Praying For Circumstances And In God's Power

We ought always to thank God for you, brothers, and rightly so, because your faith is growing more and more, and the love every one of you has for each other is increasing. Therefore, among God's churches we boast about your perseverance and faith in all the persecutions and trials you are enduring… God is just: He will pay back trouble to those who trouble you and give relief to you who are troubled, and to us as well. This will happen when the Lord Jesus is revealed from heaven in blazing fire with His powerful angels… With this in mind, we constantly pray for you, that our God may count you worthy of His calling, and that by His power He may fulfill every good purpose of yours and every act prompted by your faith. We pray this so that the name of our Lord Jesus may be glorified in you, and you in Him, according to the grace of our God and the Lord Jesus Christ.

 

2 Thessalonians 1:3-12

 

 

Most of us base our actions on what we know.

 

We decide to grab an umbrella or rain coat based on a weather forecast or a glance out the window.

 

News of a big sale sends us to the mall to get in on some good discounts at our favorite shop.

 

We make a special effort to speak kind words to a friend we know is struggling.

 

Everything we do, including prayer, is based on observation and information.

 

So how does what we know affect what we say in prayer?

 

What should we have in mind about God and the people we pray for?

 

As we look at 2 Thessalonians 1:3-12 we find that it is a great guide for what to think about when we intercede for others.

 

When Paul thought about his Christian friends in the city of Thessalonica, he had two things in mind:

1. Their circumstances
2. God's power

Those faithful believers were going through the fire of persecution, but Paul knew that God would bring them justice and relief when Jesus returned—which he believed could be soon.

 

What he knew gave structure and power to his prayer: "With this in mind, we constantly pray for you, that our God may count you worthy of His calling, and that by His power He may fulfill every good purpose of yours and every act prompted by your faith. We pray this so that the name of our Lord Jesus may be glorified in you, and you in Him, according to the grace of our God and the Lord Jesus Christ" (2 Thessalonians 1:11-12).

 

Pray based on the information that has been conveyed to you believing in God's power to answer the prayers you are bringing before Him on your behalf or on the behalf of others.

Testing

I know, my God, that You test the heart and are pleased with integrity.

 

1 Chronicles 29:17a

God tests His children to know what is in their hearts. God's desire for each of His children is to walk in relationship with Him, to uphold His righteousness and integrity. It is a high calling that we will fail to achieve without complete dependence on Him.

 

God tests His children to know what is in their hearts.

The greatest tests come not in great adversities, but during times of great growth and blessing. For it is in blessings that we begin to lose the sensitivity to sin in our lives, adversity motivates us to righteousness out of a desire to see our adversity changed.

For example, Hezekiah was a great godly king. He was a faithful, God-honoring king most of his life, but toward the end he became proud. God wanted to find out if he would still honor Him and recognize His blessings in his life. He failed the test when God sent an envoy to his palace to inquire about a miracle that God performed on behalf of Hezekiah. The test was designed to find out if Hezekiah would publicly acknowledge the miracle performed on his behalf.

But when envoys were sent by the rulers of Babylon to ask him about the miraculous sign that had occurred in the land, God left him to test him and to know everything that was in his heart (See 2 Chronicle 32:31). Hezekiah's failure resulted in his children failing to carry on as rulers of Israel, and the nation would eventually be taken over by Babylon.

The lesson of Hezekiah is clear and if we are to remain faithful to God, we must remain steadfast in our obedience to Him. Again, during growth and blessings it can be our greatest test.

Pressing On In Ever Growing Faith

No evil shall befall you,
         Nor shall any plague come near your dwelling;
 For He shall give His angels charge over you,
         To keep you in all your ways.
  In their hands they shall bear you up,
         Lest you dash your foot against a stone.
 You shall tread upon the lion and the cobra,
         The young lion and the serpent you shall trample underfoot.          
 "Because he has set his love upon Me, therefore I will deliver him;
         I will set him on high, because he has known My name.
 He shall call upon Me, and I will answer him;
         I will be with him in trouble;
         I will deliver him and honor him.
 With long life I will satisfy him,
         And show him My salvation."

 

Psalms 91:10-16

 

It is a given that most do not like it when the going gets tough—they're uncomfortable. It's like having someone poke us in a tender spot over and over again. If we had our way, we would be lazy and hide in a shell of selfishness from reality, from God's prodding at our heart and from pain.

 

However, we do come to a point that we realize—time and time again—that these hard things are incredible blessings.

 

When God reveals a sin and takes hold of it, uprooting it from our heart, He tells us that it's dead to us and that we must relinquish it. Yet when He claims it as dead to us and takes us away from the old places we once wallowed in, and into new lessons and seasons… it is a very good thing.

 

We can see God more clearly when He clears away the weeds from the garden of our heart. Pain drives us to Him, and because we know that He is sovereign and that He is good, we are able—through the pain and tears—to thank Him for hard things.

 

They make us know, rely on, and trust Him better, and that is simply amazing.

 

When God lays His hand on something in our life and looks us in the eyes and says, "Let go; this is not yours. It does not glorify Me or serve you. I have something far better for you!" We know that He is right, and though it's difficult to surrender we know that we can trust Him. He doesn't change, and He's always been faithful to His own. If He cared enough to supply the fulfillment of our greatest need by slaying His only Son in our place, then how can we not trust Him to continue to be good to us?

 

That good might not look like we expected at the time, but that's all right. We would far rather have His best for us than our misconception of what His best might look like. And so we will press on in ever growing, by His strength, in the faith that He gives us—for He is our Lord, and we can trust Him.

Becoming Aware Of God

..."Surely the Lord is in this place, and I was not aware of it."

 

Genesis 28:16

Jacob was forced to flee his family after receiving the blessing of God from his father, Isaac. He ran as a result of his broken relationship with his brother, Esau, who threatened to kill him. As He was alone after leaving his family and was sleeping in the wilderness area at Bethel, it is here that Jacob encountered God personally for the very first time. And he had a dream in which Heaven was opened up to him.

 

God spoke to him there and gave him a promise to give him the very land on which he was lying.

This encounter with God made him realize that God was in this place, even though he had not been aware of it. God had to remove Jacob from all that was of comfort to him in order to reveal Himself to Jacob. What began as a crisis that forced him to be removed from his family and friends led to an encounter with the living God and a fresh vision of God's purposes for his life.

How often we go about our daily routine and fail to recognize that God is in the place where we are.

 

God had to bring Jacob to a place of separation from his old life and remove all his worldly possessions in order to get his full and undivided attention. Once he was alone with God at Bethel nothing else could distract him from an encounter that would change his life.

God often must do radical things in the life of the servant in whom He has special plans, such as separation from family, and removal of physical and emotional resources. These are often the hallmarks of ownership by God that build a vision into a life.

 

Become aware of God's presence on your life as He is working in you to mold you into a vessel that completely relies and trust in Him as He brings forth vision and direction in all that He has in store for you.

Lamenting Love

Why, O Lord, do You stand far off? Why do You hide Yourself in times of trouble? In his arrogance the wicked man hunts down the weak, who are caught in the schemes he devises. He boasts of the cravings of his heart; he blesses the greedy and reviles the Lord. In his pride the wicked does not seek Him; in all his thoughts there is no room for God. His ways are always prosperous; he is haughty and Your laws are far from him; he sneers at all his enemies… Arise, Lord! Lift up Your hand, O God. Do not forget the helpless. Why does the wicked man revile God? Why does he say to himself, "He won't call me to account"?

 

Psalm 10:1-13

 

 

Have you ever taken those personality assessments—those multiple choice tests—that summarize your life with a few key words… to be honest, do you really know what all that means?

 

All in all, the test is helpful and is accurate, for the most part. But it just seems that there can be a lot it left out—it didn't really say much about the real you.

 

When it comes to our concepts of love, there is much we leave out. Common associations with the word love are relationship, romance, and sex. We don't hear associations like pain and lament.

 

Until we read the Psalms.

 

Many of David's psalms are the journal of a man pouring out his love for his God—often it is brutally honest heart (Psalm10:1).

 

Lament is the ancient practice of recognizing the brokenness of the soul and then mustering the courage to embrace it before God. Lament is an act of love—recognizing that in order to truly love, one must be truly honest. Denial is simply a way of hiding and love does not hide, not even those parts of us that are ugly and sick, not even the words that are hard to say—and even harder to hear.

 

David knew that if he wanted his love affair with God to be true, he had to be honest about his anger with God, his accusations, his confusion with God's perplexing ways. Added to his expressions of gratitude and ecstasy, David knew that an authentic love must, at times, lament.

 

It is a way of honoring God, of taking Him seriously.

 

It is, as Eugene Peterson says, a way of "making the most of our loss without getting bogged down in it—[it] is a primary way of staying in the story. God is telling the story, remember… He doesn't look kindly on our editorial deletions."

 

Love is romance and hope and passion—it is honest lament.

 

Bare your soul to God—He truly loves you.

Sand Or Rock

But everyone who hears these words of Mine and does not put them into practice is like a foolish man who built his house on sand.

 

Matthew 7:26

There were two kinds of people in the days of Jesus—as there are today—some that hear the words that Jesus spoke and were awed by His wisdom and understanding, but did nothing about what they heard. And then there are those that hear the words and act on them. Jesus said that those who heard the words but failed to put them into practice were foolish and likened them to building a house on sand.

 

How foolish, indeed, it would be to build a house on sand.

The person who followed what Jesus taught was a person who would be sure to weather life's ups and downs.

Therefore everyone who hears these words of Mine and puts them into practice is like a wise man who built his house on the rock. The rain came down, the streams rose, and the winds blew and beat against that house; yet it did not fall, because it had its foundation on the rock (Matthew 7:24-25).

You never know how well your house is built until it is tested by the elements.

 

Torrential rains reveal the quality of your roof...

Wind and cold reveal how well your home is insulated...

Heat and sun reveal the quality of your paint and siding...

 

All these elements reveal whether a solid foundation has been laid to make your home a secure and lasting place to live.

Many of us find that we have given only lip service to God's commands.

 

When we are faced with the reality that our foundations are not strong enough to weather life's ups and downs we how do we react…

 

Do we fret and worry?

Do we take life into our hands?

Do we respond inappropriately when we don't get what we want?

 

God uses these times to help us recognize whether our foundations are established on sand or rock.

The Plans Of Tomorrow

You are a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes.

 

James 4:14b

A group of believers meet every weekday for fellowship, study, and prayer. One man—Tom— attended the group for several years. One day he showed up as usual, but the next morning the group received a call, "Tim is dead! He died in his sleep last night!" Tim had no prior problems and there was no indication he was about to go be with the Lord. Naturally, it came as a shock to all.

Whenever things like this happen, it brings us face to face with our mortality.

 

Some friends were challenged by someone to do an experiment. They were challenged to live their lives for one year as if it were the last year they would live. They responded to the challenge and did as proposed. It changed their outlook on life forever. They began to focus on different priorities and people when they viewed life in these terms.

James gives us a perspective on viewing tomorrow.

Now listen, you who say, "Today or tomorrow we will go to this or that city, spend a year there, carry on business and make money." Why, you do not even know what will happen tomorrow. What is your life? You are a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes. Instead, you ought to say, "If it is the Lord's will, we will live and do this or that" (James 4:13-15).

Life is fragile.

 

Consider where you are investing your time and energies. Someone once said they had never heard anyone on his deathbed say that he wished he had made more money in his lifetime or he wished he had made a certain deal. Usually it is something like, "I wish I had spent more time..."

 

Ask God to give you His priorities for your life!

Brokenness

O Lord, open my lips, and my mouth will declare your praise. For you will not delight in sacrifice, or I would give it; you will not be pleased with a burnt offering. The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit; a broken and contrite heart, O God, you will not despise. Do good to Zion in your good pleasure; build up the walls of Jerusalem; then will you delight in right sacrifices, in burnt offerings and whole burnt offerings; then bulls will be offered on your altar.

 

Psalm 51:15-19

 

Every day at twilight, a good shepherd will count his sheep. If one is missing, he will go out to find it before night falls. And the shepherd will notice if the same sheep is gone night after night, for that little lamb is developing a very bad habit. After this happens several times, the shepherd will go looking for the sheep as usual, but this time he does something out of the ordinary.

 

He will pick up the wandering sheep, firmly holding it with one arm while at the same time positioning his solid staff against one of the sheep's legs. Then with a swift and strong motion, he will snap the little lamb's leg with the staff.

 

Why would a caring shepherd break the leg of a harmless sheep?

 

How could a committed shepherd do such a cruel thing?

 

A well known author and speaker provides an answer: "Back in the fold the shepherd makes a splint for the shattered leg and, during the days that follow, he carries that crippled sheep close to his heart. As the leg begins to mend, the shepherd sets the sheep down by his side. To the crippled animal, the smallest stream looms like a giant river, the tiniest knoll rises like a mountain. The sheep depends completely on the shepherd to carry it across the terrain. After the leg has healed, the sheep has learned a lesson—it must stay close to the shepherd's side."

 

The shepherd knows that the sheep must remain close to him if it is to be protected from danger. So he breaks the leg—not to hurt it—but to restore it.

 

Sometimes God brings us to brokenness in our very own lives, in order for us to know what it means to be held close to the Shepherds heart. And like that with the sheep, once we are fully restored to wholeness we now know what it means to stay close to the Shepherd's side.

 

Make brokenness something you choose not to fight and resist, as you seek to see your brokenness as away to more fully trust in the Great Shepherd.

Hearing From Heaven

So I was left alone, gazing at this great vision, I had no strength left, my face turned deathly pale and I was helpless.

 

Daniel 10:8

Daniel received a vision that troubled him greatly and he wanted understanding of this vision. So he set himself out to understand the vision by fasting for three weeks. Three days after his three weeks of fasting, a messenger of God appeared to him and the messenger explained that Heaven had heard his prayer from the first day, but the angel was temporarily prevented from coming by the prince of Persia, a demon angel, who sought to thwart God's messenger from coming to Daniel.

There are times in our lives when we must set ourselves to seeking God with all our hearts; and it is in these times that we hear from Heaven in ways we may never have experienced before.

 

Daniel's perseverance in prayer was rewarded with a personal encounter with Heaven.

 

However, in order to receive from God, Daniel had to be left alone, have his strength removed, and be placed in a helpless condition. When we have no ability in our own strength to move Heaven or the events around us, we are in position to hear from Heaven.

 

It is the acknowledgment of our humanity and our frailness that places us in a position to have a personal encounter with our living God. Seek Him with all your heart as this demonstrate to Him you are serious—get alone with Him and He will reward you with His presence.

God Wants To Change You

Finally, then, brothers, we ask and urge you in the Lord Jesus, that as you received from us how you ought to live and to please God, just as you are doing, that you do so more and more.  For you know what instructions we gave you through the Lord Jesus.  For this is the will of God, your sanctification: that you abstain from sexual immorality; that each one of you know how to control his own body in holiness and honor, not in the passion of lust like the Gentiles who do not know God; that no one transgress and wrong his brother in this matter, because the Lord is an avenger in all these things, as we told you beforehand and solemnly warned you. For God has not called us for impurity, but in holiness. Therefore whoever disregards this, disregards not man but God, who gives his Holy Spirit to you.

 

1 Thessalonians 4:1-8

 

 

Many Christians today treat their spiritual journey as if it's already done. "I've been to the cross and I'm going to heaven—what else is there?"

 

Well, there's a whole lot more.

 

God doesn't want to just save us, He wants to change us. This is the real work that God wants to do in us—it's the work that conversion was designed to initiate. The cross is just the beginning of the Christian life—the rest is called sanctification.

 

This is the process by which God takes sinful people and makes them holy.

 

Some key verses that mention this process are:

 

• "This is the will of God, your sanctification" (1 Thessalonians 4:1-3).

 

• "He is the source of your life in Christ Jesus, whom God made our wisdom and our righteousness and sanctification and redemption" (1 Corinthians 1:30).

 

• "If anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come" (2 Corinthians 5:17).

 

If we choose to cooperate with God, we will understand how the things we see or experience are part of His plan to grow and shape us.

 

If you currently feel the weight of God's transforming influence, just remember He is in the process of changing you and that you will be all right.

 

These are exciting days for you.

 

Now is not the time to put your feet up… you've been to the cross and God has begun in you the most amazing process imaginable.

 

God doesn't want to just save you—He wants to change you!

Simply Yes Or No

Simply let your "Yes" be "Yes," and your "No," "No"; anything beyond this comes from the evil one.

 

Matthew 5:36-37

Picture for a moment that you are living in Jesus' time...

 

It is before Jesus has begun His ministry and He is a carpenter in the local town of Nazareth. Someone has asked Jesus to make a table for them and they have a deadline that He must meet in one week. They agree on a price of $100 for the table and the date of one week for completion. A week later they arrive to pick up the table, but Jesus says, "I am sorry but the table is not ready. Also, I ran into complications and can no longer honor the price I gave you. It is now $350 instead of $100."

Two years later this same Jesus is preaching to the local townspeople, but how will this person view Jesus now?

 

They probably won't give much credence to His message because of their personal experience.

 

Our lives have an ability to reinforce the message we stand for, or they can violate it and make it totally ineffective. This happens all over the world in different settings with Christian believers—our message becomes ineffective because we have not done what we said or believe in.

 

There are times when we are unable to deliver what we promised due to outside influences, but the key to turning these circumstances into a witness for God is communication. We must make or yes mean yes and our no mean no.

Showing Compassion

As he passed by, he saw a man blind from birth. And his disciples asked him, "Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?" Jesus answered, "It was not that this man sinned, or his parents, but that the works of God might be displayed in him. I must work the works of Him who sent me while it is day; night is coming, when no one can work. As long as I am in the world, I am the light of the world." Having said these things, he spat on the ground and made mud with the saliva. Then he anointed the man's eyes with the mud and said to him, "Go, wash in the pool of Siloam" (which is translated, Sent). So he went and washed and came back seeing.

 

John 9:1-7

 

 

The disciples inquired who sinned—the man's parents or he in his mother's womb—that he should be born blind. No doubt they had seen this beggar many times before and may have reacted with the same kind of standoffish, theological inquisitiveness. What they saw in Jesus' response was hardly standoffish, and it clearly demonstrated the distance between He and the disciples in regards to responding to people's needs.

 

Jesus' responded with compassion, and not judgment.

 

Jesus marshaled His resources to grant sight to the beggar and claimed that the blindness was actually intended to provide a moment when God could be magnified through Jesus' compassionate touch.

 

We are so prone to be like the disciples—lacking a heart of compassion.

 

When we hear of trouble in someone's life, we are far more interested in the details and an analysis—of what, why, when, and where—than we are in finding out what we can do to reach out and help—showing compassion as Jesus did.

 

It's amazing what a listening ear, a prayer, a note, a hug, or a meal can mean to those who are suffering or are in need. If we would only learn to see life through God's eyes and show compassion that reflects the power of God's glory through us, we could have a far greater impact on those around us.

 

Living like Jesus requires real compassion.

Alive In Death And Complete In Him

For we who are alive are always being given over to death for Jesus' sake.... So then, death is at work in us, but life is at work in you.

 

2 Corinthians 4:11-12

It is the great mystery of the gospel—death gives life—Jesus' death on the cross gave life.

 

The death of a vision brings new vision.

 

The death of a seed gives new life.

 

It is the central focus of God's requirement for experiencing Him—death.

 

When Jesus extended us an invitation to experience salvation and a relationship with Him, it came with a great cost, our very lives. Yet what we don't realize is that until we relinquish our total lives, we really aren't living at all.

 

Without this death we will continue to strive, manipulate, and fret over every detail of life. It is when we finally say, "Yes, Lord, I am Yours completely," that we experience real freedom for the first time. This is the only time when God is fully seen in and through our lives as we are His vessels—vessels for Him to be revealed in and seen by others.

Are you a complete vessel for God to work in and through?

 

When people look inside, will they see a life that is dead to all things, accept the life of Christ revealed?

 

We are faced with challenges each day that seek to instill fear and control at every turn, but God says He wants to live through our lives in every area and He wants to reveal Himself to us and those around us.

 

However, God can only do this if our vessel is free of ourselves and completely His!