I spent the day yesterday with my friend JT.  JT is a professional painter.  I am a friend that went along to….to help.  Throughout the day, JT patiently instructed me on the finer points of the painting profession.  We were working on one of the thousands of foreclosures in the Phoenix area.  The beautiful house is just four years old and the bank decided fresh paint would enhance the saleability.

JT quickly  taught me the art of masking.  He handed me a masking machine and showed me briefly how it worked.  After several attempts I caught on to the nifty little machine and went to work masking while JT headed off to other parts of the  house.  Eight hours later as I stood looking at the finished product another one of those aha moments came over me.  It’s all in the Masking.  JT has this paint spraying machine that puts paint on hundreds of square feet in minutes.  And when it is finished it looks amazing.  But if it weren’t for the masking…the hours of masking to protect windows, and door handles, and light fixtures in seconds the paint sprayer would created ten times the amount of work.  My meticulous time-consuming work would have been for naught.

You get it….it’s all in the masking.  I am leaving today for a week of speaking, counseling, and teaching in the Northwest.  Without the years of preparation, the hours of studying, and the days of prayer, the few minutes with people will fall flat.  Prayer is the masking of the spiritual world we travel.  Painstaking hours of time that prepare us for those important moments when our Lord comes along with the sprayer and finishes the job.

Pray for us this week.   I a traveling a  lot and Jill is putting together the final touches for our first praise banquet.  The enemy is very strong and we NEED prayer friends and warriors to keep evil covered.  It’s all in the masking.