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The Power of Prayer

The Power of Prayer

Sophie: During the Sneezing Days

The event I describe below occurred at the beginning of last year. This experience radically altered my perspective of my prayer life. Since then, my belief continues to increase in the power of prayer. Prayer is indeed one of the most powerful things we can do.

Malcolm and Sophie are two of my cherished treasures. God uses these Ragdoll felines to teach me many lessons, but . . . I have to seek those lessons. About a month and a half after they moved in, Sophie started sneezing. When it continued to progress to mucus flying out her nose, I took her to the vet and discovered it was an upper respiratory infection. On antibiotics, she immediately started getting better. After being off them for a couple of days, it came back and continued to get worse. We went through another around of antibiotics. Again, she got better, but after a couple of days it returned. Poor thing! I hated putting all these antibiotics in her because I was sure it would have long term affects on her little immune system. Once more, back to the vet. He took some cultures so in a couple of days we would know exactly what bacteria was the culprit. The next day she was sneezing up a storm, which was common because getting the cultures irritated her little nose. But at that point I had enough! I’d been praying for God to heal her, but it dawned on me I hadn’t sought for the lesson in all this. God, what are you trying to teach me? Obviously it wasn’t a lesson for Sophie, it must be for me.

Thankfully, God quickly replied. It had to do with the power of prayer for others. Here’s what I learned. I love Sophie more than you would think a human could love a cat. God loves me and all that concerns me is His concern. He cares for Sophie but also because of my love for her. When we care deeply about someone, God not only desires to help that person for her sake but also because of His care for us. His concern is heightened because of our concern – that is the nature of love. Heart-felt prayer spoken in faith shows we believe in God’s love for us. It’s critical that we believe God loves us because it affects our prayers. This is another reason we need to understand our value, last week’s blog. We need to have a sense of value of ourselves to be able to accept and believe God’s love for us so we can pray with the conviction that our prayers matter.

God needed me to understand this truth so I would pray for those He laid on my heart with the confidence that my prayers made an impact. I needed to believe that my prayers influenced Him because of His love for me, which then could affect the lives of others. Otherwise, my lack of belief drained the power of my prayers. See, my belief in the power of prayer had started to wane. I had started to think my prayers didn’t have THAT much impact. This mindset crept in as I was seeking to understand His sovereignty. He is in control and His will prevails so how much impact do my prayers really have? Not much was my thought until this situation. I didn’t realize how strongly I was holding this false belief until this lesson. I knew prayer was important, but I didn’t understand how much of an impact it had, especially mine. Now I know that my concern and love enhances His concern because that is love. This is the power of prayer of God’s children in numbers. If you had one child concerned about a pet – how much that would affect your heart. What if you had five children concerned – how much more would that affect your heart?

But it isn’t just about numbers, but about the state of the heart. There is power manifested when we intercede for another out of love. This is why our love needs to be with sincerity. Love is an extremely powerful force in our lives. It changes others. It moves the heart of God. This is why it is important to seek the love of God to replace our corrupted version of it so that we can truly love others because if affects our prayers for them. If we are just saying the words and our hearts are distant, then the power of prayer is sapped. That’s why vain repetitions are a waste of time. Matthew 6:7 But if we pray with conviction because we truly care it has a considerable impact. This is why sometimes God “lays” someone on our heart. We have a strong pull to pray for them, because the heart matters.

When I realized this insight about the power of prayer wrapped in love and sincerity, Sophie stopped sneezing that night. The cultures came back revealing a certain bacterium, but she was better. Isn’t God good? Glad I asked. She was going through what she did to teach me. I never would have stopped and sought if she wasn’t sick. And my seeking brought me to a very important lesson about the significance of heart-felt prayer.

God loves His children beyond what we can imagine. His heart for us is mighty and what concerns us concerns Him. Prayer is to teach us many things and one is how much He loves us. Even if He doesn’t seem to be healing a child or delivering them from an unhealthy lifestyle or friendship – know that He cares more so for that child because He cares for their life and that is amplified because of your care for them and His care for you. We can’t see the big picture. We don’t know what they may need to go through to learn what they need to learn. But God is listening if you are rightly related to Him through Christ. Proverbs 15:29 We have certain expectations about how things should play out, but God holds everything in His hands. If I hadn’t gone through the tough times I did as a kid, ones I’m sure my mom wished I avoided, then perhaps I wouldn’t have drawn near to God like I have. From those experiences, I learned my need for Him and the extent of His love for me. In the end, her prayers were answered, but it wasn’t a path she expected, but that path I needed to travel. We need to be careful of our expectations and make sure they are in God. If we are God’s and praying with the right heart and motive about a matter, we need to trust that God is working things out as they should be. We have expectations about what the best path or answer to that prayer would be, but we haven’t a clue. We need to trust in His divine wisdom to work it out to everyone’s best.

James 4:3 You ask and do not receive, because you ask amiss, that you may spend it on your pleasures.

1 Peter 3:12 For the eyes of the Lord are on the righteous, And His ears are open to their prayers; But the face of the Lord is against those who do evil.”

James 5:16 Confess your trespasses to one another, and pray for one another, that you may be healed. The effective, fervent prayer of a righteous man avails much.

Proverbs 15:8 The sacrifice of the wicked is an abomination to the Lord, But the prayer of the upright is His delight.

Needless to say, my prayer life totally changed. Our faith is everything. Our belief affects the power our prayer holds. John 14:12-13 I needed and am thankful for this lesson to increase my faith in the power of prayer. And I’m very glad Sophie is no longer sneezing!!

Sophie: Today

Other blog on Prayer Mountain Moving Prayer

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Heightened Spiritual Warfare

Heightened Spiritual Warfare

 

I feel we have entered into another degree of spiritual warfare; perhaps because the time of judgment is near or upon us??

In the past month, I’ve been seeing the warfare in my life, the lives around me, in the blogs I read. We are facing struggles and tribulation on a spiritual level that is affecting our daily lives. (the physical and the spiritual are connected – one affects the other.) We feel overwhelmed, burdened, discouraged, or depressed. When we are attacked at our core in our spirits then it makes dealing with the day to day stuff much more difficult. Proverbs 18:14 It makes small things seem big. It throws things out of perspective into the wrong perspective. Our trust in God wanes. Our steadfast belief that He is in control and will provide and protect us diminishes. His love feels distant. We begin to turn to the world’s wisdom instead of His. We can become fearful, timid, aggressive, or ineffective.

Then in my quiet time the other day I read Nehemiah 4:17 “Those who built on the wall, and those who carried burdens, loaded themselves so that with one hand they worked at construction, and with the other held a weapon.” It struck me that what this verse is saying is what I had been feeling and what we need to do. We are being attacked to such a degree that we need to be ready for battle daily. Each day, we can no longer just focus on building the temple but we have to fight the spiritual battle as well. If we don’t recognize the attacks and fight the enemy we won’t be able to build. There has always been spiritual warfare, but lately it seems it has intensified.

As for building the temple, it’s not a physical temple we are building. It is a spiritual one and we, our spirits together, are the temple, the temple of God. We hold the spirit of God. The part of us that is a part of Him holds His spirit. Each one of our spirits is like a pillar. If our spirits are mal-nourished and lacking in truth, then they become like rotting broken down pillars.

We build by stirring the deep (spending one-on-one time building intimacy with God through His Word) each day. This is our work. John 6:29 Our work is to believe – to live in God’s wisdom and truth. Because our beliefs are the core to every thought and action. When our spirits are thriving and strong, then God’s spirit is strong within us and works through us in mighty ways in our lives and the lives of others. When we succumb to the attacks because we don’t recognize them for what they are, we become weak and neglect to be steadfast in our beliefs, which negatively impacts everything.

I believe that the time is upon us, where we need to build the temple with one hand and hold a weapon in the other.

The fantastic news is and what I am experiencing in my life is the mighty power that Jesus Christ gave us in the spiritual realm to defeat any and every enemy. Luke 10:19 However, we have to be aware of that power, use it through faith and prayer, and use it right when we need it, not wait.

Lately, as I have experienced more attacks, I’ve been prepared with the knowledge of the power that I have in Christ. When they come, I call upon God the enemy backs off. It is tremendous!

Who is the enemy? Most often ourselves, our flesh nature. We have an external evil warring against our spirits but even that enemy usually uses our weaknesses, our lack of knowledge of truth, our issues, our temptations, our desires, and our self-will to discourage and lead us astray.

These are challenging days, but God has laid out the tools before us to be more than conquerors in all that we face. It is our part to learn what tools are there and to pick them up and fight so we can continue to build.

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Left Standing – Ashamed or Glorified?

Left Standing …

Ashamed or Glorified?

When the purity of God’s truth invades our souls it exposes our true beliefs.

After spending a couple years of consistent time one-one-one with God in His Word, I had a life/spirit changing awareness about myself. I realized most of what I believed about Christianity was based on other’s words. Therefore the source of my trust was in others not God, which meant my confidence was in them. Up to that point I assumed I trusted God, but when prompted to take a closer look by God’s Spirit searching in my soul I found a different reality.

As I examined where my truth came from, who and where I went to hear and know truth, it was all centered around others and their words. True their words were supposedly based on God’s truth, but it was still their interpretations and opinions about God’s Word. Along with the multitude of warnings in the Bible about not trusting in others, but God, at that moment I set out to seek God and His truth from Him. Over the years, God has been an incredible and faithful Teacher about Himself. It seems I talk a lot about trust in my blogs, but who we really trust is the core of our faith. It affects everything.

I’ve been reading through Jeremiah and Revelations, some heavy books to say the least, yet amazingly rich. The verses below jumped off the page reminding of this awakening I had some time ago about my belief system, and reminding me to daily examine my beliefs in light of His truth because other’s philosophies can easily creep in unnoticed. 2 Corinthians 10:5

Jeremiah 48:13b “As the house of Israel was ashamed of Bethel (house of God), their confidence.”

Jeremiah 48:7 “For because you have trusted in your works and your treasures, You also shall be taken. And Chemosh shall go forth into captivity, His priests and his princes together.”

Verses like these are what compelled me to a paradigm shift in my beliefs – seeking truth directly from God. If we take time to pause, these verses prod each one of us into a deep self-examination, Who do you trust REALLY?

Who do you trust for spiritual protection? Church, or God Psalm 18:30

Who is your shepherd? Church, or God. Ezekiel 34:23

Where/Who do you go to be fed (spiritual nourishment)? Church or God 1 John 2:27

Where do you learn about God? Church or God Jeremiah 31:33

Where do you learn about truth? Church or God 2 Peter 3:16-18

Who do you trust for the surety of your salvation? Church or God Hebrews 7:22, Proverbs 11:15

If we chose the first option – our trust and confidence is in the wrong place.

Many of us need to take an honest look at our spiritual lives – is the source of trust the church and others or God? And if it is the church (Bethel or House of God), then one day, as Jeremiah says, we will experience great shame for that trust, because we should have been trusting God. If it is God then we will stand with Him glorifying Him with our lives.

We all trust ourselves, the wisdom of the world and others in areas where we should be trusting God, but the question is – are we seeking God and spending time with Him so that our trust will be in Him alone? One reason for the multitude of denominations is that people are really following a multitude of different teachers and not the Teacher – one area of great misplaced trust. Matthew 23:10, 2 Timothy 4:3 A teacher’s role is to teach us to learn of God from God. I see very few actually giving this type of instruction. Most of them are spoon feeding us what they call truth, but it is their point of view from where they are on their spiritual journey. It may or may not be truth, and according to the vast warnings in God’s Word most aren’t teaching truth. Fellowship is great for sharing insights but the source of our truth, our Teacher is to be God.

God is to be the source of our trust. When He is it means we go to Him directly, to the Bible which is His words, to Him in prayer, to Him in stillness to hear His voice. He calls us to come to Him one-on-one with the Spirit as our mediator not man. Jesus came not to bring another religion but a relationship – an intimate personal relationship with our Father where we commune with Him one-on-one. So many have neglected cultivating this intimacy and will fall for it. Most have lost or never had a love for the truth, and will be lead astray. 2 Thessalonians 2:10 If you love the truth – you want to dwell in it daily, seek out its mysteries, live by it, and dedicate time to abiding in it.

Don’t give your life, your beliefs over to another. Don’t be one of those who stands ashamed at the end because you looked to others when God was calling you to Him and waiting to open up His magnificent kingdom to you. Listen to others this week – listen to yourself – where are you getting your truth – are you saying he said, she said or God said?

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Preacher, Are You Sure I’m Saved?

Preacher, Are You Sure I’m Saved?

 

How often do we hear – say the sinner’s prayer and be saved? I remember sitting in the church pew whispering the prayer at the invitation just in case God didn’t hear me the last seventeen times. I was terrified of not going to heaven; not realizing it is mostly about a state of soul.

I recited it over and over because I had the head-knowledge that Christ died for my sins and through Him I could be forgiven. I recognized my need and knew I needed deliverance and of course I didn’t want to go to hell (not realizing the churches understanding was bound in lies), who does? However, I remained in charge of my life (often the part of the gospel quickly overlooked as churches focus on the number of people walking down the aisle). Jesus wasn’t Lord of my life, I was. I split Christ in two; I wanted Him as my Savior but His Lordship was on the back burner – and according to most churches that was okay, but it wasn’t and deep down I knew something was off, just not exactly what. I figured I just needed to say the prayer with more passion.

With Christ it is all or nothing. He is Lord and Savior. My plea was in vain because what I was looking for was a quick fix to my guilt, fear and terror of “hell” instill in by the church. Nothing changed in my life because I didn’t want to let go because I didn’t take the time to seek Him so I could know Him so I could trust Him to be my Lord. When it comes to salvation many churches overlook the significance and meaning of Christ as our Lord, it is all about a prayer and Lordship is an option. And for many who profess Christ is Lord, He isn’t. Our actions tell the truth; who we listen to, who we trust, who is the source of our truth, really. Words are useless without action backing them up. James 2:20

I wanted to believe in the words of pastors telling me that if I just said a prayer all was okay, but the restless in my spirit remained. Despite how I felt, for years I continued to try to trust in their words that left me barren, empty and spiritually deprived because without Christ as Lord we’ve got nothing.

The sinner’s prayer isn’t a magic prayer that takes us on a carpet ride into His kingdom; it is only an acknowledgement that our way isn’t the way to go. Surrendering our lives, believing in Him, Him being our Lord and Savior, and Him becoming the love of our lives is a much longer process. It entails knowing, trusting and living out what we know. We gain knowledge, trust and faith by abiding in His Word and cultivating a relationship with Him. If we aren’t abiding in His truth we can’t personally know and trust Him as He calls us to. Believe is a loaded word. If we truly believe Christ is our Lord then what would our actions be?

Romans 10:17 “So then faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the word of God.”

1 Corinthians 15:1-2 “Moreover, brethren, I declare to you the gospel which I preached to you, which also you received and in which you stand, 2 by which also you are saved, if you hold fast that word which I preached to you–unless you believed in vain.”

Telling people they are saved if they say a prayer presents a false security and denounces Christ’s Lordship, besides how do we know if they are saved or not? We don’t save others; we don’t save ourselves, only God saves thus eventually he will “save” all. It was never a question in the magnitude of his love. It puts us in the wrong position in their lives, a position that only God should hold. John 1:12-13 We have to be very careful not to be the surety or guarantee of someone’s salvation by telling them they are saved – only Christ can be their surety of new life.

Proverbs 17:18 “A man devoid of understanding shakes hands in a pledge, And becomes surety for his friend.”

Proverbs 6:1-3 “son, if you become surety for your friend, If you have shaken hands in pledge for a stranger, 2 You are snared by the words of your mouth; You are taken by the words of your mouth. 3 So do this, my son, and deliver yourself; For you have come into the hand of your friend: Go and humble yourself; Plead with your friend.”

Hebrews 7:22 “by so much more Jesus has become a surety of a better covenant”

A ticket to heaven and a prayer that is the be-all-end-all is a dishonor to God and to what Christ has done for us. He came to give us new life, to be our Lord and our Husband, for us to draw near to Him and abide with Him now not just when we die. Going to heaven is only the continuance of what we have done on earth – abiding with our Lord.

We are to point people to the One who saves, not give them a false pre-mature security by telling them they are saved. It only cripples their spiritual growth and we play God’s role as being their guarantee of new life.

1 Corinthians 4:5 “Therefore judge nothing before the time, until the Lord comes, who will both bring to light the hidden things of darkness and reveal the counsels of the hearts. Then each one’s praise will come from God.”