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Posts Tagged ‘spirituality’

Knowing God’s Discipline

Posted in Devotional Prayer, General Discipleship, tagged , , , , , on March 4, 2010 | Leave a Comment »

There are passages of Scripture that we tend to read often and there are passages that we tend to avoid. There are also passages that are easier for us to pray through than others. Yesterday I was reading a familiar passage in Proverbs 3:

My son, do not despise the Lord’s discipline and do not resent his rebuke because the Lord disciplines those he loves, as a father the son he delights in.  -Prov.3:11-12

It was the word ‘delight’ that caught my attention. I often pray about the fact that God ‘delights’ in me. Psalm 149 makes that abundantly clear when it says ‘For the Lord takes delight in his people’ (v.4). I like to remind myself that God delights in me and that he enjoys me, so when the word ‘delight’ came up in Proverbs 3 it stood out to me.

So here is the question that came up: when was the last time that I prayed for insight to recognize and understand the discipline of the Lord in my life? This is such an important concept that the author of Hebrews takes an entire chapter to discuss the matter (see Heb. 12).

For most of us the issue is not so much ‘despising’ God’s discipline as much as we don’t recognize when it is happening. I virtually never hear anybody saying ‘God is disciplining me’. So what does God’s discipline look like? Obviously it will likely be different for different people, but the common denominator is that we need spiritual eyes and discernment to distinguish between what is God’s discipline and what is not.

Take difficult circumstances as an example: our tendency is to chalk it up as spiritual warfare. Or perhaps we have been praying for a particular door to open and we respond by ‘binding the enemy’ and taking our stand against the enemy, but in reality it is God on the other side of the door holding to shut!

I want to encourage you to join me in beginning to pray to be be able to recognize and understand where and how the Lord’s discipline is evident in our lives. When it comes to this issue we probably need to do more listening than talking!

Father, I thank you that you love us and that you are committed to leading us toward spiritual maturity. I choose to thank you for your discipline and for all our working in my life. Help me to recognize when you are disciplining me and give me understanding to cooperate with what you are doing. Father I trust you. Thank you that you delight in me and that you enjoy me. I pray that would sustain me and strengthen my heart today. In Jesus name, Amen

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How to Pray for Haiti

Posted in Intercessory Prayer, tagged , , , , on January 14, 2010 | Leave a Comment »

In the wake of the incredible disaster that has befallen Haiti in recent days because of the earthquake I have been thinking a great deal about how to effectively intercede for the people of Haiti who are suffering in unimaginable ways. There is more information on the Haiti earthquake available, and some of the latest pictures are available as well.

Very often our response in times like these is to ask questions about where God was or why did God allow this. These are significant questions but in the immediate moment we need to be praying for what is happening in Haiti. Don’t allow the questions to distract from actually praying.

Like many nations, the majority of people in Haiti are not Christian. They have no knowledge or faith in the Lord. In an earlier post, I explained that intercession has been defined as “to act or interpose in behalf of someone in difficulty or trouble, as by pleading or petition” (source: dictionary.com). We have the opportunity to stand before the God of all creation and pray for people who cannot pray for themselves. If ever there was a need for this kind of intercession, the tragedy in Haiti is it!

Here are some initial guidelines on how do effectively intercede:

  • pray for God to direct the rescue efforts. There are thousands of people still trapped and in need of rescue. Pray that God would supernaturally lead the workers to find survivors.
  • pray for an effective distribution of aid supplies. Reports today are that there is total chaos in Haiti in terms of the distribution. Pray that the supplies would reach the people who need them.
  • pray for strength for the rescue workers. They will be working virtually day and night for weeks to come.
  • pray for God to comfort those tens of thousands of Haitian people who have lost loved ones. God has promised that he would comfort those who grieve, so now is the time to pray for that comfort.
  • pray for the Christian missionaries who are in Haiti, for strength and boldness to provide hope not only through aid supplies but also through the gospel message of Jesus Christ.

The vast majority of us will not be able to physically go to Haiti to offer help, yet for many of us there is a natural desire to help in some way. Thousands of people will donate money to the disaster relief and I want to encourage people to give generously as they feel directed. However there is a massive need for Christians to pray for what is happening. Humanitarian aid is simply not enough. The people of Haiti need God! There is a huge spiritual war going on right now over Haiti, and Christians must stand in the gap and pray. I truly believe that intercession will have enormous impact on what happens in Haiti in the coming weeks and months.

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Why I Pray

Posted in Devotional Prayer, Intercessory Prayer, tagged , , , , on December 7, 2009 | 2 Comments »

There are many reasons why I pray, such as the fact that I know that God genuinely enjoys the sound of my voice; it puts a smile on his face to hear my voice. One day I’ll write more about that but today I want to talk about the investment of time.

Prayer is one of the few activities that Jesus said his Father would openly reward.

But when you pray, go into your room, close the door and pray to your Father who is unseen. Then your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you.  -Matt. 6:6 (NIV)

Life is short and time is precious. Some say that ‘time is money’, but the Bible’s view is that ‘time is destiny‘. King David understood this clearly:

Show me, O LORD, my life’s end and the number of my days; let me know how fleeting is my life. You have made my days a mere handbreadth; the span of my years is as nothing before you. Each man’s life is but a breath. Man is a mere phantom as he goes to and fro: He bustles about, but only in vain; he heaps up wealth, not knowing who will get it.  Ps. 39:4-6 (NIV)

That may sound a tad morbid but what David is getting at is that we need a revelation of time. We need to be wise about how we spend our time because once time is gone, it’s gone for good. There is no getting it back.

We also need to understand that ‘time is destiny’: the clear teaching of Scripture is that there is continuity between this age and the next age. In the sermon on the mount (Matt. 5-7), Jesus explicitly mentions several activities that we are to engage in because they have continuity in the next age; we will be rewarded for them in the age of His second coming.

We live in a time in history where there are so many options for how we can spend out time. Never before in all of human history have there been so many options! Never before have there been so many different ways to waste time!

When I go to the prayer room I know that the time I spend there will live on in the next age. It doesn’t matter whether I feel is was super ‘anointed’ or whether I feel it went well or not; the pay is the same! This is extremely important for anybody who wants to persevere in prayer over many years. Our tendency is to evaluate each individual prayer time (or prayer meeting) and determine whether it was ‘effective’ or ‘anointed’ or ‘boring or exciting’. It is as if we want our reward now rather than in the future! (the truth is we don’t have to choose one or the other. There are temporal rewards and awesome answers to prayer in this age for sure, but clearly the main rewards are in the age to come)

When I pray I am engaging in an activity that Jesus will remember forever! On the day when I stand before him and talk to him face to face, he will remember all the times I invested in prayer! There are many things that I spend my time doing that will be forgotten forever, but not the times I spend in prayer! That blows my mind every time I think about it and it is one of the main reasons why I pray!

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Prayer as Intercession Pt. III

Posted in Intercessory Prayer, tagged , , , , , on December 4, 2009 | 5 Comments »

Recently I’ve been looking at prayer as intercession. In Pt. I, I looked at the relational posture of intercession and in Pt. II, I looked at the activity of intercession.

Today I want to look at both the attitude of intercession and intercession as rest.

When we begin to grasp the extraordinary love and affection that God has for us and that he is our Father in heaven who is longing to give us good things (see Lk. 11:11-13), it greatly changes our intercession. Sometimes people will cry out prayers of intercession, asking God for help with an attitude of pleading. There is little confidence before God, little faith that he will answer. Such a prayer life cannot be sustained for very long because it is tremendously wearying. Jesus spent the majority of his public ministry revealing what the Father was like (see Jn. 17:26) and showing how our attitude in prayer is to be coming before God as our heavenly father (see. Matt. 6:9; Mk. 14:36; Rms. 8:15).

Yet is it also critical, as I said earlier, to know at a heart level that God has incredible passion for us. He is not a stern father figure that we must run away from in fear and terror.

Our attitude in intercession is critical to being able to engage in intercession as rest. We want to be people who intercede, knowing what God is really like. Let’s look at Psalm 33 as an example:

The Psalm begins with a call to worship the Lord and declarations that all he does is right and true and that the earth is full of his unfailing love. It continues to describe the power of the Lord to create all things and that no one is able to overcome his purposes and plans.

The LORD foils the plans of the nations; he thwarts the purposes of the peoples. But the plans of the LORD stand firm for ever, the purposes of his heart through all generations. -v. 10-11

Then the Psalmist looks at how man reacts to circumstances of crisis and the human inclination to always act and try to solve all our problems on our own.

No king is saved by the size of his army; no warrior escapes by his great strength. A horse is a vain hope for deliverance; despite all its great strength it cannot save. -v. 16-17

The Psalm ends with call to rest rather than frantic activity; to trust in God rather than trust in ourselves.

But the eyes of the LORD are on those who fear him, on those whose hope is in his unfailing love, to deliver them from death and keep them alive in famine. We wait in hope for the LORD; he is our help and our shield. In him our hearts rejoice, for we trust in his holy name. May your unfailing love rest upon us, O LORD, even as we put our hope in you.  -v. 18-22

This is not a passive rest or an attitude of resignation to crisis. It is a call to worship and to intercession. We are to worship the Lord, to sing joyfully to him because he is faithful in all he does. We wait and hope in the Lord through prayer.

God is working to raise up a church that has such deep revelation of God’s love and faithfulness that even in the greatest crisis their response is to worship and pray. Our primary response is intended to be waiting and trusting our Father in heaven who loves us more deeply than we can even imagine. We enter into a position of rest through waiting and trusting because of our attitude of confidence before our all powerful, loving Father in Heaven.

Today I encourage you to spend some time looking at Psalm 33 and Luke 11:11-13 and talk to God about what he is saying to you.

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Forgiveness & the Lord’s Prayer

Posted in Devotional Prayer, General Discipleship, tagged , , , on December 1, 2009 | Leave a Comment »

In Matthew 6:9-13 Jesus teaches us to pray and gives us what is known as the ‘Lord’s Prayer‘. It is a powerful prayer which is also a table of contents on areas prayer. Volumes have been written about it.

In v. 12 it says:

forgive us our sins as we forgive those who have sinned against us.

Here’s a quick thought on that verse: a significant amount of the sin in our lives is a reaction to those who have sinned against us. It is easy for us to blame others for our own issues and troubles and I in no way am trying to blame our sinful on what others have done to us. However the reality is that some of our sinful behavior is a response to the ways we have been treated by others. It is a wrong response and we must seek forgiveness, but Jesus provides some crucial insight into some of the root causes of our behavior.

As we forgive those who have sinned against us we ourselves find greater freedom to respond in righteousness rather than sin. Rather than go on discussing the theology related to this issue I want to encourage you to simply take a moment right now to pray:

  • Ask the Lord to show you any people that you need to forgive in your life today.
  • Ask him to bring them to your mind and then choose to forgive them. It is helpful to say out loud that you forgive them.
  • Ask the Holy Spirit to strengthen you today to respond to them in righteousness.

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