Prayer Pt 3 Rooted

As my youth are in day 6 of our 21 days of prayer. I thought about my own days as a youth. I know. Wayyyyy back in the day! I lived in prayer. I really did.  I started following Christ at age 15 and he really was after me. My  life in little less than two weeks would be turned upside down and slam dunked and my family and I would never be the same. Our much beloved matriarch of our mother's side was dying and it was taking a toll on everyone.  She was peaceful, prayerful, and  the glue of the family. Then she died. I knew my mom was devastated. She had just lost her mother and best friend.  Then the wheels came off. Just an hour after the funeral. We had come back to the house my mother grew up in. We were packing  and getting ready to leave. My sister had asked my grandfather if she could use the phone and he said she could use the phone in his room. Then the unthinkable happened. My grandfather comes in and seemingly forgets all this and begins to yell at my sister, my mother comes in to see what the commotion is all about. They begin to yell and my mother says "keep your hands off of my daughter!"   Then my grandfather begins to strangle my mother and my sister screams for help. My dad runs back to the room and pulls my grandfather off of her and he begins to choke my dad. This was so heartbreaking as a 15 year old boy to watch unfold. Following this my grandfather comes out and tell us..."You are cut off. You are all dead to me!'

Now I said all that to say if I had not been taught to pray first. pray often. I really don't know how I would have made it through all of that. Our prayer life has to have roots. It can't be a surface relationship  or as my wife and I like to say, a rescue prayer life.  Those next 4 years of my life would be a lot of pain that most of my friends would never know or often thought I exaggerated. My mother would suffer from depression and addiction and lose her job because of it when she was only a few years from retirement after 27 years of working for the same company. My brother would drop out of high school and suffer through addiction. I  didn't know from week to week if my mother would end her life. I did my best to hide my pain.  Most every Wednesday was a night of war for me. I would go to church, only to have to come back to what waited for me. Usually my mother would be drunk and what always followed was chaos. Violence. Verbal abuse. Physical abuse. She would lock herself in her room for hours and I would be on the other side listening to her cry and say she was going to kill herself.  Now, it would take years before my mom finally healed. I am so proud of the many changes she did to get to a place where her will is stronger than the bottle. 

I spent many of those nights just locked in prayer. I still do. When Paul writes in 1st Thessalonians 5  as  his  final advice.

Paul’s Final Advice

¹² Dear brothers and sisters, honor those who are your leaders in the Lord’s work. They work hard among you and give you spiritual guidance. ¹³ Show them great respect and wholehearted love because of their work. And live peacefully with each other.

¹⁴ Brothers and sisters, we urge you to warn those who are lazy. Encourage those who are timid. Take tender care of those who are weak. Be patient with everyone.
¹⁵ See that no one pays back evil for evil, but always try to do good to each other and to all people.
¹⁶ Always be joyful. ¹⁷ Never stop praying. ¹⁸ Be thankful in all circumstances, for this is God’s will for you who belong to Christ Jesus.
¹⁹ Do not stifle the Holy Spirit. ²⁰ Do not scoff at prophecies, ²¹ but test everything that is said. Hold on to what is good. ²² Stay away from every kind of evil.

I think if we focus in on verse 16 & 17 . Stay Joyful. Never stop praying.
Lay the roots of prayer in your life. It takes time to develop. If we develop this we can stand when the storms of life come and become stronger. Stop and thank God for all and start today!

Prayer pt 2 Pray First & about Everything!

This is a must in my house! In fact my wife & I often remind each other when talking about anything , "Did you pray first?".  I quote it to everyone. God has given you the tools to overcome stress, anxiety, and worry- and it's called prayer! Worrying taking the steering wheel from God, when our job is to trust him. So let go today and talk to God!  The future if we stare at it to often can look scary, but God reminds us in ( Jer 29:11) I have a future for you. I have a plan.   So when you feel the worry set in, discipline yourself to pray.

With praying for everything, pray first! Pray before making that big purchase. Pray before you go to that next meeting. Pray before walking out the door, sending that email, etc..... It may seem excessive, but 1 Thess 5:17 tells us to simply pray without ceasing! 

My prayer for you:

God, I come to you now and humbly ask for your forgiveness of things I have done knowingly or unknowingly. I give you my heart, my thoughts, my will, and emotions. I let go of my worry and trust you! I rejoice and thank you because you are an amazing God who loves me!
Amen

Talking to God to doesn't have to be formal! It's about a relationship.  I hope that you were encouraged and that you develop a prayer life that is infectious!

Stay Hungry

It's funny isn't it. Look at the meal above. No one would sit down to a table and simply have just a pea. Yet, spiritually we do this with God's word. Why do we do this?  How can we stay hungry ?

 

Deuteronomy 8:3

New King James Version (NKJV)

³ So He humbled you, allowed you to hunger, and fed you with manna which you did not know nor did your fathers know, that He might make you know that man shall not live by bread alone; but man lives by every word that proceeds from the mouth of the Lord

It's interesting this scripture would be used again by Jesus against a temptation from the devil. I think we all go through days where we just DON'T want to really read. No one reads any more. Maybe you need to get back on track or maybe you have never really spiritually hungered after God's word. Some people literally don't even bring their bible to church anymore. Look around.
Here my top 3 things for not reading.

1. I can get what I need from my pastor- Imagine working  a 40 hour week and only eating ONCE  a week. Who would do this? While your pastor may be awesome, you need to get in the word FOR YOU!
2. I am too busy- Well we all have this, but we can pray and ask God for direction and yet not open up his word. God's word has so much for you! Try a few different things. ChurchoftheHighlands.com offers a 1 year bible study and it takes a second just each morning.
3. I can't relate- We all can relate to relationships. If you think about what the bible really is. A revelation of God is. Get to know him today. Know his promises.

First. Pray. Ask God for a hunger. Worship in his word. Pray according to his word. You wouldn't starve your physical man on purpose, why would you deny spirit the same nourishment.

May God grant you a hunger today for his word that you might know him more.

How to be a Fool

Everyday life can be complex. No this is not a lesson in  how to be a fool, but rather how to avoid it. Are you on the list:
1. Speaks too much - Proverbs 17:28
2. Hopes in money - Proverbs 11:28
3. Lacks self-control - Proverbs 25:28
... 4. Gossips - Proverbs 10:18
5. Never plans ahead - Proverbs 19:2
6. Meddles in the matters of others - Proverbs 26:17
7. Speaks quickly - Proverbs 29:11
8. Stubborn - Proverbs 12:15
9. Lazy - Proverbs 13:4
10. Stingy - Proverbs 28:22

Things we should avoid!

Prayer: pt1

Scriptures: Matt 6:9-11 & Eph 3:14
As my wife and I prepare for the next series , "Teach Us To Pray", we want to focus in several different parts of prayer. What did Jesus mean when he said we ought to pray like this, but I  wanted to start some place else this week.  In Eph 3  Paul starts talking about the great wonder and mystery of God's plan of how he weaves all people, no matter how different, into one big beautiful canvas called his Church. How God would even use him (Paul) in his wondrous plan.
Paul writes in verse 14 of Eph 3, "when I think of all this, I fall to my knees in pray to the Father".

There are two things I want to highlight.

1. Keep the wonder and awe about Jesus and his beautiful plan alive. Don't lose that. Don't lose your spark. Don't be overwhelmed by what God is calling you to in your life or the life of the Church. Don't get lost in the complexity or simplicity, you are in the midst of his plan for you life. Instead, let it drive you to your knees in prayer. Not in fear or worry/doubt, but in simple surrender to the Father who loves and leads you .

2. Pray. Simply, Pray. No special place or event. Just direct your heart in conversation with God. Kneel both spiritually and physically(if need be). God has a plan and we most often fret, because we just don't ever stop ourselves and pray. We try to figure it out. So in praying let it lead you to surrender. My favorite part of the Lord's prayer is that the most important part is often overlooked. We've heard people say that our prayer isn't answered because we hold onto  a lack  of forgiveness , but before we even get to that part of the prayer Jesus is telling us to surrender. Think about it. God your will be done!  So today let us be in awe and surrender.

Through the storms

Matthew 7:24-27

²⁴ “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. ²⁵ 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. ²⁶ 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. ²⁷ The rain came down, the streams rose, and the winds blew and beat against that house, and it fell with a great crash.”

It rains doesn't it. In our life. We have great times of peace and joy where the sun is shining and all is right with the world, but then the rain comes.

Jesus teaches us that it's going to happen. A simple  and yet profound teaching. I thought about this twice this week. The first time was because of an actual storm and the second because of a family who suffered the loss of a son.  My best friend called to tell me the news and after I hung up the phone I cried and prayed for the family.  I have been through that loss. A few times.

As I went the next few days I mulled over and over the storms that I have been through and that if I didn't have a foundation built upon who Jesus I wondered what kind of person or situation I would be in. I kept thinking that it would have be a house that would constantly need rebuilding. Imagine for a minute that your own house or where you live, that if a storm hit that you had to keep rebuilding and rebuilding every time  a storm came. That would be crazy! I know that I would get sick of that pretty quick, but I would have to build something with an actual foundation, something of worth.   It would not be based off my own understanding and my own will. Which let's face it. My will power is pretty weak. I am thankful everyday that I have a relationship that's built upon the teachings of Jesus. It's pretty solid but it's in those moments of weakness though. In the storms that I cry out to God and he hears me.  I get to be held close by him.  Ps 34:17 "The Lord hears his people when they call to him for help and he rescues them from all their troubles."

It's interesting because in this moment of my pain, junk, and weakness God desires to be close to me. When I feel my least bit like loving others and pouring out is the moment God wants to pour in me. So don't worry if you don't have it all together. Jesus came to heal the sick and the broken. Cry out to him and he will rescue you. So in your pain and in the storm stop and just cry out.

The Road to Here! (wherever that may be)

You know this scripture. You've heard it a few hundred times.

Jeremiah 29:11

New International Version (NIV)

¹¹ For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the Lord, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.

 

What does it mean to you? Is this encouraging to you? I know for a while that I had some doubts about God's plan for my family because of my own lack of perspective. As my wife and I were on this journey we encountered frustration, depression, tension, feeling lost, defeated and then all of a sudden things started to change. We realized that my job as a Marine was taking it's toll on our spiritual lives together. I wasn't leading worship much and she was not getting to volunteer. We had become so busy with everything else that we weren't spending time together in God's presence.  I felt like we had no hope. No future.

 

1.The Change:Pray First

What changed was us wasn't a huge spiritual mystery. It was just simply a case of surrender and let God rid of us our fears. When this dawned on us we took a spiritual inventory and realized we needed to just draw closer to God together. So we started first with our prayer life. We made the intentional effort of praying before everything and I do mean EVERYTHING! When we woke up, pray. When we had our breakfast, pray! When I left the house for work,pray!  Almost immediately we both began to see a change in our attitudes and in our marriage. God began to whisper that what he had promised would be fulfilled!  That moment of "light bulb" went off:

 

New Living Translation (NLT) Matt 6:31-33

³¹ “So don’t worry about these things, saying, ‘What will we eat? What will we drink? What will we wear?’ ³² These things dominate the thoughts of unbelievers, but your heavenly Father already knows all your needs. ³³ Seek the Kingdom of God^[a] above all else, and live righteously, and he will give you everything you need.

 

2. Trust God: Don't let fear rule you.

 

The very first thing happens when you have change in your life isn't what you think. It's fear. Is this really God!? Is this right for my family? Where are we going to live? What will I do ? What will my girls DO!? AGGGHHH!? Then a still small voice speaks and you calm down and breathe in. Jesus reminds in Matthew's gospel that if we just Seek First God's way of doing things in our lives that all these other things will be taken care of! 

So in this moment. Breathe. Rest. Recharge and then be relentless in pursuing God. Things will not always happen in your time, but they will happen.  God is faithful.We had to go through some strange stuff to get where we are now. Lost  a solid job with benefits. Had a monumental failure. Had to move in with our in -laws. Pregnant with our 3rd child and it all started to feel hopeless but then it was as is if we just don't give up and don't give in just remain faithful, pray first, and seek first its going to work out. Then all of a sudden, it did. We started getting hints of a blessing on the way. We stayed faithful. We had to just cast fear aside and speak what God wants to do is bless us.  So in your moment doing all you can do to stand and stay strong , do it!

 

3. Worship God with all your heart,mind, and strength.

 

From my perspective I have always just turned to worship. I know this seems odd, but for me. Just getting time alone with God and singing with abandon and just declaring who God is in my life makes me feel closer to God's heart. So if you are going through a season of doubt and change it might be time to take spiritual inventory. Examine and be honest with yourself. The road to we took was winding and often filled with dangers to just give up. So focus on his presence and not your problem. Fix yourself on God's will and not on your fear.  

 

Let me finish with this. My wife took a the posistion of Family Life Director and we moved to the small town of Port St. Joe, Fl but we believe that God has BIG things here for us. God's story for our lives is in a new chapter. This was my wife's dream posistion. What's your story going to look like?