The Give and Take of Intercession

1 Thessalonians 5:24
He who calls you is faithful; he will surely do it.
The God who calls us to our Christian faith is faithful to fulfill His promises to us.  From the moment that we surrender to His Son, Jesus, as Our Savior, He commences a good work in us that He promises to finish.  He will be steadfast in His continuous work of sanctification in our lives.

New government authority, new boss, new co-worker, new neighbor, new acquaintance, new friend – not a single one is new by chance.  God has placed each of those that are around us to teach us new things about ourselves.  It seems impossible that such a plan could be put in place for each of us.  But our God is a God of the impossible.  He has no limits to His power and His authority.  He loves us so much that He goes to an extraordinary, nearly unimaginable, level to insure that we are surrounded by a host of intercessors.  These intercessors in our lives are placed there for one reason.  God in His mercy and His grace wants to insure that we are properly prepared to spend eternity with Him.
In the life of the believer, there is no such thing as chance.  Our sovereign God is always in total control of everything.  Do not miss the flip side of our relationships with our surrounding intercessors.  God wants us to join Him in the work that He is doing in the lives of those around us.  We are simultaneously the other half of all of these relationships in our lives – the new boss, new co-worker, new neighbor, new acquaintance, new friend – and again, not a single one is new by chance.  God has purposely placed us in each relationship to be a giver as well as a receiver of His intercessory work in our lives.

Prayer
Heavenly Father, we thank You for Your providence in our lives.  We rejoice in knowing that You understand our weaknesses and provide intercessory support through those that You place around us.  We pray, Father, that Your Holy Spirit will alert us to the intercession that You have planned for us.  May we learn to grow through the circumstances that engulf us from time to time.  May we be gracious and willing receivers of the intercession that You have placed in our lives.  We pray that in turn You will provide the wisdom that we need to be fruitful intercessors for others as we engage them in the journey that is life.   We ask all these things in the name of Jesus Christ, Our Most High Intercessor.

Worrying About the Things to Come?

Romans 8:28
And we know that for those who love God all things work together for good, for those who are called according to his purpose.
It is likely that at one time or another that you have heard someone say, “I am not worried.  Everything always works out for the best.”  Of course, what you probably did not know when the person made the statement was whether that person had made the statement from a spiritual or worldly perspective.  Were they counting on continued good fortune because they trusted in the God that they loved to stand up to His promises or were they just feeling lucky?

There is temporal good and there is spiritual good.  Temporal good is what men usually seek.   When men seek God, spiritual good is what God bestows.  Through His grace the temporal and spiritual needs of the men who seek Him are worked out perfectly.
Through the grace of God, we as followers of Jesus Christ do not have to wonder or worry about whether good things are coming our way.  We have been promised by Almighty God that if we love Him and follow the calling that He has placed on our lives that all things will work for together for good in our lives.  
Does this mean that we will always live in riches?  Does this mean that we will always live without illness?  Does this mean that we will live trouble free lives?  No it does not.  What it does mean is that we will be broken from sin, we will be drawn closer and closer to Our Savior and in the end we will be made fit for our eternal place in heaven.  Now it just doesn’t get any better than that.
Prayer
Heavenly Father, we thank You for drawing us unto Yourself.  We exalt Your name for the perfect love and forgiveness that we receive through Your grace and Your mercy.  We thank You for the eternal blessings that are ours through the redemptive work of Your Son, Our Savior, Jesus Christ.  We pray that the world may know Your Son because we boldly proclaim the name of the One who brings us our eternal riches.   We ask all these things in the name of the Lord Over All, Jesus Christ.

The Fabric of Eternity

1 Peter 4:13
But rejoice insofar as you share Christ’s sufferings, that you may also rejoice and be glad when his glory is revealed.
If we are to be used by God, He will allow us to go through a multitude of experiences that are meant to transform us into instruments of His good work.  Some of the experiences will be easy, but some of the experiences will certainly be difficult.  All will be meticulously worked into the fabric of our lives with the final product in mind.
We need to understand that the sufferings that we go through are not those of ordinary men and women.  We are being prepared for greater things to come.  While we view our lives in the fabric of time, God views our lives in the fabric of eternity.  While all we see is the weaving of one single thread at a time, God sees the final finished product all woven together in accordance with His will and plan for our lives.
Because God is who He is, the final product will be much more beautiful and useful than anything that we could ever even imagine or hope for.  We will realize it when the whole is complete and we stand before the Father in glory.
Prayer
Heavenly Father, we thank You for allowing us to experience life through many different trials.  We rejoice in knowing that when we are struggling in the tribulations that the world brings to our door that Your Holy Spirit is always there strengthening us and guiding us to the next experience that You have set aside for us.  Father, we pray for the patient perseverance to endure through all that You have prepared for us.  May we be transformed according to Your will and plan for our lives.  We ask all these things in the name of our Spiritual Rock, Jesus Christ.

Our Living Shield

James 4:7
Submit yourselves therefore to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you.
Satan is to be looked upon as an enemy, one who must be watched and guarded against.   Faith, humble prayers and heavenly wisdom are are our weapons of resistance.

Man without Jesus Christ is not capable of standing against the powers that seek to devour and destroy him.  In the darkness of the flesh, we are unable to see that we are being lead into lives that will never be totally satisfying.  We cannot see that our lives are much less than they could be, much less than they should be.
But when the light of Jesus Christ comes into our lives, we see how life can be, how life should be, how our lives are renewed in the spirit of Our Savior.  We come to recognize that the renewal of our minds and our spirits is only available to us through our submission to Our Savior.  We come to discover that the dominating power of the world, our flesh and Satan himself are defeated through the victory that Jesus Christ won for us on the Cross.  
Prayer
Heavenly Father, we thank You for allowing us to come to You to gain the armor that we need to defend ourselves from the enemy who comes to defeat us.  We thank You for the weapon of prayer, the sword of Your Holy Word and the shield of faith.  We rejoice in knowing that the victory is ours because Your Son, Jesus, claimed it for us forever when He died on the Cross for our sins.  We humbly come before You, Lord, to proclaim that we are laying aside our own strength so that we may dwell in the protection of Your shadow.  We ask all these things in the name of Jesus Christ, our Living Shield.

Living by Faith in the Son of God

Galatians 2:20
I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.

We certainly were not physically crucified with Christ.  Only the two thieves beside Him qualify in this regard.  But through His crucifixion, because of what He did on our account, we are bound to Him through His death, His burial and His resurrection. Through the fullness of His love and eternal provision, we are forever bound to Him.

In the days of slavery, the slaves were keenly aware of who their slave owner was and what their slave owner expected of them.  When the slaves had a good master, they understood the value of the provisions that they were given.  They would delight in pleasing their good master because their good master fulfilled their every need. They would serve their master faithfully each day because they had faith in the continuing provision of the one to whom they were bound.
As Christians, we not only have a good master, we have a good and perfect master.  We have Our Lord, Jesus, as our Master.  We should be in constant praise and worship for the provisions that we have received, the provisions that we will receive and the eternal provisions that have been set aside for us.  We should delight in meeting every calling that Our Master places on our lives.  We should purposefully sign away our own rights in order to be bond-slaves of Jesus Christ.
Prayer
Heavenly Father, we thank You for legally binding us to Your service for all eternity.  We rejoice in knowing that we will praise and worship You forever as our needs are met and satisfied beyond our imaginations.  We pray, Lord, for the wisdom and the strength to renounce any ownership that we seek to claim from this earth.  May we live in the comfort and triumph of Your grace.  May we live every day in surrender to Your Son, Jesus.  We ask all these things in His precious, holy and mighty name.

Fit Habitats for Our Savior

1 Corinthians 6:19
Or do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit who is in you, whom you have from God, and that you are not your own?
As Christians, our bodies become sanctuaries of the Holy Spirit.  This is a certain sign that we have been washed clean by the blood of Our Savior, Jesus Christ.  Because God is holy, holy, holy, He cannot tolerate the presence of sin.  If there were any sin in us, the Holy Spirit could not dwell within us.  Thus the Holy Spirit is witness to the atoning work of salvation in our lives.

Because in the flesh, we still hold on to the sin nature, there is perfecting work ahead for the Holy Spirit.  Upon His indwelling, He immediately begins in us the process of regeneration and sanctification.  When He begins the good work of grace, He takes full possession of the body, mind and spirit of each of us.  He supernaturally influences our lives, our bodies and our conversations.  He works to insure our bodies are fit habitats for Our Savior King. 

As we submit to the sanctifying process of the Holy Spirit, we can anticipate that there will be trials in our lives.  Jesus Himself told us that it would be so as we followed Him.  These trials that create brokenness in our lives are the experiences that the Holy Spirit uses to complete and perfect the our regeneration. 
Prayer
Heavenly Father, we thank You for allowing us to be temples of Your Holy Spirit.  We rejoice in knowing that through shed blood of Your Son, Jesus, and through the indwelling of Your Holy Spirit in our lives that You can use us to be instruments of Your good work.  We pray for the aid of the Holy Spirit to build us up in Christ so that we can endure in faith all of our trials.  We ask, Father, that we may become free flowing vessels of Your redemptive work.  As the Holy Spirit witnesses to Our Savior in our lives, may we witness to Our Savior in the lives of those around us.  We ask all these things in the name of the Lord Our Redeemer, Jesus Christ.

I Am Not Going There Anymore

Psalm 139:7
Where shall I go from your Spirit?  Or where shall I flee from your presence?

There is no place that we can go to get away from God.  He chases us no matter where we go because He loves us so much.  He pursues us with an undeniable and unlimited fervor because He has so much invested in us.  He created us.  He has planned to derive value from us not only here on earth but in heaven for all eternity.

When we are at our lowest point and it seems that Satan is winning, God just laughs.  He is there with us.  He gives us the strength for another breath and another step.  He sets an unquenchable fire in us for Him.  He knows that the victory is His and ours through Jesus Christ.  

Yet He weeps at the same time because He knows we are falling short of our potential of who we are in Christ.  He weeps because He sees us allowing our flesh to pull us and tug us in the wrong direction.  All along though, He can smile because He knows His steadfast grasp on our lives will soon enough lead to our surrender to Him.  He is ready to build something enormous in us, something within the depths of our souls that will cause us to rise up and say, “I am not going there anymore for I am a new man in Christ.”  

Thus through His constant presence and never ending love for us, we will reach a place where we seek Him and Him alone.  The world will become but a distant memory as we settle into our place of eternal comfort in the hands of Our Heavenly Father who has always been there for us. 

Prayer
Heavenly Father, we thank You for Your relentless pursuit of our affection.  We thank You for loving us first so that we could love You.  We bless the name of Your Son, Jesus, who made it possible for us to live in the comfort of Your presence for all eternity.  We pray, Father, that You set the fire in our souls that sends us running to You in full and immediate surrender.  May every breath we take be used to turn our faces toward You and away from the world.  May the world around us know us by Your presence in our lives.  We ask all these things in the name of Our Omni-Present Lord, Jesus Christ.

Not As I Will, But As You Will

Matthew 26:39
And going a little farther he fell on his face and prayed, saying, “My Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me; nevertheless, not as I will, but as you will.”

Jesus Christ, the only perfect man to ever walk the this earth, fell on His face, cried out to His Father in heaven and asked to be freed of His upcoming duty.  In the same overwhelming moment, Jesus fully surrendered everything to the will of His Father.  In this same moment, we saw the two wills of Christ, the human and the Divine.   Jesus could not turn from the supernatural plan that His Father had for Him, even though He knew how much it was going to cost Him in the flesh.  Jesus knew He was submitting to God’s perfect plan for the salvation of all men.  

It is certain that we will find times in our lives when we are nearly overwhelmed by the thought of what is ahead.  Our flesh will be ready to give in to defeat.  It is precisely at these times that we must fall on our faces before Our Heavenly Father and surrender to His will for our lives.  At these times, there is no resource to us greater than our prayer for strength.  It is in these times that we receive the supernatural blessing that we need to obey God’s calling on our lives. 

Our Father in heaven has given us life.  He sustains our lives everyday.  God, Himself, made the ultimate sacrifice by sending His Son to die for our sins, so that He could grant us eternal life with Him.  Our full surrender to the Father is the only appropriate response that we can offer to His calling on our lives.

Prayer
Heavenly Father, we thank You for giving us life in flesh, sustaining our every breath and granting us eternal supernatural life through the atoning sacrifice of Your Son, Jesus.  We rejoice in knowing that the obedience of the Son to Your will paid the complete price for our salvation.  We pray that we will find all the strength that we need to completely surrender to Your will.  May we bear the fruit of Your will as we walk in obedience every day of our lives.  We ask all these things in the name of the One without sin, Jesus Christ.

The Manifestation of Grace

2 Corinthians 12:9
But he said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” Therefore I will boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may rest upon me.

The apostle Paul knew what it was to receive God’s grace.  Through his great faith he delighted in his weaknesses, he delighted in the insults that were tossed his way, he delighted in his hardships and he delighted in his persecutions.  Paul knew the secret.  He rested on God’s promises to perfect His strength in Paul’s weaknesses, in Paul’s trials and in Paul’s tribulations.  

Our God in heaven is ready to do the same for us.  Our Heavenly Father promises to provide all that we need to overcome every hard thing that we face and to provide all that we need to gain victory over the evil that surrounds us.  He does not promise to take us out of the battle.  Just as He used Paul’s thorn to keep him mindful of his needs in Christ, He will allow things in our lives to keep us mindful of how needy we are.

We will find victory when we learn to surrender like Paul did.  We will find peace in all circumstances when we recognize God’s grace is sufficient.  We will become stronger than we ever imagined when we allow the grace of God to be manifested and magnified in our lives.

Prayer
Heavenly Father, we thank You for the all-sufficient grace that You promise us.  We bless the name of Jesus who insured our victory on the Cross.  We rejoice in the presence of the Holy Spirit, who guides us, instructs us and strengthens us through our trials.  We pray, Father, that we will learn to have faith in You as Paul had faith in You.  We ask for the courage to surrender to Your Holy Spirit through all the trials that we face.  We pray that world we see and be drawn to the manifestation and magnification of Your grace in our lives.  We ask all these things in the name of the Lord Mighty in Battle, Jesus Christ.

Victory Over Evil

Mark 9:29
And he said to them, “This kind cannot be driven out by anything but prayer.”
Jesus taught us, “And you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.”  He emphasized that this was the greatest commandment.  It is the highest order in the kingdom.  Our number one purpose on earth and in heaven is to love God, to praise Him and to bring glory to His name.  One of the foremost ways that we can meet the requirements of this commandment is through our prayers.
When we are engaged in work that we consider to be the work of the Lord, we can lose sight of the fact that the work is being done out of the loving relationship that we have with Our Lord.  If we let our relationship with God slip, He will withdraw the power that He gives us to do His good work.  He is far more interested in our relationship with Him than He is in the result of our work.  Our relationship with the Father is built and sustained through our prayer life.  
We may be able to manipulate some things in the flesh, but all the things that provide real kingdom value will not endure under the burden of broken fellowship with the Father.  Through regular prayer, we build on our relationship with Our Father and we insure that we are empowered to do the greatest works that He has called us to do, even to cast out evil.
Prayer
Heavenly Father, we thank You for Your perfect love in our lives.  We thank You for allowing us the privilege of returning our love, our praise and our worship to You through our prayers.  We bless the name of Jesus, who dwells within us, for making it possible for us to have victory over evil.  Father, we pray that all that we do is born out of the intimacy of our relationship with You.  We humbly ask for the grace to stay in constant fellowship with You through our prayers.  We beseech You to grant us the power over the evil in our lives and the lives of those that surround us.  May it all be for Your glory.  We ask all these things in the name of the One who has has victory over all evil, Jesus Christ.