Asking Prayer

Weekly Devotions

Asking Prayer

"Ask and it will be given to you." Matthew 7:7

In seeking prayer we seek God for who He is; in knocking prayer we persistently knock for the influence of the Holy Spirit on others; and in asking prayer we ask for our own needs. Jesus said we didn’t need to use many words in asking prayer because "your Father knows what you need before you ask Him." If He already knows, why ask? God wants us to get to know His generosity and love through answered prayer, and He strategically uses delays in answers to refine our character.

Believing is especially central to asking prayer. Jesus said, "And all things you ask in prayer, believing, you will receive." (Matthew 21:22) Believing what? Believing that God will give it exactly when and how you want it? Or do we simply believe God is good; He hears our prayer and He will answer it in His own way and in His own time? Martin Luther believed it was the latter:

"We are to lay our need before God in prayer but not prescribe to God a measure, manner, time, or place. We must leave that to God, for He may wish to give it to us in another, perhaps better, way than we think is best. Frequently we do not know what to pray as St. Paul says in Romans 8, and we know that God’s ways are above all that we can ever understand as He says in Ephesians 3. Therefore, we should have no doubt that our prayer is acceptable and heard, and we must leave to God the measure, manner, time, and place, for God will surely do what is right." (Devotional Classics; pg 117)

A couple of months ago I was praying about a frustrating situation and instructing God exactly when He needed to have this problem fixed by, and if not, I was going to have to do something drastic. After I was done with my little tirade, I heard a one word whisper in my mind that I believe was the Holy Spirit speaking: "Really?" I was instantly repentant of my attitude. I’m not going to take over; I’m going to wait for God’s timing and allow the process to refine my soul.

Ephesians 3:20 is a verse that gives God a lot of latitude in how He answers prayer: "God is able to do far above all you ask or think…" We don’t have to ask perfectly or even think of how God might do it; our part is to pray with childlike faith and trust that our God will take it from there. Ask and it will be given to you.

Have a great week,
Tom

Knocking Prayer

Weekly Devotions
Knocking Prayer

"Suppose one of you has a friend, and he goes to him at midnight and says, ‘Friend, lend me three loaves of bread, because a friend of mine on a journey has come to me, and I have nothing to set before him.’ Then the one inside answers, ‘Don’t bother me. The door is already locked, and my children are with me in bed. I can’t get up and give you anything." I tell you, though he will not get up and give him the bread because he is his friend, yet because of the man’s boldness (shameless persistence) he will get up and give him as much as he needs." Luke 11:5-8

This story is part of Jesus’ response to the disciple’s request: "Lord, teach us to pray." A friend has come to you in the midnight hour with a need. You have nothing for him but you do have a strong friendship with someone rich, and you know he has everything your friend needs. You go to this wealthy person on behalf of your needy friend. You knock on the door and say "it’s me." Instead of saying "come in", he says "the door is locked". He tells you to go away because the family is in bed, yet you refuse to leave. You just keep knocking because you know your friend. He has a tender heart and will not resist your need; He will eventually get up and give you everything you have requested.

A year ago January my daughter told me that she wanted to have an operation on her jaw. Her teeth didn’t line up right so she lived with constant pain and had difficulty chewing things. There were two possible solutions: One was affordable and would cut down the pain as well as slow the deterioration; the other was expensive but would actually make her better. Insurance would cover the operation the expensive option required, but not the $5,000 it would cost to put braces on her before and after the surgery.

We didn’t have the money. I told the Lord in prayer that we didn’t have the money to do what really needed to be done. We were already making sacrifices to put her and her siblings through college and I just felt like all my resources were tapped. "Not all your resources," was the whisper I heard in my spirit. Was there a bank account somewhere I had forgotten about? As I began to think about other resources, I thought of my relationship with my mom.

To do everything for my daughter didn’t just mean using money we had, it had to include me humbling myself before my mom and asking her if she would help. To say "no" to my daughter without at least asking my mom for help, would not be doing everything possible.

Because of my mom’s generosity, I rejoice to say that my daughter has been in braces for the past year and is having surgery in a couple of weeks.

Have you included your relationship with God when you think about your resources? You may not have what others need, but you know Someone who does. And He actually loves your needy friend even more than you do. You haven’t done everything to help your friend in the midnight hour until you’ve prayed for him/her. Here’s how Jesus closed the application of this story: "If you then, give good gifts to your children, how much more will you Father in heaven give the Holy Spirit to those who ask Him."

Have a great week,
Tom

Seeking Prayer

Weekly Devotions

Seeking Prayer

"Seek, and you will find." Matthew 7:7

Jesus describes three types of prayer that we will look at over the next three weeks. The first is seeking prayer which is a description of prayer that seeks after God for who He is. Jeremiah 29:13 gives the essence of this kind of prayer: "You will seek Me and find Me when you search for Me with all your heart."
Singing worship songs is considered part of seeking prayer because it is God focused instead of need centered. Jesus gave us an outline for prayer which starts with who God is: "Our Father who lives in heaven; hallowed by Your Name." Seeking prayer is when we remember it’s not about us or our name (reputation), but about God and His Name.
There is a campaign that began in southern California called: "I am second." There are billboards all over the country now and many famous Christians have made youtubes which declare that Christ is first, not me. The best selling book The Purpose Driven Life, starts with the words, "It’s not about you." In seeking prayer we remember this truth and long to find our satisfaction and identity in God, instead of in ourselves.
"When you said, ‘Seek My face,’ my heart said to You, ‘Your face, O Lord, I shall seek." (Psalm 27:8) God invites us to come after Him and find a deeper faith based more and more on His character and less and less on our momentary feelings about Him.
People often start prayer by asking for God’s hand which is fine, but the real action comes when we prioritize seeking His face. Consider one of the greatest promises in the Bible: "If My people, who are called by My Name, will humble themselves, and pray, and seek My face and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven, forgive their sin and heal their land." (2Chronicles 7:14) Isn’t it interesting that this verse never mentions anyone asking God to heal the land? If you seek His face, you will see His hand move on your behalf without even having to ask!
I remember when my kids were young. A lot of their interaction with me was because they needed something, but once in awhile they would bring a picture that they made "just for me." It didn’t matter what was on that paper, it was a masterpiece that was going on the refrigerator because of their loving intent. I think that’s how God feels when we seek His face.

Have a great week,
Tom

The Disabled List

The Disabled List

"Strengthen your feeble arms and weak knees. Make straight paths for your feet, so that the lame may not be disabled but healed." Hebrews 12:12-13

The author of Hebrews is writing about how to respond to hardships in life. All hardship, he says, is part of God’s discipline or training, to grow us up. (12:7) Yet the very hardship that was designed by God for our healing can end up disabling us if we respond in the wrong way. We need to strengthen ourselves and stay on the straight path in these trying times or we are in danger of ending up on the disabled list.
What makes us weak in hardship are the lies of the enemy. A few verses earlier we are warned to not be discouraged by discipline or take it as a sign of God’s rejection. God loves us and His discipline is actually a sign of His acceptance.
A great danger in 21st century Christianity is the belief that God’s chief end for us is to be happy right now, so anything difficult must be prayed away or rebuked as being from the devil. God wants us to be healthy, not just happy, and sometimes that means He allows things in our lives that we wouldn’t choose for ourselves. Even if the devil initiated the difficulties because he hates us, God will use them for our good if we’ll trust Him. (2Corinthians 12:7-9; Revelation 2:10)
Because of this, James tells us we should rejoice when we face various trials (1:2) because God’s end is that we would become complete in Him, lacking nothing. All we have to do is allow patience (our patience with God) to finish its work. (1:4)
Are you in a time of difficulty? It is easy to be offended and wander away from God. Strengthen yourself right now by embracing the truth. God loves you and this present difficulty is only going to make you better if you just hang in there. Choose to trust in God’s love and rejoice in His wisdom even when you can’t figure out how something so hard can work for your good.
Prayer: "Father, I choose the joy of the Lord in this circumstance and choose to laugh at all the enemy’s lies. I believe that You will allow no weapon formed against me to prosper because I’m holding on to You in faith."

Have a great week,
Tom

Shutting the Door

Weekly Devotions

Shutting the Door

“When you pray, go into your inner room, shut your door and pray to your Father who is in secret, and your Father who sees what is done in secret will reward you.” Matthew 6:6

Think about the words “shut your door.” Are we too available to this world and to the people of this world? Are we so connected that we struggle to shut the door on human contact to make ourselves fully available for fellowship with God? Bob Sorge says: “God isn’t disappointed in you when you fail to spend time with Him alone; He’s disappointed for you.” He has so much to give us in the secret place. We lose our fear of man; we hear His whispers; He changes our desires; He adjusts our perspectives; He removes our weights; and of course, He hears our prayers.

Sometimes people do get alone with God and find their time disappointing because they don’t feel they really make a connection. Jesus said, “If anyone loves Me, he will keep My word; and My Father will love him, and We will come to him and make Our abode with him.” (John 14:23) If you are a believer the Holy Spirit lives in your spirit and that is where God wants to meet you. Sometimes we close the physical door but we have trouble closing the door of our souls (mind, will, and emotions) so that we can really commune with God in our spirits.

Our emotions, anxieties, and continual thinking can keep us from true communion. Shut the door! Ask the Holy Spirit to help you and become comfortable with the fact that God lives in you. The challenge is to live from our spirits so that the Presence of God and the Word of God dominate our souls instead of our carnal nature. When we take time to shut the door to have alone time with God it gets much easier to shut the door of our souls during the day when we need to drink from the Spirit.

The cool thing about disconnecting from this world and its relationships is you will find you have more to bring to them when you reconnect.

Have a great week,
Tom

Proof for the Unbeliever

Weekly Devotions

Proof for the Unbeliever

“And when they had assembled with the elders and consulted together, they gave a large sum of money to the soldiers, and said, ‘You are to say, “His disciples came by night and stole Him away while we were asleep.” Matthew 28:12-13

A few weeks ago I had the privilege of answering questions the youth group had about God and the Bible. Among the questions was this one: “Is there any evidence that the Bible is the word of God other than the Bible saying it is.” My response was to point to the resurrection. Christianity is based on something that happened in the history of this planet. If the resurrection is true, then it is God’s validation of the ministry and teaching of Jesus. His teaching included a confirmation that the Old Testament is true. So, what is the evidence that Jesus rose from the dead?

Today’s scholars, whether believing or unbelieving in the actual resurrection, have come to an agreement on one point: the disciples believed Jesus rose from the dead. Gary Habermas, a scholar who has debated the resurrection on many college campuses, states: “The substantially unanimous verdict of contemporary critical scholars is that Jesus’ disciples at least believed that Jesus was alive, resurrected from the dead. Reginald Fuller refers to the disciples’ belief in Jesus’ resurrection as ‘one of the indisputable facts of history.’ Upon what was their claim based? Fuller continues: ‘It is clear that the disciples had real experiences, characterized as appearances or visions of the risen Jesus. Whether these are explained naturally or supernaturally, this experience is a fact upon which both believer and unbeliever may agree.’”
Why would unbelieving scholars make such an enormous concession? For a few reasons:

1. Christianity exists today with over a billion followers and it’s beginning is undisputed. The early church rose without the aid of authority or position; without any help from the power centers of it’s day; and with very little organization in the midst of a hostile climate. The only thing it had was a shared belief in the resurrection. In 1Corinthians 15:3-6 NIV Paul gives this earliest belief: “For what I received I passed on to you as of first importance: that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, that He was buried, that He was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures, and that he appeared to Peter, and then to the Twelve. After that, He appeared to more than five hundred of the brothers at the same time, most of whom are still living, though some have fallen asleep.”

2. The appearances themselves would never lead one to believe in a bodily resurrection. Jews were familiar with apparitions of someone alive in another place, like in the case of Samuel appearing to the witch of Endor. They had to have seen an empty tomb combined with an apparition to conclude that there had been a resurrection.

3. It is simply too much to believe that the eleven disciples of Jesus, known as the most moral of men, moved the stone and removed the body while Roman soldiers were sleeping and then propagated a lie that Jesus rose from the dead. They would have gained nothing from this lie and, in fact, lost everything with ten of the eleven being martyred for their faith.

Even unbelieving scholars agree that the disciples believed Jesus rose from the dead. But to remain unbelieving, what they are left to believe in place of the resurrection is some kind of hallucination theory – the disciples saw what they wanted to see and were very sincere even though what they experienced was a natural occurrence in their minds and not a supernatural event.

While this is certainly possible, there are some difficulties that make this position difficult to believe. First, you have to believe a whole bunch of people had hallucinations at the same time. One time there were eleven who saw it, and at another, there were five hundred, many who were still alive when Paul wrote and could tell the story.

But maybe even more problematic is you still have to have an empty tomb. You have to believe that someone else broke through the Roman guard, moved the two ton stone, broke the Roman seal (the penalty for this was to be crucified upside down), and hid the body somewhere else with no discernable motive. Something like this has to happen for the disciples to still find the empty tomb, have their apparitions, and believe in the resurrection without there needing to be a supernatural explanation.

You almost have to want to not believe in the resurrection to embrace this scenario. The truth is that Jesus did rise from the dead; His death accomplished forgiveness for all who believe; and His promise remains that all who belong to Him will some day rise as He did. Hallelujah!

Have a great week,
Tom

World View

Weekly Devotions
World View

“I have been crucified with Christ; and it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me; and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself up for me.” Galatians 2:20

The only way we can be fruitful instead of frustrated in this life is if we gain God’s view of the world and learn to live from it. Because of our sin nature we have to continually train ourselves to die to the self-centered view that comes naturally; and because of the new nature all we have to is acknowledge the Lord again to start seeing rightly.
William Temple (1881-1944) was a philosopher, professor at Oxford, and ultimately the archbishop of Canterbury. His great concern was that Christians would embrace a world view that puts man in the center instead of God. Here is an excerpt from his writings:

“The least popular part of traditional Christianity is Original Sin. It may be expressed in simple terms as follows: Our standard of value is the way things affect us. Each of us takes our place in the center of our own world. But I am not the center of the world, or the standard of reference between good and bad. I am not, but God is.

In other words, from the beginning I put myself in God’s place. This is my original sin. I was doing it before I could speak, as has everyone else. I am not ‘guilty’ on this account because I could not help it. But I am in a state, from birth, in which I shall bring disaster on myself and everyone else unless I escape it.

Education may make my self-centeredness less disastrous by widening my horizons. But this is like climbing a tower which widens the horizons of my vision while leaving me still the center of reference. The only way to deliver me from my self-centeredness is by winning my entire heart’s devotion, the total allegiance of my will to God, and this can only be done by the Divine love of God disclosed by Christ in His life and death.

In making the world, God brought into existence vast numbers of things, like electrons which always have to obey His law for them and do so. But He made creatures – men and women – who could disobey His law for them and often do so. He did this in order that among His creatures there might be some who answer His love with theirs by offering to Him a free obedience.

This involved a risk in that they would naturally take the self-centered outlook on life, and then, increasingly become hardened in that selfishness. This is what has happened. To win them out of this, He came on earth and lived out the Divine love in human life and death. He is increasingly drawing us to Himself by the love thus shown, but this task of drawing all people to Himself will not be complete until the end of history. The kingdom of God is a reality here and now but can be perfect only in the eternal order.” (Devotional Classics; page 244-226)

Have a great week,
Tom