Have your prayers been stale lately? Are you having a tough time in your prayer closet and it is as if there is a sheet of glass between you and God? Oh, you can see Him, and you know exactly how you ought to pray, but this invisible wall of glass is preventing you from getting there? You are not alone in this regard, and there is a way to overcome this prayerful malaise.
Do miracles scare you? How about miracles performed by a man? We are inclined to trust in God and His divine goodness when it comes to healing us, forgiving us, or the other amazing things that we associate with Him by our belief in His Word, and His promises. Yet, do we have confidence, and does it bother us when a man lays his hands on someone, or us, and a healing occurs? What if that man was Jesus Christ?
Do you lean on your own understanding when you read scripture? Do you try to discern the meaning of God’s Word by your own insufficient intellect? The apostles had Jesus right there with them, and yet they were so often confused by what He said, and had to have it repeated and explained. It was not until the Holy Spirit came to help them that they were truly enlightened.
Love is central to our faith as Christians, and not just our agape love for God nor a personal love that is limited to family, friends, and self, but a love that flows into all the world, and beyond. The love we exhibit is meant to be so profound that it is witnessed and considered a spectacle in heaven itself! Are we living such a life of love today? Has our love become spiritual and heavenly?
Is the Holy Spirit worth waiting for, and can we receive Him today just as the disciples did? These are questions that many claim to be answered “Yes”, and that even asking them this question seems spiritually childish to them, while others denounce today’s coming of the Holy Spirit as irrelevant and a thing of the past. So, which is it? How can we talk about receiving the gifts of the Spirit, and the workings of the Holy Spirit in us... while never having received Him?
Who are we, and what was it that God created us to accomplish? We have always asked ourselves why we were created, and what purpose we were meant to serve. There is no real answer to these two questions outside of our faith, and the Word of God, so what can be found there?
We are told to serve one another, but how, and in what way are we to do that? This subject is just as deep and profound as our faith and our prayers. You might argue this point, but think back on the life of Jesus. You may not have recognized all the acts of servitude He performed because He did them disguised as love, and shrouded in humility; yet there they are. His lesson on serving that He taught as He washed the feet of His disciples was just the most obvious and most frequently touted... yet quite possibly the least of them all.
Have you entered a doldrum in regard to your faith and prayer life? Perhaps you are new to prayer and are seeking that first gust of wind in your sails; the one that you know should be there. Or perhaps you are a salty Christian that has somehow become becalmed. Times such as this require that we lean into our faith all the more, and continue to pray. Believing should become the hope that carries us through those times when we seem to be going through the motions of our religion without any forward progress. We must believe, hope, trust, and continue to lift up our prayers unto the Lord.
Do you count yourself as insufficient when it comes to saving the many lost souls? When God asks you to accomplish something huge do you answer back, “I can’t, Father! I am just one man!” Is this your justification for being disobedient too? Well, that used to be my excuse, but this morning I read Romans 5:12-21 and it convicted me, so I will never again say “But Father I am just one man!” I will be obedient in the face of the great challenges He sets before me.
How is it that we are saved? How is it that the sin which rules our flesh can be overcome? When I realized that without Jesus Christ in my life each and every day, I would naturally revert back to the creature I once was, my faith would begin to change at once within me. I came to understand that temptation and sin did not go away when I first believed, but instead had to be held at bay, and that I was allowed a moment by moment victory over it through Jesus Christ, my Savior.
Have you ever asked others for healing prayer and received relief from your illness as a result? When this happened did you elevate those who prayed in intercession for you to a lofty position of faith? Has someone sick ever come to you for prayer, and as a result of your praying for them they were healed? Did you have a feeling of accomplishment as if your praying had done this for them, or felt in some small part to be responsible for the miracle? If either of these is true, then you have misappropriated God’s glory.
What songs do we sing when we are with our friends outside of church and church gatherings? Do we sing popular songs of today, old favorites from the past, folk songs, holiday songs, campfire songs, or perhaps… drinking songs? Well, we are told in Ephesians that as believers we are to remain sober, greet one another spiritually in psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs as we sing to the Lord, and to be filled with the Spirit. How should we interpret this? Is singing anything other than hymns a taboo?
My personal devotional reading this morning was about learning and unlearning from a Christian perspective, and it brought back memories of those things in my life that I had to let go of as I relearned them by replacing them with the truth that the Word of God shows us. Sometimes we advance in faith by being willing to let go of what the world has taught us; things we thought were true prior to the Holy Spirit leading us to a deeper understanding.
Do we find ourselves to be at war within? Are we in the midst of a battle between our mind and our body, between the weakness of our flesh that is so often reluctant to kneel before God, and our spirit which actually worships Him? We never have to look far as we seek to understand if there truly is both a physical and a spiritual world, because we live with one foot in each, and this tenuous stance threatens constantly to destroy us as our spirit works to tame the man of flesh who walks towards sin.