He Will Make You Lie Down and Make You Be Still - Chris & Susan Blumstein - The Church at Cahaba Bend

In the same week of October 2015, Susan and I were diagnosed with Breast and Prostate Cancer.  After a good cry together, we felt God was saying that we may have Cancer, but we shouldn't let it have us. We humbled ourselves and asked for prayer from the members of our Church, The Church at Cahaba Bend.  As word spread amongst the Churches in the area, there were hundreds of people praying for us.

We went through the surgeries and treatments and were declared cancer free in 2017.  Just for fun, I also had open heart surgery in 2017.  One of the most important elements in our recovery and healing was the fervent prayer of the local Churches.  We had almost no side effects from the Chemo and Radiation and only missed work time to recover from the surgery.

God pointed us to Psalms 23 and 46.  He was Making us lie down in green pastures, so He could sustain us and Make us rest.  He reminded us that He created Medicine and to BE STILL and know that He is a VERY PRESENT help in time of trouble.  He was going to restore us so that we could climb from the pastures to the Mountain top with the same vigor as before.

Christianity has been saturated with the false belief that anything bad in our lives is an attack by the devil.  We have been deluded that the source of pressure in our lives is only the devil and reject Paul's command to "give no place for the devil" (Eph. 4:27). We have not considered that God allowed the devil to attack Job (Chapter 1&2).  We have not considered the declaration that the devil was to be crushed under Jesus’ feet in Genesis 3:15 and our feet in Romans 16:20.  The devil is a defeated dog on a leash and the King of the Universe orchestrates lives as He wills.

After our “adventure”, we became aware of the Lord stirring our hearts to dig deeper into Prayer.  Praying for ourselves was not enough and praying for others was not enough.  He was moving our hearts to corporately pray for our Church ministry teams, our Church finances, our Strategic Plan, our place in the community, and our destiny as a group of like-minded believers.  We were persuaded to start the Prayer Huddle in 2017.  Before we started the Prayer Huddle, I grabbed an old booklet by Dr. Kelley Varner, titled The Four Foundations of Effectual Prayer: His THANKSGIVING for us, His RIGHTEOUSNESS to us, His BOLDNESS through us, and His COMPASSION among us.  He was admonishing the Church to allow the Lord to “teach us to pray” (Luke 1:11). God is calling us to prayer.  God wants us to catch a vision of the destiny of our lives and families that intersects with His vision for the Church and Nation.  We must ask largely of the Lord (Zech. 10:1).

Most folks are afraid to ask.  They have yet to learn that God is FOR them (Rom. 8:31).  They think that God won’t listen, so they are reluctant to pray.  God, in Paul's Epistles, is trying to teach us to renew our minds to a life of overcoming, prevailing prayer that will result in an overcoming, prevailing life.

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