," a production that put a Christian twist on Charles Dickens' "A Christmas Carol," a dramatization of the life of Esther from the Bible, and a production called "Bethlehem Marketplace," that took visitors through the village of Bethlehem and confronted them personally with the claims of Christ.

One story that I remember from those days, showed how she used to get into situations, then see God get her out of them. We were living in St. Louis at the time and she flew back to California for a couple of weeks to be involved with "Bethlehem Marketplace" and was dressed in first-century garb guiding guests through the village. After a performance on a Friday night she was driving to the home of some friends where she was staying with. It was about 11:30 at night along a desolate stretch of road when the car conked out on her. Fortunately in California desolate and suburb are often in close proximity. This was before the days of cell phones and she wasn't even quite sure where she was. Incredibly an older couple was walking their dog across the wash from the street she was on. Lindsa (always the shy, retiring type) proceeded to ask for help and explain her outlandish clothes. The couple, instead of picking up their dog and running for their lives from this weird person, invited her into their house and let her use their phone. When nobody answered the phone, they volunteered to drive her (a person they just met 15 minutes ago) to where she needed to go. Lindsa tended to have that effect on people. When they got to where her friends house was they dropped her off and with a wave returned home. I can't even remember what happened to the car.

Fast forward a couple of decades to when she was in the last stages of her 4+ year battle with the insidious disease of cancer. She was in a lot of pain and the discomfort is hard to describe. Tough to watch a person that you love suffer. She woke up one morning and said with disappointment, "Why am I still here?"

She was ready to go to be with her Savior. To cast aside her worn out flesh and take on a new body, one capable of living forever and enjoying continuous fellowship with her master. She could say with Paul: "I have fought the good fight, I have finished the course, I have kept the faith; in the future there is laid up for me the crown of righteousness, which the Lord the righteous judge will award to me on that day" 2 Timothy 4:8.

When you're married to a person for a long time -- we were married for 36 years -- there are times when we wish our spouse was different. More of this or more like that. But in the end, you can look back and see she was the perfect person for you. Praise God.

To close, let me leave with you a couple of enduring images of Lindsa:

Swimming a mile on her birthday. I used to call her the human torpedo in the water.

Going to the beach and riding the waves. Even in her 60's she loved the beach.

A cruise to Alaska to celebrate her 60th birthday. She loved it all, but especially playing with the dogs that compete in the Iditarod.

Her love of nicknames and catch phrases. When I was teasing her about something she might say, "Go bite the wall!" It always made me laugh when she said that.

She had pet names for people close to her: I was "The Dude!" Mark was "Tiger" Tracy was "The Munch" and Christy was "peanut" She used to call herself "Tomato face." because when she blushed (which was often in the earlier years of our marriage) she turned tomato red.

Her love for her new granddaughter Maggie Rose. Even in her final weeks, Lindsa would smile broadly when she heard Maggie's voice on the telephone.

Thanks for joining us today in celebrating Lindsa's life and legacy.