Archive for the prayer Category
When King Hezekiah heard their report, he tore his clothes and put on sackcloth and went into the Temple of the LORD to pray.
2 Kings 17:1 (NLT)
I love this verse. It is a constant reminder that when things fall apart, the best thing for me to do is humble myself and pray. King Hezekiah had received a report that he was about to be attacked by the Assyrian army – an army that was kicking butt across the region. Israel was next on the list. How could the small nation stand against such an army?
The king of Assyria tried to weakened the Israelites before actually engaging them in battle. He sent messengers before him who:
- Taunted King Hezekiah and the Israelites. He basically said “If you can find 2,000 horsemen in your army, I’ll give you 2,000 Egyptian horses for them to ride and then I’ll still beat you!”
- Challenged their faith by saying “Do you think we’ve invaded your land without the Lord’s direction? The Lord Himself told us ‘Go and destroy it!’”
- Destroyed their confidence in their king and God saying directly to the people “Don’t let the king fool you. He’ll never be able to save you from my power. None of the other countries were able to stand against me.”
King Hezekiah heard all this and went into the temple of the Lord to pray.
Lord, make me more like Hezekiah – I want to act with a calm faith in the face of what looks like sure disaster.
In our economy today, many people are listening to the kings of Assyria in their lives. They are hearing and believing that they will come to ruin unless they surrender now. The enemy is whispering in their ears “Who do you think you are that God would deliver you? Don’t you know that I’ve been sent by God to humble you - to punish you or to teach you a lesson? I could give you free housing/car/health insurance (choose your most pressing financial issue) and I’d still drown you in debt before the end of the year. Why will your God deliver you?”
The answer is He will deliver us because He is our deliverer. He will deliver us because we belong to Him. Husbands don’t let their wives be taken captive. Jesus Christ is the bridegroom of the Church – He is our husband.
But let’s respond correctly. Let’s choose to believe our God instead of foreign kings and let’s humble ourselves and pray.
I’m not making economic predictions. I have no idea if the economy will turn around in January or March or March of 2020. But I know that my deliverance comes from the Lord and is not dependent on the economy. My deliverance is not dependent on my own ability to work hard or to make money, it’s not dependent on being at the right place at the right time, and it’s not dependent on the amount of faith I have. It is dependent on God’s mercy and grace and His mighty power.
Where do you choose to place your trust – in the economy or in God’s mercy and power? Who do you choose to believe – enemy kings or the King of Kings?
How you approach 2009 depends on where your trust lies. If your trust is in God’s mercy and power, you can face the new year with confidence, not despair. Place your trust in the King of Kings. He is the faithful provider, not dependent upon the whims of the economy. Strengthen that trust by visiting with Him regularly in prayer and by reading in the Bible about His nature and His history of faithfulness.
As an aside, let me give you something to think about. I’m going to be providing a plan for read through the Bible in 2009 along with weekly encouragements and blogs that correspond to the readings. Don’t be intimidated by it! You can read throught the Bible by reading about 3.2 chapters each day. For now, just be open to the idea. You’ll learn more about the plan in a day or two.
As I was writing this blog, a favorite verse came to mind:
Some trust in chariots and some in horses,
but we trust in the name of the LORD our God.
I wasn’t sure of the wording or the reference, so I looked it up. I found it in the middle of this wonderful prayer that seems a perfect ending to this blog. It is my prayer for you as we look toward 2009.
1 May the LORD answer you when you are in distress;
may the name of the God of Jacob protect you.
2 May he send you help from the sanctuary
and grant you support from Zion.
3 May he remember all your sacrifices
and accept your burnt offerings.
Selah
4 May he give you the desire of your heart
and make all your plans succeed.
5 We will shout for joy when you are victorious
and will lift up our banners in the name of our God.
May the LORD grant all your requests.
6 Now I know that the LORD saves his anointed;
he answers him from his holy heaven
with the saving power of his right hand.
7 Some trust in chariots and some in horses,
but we trust in the name of the LORD our God.
8 They are brought to their knees and fall,
but we rise up and stand firm.
9 O LORD, save the king!
Answer us when we call!
Psalm 20 (NIV)
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Yesterday I blogged about how our dog, Sweetie, “presents” herself to my husband, Phil, several times a day looking for love and attention.
On the first Sunday of every month, Phil & I conduct a church service for the residents of a nursing home. We always take Sweetie with us. We officially proclaim it to be “Bring Your Dog to Church Sunday.” The residents love it.
Today, while Phil was leading the singing of some familiar hymns, Sweetie got up from lying near my chair and sat in front of me, looking up at me expectantly. I thought “Isn’t she cute, presenting herself for attention.”
A few minutes, Phil read one of the Scripture readings, Philippians 4:4-9. Verse struck me:
Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God.
Present your requests to God. God wants me to be very much like Sweetie - coming frequently into His presence, sharing affection with Him, letting Him shower me with love, or even having Him show me the right way to do things. Yes, this verse is about bringing our requests to Him, but we can’t present our requests to Him without first presenting ourselves to Him.
I guess now I have two things to work on this week…paying more attention to Phil and frequently “presenting” myself to the Lord for fellowship and to express my needs. Are you up for joining me in the challenge?
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It’s wonderful finding Christians in the marketplace. For many years I felt a bit like Elijah - the only one left. That has changed considerably over the past decade, as more and more Christians are making their faith known on the job. Last week a business associate and friend, Jim Green, suggested I write a blog on prayer. We e-mailed back and forth, several times, and the end result is this collaborative effort.
Prayer is a powerful tool of the Christian in our daily walk and communion with the Lord. Without it we are disconnected from our true Source of life, strength, wisdom and power. If you are a new Christian, prayer is an excellent topic to study, after understanding that you are saved by God’s grace through your faith in Christ and his death on the cross.
Prayer is simply talking to God. And yet it is so much more than that. Through your daily conversations with Him, you have a tremendous opportunity to know Him better, and to make an impact on the world around you. John Wesley said “God does nothing except in response to prayer.” Do you see something wrong in the world around you? (And who doesn’t?) Don’t complain about it, pray about it. Complaining doesn’t change things, prayer changes things.
Often, though, it’s easy for our prayers to become too “me” focused. Jim remembers reading a small book on how to pray many years ago in which they suggested the following simple approach to pray.
PRAY, don’t yarp.
Yarp is “pray” spelled backwards and it is an illustration of how we can sometimes get things backwards in our prayer life.
Praise God with humility and reverence
Scripture teaches that God inhabits the praises of His people. (Psalms 22:3, NRSV & KJV) He lives in them. When you praise God, His presence comes to inhabit the very air in and around you.
Enter his gates with thanksgiving
and his courts with praise;
give thanks to him and praise his name.
For the LORD is good and his love endures forever;
his faithfulness continues through all generations.
Psalm 100:4-5 (NIV)
Repent with a contrite heart
Repentance means to turn away from. It is saying “God, I was wrong. I am sorry. Please forgive me.” And then, with God’s help, changing our ways. It doesn’t mean we immediately begin to do everything right (don’t we wish it were that easy!). But it does mean we continually bring our sins before God. 1 John says it well:
If we say we have no sin, we are only fooling ourselves and refusing to accept the truth. But if we confess our sins to him, he is faithful and just to forgive us and to cleanse us from every wrong. If we claim we have not sinned, we are calling God a liar and showing that his word has no place in our hearts.
1 John 1:8-10 (NLT)
Ask for others and their needs first
At the heart of Christianity is giving ourselves for others. Jesus is our supreme example, whose blood was poured out for us on the cross (Matthew 26:28). Paul, Jesus’ disciple, opened many of his letters with tremendous prayers for God’s people.
Every time I think of you, I give thanks to my God. I always pray for you, and I make my requests with a heart full of joy…
Philippians 1:3-4 (NLT)
Yourself last
Don’t forget to pray for your own needs! They are precious to God. He has the number of hairs on your head numbered
You can ask for anything in my name, and I will do it, because the work of the Son brings glory to the Father. Yes, ask anything in my name, and I will do it!
John 14:13-14 (NLT)
Always pray according to God’s will, by the power of the Holy Spirit, and in the name of Jesus.
PRAY, don’t yarp.
Always put God first, praising Him for who He is and what He’s done. Repent of sins you’ve committed. Ask for God to move on behalf of others, the for Yourself.
Always remember to pray.
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Posted by: Sandy in prayer
Something God reminded me this morning…staring at my prayer list and praying are two very different things! Oops! Forgive me Lord, that my mind so easily wanders.
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“Who is able to advise the Spirit of the Lord? Who knows enough to be his teacher or counselor? Has the Lord ever needed anyone’s advise? Does he need instruction about what is good or what is best?” Isaiah 40:13-14 (NLT)
As I read this passage this morning I was struck at how often I am guilty of “giving the Lord advise” in my prayers. Does He need my advise? Obviously not. Does He need my counsel? Somehow, I don’t think so!
I’m very thankful that we have a God who regularly overlooks my poor choice of wording when I pray, that He sees my heart instead of just hearing my words. Sometimes I mispeak and God hears the good in my heart instead of the poorly worded request that comes from my lips. If I’m honest with myself, though, I know that there are other times when I’ve “cleaned up” the words I speak but the sentiment of my heart truly is to manipulate or “instruct” God in what needs to happen in a given situation. How arrogant of me!
Have you ever prayed “Lord, please help this other person ____________________” (fill in the blank), when what you mean in your heart is “Lord, let this person do what I want them to do”? Were you secretly trying to give God instructions or counsel about what He should do? You may have convinced yourself that you were praying what’s best for that person, yet what you were really praying was the equivalent of giving God instructions.
Although I often fail, I try to pray Scripture rather than solutions. Once while teaching on this subject I was asked the following question: “I have a friend who is about to lose his job. Shouldn’t I pray for him to keep his job?” My response was that while we know that it’s God’s will for the man to provide for his family, we don’t know that it is God’s will for him to have that particular job. As we learned more about the situation it became clear that the friend was in jeopardy of losing his job because his boss was asking him to do unethical things and he was refusing. In the midst of the crisis of needing to provide for his family both he and his friends were losing sight of the fact that God may have orchestrated these circumstances to move him into a new position. If I had prayed that he not lose his job, I might have been praying against the will of God. Rather, if I prayed that God would enable him to continue to provide for his family, enable him to see the “way out” (1 Cor 10:13) of this situation, continue to teach him His ways and conform him to the image of Christ, I would clearly be praying in God’s will.
This doesn’t always come easy for me. I’m a person who seeks solutions. It’s the way my mind works. I see or hear of a problem and my mind immediately begins to brainstorm solutions. It’s one of the ways I tend to be more like men than women. When women share problems with their husbands they are often frustrated because their husbands go into “fixit” mode immediately instead of just listening and being compassionate. I am more like that husband. When I hear a problem I automatically go into “fixit” mode. I’ve had to train myself to listen longer and then make my suggestions in a milder way than comes naturally to me. (I am admittedly better at this sometimes than at other times.)
This personality trait serves me well in many areas of my life. But it’s totally inappropriate in my relationship with God. God doesn’t need me to offer suggestions about how to solve a problem. He has already put the solution in motion. Scripture teaches us that He is always at work in our circumstances, past, present and future. My job is to watch and to listen. If my prayers were more “watch and listen” focused, I undoubtedly would have a more Christ-like walk with the Lord. (Ouch!)
Lord, as I look to 2008, help me to NOT (advertently or inadvertently) give You advice and instructions. Your wisdom is greater.
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I have this recurring theme in my mind…simplify, uncomplicate, rest…
Yet the world is screaming “more, more, more.”
I’ve begun a new venture…we’re adding a book publishing capability to Data Designs, in part because writing books is something I’ve always wanted to do and my dad’s death kind of pushed it to the forefront (but that’s a long story that would lead to complicating this blog!).
One of the books I want to write is about honoring the Sabbath and as I meditate on the subject, I think it has a whole “uncomplicating life” component to it…hence, the recurring mantra in my head.
It’s just that I can’t quite get there…
Anyway, today I’m researching some topics that it feels like the rest of the world knows about and I’m stupid about. RSS Feeds and Feed Readers is one of those topics. The problem is that everywhere I end up I find nothing but overwhelming details about way too many options describing features that I’m not knowledgeable enough to compare. (How important is that feature compared to this other feature?)
My point…admittedly made in quite a round-about, complicated way…is that life offers so many options these days that we are constantly being barraged with “opportunities” to enhance our lives. And for each opportunity, as I see it we’re faced with three options: Ignore all of them, evaluate each one of them, or evaluate only those that have been created by someone who knows how to write a great grab-your-attention headline. I hate those choices! I guess what I want is a great personal assistant who will evaluate all of them and only forward the great ones to me! 
But life doesn’t work that way for most of us. Most of us have to make our own choices.
It occurs to me, though, that the Holy Spirit really is (or can be) our personal assistant. Now don’t get upset at that sentence…I mean no disrespect whatsoever. But Scripture says that the Holy Spirit will lead and guide us. And while He will clearly lead and guide us into spiritual Truths, He can also help us “number our days aright,” (Psalm 90:12, NIV). Isn’t that what I’m really looking for? Someone to help me make right decisions about even the most mundane (or technical) of issues.
The problem (or at least ONE of the problems) is that I often forget to ask for help. I often get bogged down in the details and begin to feel like I have to make a decision. And if ever there was wrong thinking, that’s it. Thinking that I’m responsible for everything in my life. God never intended it that way. Yes, I’m to be responsible for my actions, but He never intended me to go it alone. He truly wants to be a part of all the decisions, whether they seem to have “spiritual” implications or not…because when all is said and done, everything has spiritual implications.
I’d like to make a renewed commitment to asking the Holy Spirit to help me “number my days aright” — beginning with time with God and continuing all the way through to the decisions about which DSL speed to upgrade to. Care to join me?
Comment from dansdesk
Great thoughts! I have two comments: one spiritual and the other not so much. I, too struggle with asking for the Spirit’s help in the simplest to the most complex of decisions. Several recent studies reinforce the need to do that. In Just Walk Across the Room, Bill Hybels emphasizes that we need need to begin conversations, take an interest in people, and then let the Spirit guide us. That assumes that our relationship with God is good enough to hear the Spirit.My more practical comment is that I’ve developed a system in how to decide what new things things I need to research or do. I never go cutting edge on anything — technology, ministry, theology, fads, etc. I let the dust settle, the bugs to be worked out, the systems in place, and the prices to go down. RSS is actually rather simple now at least compared to what it used to be. Those are my two cents. Have a great day. Keep writing and I’ll buy a book of yours but I would expect it to be autographed! Dan
Tuesday October 9, 2007 - 09:28am (EDT)
Response from Sandy
Great advice. We agree…never buy totally cutting edge. Version 1.0 never works well. :-)And your spiritual advice is right on…but how easy it is for us to fall into the trap of forgetting to have the conversation with God on the mundane stuff. Lord, lead me out of my self-sufficiency, even in (or especially in) areas where I could be self-sufficient.Be blessed! And thanks for your comments and I’ll hold you to your promise to buy the book!
Saturday October 13, 2007 - 03:24pm (EDT)
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