Category: Uncategorized

Waiting in Quiet Confidence

Isaiah 43:2
When you pass through the waters, I will be with you; and through the rivers, they shall not overwhelm you; when you walk through fire you shall not be burned, and the flame shall not consume you.

God’s promises are meant to give us comfort.  His promises are for all that have been redeemed by the blood of His Son, Jesus.  The promises are meant to give us the strength and the courage that we need to overcome without fear all that comes against us. 

His promises are also given so that we may endure the time that it takes to get through the rising waters and tormenting flames.  We should be careful not to force our way out of our troubles through our own efforts.  Waiting in quiet confidence on the hand of God while we are under attack blesses Our Heavenly Father.  Waiting in patience, without murmuring, allows the waters and the flames that we pass through to cleanse us, purify us and prepare us for our place in God’s kingdom. 

Prayer
Heavenly Father, we thank You for Your Holy Word that is swollen with all of the promises that You have set aside for us.  We bless the name of Jesus who redeemed us so that we could live under the protection of Your promises.  We praise Your Name for allowing us to live in Your shadow and claim Your promises as we go through the struggles of life.  We pray, Father, that You teach us how to live confidently and without fear, trusting in You for our every need.  May our lives come in complete alignment with Your will as we learn to surrender all to You.

Trusting Through Fiery Trials

1Peter 4:12
Beloved, do not be surprised at the fiery trial when it comes upon you to test you, as though something strange were happening to you.

Jesus makes it completely clear in His teaching that we should expect trials if we follow Him.  We should not be surprised by any painful trial that we may be going through.  Trials are part of the necessary process of growing our faith and our intimacy with Our Lord.  

Our faith must be tested.  Without trials, we would soon believe that all of our good fortune was of our own making.  Through the trials, we build our confidence in Our Savior who faithfully delivers us from each and every challenging period in our lives.

Prayer
Heavenly Father, we thank You for being our rock and our foundation.  We thank You for Your faithfulness in delivering us from the fiery trials in our lives.  We pray that we will come to a place where we trust You in all things.   May our trust become so complete that we actually learn to rejoice in the face of our trials, knowing the victory is ours in all matters even unto death. 

Constant Enlightenment

1 Thessalonians 5:17
Pray without ceasing.

Unless we live lives of solitude, incessant prayer as we perceive it would seem to be an impossible command to follow.  However, if we realize that the Holy Spirit of Jesus is with us throughout the day, why wouldn’t we be in constant conversation with Him? 

Would we ignore our best friends if they were to accompany us throughout the day?  Of course, we would not.  Our relationship with our friends would dictate that we have interaction of some type with them on a regular basis.  Does this mean that we would be speaking with them non-stop?  Of course, we would not.  The flow of the time that we spend together would dictate when we would speak and when we would listen.  We would be ourselves and comfortably include our friends in all the activities of our day.  

So it is with the Lord.

Prayer
Heavenly Father, we thank You for providing us with the constant companionship of the Holy Spirit.  We praise You for allowing us to have fellowship with One who loves us perfectly and unconditionally.  Father, we humbly seek to interact with our Wonderful Counselor without ceasing.  May we be constantly enlightened, enlivened and purified by His presence.


Living in the Light

John 12:35
So Jesus said to them, “The light is among you for a little while longer. Walk while you have the light, lest darkness overtake you. The one who walks in the darkness does not know where he is going.

Jesus is the light, the truth and the way.  When we let Him into our lives, His light is going to reveal all the darkness that exists in our flesh.  When He brings our sins into the light, we must repent immediately and ask the Holy Spirit to guide us and strengthen us as we turn away from the things in our lives that displease Our Heavenly Father.  To delay is to let Satan build a stronghold that will become harder and harder to overcome.

Jesus came and died on the Cross for us so that we may have light.  He freed us from walking in the darkness where the stumbling blocks are many and where we are sure to find afflictions, calamity and distress.  He provided us with a path that allows us to act as wise men and not as fools.

Prayer
Heavenly Father, we thank You for the Light of the World, Jesus Christ.  We thank You that Your Holy Spirit within us reveals our sins to us.  We ask forgiveness for all of our sins.  We choose this day to turn away from all the things in our lives that are displeasing to You.  May the Holy Spirit guide and strengthen us as we choose to live in the Light.

His Peace

John 14:27
Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you. Not as the world gives do I give to you. Let not your hearts be troubled, neither let them be afraid.

Just before Jesus entered His final days on earth, He told His disciples He would be leaving them His peace after He was gone.  He instructed them that His peace was different from the world’s peace.  He assured them that His peace was sufficient to carry them through anything that the world brought against them.

Earlier Jesus had told the apostles, “If anyone loves me, he will keep my word, and my Father will love him, and we will come and make Our home with him.”  The presence of the Father and the Son (our peace) is thus based on our relationship with Jesus.  So it is easy to see that if we are not in good relationship with Our Savior, we will be left with the peace of the world and not His peace.

Why would we settle for anything less than the perfect peace that only Jesus can provide us?  Trusting in ourselves and in the world will lead us down a very bumpy path at best.  Let us set ourselves straight with Our Savior so that we may receive the peace in our lives that He promises – His peace.

Prayer
Heavenly Father, we thank You for supernatural peace that we have through Your Son, Jesus.  We rejoice in knowing that we can have peace even when everything in the world is coming against us.  We bless the name of Jesus because His peace is sufficient to carry us through all of our trials.  We ask the Holy Spirit to keep us mindful to always seek the peace of Jesus first and not the peace of the world.  We pray for the grace to keep us in an intimate relationship with Our Savior and the wisdom and the strength to work on making that relationship closer each day.

Cheerful Compliance

Psalm 40:8
I delight to do your will, O my God; your law is within my heart.

When we pass on food that we love because we have a single purpose of trying to lose weight, we are likely to struggle from the onset.  When we strive to lose weight so that we may have a happier, extended life to enjoy with our loved ones, we are more likely to sacrifice the pleasure of our favorite foods because of the higher purpose that drives our success.

When we seek to be faithful in following all of the commandments with the single purpose of avoiding sin, we are certain to struggle because our purpose is not high enough.  We must find our passion in our covenant with Jesus not in the law.  We must seek to know Jesus so intimately that we can enjoy His peace, His beauty, His mercy, His loving kindness and most of all His forgiveness.  When we have reached this place of passion for Jesus Christ, then we will delight in doing the will of The Father, just as Jesus delighted in doing His Father’s will.  We will count it as joy to give up the things of the world for the glory of Our Heavenly Father.

Prayer
Heavenly Father, we thank You for loving us so much that You gave us Your Son to come down from heaven to fulfill the law.  We bless the name of Jesus for His perfect obedience in doing Your will.  We ask that the Holy Spirit will help us to set our hearts upon Your law with cheerful compliance.  Oh Lord, we pray that we may take up our crosses daily with the same delight and pleasure that Jesus did when He fulfilled Your will for His life.  

"No" is an Answer

Matthew 7:9
Or which one of you, if his son asks him for bread, will give him a stone?

As parents, one of our strongest desires is to feed our children when they are hungry?  It is also one of our greatest responsibilities.  Yet, if they ask for ice cream when it is dinner time, our answer is usually “no” or “not now”.   While our commitment to them is to feed them, our larger commitment is to see them grow up and become healthy adults.

The Lord promises to hear and answer all of our prayers of need in His Holy Word.  But all of His promises are bound by the higher covenant of preparing us for our eternal life in heaven with Him.  So while He always hears our prayers, sometimes His answers will be “no” or “not now.”  Each case will be determined by Him based on where we are or where those that we are praying for are in the path of sanctification.  He will answer in perfect timing in accordance with His will for the lives of all involved.

Prayer
Heavenly Father, we thank You for hearing and answering all of our prayers.  We thank You that You often protect us by not giving us what we ask for when it will take us off the path that You have set aside for our lives.  We pray for the strength to endure when the “noes” and the “not nows” seem so painful.  We ask, Lord, that You help us to keep seeking You so that our prayers will come into alignment with Your will for our lives.  

Shutting the Door on the Cares of the Day

Matthew 6:6
But when you pray, go into your room and shut the door and pray to your Father who is in secret. And your Father who sees in secret will reward you.

Without question, one of Satan’s greatest skills is his ability to keep us distracted from building our relationship with God by keeping us focused on the business of life.  One of his greatest lies is planting the seed in our minds that God does not want to hear about everything in our lives.  Through the perfect work of the Holy Spirit in our lives, we can turn both of Satan’s tactics against him.

The first thing that we should do each day in the privacy of the morning is to invite Jesus to join us throughout the day.  Then everything public in our busy lives will be marked by His presence.  Everything that comes our way as a challenge or a trial can be handed to Him immediately through brief and constant prayer.

Because we have given Jesus the burdens of life throughout the day, we can shut the door on all the cares of the day that usually distract us as we try to pray at night.  Instead of focusing on our cares, we are free to focus on Our God.  We can worship Him, we can praise Him and we can soak in His love.  We can grow in our relationship with Him according to His good and perfect plan for our lives.

Prayer
Heavenly Father, we thank You for providing Your Son to be the yoke that we can take to make our burdens light.  We rejoice in His presence with us throughout the day and night.  We pray for the wisdom and the grace to share all of our cares with Our Savior throughout the day.  We ask, Lord, that You teach us how to come to You without distraction in the evening so that we may spend the time growing in our relationship with You and refreshing ourselves for the next day to be spent in the yoke of Our Savior.

Exposed by The Light

2 Corinthians 4:6
For God, who said, “Let light shine out of darkness,” has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.

Jesus is the light, the truth and the way.  No darkness can exist in His presence.  When we accept Him as Our Savior, He comes to dwell within us and the process of removing all the darkness from our lives begins.  

All of our sins are brought into the light by the Holy Spirit.  Repentance is required.  To do otherwise is to suggest that we are sufficient in our own ways.  It is not enough to be sorry for our sins.  We must recognize our unworthiness.  We must recognize our need to be cleansed by the Blood of the Lamb.  We must fully submit to Jesus so that we will have the strength to turn away from the darkness, so that we may live in the light.  This process will continue as long as we are in our corrupted bodies.  It will not be completed until we stand before Our Father in heaven at His Throne.

Prayer
Heavenly Father, we thank You for exposing all the darkness in our lives.  We pray that we will fully submit to the cleansing process.  May Your Light extend to the outer margins of our lives.  May no element of our lives be untouched.  May the complete work of the Blood of the Lamb prepare us to take our place in heaven for all eternity.

Experiencing Kingdom Living

Matthew 5:3
Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. 

Jesus told the rich young ruler that to inherit the kingdom of heaven he must give up everything and follow Him.  As with the young ruler, the relationship that Jesus seeks with us is one in which we place the relationship with Him as the single most important thing in our lives.

Jesus asks us to yield to Him.  He wants us to understand our impoverished position without Him.  It is only through this yielding relationship that we can enter into His kingdom.  Nothing that we do or we own without Christ merits our eternal place with Jesus.

There is great blessing in our lives when we reach the place where Jesus is our single highest priority.  We are freed to begin to enjoy the fullness of what Our Savior has prepared for us.

Prayer
Heavenly Father, we thank You for the way, the truth and the life that is in Your Son, Jesus.  We thank You for drawing us away from this world and drawing us into a relationship with Our Savior.  We pray, Lord, that You inspire us to make Your Son the center of our lives.  May we begin to experience here on earth the fullness of the kingdom living that is being prepared for us.