Sword Swallower Dan Meyer

Today is a tough day for me… Today is my wife Lisa and my 7th wedding anniversary. But this one is so much more different from the past 6 anniversaries. This is the first anniversary we’ve spent apart, and being separated from her is horrible for me, almost more than I can bear.

As many of you know, Lisa and I have been separated for over 7 months, and for most of those 7 months, I have been unable to sleep for more than a few hours a night, waking up with my heart racing at night, trying to figure out what went wrong, why she asked me to leave, and what I can do to fix things and win her back. There have been no easy answers. This has been devastating for me. All I can do is stay faithful and dedicated, pray for peace and patience and hope, and ask God to work a miracle in both of our hearts.

A few weeks ago, I asked everyone I could to pray and fast and believe with me for reconciliation. I don’t know what God might have done in Lisa’s heart, but I do know He did a LOT in my heart, and He continues to work in me every day. So I’m asking once again today, on our wedding anniversary, for all my friends and prayer warriors to join with me again in prayer and fasting that God would work a miracle in both of us - that He would continue to work in me to give me His peace that passes all understanding, give me His love for Lisa, encourage me with hope for when I get discouraged, forgiveness for when I get resentful, to show me his wisdom and continue to work in me and transform me into His likeness, that my eyes would continue to stay focused on Him. And I’m asking you to pray for my wife Lisa, that God would bless her as she burns her candle at both ends, to work in her heart and cause her to draw closer to Him and soften her heart towards me. As many of you have heard me say in my talks, we serve a God of miracles who can do the IMPOSSIBLE in our lives. If I say that with my words, then I have to live it out in my actions and believe that God CAN work a miracle in our relationship and do the IMPOSSIBLE in our lives to bring us back together.

So I’m asking you to stand with me and believe with me that God would reconcile us in our relationship. I’m not perfect, but I’m in the process of being transformed and perfected in God’s likeness. I realize I’ve been called to a very unusual calling that most women wouldn’t understand or find prestigious. I also know I can’t do anything to change Lisa’s heart or mind or priorities… All I can do is to stay faithful and devoted to her, and keep coming to God on my knees and praying that He will make me a more godly husband for her, and that maybe somehow Lisa would see Him in me, and we could both get back to living up to the vows and covenants we made before Him 7 years ago.

As many of you know from my schedule, I have a booking coming up in a few days at First Baptist Church in Decatur, AL, less than 10 miles from our farm in Hartselle, and another in Weaver near where Lisa works in Birmingham. When I booked these last year, I figured I would be able to sleep in my own bed and wouldn’t need a long drive or a hotel. Little did I know at the time that I would be living 500 miles away in my sister’s basement. Now, I look at these bookings with mixed feelings. I am so looking forward to coming back to Hartselle and hoping to see Lisa, but because the communication has been strained between us, I don’t know what she’s feeling or planning, and I’m afraid of even more rejection or worse. All I know is that every mile of those 500 miles that I get closer to seeing Lisa, the harder my heart will beat, and the more mixed feelings I will get. I just keep reminding myself that perfect love casts out all fear.

So if any of you know Lisa or me, if God brings either one of us to mind, would you please pray for us today and stand with me in believing that God will reconcile our marriage for HIS glory. The Bible says that God HATES divorce. I certainly don’t want to do anything against God’s will, or be divorced or even separated from Lisa, and I am hoping that God will make some changes in our situation soon. Please pray that Lisa will be willing to see me and be willing to talk about reconciliation instead of going further the other way and growing further apart. Our communication has been strained over the past 7 months when Lisa told me to quit telling her that I love her because she doesn’t believe it or feel the same way I do. Lisa has been the love of my life, my life has changed in so many ways the past 6 years, and I am so thankful for her allowing me to step out in faith to find my calling. But in the past year something has changed between us as we have both gotten busier with our work. Please pray for peace and forgiveness between both of us. Please pray that God will soften her heart and heal the hurts caused by rejection and broken trust in my heart, and rekindle our first love in both of our hearts that brought us together in the first place.

Lisa’a an amazing woman, the most amazing woman I have ever met; she’s just very overwhelmed with all of her many jobs and responsibilities, burns her candle at both ends, and because of this, her focus is on work and money instead of communication and relationships. Here’s a blog posting I wrote on Lisa a few years ago when things were still going well. And here’s her websites:

www.Ansa-Arabians.com

www.LisaLittrell.com

Thanks for your prayers.

And if you see Lisa, please tell her I love her…

“And these three abide: Faith, Hope, and Love.
And the greatest of these is Love.”
I Cor 13

Dear friends -

Many of you are prayer warriors on my prayer team who have been praying for me and with me all along; some of you are special friends I am reaching out to specially today and asking you to join with us urgently in prayer.

I have three urgent prayer requests. Please pray for:

1). My sister Jen and her husband who are in court this morning fighting that they would be allowed their court-appointed visitation rights to see her son, my nephew, the 4 days/month that the court originally ordered, but has not happened. Please pray for peace for them, and that the truth will become evident to this new judge, and that he will judge fairly.

2). Swords for Africa -
A big charity fund-raiser project on Feb 11 I’m helping produce, market, and promote in Muncie IN to raise funds for missions to Africa - Please pray for the mission team behind this huge project, for the safety of all the guest performers who will be driving long distances in the snow from other states to donate their time and talents, for the weather to be good, for audience turnout to be strong to pack Emens Auditorium with 3300 so we can generate enough to pay the auditorium and actually raise the needed funding, and for the audience to be impacted in a powerful way by the program and the personal testimonies of the guest speakers/performers, and that God would be glorified in all we say and do. www.swordsforafrica.com

Most importantly:
3). Please continue to pray for my wife Lisa who has a LOT on her plate right now burning her candle on both ends - managing 5 of her own businesses, 2 apartment complexes, a condo, 2 horse farms, caring for her ailing mother with cancer, and traveling all over the country working a high-pressure, high-stress highly demanding dream job that she loves but that has taken it’s toll on us and our relationship. If you know Lisa, you know she is a Superwoman, very strong and very independent, and the hardest working person on earth. Please pray that God would bless Lisa, pray for Lisa’s health, for safety in her travels, for physical strength for Lisa, for healing for her mother, and for wisdom, balance, stability, and peace of mind in all she does. Please pray that God would continue the work He is doing in me, that He would transform me, heal me, give me the faith, hope, strength and wisdom to do whatever I can to be a godly husband for Lisa and know how to best love and care for her, pray for her, support her and serve her needs as her friend and husband.

The enemy would like nothing more than to separate us and drive us further apart, and he’s succeeded at doing that. The past 6 months of separation have been very painful, discouraging, heart-breaking, and devastating for me. We have had very little communication, I miss Lisa like crazy, and I struggle with the rejection in trying to figure out what went wrong between us and what we, what I could have done better to be a more godly husband for her and support her more. I have no answers other than to keep loving her, pray harder, work harder, and try to bring in more income in a very tough economy. Everyone keeps telling me to give up and give in. But I made my commitment to Lisa in our vows in our covenant before God, I gave my word to her and to God, and I am a man of my word and I’m willing to do whatever it takes to live up to my word and fight to keep us together. It has felt like an uphill struggle alone against insurmountable odds to fight for our relationship. I can’t do it alone - I need your help and support. So I ask for your prayers, encouragement and support to help us make it through these difficult times and to draw us back together again.

If a reconciliation is going to happen, it is going to take a God-sized miracle to touch and soften both of our hearts, heal us, and set our focus on serving Him first, then bringing His unconditional love back into our relationship so we can love each other unconditionally, and then blessing our work and finances. For the past 3 weeks several of us have been praying and fasting for God to do a major work in us and do some kind of supernatural change that will break us out of this quagmire.

As I stress to friends and audiences around the world, we serve the God of the IMPOSSIBLE - the ONLY One who can DO the Impossible in our lives — and I am hoping and praying and believing that He will do a major miracle in our lives, in our hearts, and in our relationship that will glorify HIM.

So most importantly, I’m asking those of you on my prayer warrior team to please pray harder than ever for reconciliation in our relationship, that God will draw us close to Him, soften and heal both of our hearts, open up communication, and reconcile us back together again. Please join me in praying, fasting, agreeing and believing for conviction, humility, forgiveness, healing, and reconciliation between us.

So I ask you to stand together with me in prayer for God to work a miracle in us, and that HE would be glorified in it. I’m asking you - please join with other prayer warriors around the world and please pray for us diligently, fast for us, pray a hedge of protection around us and our relationship, and join us in believing for a miracle - that God would work miracles and do whatever He needs to do to break down the walls and bring us back together, to re-ignite the flame between us, to strengthen our love and passion for each other stronger than ever. The Bible says that where 2 or 3 agree on earth about anything that they may ask, it shall be done for them by our Father who is in heaven.

So I’m reaching out to you in desperation. Will you agree to stand with us, to encourage us, and support us, pray for us, even fast for us, now more diligently than ever? I mean REALLY pray for us?

Thanks for standing with us and agreeing with us in prayer.

Dan

“These things still abide: Faith, Hope, and Love - and the greatest of these is love.” I Cor 13:13

I was not always so blessed.

Some of you who know me or have heard me speak know that I grew up a failure - I grew up skinny, scrawny, scared, extremely shy, and afraid of everything - I was afraid of the dark, water, spiders, snakes, heights, doctors, needles, and especially speaking to people. I suffered from social anxiety disorder, an inferiority complex and low self-esteem from being the kid the bullies beat up on and nobody wanted on their sports team, which later grew into a huge fear of rejection and failure.

I was a failure, a wimp.

In short, I was a “Loser” with a capital “L”.

Today, I am so blessed.

Over the years, God has been blessing me and healing me from my fears. He has shown me that if I give everything over to Him - my fears, my talents, my dreams, my pride - that He can be glorified in my weaknesses. When I give him my weaknesses, my fears, He turns them around and uses them as strengths. When I am weak, then is HE strong. When I am willing to lay down my pride and give Him these things, crucify them and lay them down at His feet, THEN He can turn them around and use them for HIS glory, not mine. When I give Him my fear, He gives me faith. When I give Him my obstacles, He gives me opportunities. When I give Him my pride, He teaches me humility. When I give him my talents, He gives me tools. When I give Him my work, He shows me His will. When I give Him my passions, he gives me my purpose. When I give Him my desires, He shows me my destiny. When I give Him my dreams, he gives me His vision. When I give Him my past, He gives me a new future. When I give him everything in submission, He gives me my mission.

In April of 2003, I was so blessed to meet the most incredible person I have ever met… Lisa Littrell, the woman who was to become my wife and the love of my life. A few months later, I proposed to Lisa on her birthday in a surprise hot-air balloon ride. On that day, my life changed dramaticaly, and it has not been the same since…

In April of 2007, on my 50th birthday, I was struggling to make ends meet at the Honda dealership where I was working, had struggled through the roughest six months of my life, had burned through all my savings, and was facing bankruptcy and losing our house in Nashville. I spent many sleepless nights struggling in prayer and tears, did lots of deep thinking and soul searching, and finally decided I just needed to give everything up to God. I gave Him my fears, my job, my finances, my house, my dreams, my pride, my passions, my past, my future - It took me getting to the lowest point where I finally was willing to give up on my big lifelong dream of making it in the music business, and decided to give EVERYTHING up to Him, all my dreams - music, a home, a family, traveling, entertaining, sword swallowing, the whole works - I got down on my knees, gave it ALL to God and asked Him what HE wanted me to do. He quietly said, “Thank you, my child. This is what I’ve been waiting for - I have planted these dreams inside you. Now that you have given them back to me, I can use your dreams and talents and desires for my glory… Now I can bless you…”

So in May 2007, my wife Lisa and I prayed about it and turned it over to God. For years, I had been fighting against going into “ministry”. Guess what God did? He called me into full-time ministry. After Lisa and I prayed about it, on May 3, 2007, I quit my job at the Honda dealership, and stepped out in faith to do ministry full-time. It was not an easy decision for me. As a matter of fact, it was the hardest decision I ever made. But God immediately started blessing me with opportunities and financial blessings where I was making 5x more than I had been selling cars, and more than twice the average salary for our area. I am so blessed to have a godly wife like Lisa who was willing to help me find God’s calling in my life and support me while I stepped out in faith to follow it.

Now as I give God my fears, my dreams, my talents, and my passions every day, He opens more and more doors, and blesses me with more and more opportunities. When I give Him my fears, He turns my fears to faith. When I give him my obstacles, He turns my obstacles to opportunities. When I give him my talents, He uses my talents as tools for Him. When I give Him my work, He shows me His Will. When I lay down my pride, He teaches me humility. When I give him my passions, He gives me my purpose. When I crucified my dreams, He turned my dreams to HIS vision. When I gave Him my past, He gave me a new future. When I gave him my life in submission, He turned my submission to my mission in life far beyond any job I could ever imagine - helping others to do the impossible in THEIR lives by inspiring them to giving their lives, their fears, talents, and dreams to God. No, I’m not there yet, I have a long way to go, but at least I now know what my calling, my purpose, my mission in life is: Now I know my mission is to point my swords towards heaven and make HIM famous. If I boast, I boast in God and what He has done in my weakness.

Today I am so blessed in so many ways beyond my wildest dreams. I am blessed to be happy and healthy and fulfilled; I am so blessed to live in the most beautiful paradise on our farm in Hartselle, AL, watching and learning from Lisa and working with such amazing beautiful Arabian horses. I am so blessed to have finally found and be able to follow God’s calling for my life, to meet so many wonderful people around the world and be able to speak hope into their lives and inspire them to do the impossible in THEIR lives.  I gave God my dreams, laid them down on His altar, and He has blessed me by given me my vision, my purpose and my calling; Now He blesses me when I see lives touched through me.  Just to see God using me, seeing people’s faces when I perform, and knowing God is using my life to impact their lives is tremendously exciting to me.

But my biggest blessing from God is my beautiful wife, Lisa Littrell. If you’ve heard me speak, you know how blessed I am to be married to Lisa. Lisa is AMAZING! She is the most amazing woman I have ever met. Lisa is as intelligent as she is beautiful. She is the complete opposite of me - She’s smart, fearless, proud, determined, strong-willed, very independent, passionate about her work, a tireless worker, and the hardest working human being I have ever met… She puts in long hours and can do ANYTHING! Lisa is the love of my life, and she has changed my life, and I am so blessed to be married to her.

In Lisa, God has blessed me with a true Proverbs 31 woman - She burns the midnight oil every night, and I call her my “Superwoman”, because she works tirelessly on whatever she puts her mind to do, and she succeeds at everything. Lisa amazes me every day, not only in the big things, but also in the little things. She can ride almost any horse and get a blue ribbon almost every time, and I am so proud of her. 
She can drive a trailer of horses straight through to Arizona all night long, on little to no sleep. She can design and build subdivisions and shopping malls. She gets up at the crack of dawn and works until late at night. Through her passion for work, Lisa inspires me to work harder, to not be afraid, to never give up. The thing I love most about Lisa is her integrity and perseverance. Through her character and integrity, Lisa gives me the inspiration to go on and be the best that I can be - Through watching her, I’m gaining confidence in doing things that used to be impossible for me, things I had never ever done before that are a stretch for me - working with horses, doing farm work, stepping out in faith in my ministry, trying to live out God’s calling in my life, and striving to be a godly husband for her.  It hasn’t been easy, and I’ve made lots of mistakes, but I’m learning and growing, stretching and trying, and Lisa has been patient with me.  Lisa changed my life by helping me find my calling.  She inspires me, supports me, and blesses me to go out and be a blessing to others, which makes me want to do whatever I can to inspire, support and bless her.  If it wasn’t for Lisa, I wouldn’t have made it through those tough times, the toughest times in my life, to now where I am living in the best times. Lisa is my inspiration, and my devotion and admiration for her grows every day. I am so blessed to be married to Lisa, that I can say that I am more blessed now than I have ever been before in my life. If Lisa loves me half as much as I love her, then I am blessed twice as much as she is!

So if God is working in your life, if you are struggling with finances and fears and insecurities and dreams and what to do with them, GIVE THEM TO GOD, and ask HIM to use them. If you give everything to Him, He will bless you and turn your submission into your mission. He will turn your obstacles into opportunities, your talents into HIS tools, your dreams into HIS calling, your passion into HIS purpose.  He will use your submission to show you His mission for your life. And He will bless you for your submission.

And if you’ve been blessed with a beautiful wife like I have in Lisa, then I recommend you do everything you can to be a godly husband for her, put her first, treat her special, do secret things for her that she may never know… wash her car, change her oil, bring her flowers with her coffee… and most importantly, pray for her every morning and every night… If you have been blessed, then do whatever you can to become a blessing to her. I only hope I can be as much of a blessing to Lisa as she has been to me.

God has brought me a long way from being a scared, shy, skinny kid in Indiana…

I used to be a Loser with a capital “L”.

Now I’m so Blessed with a capital “B”.

If a scared, shy, skinny kid from Indiana can do the impossible and be so blessed, then so can you.

May you be so blessed that you too can say “I am SO Blessed!”

Blessings,

Dan
Read more about Lisa and our horses at
ANSA Arabians
Hartselle, AL
www.ansa-arabians.com

Upcoming Fall 2009 Dates:
Sept 16 - The Ark, Maize, KS
Sept 19 - Hartselle Depot Days, Hartselle, AL
Sept 21-23 - School Assemblies, See You the Pole, Union City, TN
Sept 26 - World Harvest Outreach, Hartselle, AL
Oct 1 - Ig Nobel Awards Ceremony, Harvard Univ, Cambridge, MA
Oct 2-4 - Distinguished Alumni Award, Waldorf College, Forest City, IA
Oct 8-11 - Harvest Festival, Cadiz, KY
Oct 20-21 - The Assembly, Tulsa, OK
Oct 23-27 - Festival Della Scienza, Genoa, Italy
Nov 9 - Upward Unlimited, Chico, CA