How would you classify yourself? Are you primarily a giver, or a receiver? When you offer your morning prayers do you ask the Lord to show where you can be of service to Him, or are your prayers mostly for the personal needs you have? When I asked if you were a giver or receiver I’ll bet you immediately felt that being a giver was good but had an uncomfortable, or perhaps a guilty feeling about being a receiver. The fact is that both are good and the blessing is meant to be experienced in both.
Our prayers are not powerless. When we enter into them we are not alone, but are joined there by the Holy Spirt, and Jesus Christ. When we don’t know how to pray the Holy Spirit will pray for us, and as we pray in the name of Jesus Christ it gives Him joint authorship with us in that prayer. Suddenly, what might have been a knee shaking event as we stood alone before the throne of God, has become less frightening and we are more certain that our prayers are being heard. So, I ask you this, are you alone before God in your prayers or coming before Him with the help of the Spirit and in the name of Jesus?
How strong are we bodily, and how strong is our faith? Does the strength of our physical bodies reflect the power of our faith? To answer this let’s consider the words of the apostle Paul. Perhaps we are battling an illness, or a deformity that cripples us, and our prayers for this to be healed or removed are seemingly falling on deaf ears. When our bodies suffer and become frail this can actually become the time of our greatest dependence on God, and as such an aid in reaching the height of our faith.
A while ago, many of you prayed for me as I battled against double pneumonia but today, I wish to pray for you and all those around us, and to ask that you join me by praying for them as well. My prayer today is not for their physical bodies, but rather for their spirits and faith. Have you ever prayed such a prayer before? If you haven’t then you are missing the greatest opportunity in prayer... to pray for the will of God to be manifest in all its power within the spiritual being of others.
Are you in the midst of some trauma in your life? Are you looking to God and asking Him, “Why Lord? aren’t I your child?” Well of course the answer to this question is that He loves us too much not to discipline or teach us. Even though the storms in our lives are meant to teach and perfect us, they can sure feel like pure punishment can’t they? But amidst these hardships and various forms of discipline, we should never lose sight of the fact that we are indeed the beloved children of God.
Where do our blessings come from? Are we busy trying to earn them? Is our goal in doing God’s will to be blessed, or is our blessing simply that of being in His will? Where do our spiritual blessings truly come from, and how do we come by them? And finally, do we really know what being blessed means? Let’s look at the role of Christ in our many blessings today as we attempt to answer these questions regarding how we are being blessed.
Are we alone with God when we pray or is it good to pray with others? Well, it is important to pray alone, and in secret, because that provides us with the degree of intimacy that our soul’s relationship with God longs for, but are there times when we need to pray together with others? The answer to this question regarding praying with others is a resounding “Yes!” There is power in joining together in certain times of prayer, whether we are physically together, or praying in unison from the far corners of the earth. A common cause prayed for by many carries much weight before the throne of God.
Do we have the blood of Jesus on the casings above the doors of our lives? Are our lintels smeared with the blood of the lamb and the promise of eternal life? If we were to walk back in time, and down the streets of Egypt, we would see the very real blood of Passover lambs on the doorways of believers, and if we turned to the Holy Spirit he would reveal to us the spiritual reality of that act; then he would show us the power of the blood of Jesus Christ in our lives and would make tangible to us the promises of God... His grace, forgiveness, and everlasting life.
Do we wait patiently for God’s provision and direction? Have we become practiced in allowing Him to do all things in our lives, or does He teach us over and over again how to wait? Have we set our spiritual clocks, and our expectations to His divine time, the time of heaven? As the time of an earthly day is constantly changing, and our bodies acclimate to that change, we must also acclimate spiritually to the natural variation in the will of God... the days of heaven.
As a Christian do we concentrate on who Jesus Christ is? When asked about Him do we tell of what He did, how He redeemed us, and that He taught us things like loving our neighbor as ourselves? These things are all true, but do we also tell them that He is the jar of clay that holds within it the essence of our lives, the container in which we are meant to eternally dwell? Do we reveal to them that He has so changed us that He has become engrained in the DNA of our lives; and that we are so completely interwoven that to extract Him from our being would certainly destroy us? If we can tell them this, then our faith will have become the fullness of Christ, and we will no longer find satisfaction in who Christ is, but in who we are in Him, and He in us.
Do we speak WITH God in prayer or simply TO Him? Does His voice come to us and direct us, or do we approach Him with a list of wants and demands then follow them quickly with “Amen” and without pausing to listen to what He has to say? If God isn’t speaking to us then perhaps we need to first believe that He will, and that He desires to. Not believing that God wants to have a conversation with us is an indication that we don’t really know Him as we should. Speaking to Him in prayer but not listening to His response is not a conversation, no, it is a lecture or a monologue and is this how we pray today? If it is then we are demonstrating that we don’t value what He has to say.
When we look at our lives we know that there is only room for one God, person, or thing at the pinnacle of them. When we look at ourselves we don’t see a Mesa, or a plateau, we see a mountain peak... the spire that is the ultimate point of our existence. So, what will we place there? What will occupy the highest point in our lives, will it be the God of Abraham, Jesus Christ, some mock form of spirituality we have created, financial success, physical prowess, or another worldly desire? The decision must be made, and the champion of our lives crowned and placed at the crest. Will we choose correctly?
What is the state of our life right now? Are we satisfied with where we are in our faith at this particular moment? When we look back on our actions of the past, even those of the last few hours, how do they make us feel right now? We often hate the word “NOW” because it requires immediate action. We put off changing our lives, we neglect or marginalize faith, we postpone looking at where and who we are. We say, “I will worship the Lord ________.” How do we choose to complete this sentence within the bounds of our lives? Jesus says NOW is the acceptable answer regarding when we should worship Him, praise Him, honor Him, Glorify Him, and all the other things we can imagine concerning our faith and the Lord our God. Let’s look at this…
As Christians do we fret over the condition of our country and this world? Do we wring our hands and cry out, “Lord! Lord! look at what is being done and the harm that is occurring to your people!”? Well, if we do this, then we must stop! Ours is to trust in Him who created all things, and to leave princes and principalities to their vices because it was He who established and will deal with them. We are like the grass that covers the earth. We may brown with the drought, but we should have faith in the promised rain. The trees will wither and die, but the green grass of Christ returns with the renewing rain, and as for the dark clouds and lightning on the horizon? Why they are merely the harbingers of God’s coming promise and mercy.
Do we wake up in the morning with a song of faith on our mind and a melody on our lips? Is it a lyric and song that only the Holy Spirit could have written with us, and right away we know that it is a continuation of the ballad of our life and that it reveals God’s plan for us in another verse of who we are meant to be in Christ?