Wednesday, September 26, 2012

LORD, TEACH US TO PRAY

From the devotional, The Word For You.

From Andrew Murray’s classic book on prayer, With Christ In The School Of Prayer, a pupil needs a teacher who knows his work, who has the gift of teaching, who in patience and love will descend to the pupil’s needs. Blest be God, Jesus is all this and much more! When we have questions such as 1) I’m not sure God’s listening to me, 2)I don’t understand why some prayers go unanswered, 3) Am I praying right? I’m frustrated with my prayer life. 4) If you want to feel more connected to God and have confidence that you prayers really do matter, say Lord, teach ME to pray!

There are some principles for prayer but we really need to understand that God will lead each of us individually. He wants to take us just as we are and develop in us a “rhythm of prayer.” He wants to develop in each of us a style of prayer that maximizes our own personal relationship with Him. He wants prayer to be an easy, natural, life-giving way of communicating as you share your heart with Him and allow Him to share His heart with you! Prayer is so simple…it’s nothing more than  talking to Him and taking the time to listen to what He has to say to you. God has a personalized prayer plan for you, a way for you to communicate most effectively with Him. We begin by saying, “Lord, teach me to pray.”

One of the dangers of being involved in God’s work is that you go weeks or even months without praying. In a survey of 1,000 pastors, half acknowledged that they often went long periods of time without taking time to pray except for the functions in the church. They preach sermons on it but didn’t practice it themselves. Can you relate? Jesus rose hours before dawn to spend time with His Father, sometimes He prayed all night, and it showed. His incredible success flowed out of His very rich relationship with His Father. He made deposits every morning so that He could make withdrawals all day long.

We can start by taking small amounts of time in the morning, and adding small amounts of time praying throughout the day as things come to my heart and finally ending my day by talking with Him as I fall asleep. When Paul said to pray without ceasing, this is what he meant. You can move from sporadic prayer times to measured. disciplined times without being legalistic. The more you put into it, the more pleasant it becomes and you enjoy the time spent with Him. It is no longer an obligation but a pleasure and privilege. I now realize I cannot survive a day without and be satisfied. I no longer approach God timidly, but I now approach Him boldly, as His Word teaches me to do, and with great expectation. Put it into operation, you will be very pleasantly surprised, pleased, and satisfied.

Monday, September 24, 2012

Walking for the Lord

Reading Psalm 119 is a great experience…there is so much excellent advice for us it warrants re-reading many times and perhaps in various versions, just to get “good flavor.” I love reading in NKJV, then NIV and topped off by reading in The Message. Try it, it’s amazing how much you can gather for later pondering.

The first verse almost stops you…”Blessed are they whose ways are blameless…” have you ever given any thought to being “blameless?” Whenever I think about standing before the Lord at the Bema Seat, I want over- whelming to be blameless. More than anything, I want to hear from Him, “Well done!”  With no reproach. More than anything…

The next verse gives a way to go…”Blessed are they who keep His statues and seek Him with all their hearts.”  Precepts and statutes are given to us to be instruction for character and conduct based on divine principles. This particular Psalm is full of those kinds of instructions. Reading and re-reading, meditating and pondering the messages are very profitable if you are serious about your relationship with the Lord and have that intense, burning desire to please Him. To please Him we must be willing to pay attention to His written Word, put it into practice by living it…in so doing, we become like Him. Reading Galatians 5 teaches us what NOT to incorporate into our character and then follows  those qualities we ARE to incorporate, and they are not for choosing, we are to develop them all and live them. It would be impossible to do this without the Word and the Holy Spirit actively teaching and encouraging us to move forward in our quest. Seeking Him with the whole heart is pretty much a 24 hour a day proposition…one can only imagine attaining that level of intimacy with the Savior!

Sunday, September 23, 2012

Thinking out loud about end times…

I’ve been reading a series of books by Joel Rosenberg, an amazing writer of mainly but not exclusively, end times novels.  His understanding of the Scripture and end time events is uncanny, possibly due to the fact that he is what we call a “completed Jew.” I have known and read many completed Jews that are extremely gifted in understanding and explaining Scripture. I would urge you to avail yourself of Joel’s wisdom and read his books. Today I am finishing his last one, “Implosion” which is not a novel but an expounding of his very real premise that the time of Jacob’s Trouble is “on us.” I use quotation marks because I know that time period cannot begin until the church is gone in what we refer to as the Rapture, the snatching away of true believers by the Lord, to remove us and of course, the Holy Spirit…He who restrains according to 2 Thess 2:5-12. (Good reading)…then the man of lawlessness can be revealed and the tribulation begin. Following is a few paragraphs from Implosion for you to consider.

 

Our current challenges are too large for political and business leaders alone to solve. To be sure, Washington, Wall Street, and Main Street have critical roles in play in our nation’s recovery, and I wish them Godspeed in making the fundamental economic and fiscal reforms this country so desperately needs. But we need more than tax reforms to save us. We need more than spending and entitlement reforms in Washington. We need more than better jobs and stronger economic growth and truly balanced budgets. These are crucial to our survival, but by themselves they are insufficient. What we urgently need is a national u-turn. We need a wholesale national turning from our current path of pride, materialism, narcissism, selfishness, unkindness, and vulgarity. We need to turn away from violence against the unborn and rampant pornography and the assault on traditional marriage and the family. All of us as Americans need to turn away from our sins and plead for the grace and mercy and forgiveness of Jesus Christ. e need once again to make a solemn national commitment to walk in the power of the Holy Spirit from this day forward.

At this point, nothing less than a Third Great Awakening will save us. These are not normal times. We are not facing normal problems. We dare not continue with business as usual. We cannot continue tinkering around the edges and procrastinating and living in denial. We are in mortal danger as a nation. We are on the verged if seeing God’s hand of favor removed from us forever. We are on the brink of facing god’s fair but terrifying judgment. Yet some deny God even exists, others concede He exists but deny that we really need Him. Some give lip service to being a “Christian nation” but deny Christ’s power, refusing to live holy, faithful, fruitful lives. And now the hour is late. The clock is ticking. God certainly can save America. He has the power, and He has done it in the past, but He has made us no promises…and we dare not assume that because America has been such an exceptional nation in the past, she will forever remain so. The time for personal and national change has arrived, or we as a nation are doomed.

Personally, I agree with all Joel has written. the time has come for us to be honest with ourselves and with the Lord. What are we personally to be doing at this time in history, doing for Him, to share and teach and alert others to where we are in history and urge them to be ready!