Shattered

Horribly broken am I
Not a little damaged
A tiny bit dented
Or worse for the wear
But tragically 
Oh so tragically broken

Shattered
Like 
The gutter's discarded wine bottle
Useless to all who behold
Storing liquid no more
Watch for the sharp edges
The sharp jagged edges
That you don't cut yourself

Yet
You see my usefulness
My beauty
You, Jesus, repurposed me
You gently picked up my shards
You composed them
Along with all the others you've pursued
Into your gorgeous mosaic

You've made me a part 
Of something more beautiful 
Than the individuals therein
I'm beautiful to you
You, my friend are beautiful 
And important to Jesus, too

Come
Ask him to pick you up
Let him merge your shattered shards
Into his glorious mosaic
Into his spectacular masterpiece

Treasure

What is my treasure? What does my heart clamp onto? What would I miss if I lost it?

I can say unequivocally that my treasure is Jesus. At one time, it may have been such things as my guitars, music, or even my desire to be in a relationship. But I have given that all up to Jesus. I would no longer miss those things if I gave them up. I have, in fact, given them up. I have laid them all at the feet of Jesus. My heart clamps onto Jesus.

I love to do my quiet time; the time I spend with Jesus, reading Scripture, and praying. I have found that I finally understand what the Apostle Paul meant when he wrote, “pray continually” (1 Thessalonians 5:17 NIV). I find myself praying breath prayers throughout the day. A breath prayer is a short prayer one can say with a breath. A classic example is this, “Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner,” or simply, “Thank you, God, for loving me.” I pray as I go about my daily business, as I drive, work, and do schoolwork. I am constantly in prayer, thanking God, asking for His help, and praising Him.

I am not saying this to “toot my own horn” or brag. No, I am saying this to encourage you. I want to show you that praying without ceasing is a state of mind. One does not have to be in a particular posture physically to pray. It is a mental posture one must assume, an attitude, a state of mind.

This state of mind is a choice I repeatedly make throughout the day. I choose to talk to God. And do you know what the fantastic thing about this choice is? God listens to me. The Creator and Ruler of the universe makes time for me. I am nothing in this tremendously massive creation (more on that another time), and Jesus takes the time to listen to me. He will listen to you, too. Take the time. Make an effort. I dare you to.

Grandma & Jesus

I told Grandma about Jesus several times over the last few months. I have provided her pastoral care ever since she was placed on hospice. She wanted me to provide her pastoral care, not the hospice chaplain. I told Grandma that since she wanted me to do that, I was going to minister to her. And to me, that meant we were going to have some uncomfortable conversations about Jesus and Eternity. I believe that came as a surprise to her.

 I asked her why she thought God had given her a life so much longer than everyone else in the family. She was, after all, more than 98 years old. She said she didn’t know but wondered the same thing. I told her that I had a theory. It was because God wanted her to hear about and make a decision regarding Jesus.

For several months, I visited her every Monday. I read to her from the Gospel of Luke and prayed with her. Prior to this, I had read Mark’s Gospel and Acts and had begun to read the Gospel of John to her. I had hoped to have some light theological discussions with her, but she showed no interest.

During my pastoral visits to her, we talked about Jesus several times, and I asked her if she wanted to make a decision for Jesus, but she repeatedly said she wanted to think about it and that maybe she would do it later. Then Grandma began showing signs of dementia. She wasn’t capable of those sorts of conversations any longer. The discussions we started having about Jesus were on the level of talks one might have with a toddler. I did not give up hope. After all, Jesus told us to have the faith of a child. I hoped this approach would work with Grandma.

Starting on Monday of her last week, I went every day to spend time with her. Tuesday, she was very agitated and was hallucinating. She tried twice to get up out of her recliner. This was particularly dangerous because she did not have the strength or ability to stand up. She had lost this ability many months earlier.

Wednesday, when I visited her, she was in bed. She was largely incoherent but would mumble, “I love you, too,” when Mom or I would say it to her. On Thursday, she was comatose. The hospice nurse told us repeatedly that hearing was the last thing to go and that she could hear when we talked to her. So, I read to her from the Psalms and prayed. I asked Mom for a few minutes alone with Grandma. Mom stepped out. I told Grandma that Jesus loved her, as did I. And that Jesus would meet her if she asked him to.

The hospice nurse told Mom that Grandma only had forty-eight hours or so left. At this point, I started praying in my personal quiet time that if God was not going to bring her into His flock, He should just take her. That thought made me very sad. I began challenging God, saying things like, “Why are You letting her linger if there is no hope she will turn to You.”

Friday came and went with no change; she was still comatose. I continued challenging God in my prayer time. I told Grandma that Jesus loved her and that he would meet her if she asked him to do so. On Saturday morning, the nurse told Mom she was surprised that Grandma made it through the night. The nurse asked Mom whom Grandma was waiting for. Neither Mom nor the nurse had any ideas.

I arrived at her bedside and read Psalm 23 to her and prayed over her. I leaned down and told  Grandma she had to trust me; that I wouldn’t lead her astray. I promised her that I had her best interests at heart. I told Grandma to pray, repeating the words I would tell her. I said, “Jesus, thank you for your work on the cross. Please forgive my sins; I’m sorry for the sins I have committed in the past. Please come live in my heart. Thank you for loving me. Amen.” I kissed her forehead, told her to ask Jesus to come to meet her, and left her in Mom’s care. Grandma expired twenty minutes later.

Who was she waiting for? I believe she was waiting to meet Jesus.

God Weaves a Tapestry

Wanting to go to Grad school, I found an old student loan that needed my attention first. I needed to pay it off before I could qualify for aid. I asked God for discernment about how to take care of this debt. During this time frame, I heard a sermon wherein the preacher talked about how, when Joshua was leading Israel across the Jordan river into the promised land, God told them to first step into the water before God would make Israel’s path dry (Joshua 3:13-17). I interpreted this sermon as the Holy Spirit telling me that God would have my back financially if I would go ahead and step in the water by paying off the loan with my savings before saving up more money.

So, I saved up money for two weeks, which was enough not to deplete my entire savings (I still had other bills to pay in the near term). I paid the loan off, paid the other bills, and felt the financial crunch I had created. As a result, I started second-guessing my faith in what I felt the Holy Spirit had told me. I decided to confess my doubt and asked God for help. Specifically, I admitted to God that I could not manage my finances, turned them over to Him, and asked Him to take charge of my finances.

Recently, I reread the book, A Praying Life, authored by Paul E. Miller (I highly recommend reading it). In it, Miller discusses how God weaves different sections of our lives together in what he refers to as “poetic artistry.” Miller encourages the reader to pray that God would reveal how He is weaving together the tapestry of one’s life. I set about praying this for myself. In addition, I have also been praying that God would, somehow, surprise me. He has, recently, surprised me several times, in a good way.

The other night (12/12/2021), I was in my car, at work as a food delivery driver, when I heard a still, small voice in my head tell me, out of the blue, to “liquidate the contents of the storage locker.” I said out loud, “What?” The still small voice repeated itself in my head, “liquidate the contents of the storage locker.” I asked out loud, “Sell all the stuff in the storage locker?” The voice said, “Yes, liquidate the storage locker.”

I recognized the voice as likely not my own, but rather, that of the Holy Spirit. This has happened once in a while, before, and the thoughts previously have been the same voice, but they explode into my head while I’m thinking of something completely unrelated to the explosive thoughts; anyway, on with the story. Wondering if this is my thought or the Holy Spirit, I said aloud, “God, if this is You, give me a sign. I don’t know what the sign should be; just make it obvious to me.” My phone beeped at me within two or three seconds, and a message saying, “Let’s free up some storage space” appeared. This is not an unusual message for me to see on my phone. It happens daily. The unique part, the awe-inspiring thing, was first, that it was on topic, and second, the timing of when it happened.

Next, I asked God, “You want me to sell ALL the contents of the locker? Everything? If you want me to sell everything, give me a sign.” I waited for another sign, but I didn’t see anything. I went inside to get another delivery, and one of the other drivers said to me, “Holy smokes, dude! All your deliveries tonight have been to the extremes of our delivery zone!” I thought about it and realized the five deliveries I had at that point had all been to the extremes of our delivery area.

Suddenly, I realized that’s where God’s “poetic artistry” was manifesting itself in the weaving of the tapestry of my life, in the “extreme.” God was telling me to go to the extreme and sell everything to answer several prayers. The first answer was in reply to my request that He would show me His “poetic artistry.” The second answer was in response to my prayer that God would help me manage my finances; selling everything would allow me to dispose of the storage locker, thereby saving me more than $200 monthly. A third answer was in response to my request for God to surprise me. I certainly didn’t expect to hear from the Holy Spirit tonight.

The lesson in this reflects the truth that God cares about all aspects of our lives. Jesus says that God knows about the death of a mere sparrow and that, in His eyes, we are worth far more than many little birds (Matthew 10:29-31). God will manifest Himself to us if we submit to His will. I praise God for what He showed me tonight.

Romans Road to Jesus

The Romans Road is a way of presenting the Salvation Gospel of Jesus Christ to an individual. It’s not the only way to do it, but it presents the essence of the Gospel message using the New Testament book of Romans to do so. I like it because it is concise and is easy for me to remember. I also found the verses, with a little work, easy to memorize. Let’s go ahead and take a walk down the Romans Road together. I’ll be quoting from the English Standard Version (ESV) of the Bible, as we go.

The first stop on the Romans Road is that everyone has sinned and doesn’t measure up to God’s standard. God is Holy and pure, and we have all missed the mark in our thinking, and behavior toward Him and each other. That’s what it means to sin: to miss the mark. In Romans 3:23, the Apostle Paul tells us, “for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.”

At our second stop, we discover what is the penalty of our sin. In Romans 6:23, we learn from Paul, “for the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.” This is both, bad news and good news. The bad news is that our sinning results in our death. The good news is that God provides us with a plan of salvation by way of Jesus.

The third stop on the Romans Road is to learn how God makes the provision of eternal life available to us. We find that explained in Romans 5:8. Paul writes, “but God shows His love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.” I find Paul’s statement interesting because he says, “God shows His love for us,” (present tense) while, “Christ died for us,” (past tense). In other words, God is showing His love for us because Jesus died for us.

The fourth stop for us on our walk down this road explains how we come to participate in God’s gift of eternal life. Paul writes, in Romans 10:9-10, “because, if you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord, and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. For with the heart, one believes and is justified, and with the mouth, one confesses and is saved.”

The fifth and final stop is a reassurance from Paul that God will positively respond to us. In Romans 10:13 Paul assures us, “for everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.” Everyone. No exceptions. No qualifications. Simply, everyone.

Would you like to do that now? Here’s a prayer you can pray:

Dear Jesus, I admit that I’m not perfect; I don’t measure up to God’s standards. Thank you for your free gift of salvation, of eternal life. I would like to claim that gift for myself, here and now. I believe, Jesus, that you died for my sins, I believe that you overcame death, and I want to follow you. Please send your Spirit to live in my heart. Thank you for what you have done for me. Amen.

If you’ve decided to follow Christ today, please let me know by leaving me a comment below, or by emailing me at posowski81@gmail.com. I would like to encourage you and, also, to pray for you.

Does God Always Answer Prayer?

Recently, God taught me a lesson about Himself. I was reading Man: The Dwelling Place of God, by A. W. Tozer, where he addressed the issue of prayer. He talked about a notion passed around by believers that God always answers prayer. Tozer makes the case that this is not true; it’s not only bad theology, it’s a lie perpetrated by Satan to misdirect believers.  More about that shortly.

James 4:3 tells us about prayer, “When you ask, you do not receive, because you ask with wrong motives, that you may spend what you get on your pleasures”(NIV). Instead of “pleasures,” the KJV reads a little stronger using “lusts.” The Apostle John explains, “Dear friends, if our hearts do not condemn us, we have confidence before God and receive from him anything we ask, because we keep his commands and do what pleases him” (1 John 3:21-22 NIV). The Apostle also quotes Jesus saying, “if you remain in me and my words remain in you, ask whatever you wish, and it will be done for you” (John 15:7 NIV). So,  according to Scripture, there are two qualifications you must meet to receive answers, from God, for prayer.

First, review your motives. Your intentions for asking must be right. You cannot ask, expecting to receive, if your objectives are self-serving. In other words, get your motives straight.

Second, make sure you are doing what you, as a believer, are supposed to be doing. That is, obeying God’s commands. What are His commands? Those are summed up by Jesus in Matthew 22:37-39, “… ‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself’” (Matthew 22:37-39 NIV). Let’s not forget Jesus’ command to us, as well, found in John 13:34, where Jesus says to his disciples, “A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another” (John 13:34 NIV).

As was stated earlier, Satan uses the lie that God always answers prayer to misdirect believers. He uses it to direct the believer away from the fact that perhaps God hasn’t answered the prayer because the believer isn’t obeying God’s commands. Satan’s lie precludes the believer from surmising that perhaps God didn’t answer the prayer because there is sin in the believer’s life. You must ask, “am I obeying all of God’s commands?” Weigh your obedience to God.

So, the two things that can result in unanswered prayer are: self-serving motives, and lack of obedience to God. Observing these, of course, won’t guarantee that God will grant your prayer request, but it is the proper way to approach the situation. It puts the request within the realm of “Your will be done,” rather than, “my will be done.” And this is the proper attitude with which to approach prayer, as taught by Jesus, “This, then is how you should pray: Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name, your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread. And forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one” (Matthew 6:9-13 NIV).

Now, my friend, go forth and do likewise.

Beginnings of an Answer to Prayer

I don’t know if you’ve ever received an answer to prayer from God, but I’ve observed that when He answers my prayers, the answer frequently arrives in a form I’m not anticipating. Case in point, for the past several months I’ve been praying daily that God would, “Teach me to love my neighbor as myself. Show me how to love the unlovable.”

As bad as this sounds, I expected that God would bring someone across my path who was vile and evil. Or maybe, He would have me cross paths with someone unpleasant, dirty, and smelly; someone who was rejected by general society. Both of these types of people crossed my path recently, but this wasn’t where God went in my lesson. He went in another direction, that I didn’t see coming; let’s look at where God took me.

I was reading “Revelations of Divine Love,” a book written about 600 years ago by Julian of Norwich. It’s the oldest extant book written in English by a woman. Julian wrote it as an account of 16 visions that God gave her over the course of 2 days (15 visions were seen on the first day, and 1 vision was given on the second day). Julian was an anchoress in Norwich, England. An anchoress was the female version of an anchorite, a fancy word for a religious recluse that lived in a small cell attached to a church.

It wasn’t that Julian was writing about loving one’s neighbor as one’s self; she was writing about something completely unrelated, but what she wrote sparked a flash of revelation in my mind. In chapter 5 she described that Jesus showed her a small object, about the size of a hazelnut in the palm of her hand. About the object, she said, “In this little thing I saw three properties: the first is that God made it; the second is that God loves it; the third is that God cares for it.” The lightbulb went on in my brain, and I had the realization that these three properties also applied to loving my neighbor as myself. I should, therefore, love my neighbor as myself, not just because Jesus told me to do so, but because God made them, God loves them, and God cares about them. Let me point out that they were also created, by God, in His own image. Scripture proclaims, “God created humankind in his own image, in the image of God he created them, male and female he created them (Genesis 1:27 NET). 

The second portion of the prayer I’ve been praying is this: “Help me to obey your (that is, God’s) commandments.”

Wait a minute, you may be asking, what commandments am I referring to?

Jesus summed this up as follows. Trying to trick him, a religious leader of the day asked Jesus: “Teacher, which commandment in the law is the greatest?” Jesus said to him, “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind.’  This is the first and greatest commandment. The second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’  All the law and the prophets depend on these two commandments” (Matthew 22:36-40 NET).

I was inspired by something written 600 years ago. It further motivated me to obey God’s commandments. My prayer is that you, too, will be encouraged to obey God and work toward loving your neighbor as yourself, recalling those three points, illuminated by Julian of Norwich, when you think of your neighbor: that they are made by God, that they are loved by God, and that they are cared for by God. This is the start of loving your neighbor as yourself.

My Soul

Night's shadow veils my soul no longer
My heart's window, a light shaft pierces
Dust, twinkling, pirouettes therein
A green eyed, gray cat lolls in its illumination 
Hitting its mark in the stage's spotlight

Night's shadow cloaks my soul no longer
Behold black nose, pink tongue, and flag tail
A golden, furry, four-legged friend
Found in front of the flickering, fiery hearth 
Curled and cuddled on a braided, oval rug

Night's shadow haunts my soul no longer 
Ice from the eaves teases, drip, drop, drip
While out on the green, remain islands of snow
Crocuses awaken in resurrection glory
Sprinkles of color amidst glistening white

Night's shadow shrouds my soul no longer
A cardinal, ruby red robed, resting in a verdant conifer
Tweeting and twittering, sounds the alarm
A red-breasted robin, too close for comfort
Peck, peck, pecking in the yard

Night's shadow smothers my soul no longer
Azure skies, marbled, swishing swaths of cotton floss
Glowing, white-hot orb, the morning, it warms
Suffocating weight of night's shadow evaporates in a rising blaze of glory 
Each dawning day is a little lengthier than last

Overwhelming silence of an empty tomb
An angel adorned in white, to the weeping woman proclaims
"He is not here! He is risen!"
Another rising blaze of glory!
Night's shadow dissolves like midmorning melting snow

Some News

Hello. Thanks for taking the time to stop by during your busy day. Please allow me to introduce myself. My name is Patrick. Let me start by letting you know that I have some bad news and some extraordinarily good news to share with you. I should probably start with the bad news first, because it’s very bad news.

Humanity is in a pickle. No. That’s an understatement. Mankind is doomed.

Mankind is broken; I’m broken, you’re broken, we’re all broken.  In fact, some of us are, maybe, more broken than others. But that’s not the point here. What matters is that we recognize that we’re all in this together, and that we’re all broken.

You may or may not realize this, but everyone has a dark side. Even the best of us do. Don’t believe me? Look around you. Go for a drive on the interstate, or drive in rush hour traffic. Watch the evening news. We are not as we want to be or even as we should be. That is why we have traffic courts; that is why we lock up our houses and cars.

The Bible tells us, “For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God” (Romans 3:23 New English Translation). In other words, we don’t measure up to God’s standard – no matter how hard we try, or how good we are.

Now, don’t get me wrong. I’m not saying there aren’t good things that people do for each other. There definitely are. You’ll see that on the evening news, also. You’ll see that in kindness shown to strangers, or in sacrifices made during a crisis. People can be good, but not good enough for God.

Now for the extraordinarily good news: God has accounted for this failure of mankind with the sacrifice and resurrection of Jesus Christ. You see, Jesus, who is God, took on the flesh of humanity and, having lived the perfect unblemished life here on earth gave his life as a sacrifice for us.

The Bible explains, “For this is the way God loved the world: He gave his one and only Son, so that everyone who believes in him will not perish but have eternal life” (John 3:16 NET).


God has acted in history, by reaching out to us, by redeeming us. We can’t do anything to reach out to God, to earn His love because, as we saw earlier, we fall short of His expectations. We can, however, call on Jesus as our Savior. That’s why he died for us: to redeem us. Because we’re not able to be good enough, we need a savior.

In the Gospel of John, Jesus says, “… I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me” (John 14:6 NET).

The Apostle Paul tells us in his letter to the Romans that, “… if you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved” (Romans 10: 9 NET).

That’s it. That’s all you need to start on your journey of redemption. If you’re curious and want to learn more, or want me to pray for you, please feel free to email me at posowski81@gmail.com I would love to explore this further with you.