Through Jesus' Love

“Pray without ceasing,” is the message in 1 Thessalonians 5:17.  This is not be feasible for most of us, at least not in the form of prayer as we generally think of it.

Perhaps we should think about prayer as a conversation with God.  With His Spirit dwelling within us at all times, why would we not be in conversation with Him throughout the day.  Would we ignore our best friend, if he or she happened to be with us throughout the day?  Of course not, our relationship would dictate constant interaction.  So be it with the Lord.

The light of the Holy Spirit is present within every Christian.  The light affects us in two important ways.  It shines forth to attract others to Jesus and it reveals all the darkness of sin that exists in our flesh.  The two processes work hand in hand. 

If we do not repent of the sin that is revealed to us, we greatly reduce or even eliminate the possibility of reaching others for Christ.  Of even greater personal consequence, we create a stronghold for Satan to place a stronger claim on our lives.

On the other hand, if we repent when sin is revealed to us, we remove the darkness of sin from our spirit.  Then with the Holy Spirit guiding and strengthening us, our living testimony becomes even stronger and more appealing to others.  

We, all too often, focus on the problems that we are facing instead of focusing on the solution – Our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.  Unfortunately, when we are not completely in tune with Our Savior, we are easily taken down a path on which we try to manipulate our own solutions to our problems.  You may have discovered, I certainly have, that this is not a peaceful path.

Why would we take the path of strife when all we have to do is call on the Lord?  Call on the name of Jehovah Shalom.  He promises to give us His peace that goes beyond human understanding. 

Every person who has ever been on a diet knows what a struggle it can be.  It is even more difficult if the only purpose for going on the diet is “to lose weight.”  The dieter generally has greater success when his or her purpose is of a higher calling.  For example, “I want to lose weight so that I can better enjoy the time that I spend with my children.”  The passion behind the purpose is what drives the individual to overcome the challenges.

When we seek to build our relationship with Jesus, we need to have the passion of a higher calling.  We need more than, “I want to be a better person.”  We need, “I want to be a new person in Christ.  I want to die of my old self.”  It is this higher calling that will lead to the intimacy we seek with our Savior.

The Lord’s promises are always fulfilled just as He says they will be in His Word.  Regarding our prayers, the Lord promises that He will always hear our prayers and He will always answer our prayers.

Many of His promises, however, have conditions that we must fulfill in order for His promises to be met.  Often we seem to latch on to the promises, but conveniently overlook the conditions of the agreement.  This is especially true in our prayer lives where we are hungry for instant satisfaction.  

When we want God to honor the promise of, “Ask and you shall receive,” here are a few of the important considerations that are impacting the Lord’s response to our prayers:
1) He will answer our prayers according to His perfect timetable that He has for our lives.
2) He will answer our prayers according to His perfect will for our lives.
3) He will answer our prayers if we are in right standing with Him.
4) He will grant us the desires of our hearts, if we seek Him first.

Surely one of Satan’s greatest skills is his ability to keep us focused on the things of the world.  One of his greatest lies is making us think that God does not want to hear about everything in our lives.  Through these techniques, he schemes to keep us from developing an intimate relationship with our Heavenly Father.

We can easily turn these two schemes around on Satan through the perfected strength of the Holy Spirit within us.  We can bring all of our concerns before the Lord as they come to us each day and we can praise Him throughout the day for all the things that He provides.  And yes, we can even ask forgiveness for our sins as they occur.  Then in our evening prayer, we can spend the entire time focusing on our relationship with Jesus.

Jesus told the rich, young ruler that he must give up everything to follow Him.  Such is the calling of all Christians.

Jesus seeks to make our relationship with Him the most important thing in our lives.  There is great blessing in our lives when we reach the point where Jesus is our top priority.  It frees us to enjoy the fullness of what our Savior has prepared for us.

God’s plan for our lives calls for total surrender to Him.  The enemy has a different plan.  The enemy uses every facet of our lives as weapons against us to distract us from our full surrender to Our Lord.

Work is the biggest distraction for most of us.  Recreation, hobbies and entertainment are also big distractors.  There is nothing wrong with any of these things.  In fact, they are all good things when engaged properly.  That is why Satan is so successful.  

Satan tries to unseat God’s proper place in our lives by enticing us to overdo “good” things.  We can only keep God in His rightful place through our ongoing relationship with Jesus Christ.

Once we accept Jesus as our Savior, He promises to perfect His strength in our weakness.  He also promises to finish the good work in us that was started when we committed our lives to Him.

For these very reasons, we are in a continual process of pruning.  This pruning process will not stop until we are perfect.  Be ready, saints, perfection will not be reached until we get to heaven.  Our time on earth will be filled with perpetual pruning.  Rejoice in knowing that all the good work will be completed as promised according to God’s perfect timing for our lives.

For most Christians, God’s directions for our lives do not come in audible context.  They come in the faint internal whisperings of the Holy Spirit.  They come as gentle urgings of the spirit rather than anything of a more direct nature.

These urgings are designed to test our obedience.  If we are obedient to the calls, we will find that the urgings become clearer and extend over more and more of our activities.  We will begin to seek the direction of the Holy Spirit in all of our endeavors.  If we ignore the urgings, they will gradually cease.