Pray Without Ceasing

Rejoice always, pray without ceasing, give thanks in all circumstances; for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you.

~ 1 Thessalonians 5:16-18

Many times we feel pressure to do things as Christians. We are told we need to give more, volunteer more, read our Bible more, etc. The list goes on and on until we sometimes feel so overwhelmed that we just resign ourselves to feeling like a subpar, inferior Christian. I don’t believe God wants us to feel defeated. Remember, His goal for us is liberation and restoration.

Now with this being said, I must add one thing. Just a five-minute prayer on your knees is guaranteed to bless, rejuvenate, and bring peace to your already full, stressful life. My suggestion is to do it on your knees, but it is not necessary. God is not more pleased with one on your knees than one standing up or sitting down, head bowed or head lifted, or eyes closed or eyes open. These things do not matter.

Find a spot, even if it’s on the bathroom floor. Stretch out your back muscles, and feel that wonderful pressure release on each vertebrate. Take a deep breath. When you breathe in say, “Holy Spirit fill me,” when you breathe out say, “I release myself to you.” Do this a couple times. If you absolutely cannot think of anything to say, just say, “Thank you,” then be still and listen. If you need a plan, one that really works is to fashion your prayer after two things, The Lord’s Prayer, and the 23rd Psalm.

Here is an example:

“My perfect holy Father in heaven and in my heart, you are my shepherd and there is nothing I lack. I give you thanks. You restore my soul through your peace. I look forward to your return, but until then I pray I will do your will. Provide my needs, and protect me from evil, so that even in death I have nothing to fear. Forgive me, and help to forgive and love others. I realize everything comes from you, and only you are worthy to be praised. This I pray over my family, the church, the leaders of the world, and all people. Let my attitude be one of prayer all day. In Christ name, I pray, Amen”

That’s all there is to it. Then during the day when you hug a child, you have hugged Jesus. When you stood patiently in line, you did it for Christ. When you showed compassion and understanding, it was for Jesus’ sake. When you see the blue sky, you give thanks. When a friend asks for your advice, you ask for help. When you blurt out a bad word, you apologize. When someone was rude, you ask for a forgiving heart. When you pass a homeless person, toss a little change their way. When you feel overwhelmed, breathe in His peace. When you feel pain, seek Him. Quite literally, all day you have prayed by saying, “Thank you, help, and forgive me,” and by doing random acts of kindness in Jesus’ name.

A prayer life need not to be another chore to add to our already long list. We need to remind ourselves that God’s yoke is easy. We like to make it difficult so that we can beat on our chest in pride and say, “Look what I have done. I have studied my Bible for three hours, and prayed for an hour, and gave my time and my money. Just look what a good person I am.” Boasting to others, or even within ourselves, is not God’s desire for us. If we boast at all, it is only in Jesus, and what He has accomplished.

We must always remember, it’s never about us. It’s all about the one who created us in His image, who gave His life willingly, and who loves and wants a relationship with us. Let your service to Him bring you peace. If it’s not bringing peace, but instead it’s an added burden to your already stressful life, then maybe something is wrong.

I love you, Lord. Amen

Calling the Unqualified

Blessed are the humble, for they shall inherit the earth.

~ Matthew 5:5

You hillbillies will be my witnesses. You uneducated and simple folk will be my witnesses. You who once called me crazy, who shouted at me in the boat and doubted me in the Upper Room. You temperamental, parochial net casters and tax collectors. You will be my witnesses.

You will spearhead a movement that will explode like a just-opened fire hydrant out of Jerusalem and spill into the ends of the earth: into the streets of Paris, the districts of Rome, and the ports of Athens, Istanbul, Shanghai, and Buenos Aires. You will be a part of something so mighty, controversial, and head spinning that two millennia from now a middle-aged, redheaded author riding in the exit row of a flight from Boston to Dallas will type this question on his laptop:

Does Jesus still do it? Does he still use simple folks like us to change the world?

God doesn’t call the qualified. He qualifies the called.

Don’t let Satan convince you otherwise. He will try. He will tell you that God has an IQ requirement or an entry fee. That he employs only specialists and experts, governments and high-powered personalities. When Satan whispers such lies, dismiss him with this truth: God stampeded the first-century society with swaybacks, not thoroughbreds. Before Jesus came along, the disciples were loading trucks, coaching soccer, and selling Slurpee drinks at the convenience store. Their collars were blue, and their hands were calloused, and there is no evidence that Jesus chose them because they were smarter or nicer than the guy next door. The one thing they had going for them was a willingness to take a step when Jesus said, “Follow me.”

Are you more dinghy than cruise ship? More stand-in than movie star? More plumber than executive? More blue jeans than blue blood? Congratulations. God changes the world with folks like you.

Lord. let me never be hesitant to do whatever you call me to do, no matter how humble my gifts. Amen.

~ from “Calling the Unqualified”, by Max Lucado

Total Commitment

Ye shall know them by their fruits. Do men gather grapes of thorns, or figs of thistles?

~ Matthew 7:16

Teachers will tell you that the laziest child in the class is the one who works hardest in the end. They mean this. If you give two children, say, a proposition in geometry to do, the one who is prepared to take trouble will try to understand it. The lazy child will try to learn it by heart because, for the moment, that needs less effort.

But six months later, when they are preparing for an exam, that lazy child is doing hours and hours of miserable drudgery over things the other child understands, and positively enjoys, in a few minutes. Laziness means more work in the long run.

Or look at it this way. In a battle, or in mountain climbing, there is often one thing which it takes a lot of pluck to do; but it is also, in the long run, the safest thing to do. If you funk it, you will find yourself, hours later, in far worse danger. The cowardly thing is also the most dangerous thing.

It is like that here. The terrible thing, the almost impossible thing, is to hand over your whole self—all your wishes and precautions—to Christ. But it is far easier than what we are all trying to do instead. For what we are trying to do is to remain what we call ourselves, to keep personal happiness as our great aim in life, and yet at the same time be ‘good’. We are all trying to let our mind and heart go their own way — centered on money or pleasure or ambition—and hoping, in spite of this, to behave honestly and chastely and humbly. And that is exactly what Christ warned us you could not do.

As He said, a thistle cannot produce figs. If I am a field that contains nothing but grass seed, I cannot produce wheat. Cutting the grass may keep it short: but I shall still produce grass and no wheat. If I want to produce wheat, the change must go deeper than the surface. I must be plowed up and re-sown.

Lord, let me always be willing to change at the most basic level. Amen.

~ C.S. Lewis, from “Mere Christianity”

Faith Enough To Be Wrong

Behold, God is exalted, and we do not know Him; The number of His years is unsearchable.

~ Job 36:26

We need to ask ourselves this question, “Do I have enough faith in God to believe that I don’t know, but I will trust Him anyway?” I was raised in a very strict religious way. The bottom line was: You must believe this way, or you are wrong. Now as an older adult, I am realizing that maybe thinking we know, is a trap of pride. Maybe true knowledge is the fact that we know very little.

There is one thing that is non-negotiable, if you want to come to God and have abundant life now, you need to go through Jesus. In the Bible, this is stated very clearly, many times. Other than that, maybe all other things are cumbersomely mute.

I am not saying these things are, or aren’t true, but just planting a seed of faith. If you went to heaven, and found out that God was both male and female, would you turn away, or still trust? If in the presence of God, He informed you that His billion years, is like one day to you, in other words, it took Him our billions of years to create the earth, as defined by His one day, would you be angry? If in the afterlife, you run into the most evil person you know, would you leave God’s presence disgusted, wondering; why was this person given the same wages or rewards as me, or would you rest in God’s infinite knowledge of His own justice system?

Now before you think I have gone off the deep end, I assure you, I have not. I am just wondering if our faith could be strong enough to trust, even if we are wrong. Can we truly believe He is a God of, “I Can,” instead of the definition of the God we design? We take a scripture here, and there, and piece them together to form a stringent determination, never entertaining the idea of possible outside parameters, or our own fallibility. With this way of thinking, God becomes the God of, “I Can, if I say so,” mentality. In essence, what we believe becomes our idol, instead of whom we serve.

When Jesus came to earth, the religious leaders had a definition of God. They could not, and would not, entertain the idea of a lowly person being God in the flesh. He did not meet their qualifications. Do we put qualifiers on God? Do we say, “Well, this is what the Bible says, and it means exactly my way of thinking?” Could we have enough faith to have confidence that He is a God in control, and our job is to rest in His easy yoke with assurance?

I have made a decision to trust God no matter what. I may find out I was wrong about many things, but this I know, God loves me, God gave His life for me, and God is pure, holy, and capable of anything, even when He does not meet my clarification or qualification. I come to Him, seeking forgiveness for being so prideful by placing Him in my definition of who I think He should be. My dependence is not on my knowledge, but on Him in His ultimate wisdom.

Forgive me Oh Lord, for putting parameters around you, making you less that who you really are. I trust you to be the God of, “I Can and I Will.” Amen

"The Loving care and purpose of The Holy Spirit."

 Genesis 1:1-2in

Genesis 1  

1 In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. 2 The earth was without form, and void; and darkness was on the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-9EGwkimNeQ

INTRO:

"In the beginning", oh how great and mighty is He that created all things. Oh, how beautiful and artistic is He. The earth was without form and was void. It was a wilderness of darkness. It was empty nothingness. Then God began to create. The Spirit of God, in His awesome, and loving way, "hovered" over this nothingness and cradled it with care, much like a mother bird spreads its wings over its young to protect, guard, and care for its young and their needs. Let us view this void and creation in a comparative viewpoint by comparing it to our lives...

The earth was void [empty], and dark. The Spirit of God hovered over the deep. Let us look at this in the viewpoint of life without Christ, and in need of Him, as The Holy Spirit "hovers" and nestles us, those that are Born Again, in Christ.

The Bible is quite clear that the Holy Spirit is active in our world. The book of Acts, which sometimes goes by the longer title of “The Acts of the Apostles,” could just as accurately be called “The Acts of the Holy Spirit through the Apostles.” After the apostolic age, there have been some changes—the Spirit does not inspire further Scripture, for example—but He continues to do His work in the world.

First, the Holy Spirit does many things in the lives of believers. He is the believers’ Helper (John 14:26). He indwells believers and seals them until the day of redemption—this indicates that the Holy Spirit’s presence in the believer is irreversible. He guards and guarantees the salvation of the ones He indwells (Ephesians 1:13; 4:30). The Holy Spirit assists believers in prayer (Jude 1:20) and “intercedes for God’s people in accordance with the will of God” (Romans 8:26–27).

The Holy Spirit regenerates and renews the believer (Titus 3:5). At the moment of salvation, the Spirit baptizes the believer into the Body of Christ (Romans 6:3). Believers receive the new birth by the power of the Spirit (John 3:5–8). The Spirit comforts believers with fellowship and joy as they go through a hostile world (1 Thessalonians 1:6; 2 Corinthians 13:14). The Spirit, in His mighty power, fills believers with “all joy and peace” as they trust the Lord, causing believers to “overflow with hope” (Romans 15:13).

Sanctification is another work of the Holy Spirit in the life of a believer. The Spirit sets Himself against the desires of the flesh and leads the believer into righteousness (Galatians 5:16–18). The works of the flesh become less evident, and the fruit of the Spirit becomes more evident (Galatians 5:19–26). Believers are commanded to “be filled with the Spirit” (Ephesians 5:18), which means they are to yield themselves to the Spirit’s full control.

The Holy Spirit is also a gift-giver. “There are different kinds of gifts, but the same Spirit distributes them” (1 Corinthians 12:4). The spiritual gifts that believers possess are given by the Holy Spirit as He determines in His wisdom (verse 11)

The Holy Spirit also does work among unbelievers. Jesus promised that He would send the Holy Spirit to “convict the world concerning sin and righteousness and judgment” (John 16:8, ESV). The Spirit testifies of Christ (John 15:26), pointing people to the Lord. Currently, the Holy Spirit is also restraining sin and combatting “the secret power of lawlessness” in the world. This action keeps the rise of the Antichrist at bay (2 Thessalonians 2:6–10).

The Holy Spirit has one other important role, and that is to give believers wisdom by which we can understand God. “The Spirit searches everything, even the depths of God. For who knows a person’s thoughts except the spirit of that person, which is in him? So also no one comprehends the thoughts of God except the Spirit of God” (1 Corinthians 2:10–11). Since we have been given the amazing gift of God’s Spirit inside ourselves, we can comprehend the thoughts of God, as revealed in the Scripture. The Spirit helps us understand. This is wisdom from God, rather than wisdom from man. No amount of human knowledge can ever replace the Holy Spirit’s teaching (1 Corinthians 2:12–13).

PRAYER:

Dear Lord, by way of Your Spirit, hover over my walk in life and continue to guide and nestle us, by Your grace so that we may fulfill Your Will and glorify You rightly, please, in Jesus' Holy Name, we love and thank You, amen.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6ph-t8P2r_I

Special Revelation and the Bible

All Scripture is given by inspiration of God.

~ 2 Timothy 3:16

When Jesus was tempted by Satan in the wilderness, He rebuked the devil with the words, “Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God” (Matthew 4:4). Historically, the church has echoed the teaching of Jesus by affirming that the Bible is the vox Dei, the “voice of God” or the verbum Dei, the “Word of God.” To call the Bible the Word of God is not to suggest that it was written by God's own divine hand or that it fell from heaven in a parachute. The Bible itself clearly calls attention to its many human authors. In a careful study of Scripture we notice that each human author has his own peculiar literary style, vocabulary, special emphasis, perspective, and the like. Since the production of the Bible involved human effort, how can it be regarded as the Word of God?

The Bible is called the Word of God because of its claim, believed by the church, that the human writers did not merely write their own opinions, but that their words were inspired by God. The apostle Paul writes, “All Scripture is given by inspiration of God” (2 Timothy 3:16). The word inspiration is a translation from the Greek word meaning “God-breathed.” God breathed out the Bible. Just as we must expel breath from our mouths when we speak, so ultimately Scripture is God speaking.

Although Scripture came to us from the pens of human authors, the ultimate source of Scripture is God. That is why the prophets could preface their words by saying, “Thus says the Lord.” This is also why Jesus could say, “Your word is truth” (John 17:17), and “Scripture cannot be broken” (John 10:35).

The word inspiration also calls attention to the process by which the Holy Spirit superintended the production of Scripture. The Holy Spirit guided the human authors so that their words would be nothing less than the word of God. How God superintended the original writings of the Bible is not known. But inspiration does not mean that God dictated his messages to those who wrote the Bible. Rather, the Holy Spirit communicated through the human writers the very words of God.

Christians affirm the infallibility and inerrancy of the Bible because God is ultimately the Author of the Bible. And because God is incapable of inspiring falsehood, His word is altogether true and trustworthy. Any normally prepared human literary product is liable to error. But the Bible is not a normal human project. If the Bible is inspired and superintended by God, then it cannot err.

This does not mean that the Bible translations we have today are without error, but that the original manuscripts were absolutely correct. Nor does it mean that every statement in the Bible is true. The writer of the book of Ecclesiastes, for instance, declares that “there is no work or device or knowledge or wisdom in the grave where you are going” (Ecclesiastes 9:10). The writer was speaking from the standpoint of human despair, and we know his statement to be untrue from other parts of Scripture. Even in revealing the false reasonings of a despairing man, the Bible speaks truth.

Lord, let me remember the divinity of your Word. Amen.

A Saint In Embryo

For I delight in the law of God according to the inward man. But I see another law in my members, warring against the law of my mind, and bringing me into captivity to the law of sin which is in my members.

~ Romans 7:22-23

The regenerate man often has a more difficult time of it than the unregenerate, for he is not one man but two. He feels within him a power that tends toward holiness and God, while at the same time he is still a child of Adam’s flesh and a son of the red clay. This moral dualism is to him a source of distress and struggle wholly unknown to the once-born man. Of course the classic critique upon this is Paul’s testimony in the seventh chapter of his Roman epistle.

The devil makes it his business to keep Christians in bondage, bound and gagged, actually imprisoned in their own grave clothes! Why doesn’t the old devil, Satan, give up and bow out of the picture when a person becomes a believing Christian? Although he is a dark and sinister foe dedicated to the damnation of humans, I think he knows that it is no use trying to damn a forgiven and justified child of God who is in the Lord’s hands. So, it becomes the devil’s business to keep the Christian’s spirit imprisoned. He knows that the believing and justified Christian has been raised up out of the grave of his sins and trespasses. From that point on, Satan works that much harder to keep us bound and gagged, actually imprisoned in our own grave clothes.

The true Christian is a saint in embryo. The heavenly genes are in him and the Holy Spirit is working to bring him on into a spiritual development that accords with the nature of the Heavenly Father from whom he received the deposit of divine life. Yet he is here in this mortal body subject to weakness and temptation, and his warfare with the flesh sometimes leads him to do extreme things. “For the flesh lusteth against the Spirit, and the Spirit against the flesh: and these are contrary the one to the other: so that ye cannot do the things that ye would” (Gal. 5:17).

Lord, sometimes I could wish I were not ‘still a child of Adam’s flesh and a son of the red clay.’ But I live in this flesh and realize constantly my total dependence on You for spiritual victory. Grant it today, for Jesus’ sake. Amen.

~ from “Christian Leadership” by A.W. Tozer