Friends, what a week.
I hope yours was as great as mine.
Wednesday the 31st my wife and I celebrated 4 years of marriage.
June 2nd was my 28th birthday and we took a trip across the country to celebrate both things!
I don’t love my birthday but I LOVE my wife and she won’t let me not celebrate my birthday so I group it with our anniversary and it does a good job of hiding itself.
Two of the perks of traveling for work are free hotels and free flights.
For the last couple of years we have taken a trip somewhere just the two of us. Year one we went to San Diego (insert “Anchorman” quote here). Year two Jes was very pregnant and did not want to go anywhere so we had a staycation in Denver. Year three we went to Vegas and this last weekend we went to Charleston, SC.
I woke up early on my birthday and went down to the lobby to leverage the fact that it was my birthday at the hotel’s coffee shop with the intent of getting free coffee from the baristas. I don’t really talk about my birthday on my birthday unless it gets me free stuff because I am indeed a cheap-ass. Down the road I am going to do a whole segment called “Cheap-Ass-Dad Hacks” and it is going to be a collection of other C.A.D.s sharing their secrets. But that is for a later time.
After having successfully schmoozed my way to a free latte I found a corner to spend some time with the Big Three. I often refer to my mornings as coffee with Jesus but I think that there are two holes in my often over used Christianese.
I would bet most of my time is actually spent with Holy Spirit because Jesus is currently at the right hand of the Father and he gave us the Spirit for these exact times. Coffee with Holy Spirit would be more accurate I am sure. But that doesn’t look good on an Etsy shirt because the Holy Spirit is Spoooooky.
We don’t even know if Jesus likes coffee.
I wrote in my journal last week “Thank You Jesus for meeting me for coffee”
*enter-enter-enter*
“HA what if you don’t actually like coffee and you’re mad I haven’t made you tea.”
I digress but that squirrel was super interesting.
I started reading in Luke 11 again.
I have been opening my prayer journals pretty consistently with “Lord teach me to pray”
So where better to start than when the disciples are asking the same thing?
The first 12 set me up and verse 13 punches me in the gut. Here they are.
Once Jesus was in a certain place praying. As he finished, one of his disciples came to him and said, “Lord, teach us to pray, just as John taught his disciples.”
2 Jesus said, “This is how you should pray:[a]
“Father, may your name be kept holy.
May your Kingdom come soon.
3 Give us each day the food we need,[b]
4 and forgive us our sins,
as we forgive those who sin against us.
And don’t let us yield to temptation.[c]”5 Then, teaching them more about prayer, he used this story: “Suppose you went to a friend’s house at midnight, wanting to borrow three loaves of bread. You say to him, 6 ‘A friend of mine has just arrived for a visit, and I have nothing for him to eat.’ 7 And suppose he calls out from his bedroom, ‘Don’t bother me. The door is locked for the night, and my family and I are all in bed. I can’t help you.’ 8 But I tell you this—though he won’t do it for friendship’s sake, if you keep knocking long enough, he will get up and give you whatever you need because of your shameless persistence.[d]
9 “And so I tell you, keep on asking, and you will receive what you ask for. Keep on seeking, and you will find. Keep on knocking, and the door will be opened to you. 10 For everyone who asks, receives. Everyone who seeks, finds. And to everyone who knocks, the door will be opened.
11 “You fathers—if your children ask[e] for a fish, do you give them a snake instead? 12 Or if they ask for an egg, do you give them a scorpion? Of course not! 13 So if you sinful people know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him.”
Notice that in verse 13 it says that when answering the door and answering prayer the Father gives good gifts in the form of more Holy Spirit.
We petition and we knock asking for what ever it may be in our lives that is pressing in that moment and the Lord in response pours out more of His Spirit.
I wonder what it would look like in our lives if we knocked persistently, petitioning for more of the Spirit. How much more freely would the Holy Spirit be poured out in our lives if that was the one thing we asked for.
I believe the Lord is looking for a generation that will knock fervently asking for more of his Spirit.
All of this week’s content again is centered around the Holy Spirit. I am so stuck on the importance and the urgency of having an influx of Spirit-filled men in the business world. Men who manage their daily happenings in such a way that the Holy Spirit is the operator.
🎙️Weekly Podcast 🎙️
Corey Russell and Billy Humphrey are two men who I admire for the teaching of Truth, authentically and apologetically. The talk about the Spirit how the Bible teaches the Spirit.
This whole season has been great but I listened to this episode this week and it got me.
They talk about how a majority of us are living below the poverty line in the Kingdom because we refuse to tap in to the riches available through the fact that we have the Spirit of God within us.
Give it a listen here ⬇️⬇️
🙌🏼 Weekly Worship 🙌🏼
The song I had on repeat this week was “Fall Like Rain” by Rachel Halbach. It’s a goody.
Let’s take a moment to recognize that this is two weeks in a row without a RRW song.
😮💨 Man all things are possible with God. There’s a coffee mug with a verse about that somewhere I’m sure.
HA
This is a song that you put on and it doubles as a prayer.
Jesus, let it be.
You can listen here ⬇️⬇️
📚 Weekly Book 📚
After the last few years I would be willing to bet that there are few to no people who are unfamiliar with the term “epidemic”.
I like this book because the author compares the spreading of ideas to the passing of a flu strand. It starts out with only a few who carry the strand and it is passed slowly,until eventually the transmission hits a tipping point and it becomes an epidemic rapidly.
He follows it up with the sociological phenomenon that 20% of the population tend to influence the other 80%.
As men aiming to make a change in society. To influence the way that men interact with each other, with their families, their bosses. To rewrite how men lead. How men follow. This book provides evidence that it doesn’t take much to get to the tipping point, where momentum becomes a powerful force in a movement.
And if you don’t believe me then trust
. He has read every Malcom Gladwell book. Most of them multiple times.💪🏼 Weekly Challenge 💪🏼
Man, this week was so great but there was one big bummer. I went to a concert of a group that Jes and I kind of stumbled across. They aren’t a proclaimed Christian band but they are a Southern Jazz group and a majority of their music, if you closed your eyes would make you think they were leading worship.
We were stoked; enough so that we stayed around after to thank the band for representing Jesus in the secular music realm and doing it well! They have won two Grammy’s!!
After waiting around at the merch table we got the chance to shake hands with one of the lead vocalists. We thanked him and got to talking to him about the Faith in their songs and the Jesus they sing about. Here is the bummer.
Dude was obviously high out of his mind.
When we asked if they were believers in Jesus, he responded with “ahh man I believe in a lot of things”
He earlier in the conversation made the statement that they sing about Jesus a lot because it is kind of what the people who listen to their style of music expect…
I was so bummed haha and mad I bought a t-shirt.
I say all this because it challenged me to do a heart-check.
Does it look like you love Jesus on the outside?
Do you proclaim Jesus because it is expected?
Do you ride the positive impact that sharing your Faith has on influence or standing with people?
Do you love Jesus unconditionally or has the Enemy allowed outside forces to wedge themselves between you and right motivation of intimacy with God?
I would challenge you to bring this to the Lord and ask him to search your heart in a Psalm 139:23-24
23 Search me, God, and know my heart;
test me and know my anxious thoughts.
24 See if there is any offensive way in me,
and lead me in the way everlasting.
🙏🏼 Weekly Prayer 🙏🏼
I want to learn how to pray. I was challenged with the question recently of “ If someone were to inspect your prayer life would they want to replicate it”.
It kicked my butt. Because the answer was no.
So I have started asking the Lord to teach me how to pray. I am reading Luke 11 every day. I used to pray the Lord’s Prayer in college after every practice as a team before we broke to head into the Locker room. Now I recite that prayer all day.
I have started speaking in my prayer language when I am driving to the gym, to Costco, sitting at home; just as often as possible.
My weekly prayer is for you. I want you to pray for you. I believe that in order to build an army of Spirit-filled men we need to start first with an army of men who not only pray but know how to pray.
This week I am asking the Lord to teach me to pray.
I hope that this week’s edition of the Weekly Weapons Newsletter was beneficial to you in one way or another.
As this thing evolves, I would LOVE feedback or just responses.
You can email me at mitchparsonscreative@gmail.com
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Until next time.
PEACE✌🏻