For well over six months we prayed and planned on making a significant dent in the debt on our building as a congregation. Much has been paid down over the years but we still lacked $101,000. The church is made up of mostly senior adults on fixed incomes. We rarely top fifty people in attendance. Still we set aside December 30th as a day to take up a special offering to pay down the debt.
28 days ago we began a church wide fast and intense prayer emphasis. The concept included a 28 day challenge to fast, pray about what we would give, to ask God for miracles personally and to pay down the debt. So began the 28 days to trust and obey. If you frequent this site often you are familiar with all this as I posted devotions for those 28 days.
So began our prayers. We also set aside December 30th to give testimonies of what God did during the past month. After a fellowship lunch we reconvened for the purpose of hearing what God had done. Many got up sharing testimonies. Some very shy. Others more bold. Even a brand new convert who got baptized earlier in the morning got up to testify. Joy filled the room.
The day ended with the announcement of the grand total of the offering. One of the leaders got up before the small crowd. He tried to speak but his words were broken and tears formed. After struggling to regain his composure he spoke again. I sat on the edge of my seat. I thought of the all the hours of prayer, all the sacrifice offered from the small band of devoutly faithful people. When I heard him say, "We took in today fourteen thousand....," I could not contain myself. I shouted, "HALLELUJAH!" and started clapping before he finished. Others did the same. I never did hear the full amount of the offering. We celebrated what God did.
Think about it. For a congregation of less than 50 people, more like less than 40 people most weeks, most on fixed incomes, and the Sunday following Christmas Day to come up with that much money is nothing short of a miracle in my book. Of course I wanted to do more personally. Brenda and I both prayed diligently that we would get blessed so much financially that together we would be able to giver $20,000 ourselves. That did not happen. At least not yet. We gave what we could. Others did the same.
Some of our offerings may have looked like the loaves and fish the little boy offered to Jesus to feed the thousands. God took our gifts and multiplied them. With that single offering we were able to move the debt from $101,000 to $86,000. We also have another $16,000 in a special account set aside to make the building payments. Factor that in and we really only owe less than $70,000. A mountain many believe God to totally remove in 2019. Nothing short of miracle.
All glory to Jehovah. All glory to Jesus. Hallelujah!I rejoiced when I saw the chart we have colored in taking the debt down to $86,000. I conclude with something I read that missionary William Carey said, "Attempt great things from God. Expect great things from God."
Monday, December 31, 2018
It Has Been Six Years
I hurried to change clothes to make my appointment. I felt rushed. Out the door I dashed and down a sidewalk in the chilling damp weather. It did not take long to reach my destination. I went through the back door to a dimly lit room. Inside I could hear others.
I mounted the steps to my little perch. Below my feet I could see a pool of water. After slipping my shoes off I dipped my foot in the water and surprisingly discovered the water was warm. I ventured in with both feet. Then I waded in a little farther. Soaking my clothes I felt a surge of adrenaline.
Before long I stood waist deep in the water. Soon I was joined by another. While others around us went about their business we probably seemed out of place standing in waist deep water on such a cold morning. Eventually I called out to get everyone's attention. In a moment all our eyes were on us.
I spoke from my heart and took the other brave soul in the water and laid her backward beneath the water in baptism. Every ounce of passion I had bubbled out. Heritage Baptist Church had not baptized anyone in four years one person told me. It made me think. I had not personally baptized anyone in at least six years.
Six long years. Six years of preaching multiple times a week. Six years of presenting the gospel. Six years of no new converts. Six years of solid Bible preaching and teaching but no converts. I saw converts on my preaching travels and but not locally. I forgot the joy and celebration of a baptism service. I am resolved it will not be another six years before I baptize again.
Hallelujah to the Savior. Praise the Lord. Worthy is the Lamb who redeems. Exalted is the Lord of Hosts who rescues the perishing. All glory to Jesus, the Son of God, who still forgives sin along with saving and transforming lives. Praise Him who allowed this stammerer of the gospel to once again celebrate new birth in the act of baptism.
I mounted the steps to my little perch. Below my feet I could see a pool of water. After slipping my shoes off I dipped my foot in the water and surprisingly discovered the water was warm. I ventured in with both feet. Then I waded in a little farther. Soaking my clothes I felt a surge of adrenaline.
Before long I stood waist deep in the water. Soon I was joined by another. While others around us went about their business we probably seemed out of place standing in waist deep water on such a cold morning. Eventually I called out to get everyone's attention. In a moment all our eyes were on us.
I spoke from my heart and took the other brave soul in the water and laid her backward beneath the water in baptism. Every ounce of passion I had bubbled out. Heritage Baptist Church had not baptized anyone in four years one person told me. It made me think. I had not personally baptized anyone in at least six years.
Six long years. Six years of preaching multiple times a week. Six years of presenting the gospel. Six years of no new converts. Six years of solid Bible preaching and teaching but no converts. I saw converts on my preaching travels and but not locally. I forgot the joy and celebration of a baptism service. I am resolved it will not be another six years before I baptize again.
Hallelujah to the Savior. Praise the Lord. Worthy is the Lamb who redeems. Exalted is the Lord of Hosts who rescues the perishing. All glory to Jesus, the Son of God, who still forgives sin along with saving and transforming lives. Praise Him who allowed this stammerer of the gospel to once again celebrate new birth in the act of baptism.
Saturday, December 29, 2018
28 Days To Trust And Obey - Day 28
But Moses said to the people, “Do not fear! Stand by and see the salvation of the Lord which He will accomplish for you today; for the Egyptians whom you have seen today, you will never see them again forever. The Lord will fight for you while you keep silent.” Exodus 14:13-14
There are going to be times when God is going to lead you into trying circumstances. In Exodus 13-14 God led the children of Israel out of Egypt, but to a place where they found their backs against the wall. Through His servant Moses, God led His people to a place where they were hemmed in – the shores of the Red Sea - and then Pharaoh changed his mind about giving Israel her freedom and pursued them with a vengeance (Exodus 14:5-9.) This scenario had all the makings of a slaughter.
Israel had no trained military personnel. They had been in captivity for four centuries. They were hemmed in geographically by mountains and the sea and it appeared that God, who was the one who led them to camp in this position, had abandoned His people to die (Exodus 13:17-22, Exodus 14:1-2.) The Egyptian army chased down Israel with six hundred select chariots, horses, and the full might of the army. This was an all out-assault - let there be no question as to the resolve that Pharaoh had to bring the Israelites back into bondage.
When the Israelite people saw the intimidating forces of the Egyptian army, they were very frightened (Exodus 14:10.) There was no escape route. They could not fight their way out. From their perspective, the situation looked absolutely hopeless, but it is in the midst of hopeless situations that God does some of His best work.
The Israelites began to grumble, doubt, and speak words of complaint against God and against Moses. God’s response was to call Moses to more faith. He was called to hold his staff above the Red Sea to divide it, with the assurance that the whole nation would cross on dry ground. God further assured Moses that He would deal with Egypt once and for all. In essence the Lord spoke through Moses, “Stand by and see the salvation of the Lord. The Lord will fight for you.”
Some of you need to hear that today. You are tempted to believe that your enemy is going to win. You see the impossible odds you are up against and furthermore you cannot see any way of escape. You are scared and doubt is defeating your faith. You want to complain but God is telling you to keep silent, to stand by and watch the miracle that He is about to do. God is about to fight on your behalf and in ways you could not have imagined. He is about to step in and flex His mighty muscles to move mightily in your midst. He is about to step in and save the day.
What do you see with your eyes? What is your enemy doing? Now that you have identified that, what do you believe? Jesus said in Mark 9:23 that all things are possible to the one who believes. Your eyes might be telling you that a great army is about to descend upon you and defeat you, but God is whispering “Do not believe what you see.” Do not believe what those around you might be saying. God is saying, “Choose to believe Me!”
God did help Israel that historic day. He held the Egyptians back with a pillar of cloud all night long. During this time Moses was called to hold his staff over the Red Sea and God could divided it. As the waters were held back, every single one of the children of Israel walked across dry land to safety on the other side, some of them only able to see the people in front of them and the people behind them. Yet even through the darkness of night the God of Israel was working on their behalf, saving them in a more magnificent fashion than any of them could ever have imagined.
Today we are able to refer to that story and see that God did indeed fight for His children, defeating a powerful, determined enemy. If you find yourself in the same position today, do you complain and murmur or do you pray your heart out and trust God with the outcome? He is not limited by your dead-end circumstances and He is not intimidated by the impossible odds you are up against. Stand by and see the salvation of the Lord as He fights for you.
It has been a long 28 day challenge. By this time I rejoice that some of you have seen your breakthrough come. I am saddened that others of you are still waiting. Brenda and I too are still waiting for ours. We press on in faith. We trust God will come through. It may be at what appears the last minute like with the children of Israel at the Red Sea. So let us stand back in faith and watch the salvation of the Lord.
Steps to Trust and Obey:
1. What enemy is pursuing you and what stands in the way of your victory?
2. Are you murmuring and complaining today or praying in faith?
3. Do you believe that you will see the salvation of the Lord?
4. What does it mean to you to read that God is fighting for you while you remain silent?
5. As you pray you have a choice to make. It is the same choice that you have been called to make multiple times over the past few weeks. Will you believe or doubt?
6. Does it look like it is too late for your breakthrough? Don't lose heart. God often comes through at what looks like the last possible minute.
There are going to be times when God is going to lead you into trying circumstances. In Exodus 13-14 God led the children of Israel out of Egypt, but to a place where they found their backs against the wall. Through His servant Moses, God led His people to a place where they were hemmed in – the shores of the Red Sea - and then Pharaoh changed his mind about giving Israel her freedom and pursued them with a vengeance (Exodus 14:5-9.) This scenario had all the makings of a slaughter.
Israel had no trained military personnel. They had been in captivity for four centuries. They were hemmed in geographically by mountains and the sea and it appeared that God, who was the one who led them to camp in this position, had abandoned His people to die (Exodus 13:17-22, Exodus 14:1-2.) The Egyptian army chased down Israel with six hundred select chariots, horses, and the full might of the army. This was an all out-assault - let there be no question as to the resolve that Pharaoh had to bring the Israelites back into bondage.
When the Israelite people saw the intimidating forces of the Egyptian army, they were very frightened (Exodus 14:10.) There was no escape route. They could not fight their way out. From their perspective, the situation looked absolutely hopeless, but it is in the midst of hopeless situations that God does some of His best work.
The Israelites began to grumble, doubt, and speak words of complaint against God and against Moses. God’s response was to call Moses to more faith. He was called to hold his staff above the Red Sea to divide it, with the assurance that the whole nation would cross on dry ground. God further assured Moses that He would deal with Egypt once and for all. In essence the Lord spoke through Moses, “Stand by and see the salvation of the Lord. The Lord will fight for you.”
Some of you need to hear that today. You are tempted to believe that your enemy is going to win. You see the impossible odds you are up against and furthermore you cannot see any way of escape. You are scared and doubt is defeating your faith. You want to complain but God is telling you to keep silent, to stand by and watch the miracle that He is about to do. God is about to fight on your behalf and in ways you could not have imagined. He is about to step in and flex His mighty muscles to move mightily in your midst. He is about to step in and save the day.
What do you see with your eyes? What is your enemy doing? Now that you have identified that, what do you believe? Jesus said in Mark 9:23 that all things are possible to the one who believes. Your eyes might be telling you that a great army is about to descend upon you and defeat you, but God is whispering “Do not believe what you see.” Do not believe what those around you might be saying. God is saying, “Choose to believe Me!”
God did help Israel that historic day. He held the Egyptians back with a pillar of cloud all night long. During this time Moses was called to hold his staff over the Red Sea and God could divided it. As the waters were held back, every single one of the children of Israel walked across dry land to safety on the other side, some of them only able to see the people in front of them and the people behind them. Yet even through the darkness of night the God of Israel was working on their behalf, saving them in a more magnificent fashion than any of them could ever have imagined.
Today we are able to refer to that story and see that God did indeed fight for His children, defeating a powerful, determined enemy. If you find yourself in the same position today, do you complain and murmur or do you pray your heart out and trust God with the outcome? He is not limited by your dead-end circumstances and He is not intimidated by the impossible odds you are up against. Stand by and see the salvation of the Lord as He fights for you.
It has been a long 28 day challenge. By this time I rejoice that some of you have seen your breakthrough come. I am saddened that others of you are still waiting. Brenda and I too are still waiting for ours. We press on in faith. We trust God will come through. It may be at what appears the last minute like with the children of Israel at the Red Sea. So let us stand back in faith and watch the salvation of the Lord.
Steps to Trust and Obey:
1. What enemy is pursuing you and what stands in the way of your victory?
2. Are you murmuring and complaining today or praying in faith?
3. Do you believe that you will see the salvation of the Lord?
4. What does it mean to you to read that God is fighting for you while you remain silent?
5. As you pray you have a choice to make. It is the same choice that you have been called to make multiple times over the past few weeks. Will you believe or doubt?
6. Does it look like it is too late for your breakthrough? Don't lose heart. God often comes through at what looks like the last possible minute.
Friday, December 28, 2018
28 Days To Trust And Obey - Day 27
I would have despaired unless I had believed that I would see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living. Wait for the Lord; be strong and let your heart take courage; yes, wait for the Lord.
Psalm 27:13-14
Congratulations! You have made it near the end of this challenge. Are you making the time to devote yourself to prayer as you never have before? If you are just reading the material you are missing out on the most important part of this journey. This material has been written to be a road map to point you in the direction of powerful encounters with God. Those will happen in the secret place as you seek Him and listen to Him. Do not take the path of least resistance and miss out on all the important things He wants do in you and how He longs to work powerfully in conjunction with prayer.
The challenge is not to lose heart. This is easier said than done. One day we are charging full steam ahead in faith and assurance that God is at work and then suddenly one day we begin to entertain doubt and focus on our negative circumstances. One thing leads to another, and the next thing you know we have abandoned all hope and our faith begins to sink faster than the Titanic.
David found himself in such a position - in Psalm 27 he says that he was close to despair. That word means that he was near giving up and quitting. Quitting looks like a great outlet sometimes. People quit on their marriages, their children, their jobs, friendships, on churches, and on service to God. To be completely honest there are some who have given up on God all together. They quit. So what kept David going in those tough times?
It was the hope that God would step in and show His goodness in his lifetime. The word “goodness” means beauty, the best, welfare. That is very significant because most Christians believe that they will see the goodness of God in eternity, but what about the here and now? We need to see God at work in everyday circumstances. I just returned from eating lunch at one our favorite Mexican food places. Our waitress happened to be the mother of one of our boys’ classmates. Just before we left she asked us to pray because her husband has just lost his job along with many others in his industry. I know of several people who have lost their jobs all around where I sit writing this material.
There is much to be discouraged about if you listen to the doom and gloom on the news, but in the middle of dark times can you find the smallest glimmer of faith and hope that God will not abandon you and will come to your rescue. David believed this and encouraged his heart with this truth.
Next, David counsels us to wait on the Lord. You could define “wait” as expect, patiently tarry, bind together.I have waited on the Lord more days than I can count. Days can turn into weeks and weeks into months. Months can fade into years and before you know it years can become decades. Decades can come and go in rapidity, constituting an entire lifetime. The trick is not the waiting itself – most of us have had to learn how to wait reluctantly. We wait in the lines at the drive-thru, we wait at the turn signals, we wait on our income tax returns, we wait for our meetings, on airplanes, in lines at amusement parks. We may not like it, but waiting is built into the fabric of life. Anybody can wait.
What God desires is that we learn to wait in hope and with expectation. God wants our faith to mature to such a level that we are able to wake up each day with expectation, thinking this might be the day that we see our miracle. God yearns for us to maintain this hope all day long and then if the answer is delayed and we are forced to wait again, that we are able to rise from our slumber with expectation and hope again the next day and the next, and so forth. That takes courage, and ironically that is just what David calls us to do - we must take courage. The word “courage” here means to fortify, be obstinate, to conquer.
We must fortify our hearts with truth in the times of discouragement. We fortify our hearts with Bible promises and truth about the nature of God. We must also become obstinate. If there is a land God has called you to possess, you have to become obstinate in faith, refusing to entertain doubt or failure. When our hearts are fortified and obstinate, sooner or later we are going to conquer our circumstances and gain the victory.
Steps to Trust and Obey:
1. What is the greatest challenge you are facing which discourages you?
2. How can God use your times of waiting for something good? Are you waiting actively in faith and with expectation or are you waiting passively in doubt and discouragement?
3. What Bible promises do you need to be reminded of to fortify your heart and give you obstinate faith? Search for a few of them, making them part of your prayers today.
4. What is God speaking to you and what steps of obedience is He leading you to take?
28 Days To Trust And Obey - Day 26
And this is the confidence which we have before Him, that, if we ask anything according to His will, He hears us. And if we know that He hears us in whatever we ask, we know that we have the requests which we have asked from Him.
I John 5:14-15
For several days I have been referring to the importance of knowing the mind and heart of God on a matter when you pray, or to say it another way, knowing the will of God when you pray. This is of critical importance when we pray. If we miss this we are missing out on one of the most precious promises concerning prayer in all the scriptures.
As we continue in this faith challenge of focused and intense prayer, I want to know that we are praying in the will of God. In fact, I want to be so assured that I am personally praying in the will of God, that our church is praying in the will of God, that you are praying in the will of God, that I am willing to be blunt and outspoken about the very things we are praying for. Can you do that with your prayer requests? I am not referring to the fact that you can tell others what you are praying for. Can you tell people in faith and with confidence that God is going to do what you're asking Him to do because you are praying in accordance with God’s desires? This means stepping out on a limb and if you get it wrong the limb could break, you could fall, and appear as a fool to those who were listening.
This is a hard call. What if you are not sure that you are praying according to God’s will and are therefore hesitant to be outspoken? My counsel would be to remain silent until you hear clearly what the will of God is in your situation. On the other hand, to clearly know the will of God on a matter but to remain silent about its outcome because of fear or unbelief is a sin. So why do we need to be outspoken if we have been assured we have prayed in the will of God on a matter?
Remember one of the points we looked at over the past couple of days - the main purpose of praying is that God will get the glory. God gets great glory when someone publicly states in faith what they are trusting God for before it ever comes to pass. That is faith according to [Heb 11:1] But before going public you had best make sure you have really heard the Lord speak.
Do you remember the story of Elijah, who faced down the false prophets of Baal on Mount Carmel? Elijah took a very public stand and challenged the false prophets to a showdown which would reveal the real God. What if Elijah had conjured up the whole idea in his head and was motivated by selfish ambition rather than the glorification of God? Can you imagine the shame and embarrassment he would have felt if God had not come through for Him? But God did come through and God did back up His servant with a demonstration of His power.
I would draw your attention to one small part of Elijah’s prayer found in [I Kings 18:36], “Oh Lord, the God of Abraham, Isaac and Israel, today let it be known that You are God in Israel, and that I am Your servant and that I have done these things at Your word.” Elijah had heard God call Him to take such a public stand because God was about to bring abundant glory to Himself and call a whole nation to realign their hearts and loyalties. Elijah asked the Lord to show the whole nation who the one true God was. That took some boldness, especially as the water was poured on the sacrifice and spilled over into the ditches. Elijah knew he was praying and acting according to God’s will and therefore he had the confidence to be outspoken. He also had the assurance that God would come through.
Oh, that God would inspire that kind of confidence in us, not only as we pray, but as we take public stands as well. I don’t know what God has asked you to believe Him for and to publicly declare. For me is that our church would pay off $101,000 of debt. For me personally that God would provide my wife with a miracle vehicle and my son Tucker with a car that is the desire of his heart. This is one of the primary things I am asking the Lord to do over this challenge. I have confidence that I am praying and taking a stand according to the will of God. There is a scripture that I have prayed and drawn comfort from over the past several weeks, and I hope you will take that same scripture and apply it to your situation. “Delight yourself in the Lord and He will give you the desires of your heart. [Ps 37:4]
When we have prayed in the will of God there are two assurances that will follow. First, we will know that God has heard our petitions, and secondly, we will know that we can have the requests that we have asked Him for. This is great news! We need God not only to hear our prayers but we need Him to answer our prayers which He has assured us He will do if we are praying according to His will.
Steps to Trust and Obey:
1. Are your prayers aligned with God’s will? If not, what do you need to readjust so you can pray with the confidence that what you are praying for is what God desires to be done?
2. Is God calling you to take some public stand to demonstrate your faith like Elijah was called to do? If so, what is it?
3. Pray through I John 5:14-15 today, trusting God to honor this promise.
I John 5:14-15
For several days I have been referring to the importance of knowing the mind and heart of God on a matter when you pray, or to say it another way, knowing the will of God when you pray. This is of critical importance when we pray. If we miss this we are missing out on one of the most precious promises concerning prayer in all the scriptures.
As we continue in this faith challenge of focused and intense prayer, I want to know that we are praying in the will of God. In fact, I want to be so assured that I am personally praying in the will of God, that our church is praying in the will of God, that you are praying in the will of God, that I am willing to be blunt and outspoken about the very things we are praying for. Can you do that with your prayer requests? I am not referring to the fact that you can tell others what you are praying for. Can you tell people in faith and with confidence that God is going to do what you're asking Him to do because you are praying in accordance with God’s desires? This means stepping out on a limb and if you get it wrong the limb could break, you could fall, and appear as a fool to those who were listening.
This is a hard call. What if you are not sure that you are praying according to God’s will and are therefore hesitant to be outspoken? My counsel would be to remain silent until you hear clearly what the will of God is in your situation. On the other hand, to clearly know the will of God on a matter but to remain silent about its outcome because of fear or unbelief is a sin. So why do we need to be outspoken if we have been assured we have prayed in the will of God on a matter?
Remember one of the points we looked at over the past couple of days - the main purpose of praying is that God will get the glory. God gets great glory when someone publicly states in faith what they are trusting God for before it ever comes to pass. That is faith according to [Heb 11:1] But before going public you had best make sure you have really heard the Lord speak.
Do you remember the story of Elijah, who faced down the false prophets of Baal on Mount Carmel? Elijah took a very public stand and challenged the false prophets to a showdown which would reveal the real God. What if Elijah had conjured up the whole idea in his head and was motivated by selfish ambition rather than the glorification of God? Can you imagine the shame and embarrassment he would have felt if God had not come through for Him? But God did come through and God did back up His servant with a demonstration of His power.
I would draw your attention to one small part of Elijah’s prayer found in [I Kings 18:36], “Oh Lord, the God of Abraham, Isaac and Israel, today let it be known that You are God in Israel, and that I am Your servant and that I have done these things at Your word.” Elijah had heard God call Him to take such a public stand because God was about to bring abundant glory to Himself and call a whole nation to realign their hearts and loyalties. Elijah asked the Lord to show the whole nation who the one true God was. That took some boldness, especially as the water was poured on the sacrifice and spilled over into the ditches. Elijah knew he was praying and acting according to God’s will and therefore he had the confidence to be outspoken. He also had the assurance that God would come through.
Oh, that God would inspire that kind of confidence in us, not only as we pray, but as we take public stands as well. I don’t know what God has asked you to believe Him for and to publicly declare. For me is that our church would pay off $101,000 of debt. For me personally that God would provide my wife with a miracle vehicle and my son Tucker with a car that is the desire of his heart. This is one of the primary things I am asking the Lord to do over this challenge. I have confidence that I am praying and taking a stand according to the will of God. There is a scripture that I have prayed and drawn comfort from over the past several weeks, and I hope you will take that same scripture and apply it to your situation. “Delight yourself in the Lord and He will give you the desires of your heart. [Ps 37:4]
When we have prayed in the will of God there are two assurances that will follow. First, we will know that God has heard our petitions, and secondly, we will know that we can have the requests that we have asked Him for. This is great news! We need God not only to hear our prayers but we need Him to answer our prayers which He has assured us He will do if we are praying according to His will.
Steps to Trust and Obey:
1. Are your prayers aligned with God’s will? If not, what do you need to readjust so you can pray with the confidence that what you are praying for is what God desires to be done?
2. Is God calling you to take some public stand to demonstrate your faith like Elijah was called to do? If so, what is it?
3. Pray through I John 5:14-15 today, trusting God to honor this promise.
Thursday, December 27, 2018
28 Days To Trust And Obey - Day 25
And being fully assured that what God had promised, He was able also to perform.
Romans 4:21
We have spent the last few days looking at the life of an ordinary man who received an extraordinary promise and lived with the full assurance that God was able to bring it to pass. It would be easy for us to put all of our attention on Abraham, but all of the attention should be focused on God. God gave Abraham the promise to begin with. He singled Abraham out for a destiny by His own sovereign will. Abraham did not do anything to receive God’s promise. God sustained Abraham’s faith during the trials and tests. God reminded Abraham over and over again of His promise and renewed his hope day by day. God heard. God answered. God gets the glory.
I want to live my life with the full assurance that what God promises He is also able to deliver. What this verse means when it says that Abraham was “fully assured” is that Abraham fully believed that God would carry out the promise of giving him a son to the end. Abraham knew that God would bless him with the desire of his heart in a little boy, even though he was old and his wife was old. But what was old age to Abraham when compared to the promise of God?
The word “promise” simply means the announcement that one is about to do or finish something. Remember, this was spoken to Abraham over two decades before it was fulfilled. In like manner, I know there are things God has announced to you that He is about to do or complete. Just because you and I may not see it right this moment does not lessen the fact that it will come to pass if God has so promised. What encouragement that brings me today!
Why? Because our God is able. He is able to deliver on His promises, unlike politicians who promise anything and everything to get elected and then start backpedaling the moment they are elected to office. If God has announced that He is going to do it, He is able and willing to do what He says, and He says what He means to do.
Knowing this, why do we entertain doubts that He is going to fail us? I challenge you today to search the scriptures. Search them methodically and carefully and please make note of any person in the Bible you can discover whom God failed or did not keep His promises to. If God was faithful in the past, then I challenge you to read history and discover a person or group of persons whom God let down and did not do what He said He would do. Among those living today, can you find one true believer who will say God broke His promise to me? He always does what He announces He is going to do.
If you can find such a person, that would invalidate the entire Word of God. 1 Thessalonians 5:24 says that God is faithful. He is trustworthy. He is dependable and reliable. If at any point in history God failed someone, it cannot be said that He is one hundred percent faithful and reliable.
I need to be reminded of this truth from time to time. I need to be reminded that God will always come through according to His will and in His time. Abraham waited around twenty-five years for his miracle, but Isaac came. Maybe you still find yourself waiting on God to do and complete the thing He has promised. He is able, but are we fully assured? That will make all the difference between waiting and hoping or living frantically and with anxiety.
Steps to Trust and Obey:
1. What is it that you are fully assured that God is going to do on your behalf?
2. What convinces you that God is able and that He is willing to do what you are asking?
3. What is it that God has promised by announcing what He is going to do for you?
4. What is the Lord speaking to you and what is your response to Him today?
Romans 4:21
We have spent the last few days looking at the life of an ordinary man who received an extraordinary promise and lived with the full assurance that God was able to bring it to pass. It would be easy for us to put all of our attention on Abraham, but all of the attention should be focused on God. God gave Abraham the promise to begin with. He singled Abraham out for a destiny by His own sovereign will. Abraham did not do anything to receive God’s promise. God sustained Abraham’s faith during the trials and tests. God reminded Abraham over and over again of His promise and renewed his hope day by day. God heard. God answered. God gets the glory.
I want to live my life with the full assurance that what God promises He is also able to deliver. What this verse means when it says that Abraham was “fully assured” is that Abraham fully believed that God would carry out the promise of giving him a son to the end. Abraham knew that God would bless him with the desire of his heart in a little boy, even though he was old and his wife was old. But what was old age to Abraham when compared to the promise of God?
The word “promise” simply means the announcement that one is about to do or finish something. Remember, this was spoken to Abraham over two decades before it was fulfilled. In like manner, I know there are things God has announced to you that He is about to do or complete. Just because you and I may not see it right this moment does not lessen the fact that it will come to pass if God has so promised. What encouragement that brings me today!
Why? Because our God is able. He is able to deliver on His promises, unlike politicians who promise anything and everything to get elected and then start backpedaling the moment they are elected to office. If God has announced that He is going to do it, He is able and willing to do what He says, and He says what He means to do.
Knowing this, why do we entertain doubts that He is going to fail us? I challenge you today to search the scriptures. Search them methodically and carefully and please make note of any person in the Bible you can discover whom God failed or did not keep His promises to. If God was faithful in the past, then I challenge you to read history and discover a person or group of persons whom God let down and did not do what He said He would do. Among those living today, can you find one true believer who will say God broke His promise to me? He always does what He announces He is going to do.
If you can find such a person, that would invalidate the entire Word of God. 1 Thessalonians 5:24 says that God is faithful. He is trustworthy. He is dependable and reliable. If at any point in history God failed someone, it cannot be said that He is one hundred percent faithful and reliable.
I need to be reminded of this truth from time to time. I need to be reminded that God will always come through according to His will and in His time. Abraham waited around twenty-five years for his miracle, but Isaac came. Maybe you still find yourself waiting on God to do and complete the thing He has promised. He is able, but are we fully assured? That will make all the difference between waiting and hoping or living frantically and with anxiety.
Steps to Trust and Obey:
1. What is it that you are fully assured that God is going to do on your behalf?
2. What convinces you that God is able and that He is willing to do what you are asking?
3. What is it that God has promised by announcing what He is going to do for you?
4. What is the Lord speaking to you and what is your response to Him today?
Tuesday, December 25, 2018
28 Days To Trust And Obey - Day 24
Yet with respect to the promise of God he did not waver in unbelief but grew strong in faith giving glory to God.
Romans 4:20
I hope that yesterday was an encouraging day as you locked onto some of God’s promises. They are invaluable in helping you to walk and to pray with faith. That is why regular sessions of digging into the word of God are so important. Over and over, we must dig into the truth of the Bible so that three things will happen.
First of all, as we dig into the scriptures and our souls are nourished from the savory life-sustaining truth of scripture, we will not waver back and forth in unbelief or faithlessness. When our minds have been saturated with the truth of God’s word, when our souls have begun to drift away from the course of belief, we begin to waver or stagger. In the Greek language that simply means to separate or to withdraw from. When you and I feel the first tugs in our souls to withdraw from seeking God and studying His law, then we are on a collision course with unbelief and we begin to waver.
Look back over the last few weeks - the times when you have had the most faith were you continually in the word of God and clinging to His precious promises? When you have wavered in unbelief did you begin neglecting your Bible study time? If you are living a roller coaster ride in your walk with the Lord, up today and down tomorrow according to your feelings and your circumstances. God wants to offer you something better. He wants to give you a consistent and enduring faith, but this kind of faith must be nourished with prolonged times of prayer and walking through the word of God. There are no short cuts here. You cannot short-change the route of daily prayer and scripture reading if you want to have a consistent faith that endures with hope against hope.
Clinging to God’s word also causes us grow strong in faith. I think about the powerful examples of George Mueller and George Whitfield, and as I read about their lives I see that both of these men read the scriptures incessantly. Whitfield read the Bible while kneeling so he could pray over different passages as they spoke to him. Mueller read about Whitfield and adopted the same practice in the latter years of his life. Mueller reportedly read through the entire Bible one hundred times and then read through it again another one hundred times while kneeling. Is it any wonder these two men were used powerfully by God?
If you are committed to growing a strong faith you will not do it apart from devoting yourself to being immersed in the Bible. But you must do more than just read it, you must also believe it. When God gives you a word or a promise, you must trust that promise like your life depended on it. Many times I have written down the promises of God in my journal and reminded myself of them daily. In fact, when God gives me one on those promises I highlight it with a green marker after recording it in my journal and review those green highlighted sections often. This helps to grow and strengthen my faith. By continually reminding me of what God has assured me He wants to do, God empowers and enables me to believe Him for it. There is no way we can exaggerate the importance the role God’s truth plays in making our faith mighty.
There is a third thing that takes place once we have seized God’s promise, grown consistent in our trust, and stronger in our belief. We are able to give Him glory through the answers to our prayers. I have referred to this point many times over this days in this challenge. Today I would like to take a closer look at what it means to give God glory. The word “glory” means honor resulting from a good opinion. God wants this whole earth to look to Him, to recognize Him, and honor Him from the good opinions people have formed about Him. Nobody or no thing in this world deserves to be more honored and well thought of than God. If you and I were to have this opinion about ourselves, that would be sick. If we lived our every day wanting to be honored, well thought of, and for people to have a good opinion of us, there would be something really wrong in our psyches. If we tried to steer every conversation back on ourselves, to exalt, promote, and honor ourselves among people, that would become nauseating. So why is this self-promotion acceptable for God? Why does God make His glory such a big deal in general and more specifically, a big deal for our prayers? Because He deserves it.
God is the grandest reality in this universe. The best thing for this entire planet is God and God knows that all too well. God is not some insecure deity fighting for His place among all the other gods and idols in this world, He is so magnificent that in an expression of His love for people, He exalts, promotes, honors, and praises His name. He knows that as His fame spreads and His name is glorified, people will be drawn to Him and ultimately lost, sinful, hell-bound people will hear and eventually come to repentance and salvation. How? By the mouths of God’s people and by His creation. The mountains, oceans, streams, prairies, deserts, forests, and every place in between shout glory to God. God’s people praise and exalt God in response to answered prayer all the time. That is the ultimate end of prayer - God gets the glory. The one doing the praying does not get the glory. The answer to the prayer does not get the glory. God, who hears, who answers, and who does the impossible, gets the glory.
Steps to Trust and Obey:
1. What role is God’s glory playing in your prayers?
2. What role is God’s Word playing in strengthening your faith?
3. Is God speaking to you today? If so, what is He saying and what is He calling you to do?
4. In what ways will you seek to glorify Him today?
Romans 4:20
I hope that yesterday was an encouraging day as you locked onto some of God’s promises. They are invaluable in helping you to walk and to pray with faith. That is why regular sessions of digging into the word of God are so important. Over and over, we must dig into the truth of the Bible so that three things will happen.
First of all, as we dig into the scriptures and our souls are nourished from the savory life-sustaining truth of scripture, we will not waver back and forth in unbelief or faithlessness. When our minds have been saturated with the truth of God’s word, when our souls have begun to drift away from the course of belief, we begin to waver or stagger. In the Greek language that simply means to separate or to withdraw from. When you and I feel the first tugs in our souls to withdraw from seeking God and studying His law, then we are on a collision course with unbelief and we begin to waver.
Look back over the last few weeks - the times when you have had the most faith were you continually in the word of God and clinging to His precious promises? When you have wavered in unbelief did you begin neglecting your Bible study time? If you are living a roller coaster ride in your walk with the Lord, up today and down tomorrow according to your feelings and your circumstances. God wants to offer you something better. He wants to give you a consistent and enduring faith, but this kind of faith must be nourished with prolonged times of prayer and walking through the word of God. There are no short cuts here. You cannot short-change the route of daily prayer and scripture reading if you want to have a consistent faith that endures with hope against hope.
Clinging to God’s word also causes us grow strong in faith. I think about the powerful examples of George Mueller and George Whitfield, and as I read about their lives I see that both of these men read the scriptures incessantly. Whitfield read the Bible while kneeling so he could pray over different passages as they spoke to him. Mueller read about Whitfield and adopted the same practice in the latter years of his life. Mueller reportedly read through the entire Bible one hundred times and then read through it again another one hundred times while kneeling. Is it any wonder these two men were used powerfully by God?
If you are committed to growing a strong faith you will not do it apart from devoting yourself to being immersed in the Bible. But you must do more than just read it, you must also believe it. When God gives you a word or a promise, you must trust that promise like your life depended on it. Many times I have written down the promises of God in my journal and reminded myself of them daily. In fact, when God gives me one on those promises I highlight it with a green marker after recording it in my journal and review those green highlighted sections often. This helps to grow and strengthen my faith. By continually reminding me of what God has assured me He wants to do, God empowers and enables me to believe Him for it. There is no way we can exaggerate the importance the role God’s truth plays in making our faith mighty.
There is a third thing that takes place once we have seized God’s promise, grown consistent in our trust, and stronger in our belief. We are able to give Him glory through the answers to our prayers. I have referred to this point many times over this days in this challenge. Today I would like to take a closer look at what it means to give God glory. The word “glory” means honor resulting from a good opinion. God wants this whole earth to look to Him, to recognize Him, and honor Him from the good opinions people have formed about Him. Nobody or no thing in this world deserves to be more honored and well thought of than God. If you and I were to have this opinion about ourselves, that would be sick. If we lived our every day wanting to be honored, well thought of, and for people to have a good opinion of us, there would be something really wrong in our psyches. If we tried to steer every conversation back on ourselves, to exalt, promote, and honor ourselves among people, that would become nauseating. So why is this self-promotion acceptable for God? Why does God make His glory such a big deal in general and more specifically, a big deal for our prayers? Because He deserves it.
God is the grandest reality in this universe. The best thing for this entire planet is God and God knows that all too well. God is not some insecure deity fighting for His place among all the other gods and idols in this world, He is so magnificent that in an expression of His love for people, He exalts, promotes, honors, and praises His name. He knows that as His fame spreads and His name is glorified, people will be drawn to Him and ultimately lost, sinful, hell-bound people will hear and eventually come to repentance and salvation. How? By the mouths of God’s people and by His creation. The mountains, oceans, streams, prairies, deserts, forests, and every place in between shout glory to God. God’s people praise and exalt God in response to answered prayer all the time. That is the ultimate end of prayer - God gets the glory. The one doing the praying does not get the glory. The answer to the prayer does not get the glory. God, who hears, who answers, and who does the impossible, gets the glory.
Steps to Trust and Obey:
1. What role is God’s glory playing in your prayers?
2. What role is God’s Word playing in strengthening your faith?
3. Is God speaking to you today? If so, what is He saying and what is He calling you to do?
4. In what ways will you seek to glorify Him today?
Sunday, December 23, 2018
28 Days To Trust And Obey - Day 23
Yet with respect to the promise of God, he did not waver in unbelief but grew strong in faith, giving glory to God.
Romans 4:20
We are going to take this verse and break it up in two different parts. The second half of the verse we will look at tomorrow. Today our focus is going to be on the promises of God. God is the ultimate promise keeper. [1 Thessalonians 5:24] tells us that God is faithful or dependable and reliable. When He makes a promise to one of His children, you can count on that promise coming true. This was true for those who lived in biblical times as well as true for you and I today.
The one thing that kept Abraham going and kept giving new strength to his faith was the promise God had made to him. That was the thing he kept going back to. That was what kept giving hope against hope and keeps him from becoming weak in faith.
Today’s challenge will be a little shorter than the rest to give you ample opportunity to read and meditate on a few of the many promises God has made to you. I am only going to write out scripture references. It will be up to you to read, and more importantly to pray through these scriptures until the truth sinks into your soul and bones giving you new vigor in praying, living, and serving.
Please do not fall for the temptation to rush through these scriptures. The enemy would rather you do almost anything than to pray and slowly read the truth of God’s Word, especially out loud. Speak it, pray it, embrace it, memorize it, and live it.
Luke 6:38, II Corinthians 9:7, Psalm 37:25, I Timothy 6:17-18, Matthew 6:1-4, Psalm 46:1-3, Psalm 138:7, Psalm 55:22, John 16:33, Psalm 9:9, Isaiah 43:1-3, Psalm 31:24, Philippians 4:12-13, James 1:5-6, Hebrews 12:2-3, Numbers 23:19, Psalm 119:160, Psalm 119:89-90, II Corinthians 1:20, Isaiah 46:11, Isaiah 42:16, Psalm 42:11, Psalm 34:19, Psalm 18:2, Psalm 31:4, James 5:16, Psalm 34:17, Psalm 145:18-19
Steps to Trust and Obey:
1. Did the Lord use any of the above scriptures to speak to you? If so, which ones?
2. What did the Lord do to your faith?
3. What promises will you take away from this day to strengthen your trust in God?
Romans 4:20
We are going to take this verse and break it up in two different parts. The second half of the verse we will look at tomorrow. Today our focus is going to be on the promises of God. God is the ultimate promise keeper. [1 Thessalonians 5:24] tells us that God is faithful or dependable and reliable. When He makes a promise to one of His children, you can count on that promise coming true. This was true for those who lived in biblical times as well as true for you and I today.
The one thing that kept Abraham going and kept giving new strength to his faith was the promise God had made to him. That was the thing he kept going back to. That was what kept giving hope against hope and keeps him from becoming weak in faith.
Today’s challenge will be a little shorter than the rest to give you ample opportunity to read and meditate on a few of the many promises God has made to you. I am only going to write out scripture references. It will be up to you to read, and more importantly to pray through these scriptures until the truth sinks into your soul and bones giving you new vigor in praying, living, and serving.
Please do not fall for the temptation to rush through these scriptures. The enemy would rather you do almost anything than to pray and slowly read the truth of God’s Word, especially out loud. Speak it, pray it, embrace it, memorize it, and live it.
Luke 6:38, II Corinthians 9:7, Psalm 37:25, I Timothy 6:17-18, Matthew 6:1-4, Psalm 46:1-3, Psalm 138:7, Psalm 55:22, John 16:33, Psalm 9:9, Isaiah 43:1-3, Psalm 31:24, Philippians 4:12-13, James 1:5-6, Hebrews 12:2-3, Numbers 23:19, Psalm 119:160, Psalm 119:89-90, II Corinthians 1:20, Isaiah 46:11, Isaiah 42:16, Psalm 42:11, Psalm 34:19, Psalm 18:2, Psalm 31:4, James 5:16, Psalm 34:17, Psalm 145:18-19
Steps to Trust and Obey:
1. Did the Lord use any of the above scriptures to speak to you? If so, which ones?
2. What did the Lord do to your faith?
3. What promises will you take away from this day to strengthen your trust in God?
Saturday, December 22, 2018
28 Days To Trust And Obey - Day 22
Without becoming weak in faith he contemplated his own body, now as good as dead since he was about a hundred years old, and the deadness of Sarah’s womb.
Romans 4:19
There is something combating your hope today. For Abraham it was the fact that he was one hundred years old and that Sarah was ninety and her womb was dead. The facts said that they would never have a legitimate heir, but faith said to keep trusting God. This is ludicrous thinking. Nobody reading this would dare think of walking into a rest home facility filled with senior adults and believe that new life would come from one of the residents. That simply does not happen. Abraham was too old and Sarah’s womb was barren.
Abraham was well aware of the complications. In fact, he contemplated his age and the deadness of Sarah’s womb often. He didn’t put his head in the sand and pretend that he was still a young buck and she was still the fair maiden from back in their younger days. Abraham could look in the mirror and contemplate the wrinkles, the loss of vigor and strength, even the loss of desire for his wife while also looking at Sarah and watching her prime child-bearing years come and go with no children. Surely Abraham heard Sarah’s cries at night when she thought he was sleeping and he saw the jealousy that was stirred in her when her servant gave birth to Abraham’s son and she could not compete. Abraham spent many hours contemplating his situation, just like we do.
Abraham did it differently, though; he did so without becoming weak in the faith. No matter what he saw, what he felt as he got up day after day, he did not lose hope and his faith did not become feeble. That is amazing. How did he cling to hope, keep believing, and not grow weak? Hear this, He believed what God had said to Him and promised.
Yesterday you were challenged to keep hoping regardless of the state of your circumstances. Today the challenge is that we contemplate our circumstances but do not become feeble in our faith. In fact, we need to do the opposite. We need to be strengthened in our faith to keep believing with more conviction than we ever have. What has God promised? What do the eyes of your faith see? You might not be able to ignore the facts but you can trump the facts with faith. In this moment God is longing to speak to your heart. He wants to shore up sagging faith. He wants to help us keep going and not falter now. God is not the author of weak faith but He is willing to make provision even now to bolster our belief that He will come through.
Maybe over the past several days this has begun to sound like a broken record. You might be tired of hearing this same message packaged in different ways. Maybe you are tired of trusting and hoping. Maybe you are just about to forget this whole challenge. You have done well. You have nearly completed all of it and for the most part you did so in faith. Today something has changed, though. You are tired. Your obstacles are bigger than ever, and you have lost your confidence. That is exactly why what Abraham did, or what I should say, what God did in Abraham is all the more amazing. He remained strong in his faith for about two and a half decades.
God can do that in you and me if we are courageous enough to linger with Him today and the days that follow. If we are willing to listen to Him and seek Him today, He can and longs to help our faith become strong, mighty, and consistent. Once again we are at a crossroads and what we do next is critical.
Steps to Trust and Obey:
1. What is the condition of your faith today? What do you need God to do in order to strengthen your trust? Are you willing to linger with Him today to allow Him to minister to you?
2. If you are suffering from weak faith, where did you lose it? What happened to caused you to lose confidence in Christ to keep His word to you?
3. Are you willing to forget your obstacles and by God’s help believe Him one more time?
4. Do you sense Him speaking to you today? What is He saying and what is He asking of you?
Romans 4:19
There is something combating your hope today. For Abraham it was the fact that he was one hundred years old and that Sarah was ninety and her womb was dead. The facts said that they would never have a legitimate heir, but faith said to keep trusting God. This is ludicrous thinking. Nobody reading this would dare think of walking into a rest home facility filled with senior adults and believe that new life would come from one of the residents. That simply does not happen. Abraham was too old and Sarah’s womb was barren.
Abraham was well aware of the complications. In fact, he contemplated his age and the deadness of Sarah’s womb often. He didn’t put his head in the sand and pretend that he was still a young buck and she was still the fair maiden from back in their younger days. Abraham could look in the mirror and contemplate the wrinkles, the loss of vigor and strength, even the loss of desire for his wife while also looking at Sarah and watching her prime child-bearing years come and go with no children. Surely Abraham heard Sarah’s cries at night when she thought he was sleeping and he saw the jealousy that was stirred in her when her servant gave birth to Abraham’s son and she could not compete. Abraham spent many hours contemplating his situation, just like we do.
Abraham did it differently, though; he did so without becoming weak in the faith. No matter what he saw, what he felt as he got up day after day, he did not lose hope and his faith did not become feeble. That is amazing. How did he cling to hope, keep believing, and not grow weak? Hear this, He believed what God had said to Him and promised.
Yesterday you were challenged to keep hoping regardless of the state of your circumstances. Today the challenge is that we contemplate our circumstances but do not become feeble in our faith. In fact, we need to do the opposite. We need to be strengthened in our faith to keep believing with more conviction than we ever have. What has God promised? What do the eyes of your faith see? You might not be able to ignore the facts but you can trump the facts with faith. In this moment God is longing to speak to your heart. He wants to shore up sagging faith. He wants to help us keep going and not falter now. God is not the author of weak faith but He is willing to make provision even now to bolster our belief that He will come through.
Maybe over the past several days this has begun to sound like a broken record. You might be tired of hearing this same message packaged in different ways. Maybe you are tired of trusting and hoping. Maybe you are just about to forget this whole challenge. You have done well. You have nearly completed all of it and for the most part you did so in faith. Today something has changed, though. You are tired. Your obstacles are bigger than ever, and you have lost your confidence. That is exactly why what Abraham did, or what I should say, what God did in Abraham is all the more amazing. He remained strong in his faith for about two and a half decades.
God can do that in you and me if we are courageous enough to linger with Him today and the days that follow. If we are willing to listen to Him and seek Him today, He can and longs to help our faith become strong, mighty, and consistent. Once again we are at a crossroads and what we do next is critical.
Steps to Trust and Obey:
1. What is the condition of your faith today? What do you need God to do in order to strengthen your trust? Are you willing to linger with Him today to allow Him to minister to you?
2. If you are suffering from weak faith, where did you lose it? What happened to caused you to lose confidence in Christ to keep His word to you?
3. Are you willing to forget your obstacles and by God’s help believe Him one more time?
4. Do you sense Him speaking to you today? What is He saying and what is He asking of you?
28 Days To Trust And Obey - Day 21
In hope against hope he believed, so that he might become a father of many nations according to that which had been spoken, ‘So shall your descendants be.’
Romans 4:18
God has spoken over and over again over these past several days. Requests have been honed, new desires planted in our souls by the Lord Himself, and we have been challenged not to believe what we see but to believe Who we hear. By now we have a basic understanding about what the word “believe” means.
God spoke a promise to Abraham in [Genesis 12:1-3], when He promised that Abraham would be made into a great nation. But as the years passed, Abraham had no heir (no son) but he still had a promise from God. Over the years the Lord continued to give reassurance concerning this promise. A year turned into two, five, seven, ten, fifteen, twenty. Well over two decades came and went and Abraham still did not have the desire of his heart; a son. Yes, he did fail to trust the Lord and he did lean on his understanding by trusting in Sarah’s maidservant and was given a son through her. God was clear to tell Abraham that son was not the promised heir.
More waiting. More praying. Abraham grew old, Sarah grew old and everything about them physically told them that God had not come through. But in hope against hope, Abraham believed God. His body was old and worn out, well past his sexual prime. Sarah’s body was many years past her child-bearing years, yet still Abraham had no reason to keep hoping or to keep believing except he had a word from God.
For over two decades all he had was a promise from a God. When he should have abandoned hope, when his eyes deceived him, when it seemed that God had forsaken him, he kept praying, kept hoping, and kept believing. Many of us have given up hope a lot sooner than two decades. Some of us may have struggled to maintain trust and hope for two months, much less two decades.
I know the Lord has promised things and called us to a hope that can only be sustained by faith. For many the only legitimate reason you have to hold on to any hope at all is that God has spoken to you and promised you something. Much of what I have been praying for in my own personal life concerns things that God has promised me and spoken to me about, but for a long time I have not had one shred of physical evidence that those things He has spoken and promised will ever come to pass. Some of these promises I have been praying over for years and others for only a few months. In either case the only hope I have is that God has spoken and spoken often.
I know Abraham was not perfect, but you cannot help but admire this man’s confidence in God to come through. In hope against hope he kept asking and kept trusting. Many of you are at this point. You have no reasonable hope that your prayers will be answered, but is God calling you to hope against hope and to keep on believing Him for the impossible? Is God calling you to forget what you see but to believe by faith what you have heard from Him? Once again you are faced with a decision - do you hope against hope and believe or do you believe what you see and forget what God has promised you?
Steps to Trust and Obey:
1. Write out any promises God has made to you in these days.
2. List all the reasons you should not maintain hope. Contrast that with another list of all the reasons God is giving you to maintain hope?
3. What do you see? What do you believe?
4. What are you going to do now? How will you pray today?
Romans 4:18
God has spoken over and over again over these past several days. Requests have been honed, new desires planted in our souls by the Lord Himself, and we have been challenged not to believe what we see but to believe Who we hear. By now we have a basic understanding about what the word “believe” means.
God spoke a promise to Abraham in [Genesis 12:1-3], when He promised that Abraham would be made into a great nation. But as the years passed, Abraham had no heir (no son) but he still had a promise from God. Over the years the Lord continued to give reassurance concerning this promise. A year turned into two, five, seven, ten, fifteen, twenty. Well over two decades came and went and Abraham still did not have the desire of his heart; a son. Yes, he did fail to trust the Lord and he did lean on his understanding by trusting in Sarah’s maidservant and was given a son through her. God was clear to tell Abraham that son was not the promised heir.
More waiting. More praying. Abraham grew old, Sarah grew old and everything about them physically told them that God had not come through. But in hope against hope, Abraham believed God. His body was old and worn out, well past his sexual prime. Sarah’s body was many years past her child-bearing years, yet still Abraham had no reason to keep hoping or to keep believing except he had a word from God.
For over two decades all he had was a promise from a God. When he should have abandoned hope, when his eyes deceived him, when it seemed that God had forsaken him, he kept praying, kept hoping, and kept believing. Many of us have given up hope a lot sooner than two decades. Some of us may have struggled to maintain trust and hope for two months, much less two decades.
I know the Lord has promised things and called us to a hope that can only be sustained by faith. For many the only legitimate reason you have to hold on to any hope at all is that God has spoken to you and promised you something. Much of what I have been praying for in my own personal life concerns things that God has promised me and spoken to me about, but for a long time I have not had one shred of physical evidence that those things He has spoken and promised will ever come to pass. Some of these promises I have been praying over for years and others for only a few months. In either case the only hope I have is that God has spoken and spoken often.
I know Abraham was not perfect, but you cannot help but admire this man’s confidence in God to come through. In hope against hope he kept asking and kept trusting. Many of you are at this point. You have no reasonable hope that your prayers will be answered, but is God calling you to hope against hope and to keep on believing Him for the impossible? Is God calling you to forget what you see but to believe by faith what you have heard from Him? Once again you are faced with a decision - do you hope against hope and believe or do you believe what you see and forget what God has promised you?
Steps to Trust and Obey:
1. Write out any promises God has made to you in these days.
2. List all the reasons you should not maintain hope. Contrast that with another list of all the reasons God is giving you to maintain hope?
3. What do you see? What do you believe?
4. What are you going to do now? How will you pray today?
Friday, December 21, 2018
28 Days To Trust And Obey - Day 20
Whatever you ask in My name, that will I do, so that the Father may be glorified in the Son. If you ask Me anything in My name I will do it.
John 14:13-14
What are you asking God to do today? What burdens burn in your heart and moves you to pray this day? These two verses are extremely powerful and encouraging for us to keep pressing into the throne room of God and asking for help in our time of need.
At the very heart of prayer is a desire or a fierce craving for something. When these desires collide with our confidence that God not only can bless, that He not only does bless, but that He WILL bless, miracles happen. We must believe that when we ask God for anything in His name, we can be assured that Jesus wants to answer to glorify the Father. Answered prayers exalt the Father. In order for God to be more glorified, there must be answers to the things we ask for.
I hope by this time this should not even have to be said, but remember when praying through verses like this we must make sure we are praying according to the will of God. When we pray according to the will of God, we can ask ANYTHING in His name and be confident that the Lord will answer. He is able to do anything. ANYTHING! That means that what you are praying for and what I am praying for is not only in the realm of possibilities but it is also probable.
E.M. Bounds was a mighty man of prayer. He made it his habit to pray from 4:00 a.m. to 7:00 a.m. most days. He was a pastor serving in a rather obscure church who just happened to write some books on prayer. They were not widely read during his lifetime but they have been greatly used after his death. Read what he wrote about trust in the Lord: “Trust looks to receive the thing asked for and gets it. Trust is not a belief that God can bless, that He will bless, but that HE does bless, here and now. Trust always operates in the present tense. Hope looks forward to the future. Trust looks to the present. Hope expects. Trust possesses. Trust receives what prayer acquires. So that what prayer needs, at all times, is abiding and abundant trust.”[1]
What does genuine trust do? It receives, possesses, hopes, and expects that God will come through. When we pray in Jesus’ name, or according to His desires, we can confidently expect the blessings to follow. That is the true nature of prayer.
Bounds goes on to expound the thought about believing God for answers to specific desires. “Desire is not merely a simple wish; it is a deep-seated craving; an intense longing for attainment. In the realm of spiritual affairs, it is an important adjunct to prayer. So important is it, that one might say, almost, that desire is an absolute essential of prayer. Desire precedes prayer, accompanies it, is followed by it. Desire goes before prayer, and by it, is created and intensified. Prayer is the oral expression of desire. Desire is silent. Prayer is heard; desire unheard. The deeper the desire, the stronger the prayer.”[2]
Many of us have desires and they remain silent. You might even substitute the word “wish” for the word “desire.” We wish for things. Wishing and desiring, however, are not praying. Praying is taking the trust attached to our desire that lifts our souls to heaven to bring the longing desire of our hearts out into the open in God’s presence. Trust gives us the confident assurance that God will not only hear but come through.
When we pray in the name and authority of Jesus, we can expect that God is going to intervene. God will come through. God will move what needs to be moved, add what needs to be added, give what needs to be given, and empower whoever needs to be empowered. Today, do not let your desires or wishes remain silent. Take them to the Lord in prayer and ask Him in faith and the authority of His name to keep His promise in [John 14:13-14]. God is not glorified by our wishing or desiring. He is glorified by His doing and His answering in response to our faith-filled desires voiced through prayer.
What are you craving, hankering, desiring, longing, and yearning for God to do? Will you take this time to voice those cravings with intense praying, pleading for God to glorify His name through your asking and His answering?
Steps to Trust and Obey:
1. What are you craving for God to do? Is this in the silent desire state or are you bringing it out into the open by prayer?
2. Do you really trust God to bless you?
3. How does answering your desire bring more glory to the Father?
4. What is the Lord speaking to you today? What is He calling you to do in faith?
[1] E.M. Bounds, A Treasury of Prayer; The Best of E.M. Bounds (compiled by Leonard Ravenhill). Minneapolis, Bethany House Publishers: 1990, p. 132.
[2] Ibid., p. 132.
John 14:13-14
What are you asking God to do today? What burdens burn in your heart and moves you to pray this day? These two verses are extremely powerful and encouraging for us to keep pressing into the throne room of God and asking for help in our time of need.
At the very heart of prayer is a desire or a fierce craving for something. When these desires collide with our confidence that God not only can bless, that He not only does bless, but that He WILL bless, miracles happen. We must believe that when we ask God for anything in His name, we can be assured that Jesus wants to answer to glorify the Father. Answered prayers exalt the Father. In order for God to be more glorified, there must be answers to the things we ask for.
I hope by this time this should not even have to be said, but remember when praying through verses like this we must make sure we are praying according to the will of God. When we pray according to the will of God, we can ask ANYTHING in His name and be confident that the Lord will answer. He is able to do anything. ANYTHING! That means that what you are praying for and what I am praying for is not only in the realm of possibilities but it is also probable.
E.M. Bounds was a mighty man of prayer. He made it his habit to pray from 4:00 a.m. to 7:00 a.m. most days. He was a pastor serving in a rather obscure church who just happened to write some books on prayer. They were not widely read during his lifetime but they have been greatly used after his death. Read what he wrote about trust in the Lord: “Trust looks to receive the thing asked for and gets it. Trust is not a belief that God can bless, that He will bless, but that HE does bless, here and now. Trust always operates in the present tense. Hope looks forward to the future. Trust looks to the present. Hope expects. Trust possesses. Trust receives what prayer acquires. So that what prayer needs, at all times, is abiding and abundant trust.”[1]
What does genuine trust do? It receives, possesses, hopes, and expects that God will come through. When we pray in Jesus’ name, or according to His desires, we can confidently expect the blessings to follow. That is the true nature of prayer.
Bounds goes on to expound the thought about believing God for answers to specific desires. “Desire is not merely a simple wish; it is a deep-seated craving; an intense longing for attainment. In the realm of spiritual affairs, it is an important adjunct to prayer. So important is it, that one might say, almost, that desire is an absolute essential of prayer. Desire precedes prayer, accompanies it, is followed by it. Desire goes before prayer, and by it, is created and intensified. Prayer is the oral expression of desire. Desire is silent. Prayer is heard; desire unheard. The deeper the desire, the stronger the prayer.”[2]
Many of us have desires and they remain silent. You might even substitute the word “wish” for the word “desire.” We wish for things. Wishing and desiring, however, are not praying. Praying is taking the trust attached to our desire that lifts our souls to heaven to bring the longing desire of our hearts out into the open in God’s presence. Trust gives us the confident assurance that God will not only hear but come through.
When we pray in the name and authority of Jesus, we can expect that God is going to intervene. God will come through. God will move what needs to be moved, add what needs to be added, give what needs to be given, and empower whoever needs to be empowered. Today, do not let your desires or wishes remain silent. Take them to the Lord in prayer and ask Him in faith and the authority of His name to keep His promise in [John 14:13-14]. God is not glorified by our wishing or desiring. He is glorified by His doing and His answering in response to our faith-filled desires voiced through prayer.
What are you craving, hankering, desiring, longing, and yearning for God to do? Will you take this time to voice those cravings with intense praying, pleading for God to glorify His name through your asking and His answering?
Steps to Trust and Obey:
1. What are you craving for God to do? Is this in the silent desire state or are you bringing it out into the open by prayer?
2. Do you really trust God to bless you?
3. How does answering your desire bring more glory to the Father?
4. What is the Lord speaking to you today? What is He calling you to do in faith?
[1] E.M. Bounds, A Treasury of Prayer; The Best of E.M. Bounds (compiled by Leonard Ravenhill). Minneapolis, Bethany House Publishers: 1990, p. 132.
[2] Ibid., p. 132.
Thursday, December 20, 2018
28 Days To Trust And Obey 0 Day 19
Jesus said to her, “Did I not say to you that if you believe, you will see the glory of God?”
John 11:40
If there was ever an” impossible” situation in the Bible, this one has to qualify. We have a sickness that ends in death. We have a dead body in a tomb for four days, which is 96 hours. The heart has stopped beating. The blood has quit flowing. The brain activity has ceased. Muscles and tissues begin decomposing. We have a man who is dead.
On the other hand, we have grieving sisters and friends. Lazarus was much beloved by many people, who are terribly saddened by his death. His sisters love Jesus but do not understand why He did not come to help despite the fact that He knew Lazarus was sick. Jesus had healed many others and Mary and Martha had the faith to believe that if Jesus had been on the scene He would have healed their brother too. But now it is too late. Lazarus has died and he has already been buried.
Both sisters point to the fact that if Jesus had only been there things would have turned out much differently. Jesus’ response to the sisters seems cruel and suspect if you do not know the end of the story - He tells them to believe. Their understanding of belief is that Lazarus will be resurrected on the last day. In the present situation there was no belief ,just the cruel cold facts that Jesus did not make it in time, Lazarus died, and he had been buried for four long days.
Once again we are reading another story in the scriptures where sight seemed to communicate one thing, but Jesus calls His followers to ignore what they see and to just believe. The word “believe” means to trust, to have confidence, to have security. That is so hard to do when everything you have experienced in the physical realm tells you to give up, hope is gone, and it is too late. When you watch your dreams die, you emotionally bury them and then you walk away to grieve, but when the Lord tells you to keep on believing, that is very difficult. I am sure that is exactly where some of you are on this challenge.
You started with belief. You have stayed the course, but somewhere along the way your goal or desire died. You did not want it to, but Jesus did not show up when you thought He should. He did not rescue you and asa result you buried your dream. Now, Jesus is telling you to keep on believing for the glory of His name, but you are emotionally too numb to trust.
What you do and what you believe at this point are very critical. If you leave your desire buried and choose to walk away in unbelief, you will not see the glory of God. If you choose to believe even though it is hard to do, you could be an eyewitness to the power of God in your life like you have never experienced before. I am not saying it will be easy. I am not even saying that your desire or request will be resurrected over night. But ask yourself this question: would you walk away in your grief forever if you knew for certain that God was going to intervene and do an awesome miracle?
What I am about to write is crucial. What is God telling you to do right now? Is He telling you it is over and you need to walk away and leave your desire or your dream in the tomb? Or is He calling you to keep on believing despite what you see, what you hear, and yes even what you smell (before Jesus called Lazarus back to life, Mary feared that after four days in the tomb her brother would smell like death itself.)
Many of you are at that point. D o you roll the stone away from the tomb or do you walk away forever? Many people are watching, and if you roll the stone away from the tomb while they are watching and no miracle takes place you will look like a fool. But if you walk away from the tomb now in doubt, is that the will of the Lord, and will you regret it? Those are questions only you and the Lord can answer. I think it is time to ask Him.
Steps to Trust and Obey:
1. What is dead and buried in your heart? How has that made you feel? What have you done to cope with your feelings?
2. What is God telling you to do? Believe and roll the stone away or walk away forever?
3. What are you going to do?
Wednesday, December 19, 2018
28 Dyas To Trust And Obey - Day 18
“For there is hope for a tree, when it is cut down that it will sprout again and its shoots not fail. Though its roots grow old in the ground and its stump dies in the dry soil, at the scent of water it will flourish and put forth sprigs like a plant.”
Job 14:7-9
Do you have any dreams that were abandoned long ago? Do you have dreams that have died a long and agonizingly painful death? Have you given up on ever seeing such dreams become a reality? If you find yourself in this place I want to encourage you to see with the eyes of faith as you read this passage.
Take a tree and cut it down until there is nothing more than a stump left. To the eyes of everyone passing by the stump may appear dead and lifeless, but let the old roots just get the scent of water and new life can begin again. I have seen this verse come true in my own life. At the very point I thought my ministerial dreams were dead, God brought the scent of water and with it new hope and new opportunities.
At the scent of water - hope in God - dead dreams can not only come to life but also flourish. You may have given up on your God-implanted dreams. They may be nothing more than a stump with dried-up roots, but the fragrance of water can bring, not only hope, but life to dead things. That stump can begin to sprout new sprigs of hope and eventually flourish in full bloom. God can do that with the “scent of water,” which could be a scripture, a timely sermon, a moving song, a deep impression by His Spirit, or the reading of a devotional thought.
It is my prayer that this brief submission would be the scent of water for you to believe God for the impossible. Visually you may see no hope, but I challenge to look through the lens of faith. “For we walk by faith and not by sight,” (II Corinthians 5:7.) Let the scent of water excite the roots of your withered faith and believe God for the impossible. “For nothing will be impossible with God.” (Luke 1:37)
Right now there is something stirring deep in your soul. There is a desire, a dream, and request that you are just about to abandon forever, but this verse about the scent of water has brought life and hope again. Is God really finished with that dream yet? Have you grown so frustrated and impatient that you have been willing to give up on something God wills for you to have? Let the scent of water revive your faith today. Let the scent of a fresh word from God stir something deep in you and cling to that hope with all the tenacity you have. Is it time to hunker down and believe more or to walk away knowing God has something else in mind for you? Only He can answer that.
Your circumstances and those around you may be screaming at you to give up and abandon hope. I pray this short message roars like thunder deep in your soul to believe God for the scent of water, the fragrance of hope, the odor of omniscience, and the aroma of almighty power and strength bringing your dreams back to life. DO NOT GIVE UP! EVER! At the scent of water you will flourish and bloom like a plant.
Steps to Trust and Obey:
1. What has the scent of water resurfaced in your heart?
2. Are you ready to cut rope and leave or believe with more tenacity?
3. Spend this time asking God to keep hope afloat in your heart as you continue to seek Him.
4. Spend some time listening about the things He wants to bring to life because of the scent of water.
Job 14:7-9
Do you have any dreams that were abandoned long ago? Do you have dreams that have died a long and agonizingly painful death? Have you given up on ever seeing such dreams become a reality? If you find yourself in this place I want to encourage you to see with the eyes of faith as you read this passage.
Take a tree and cut it down until there is nothing more than a stump left. To the eyes of everyone passing by the stump may appear dead and lifeless, but let the old roots just get the scent of water and new life can begin again. I have seen this verse come true in my own life. At the very point I thought my ministerial dreams were dead, God brought the scent of water and with it new hope and new opportunities.
At the scent of water - hope in God - dead dreams can not only come to life but also flourish. You may have given up on your God-implanted dreams. They may be nothing more than a stump with dried-up roots, but the fragrance of water can bring, not only hope, but life to dead things. That stump can begin to sprout new sprigs of hope and eventually flourish in full bloom. God can do that with the “scent of water,” which could be a scripture, a timely sermon, a moving song, a deep impression by His Spirit, or the reading of a devotional thought.
It is my prayer that this brief submission would be the scent of water for you to believe God for the impossible. Visually you may see no hope, but I challenge to look through the lens of faith. “For we walk by faith and not by sight,” (II Corinthians 5:7.) Let the scent of water excite the roots of your withered faith and believe God for the impossible. “For nothing will be impossible with God.” (Luke 1:37)
Right now there is something stirring deep in your soul. There is a desire, a dream, and request that you are just about to abandon forever, but this verse about the scent of water has brought life and hope again. Is God really finished with that dream yet? Have you grown so frustrated and impatient that you have been willing to give up on something God wills for you to have? Let the scent of water revive your faith today. Let the scent of a fresh word from God stir something deep in you and cling to that hope with all the tenacity you have. Is it time to hunker down and believe more or to walk away knowing God has something else in mind for you? Only He can answer that.
Your circumstances and those around you may be screaming at you to give up and abandon hope. I pray this short message roars like thunder deep in your soul to believe God for the scent of water, the fragrance of hope, the odor of omniscience, and the aroma of almighty power and strength bringing your dreams back to life. DO NOT GIVE UP! EVER! At the scent of water you will flourish and bloom like a plant.
Steps to Trust and Obey:
1. What has the scent of water resurfaced in your heart?
2. Are you ready to cut rope and leave or believe with more tenacity?
3. Spend this time asking God to keep hope afloat in your heart as you continue to seek Him.
4. Spend some time listening about the things He wants to bring to life because of the scent of water.
Tuesday, December 18, 2018
Look What God Has Done
On April 12, 2018 I started the new follow hard blog. After a decade of writing a blog at www.nocompromisefbc.blogspot.com I decided it was time for a change. A time to change the name of the blog to reflect the passion in my heart to know and to follow hard after knowing God. It was also time to formerly sever ties the former blog had with FBC Seminole.
Please do not misunderstand me. I still love the people in Seminole, TX. They hold a cherished place in my heart. I have not been the pastor of FBC Seminole in nine years and it was time to start over with a blog not connected with the church.
So, on April 12, 2018 I wrote my first blog for this new site. It was hard walking away from the previous one. While it still available to be viewed I can no longer write on it. I walked away from well over 1,500 writings over a decade span and over 130,000 visits to that site.
God is not done with my writing ministry though. Fewer people know about this new site. I am totally dependent upon God's help and the word of mouth of people to point others to this site. When I left the no compromise blog we generated between 50-100 visitors a day. Much of that came via facebook. I no longer use facebook and have a much smaller viewership now. Somedays we have between 1-5 visitors. An average day may reach 10 people and a good day over 20.
Since April God has inspired over 200 posts. To date we have had 13,000 visits to this new site. I praise Him for that but I am not satisfied. Let me tell you what I dream. I dream of a day when over a 1,000 people a day will visit and be blessed by this site all free of charge. People in the United Sates as well as all around the world. I dream of a day when our total visitors will surpass 100,000 again. That is not enough for me. I want to see God bring 1,000,000 visitors in my lifetime. I want to write thousands and thousands of blogs. Only through Jesus is this possible. [Phil 4:13]"I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me."
God might use you to help make that dream a reality. If you read these posts and can point others to this site I will be grateful. I celebrate what God has done in the past nine months. I wonder what He will do in 2019. I trust He will bring well more than 13,0000 visitors next year. I also trust He will continually inspire me with new material to write to help people on their journey. Thank you for reading. Thank you in advance for passing on the word to others.
Please do not misunderstand me. I still love the people in Seminole, TX. They hold a cherished place in my heart. I have not been the pastor of FBC Seminole in nine years and it was time to start over with a blog not connected with the church.
So, on April 12, 2018 I wrote my first blog for this new site. It was hard walking away from the previous one. While it still available to be viewed I can no longer write on it. I walked away from well over 1,500 writings over a decade span and over 130,000 visits to that site.
God is not done with my writing ministry though. Fewer people know about this new site. I am totally dependent upon God's help and the word of mouth of people to point others to this site. When I left the no compromise blog we generated between 50-100 visitors a day. Much of that came via facebook. I no longer use facebook and have a much smaller viewership now. Somedays we have between 1-5 visitors. An average day may reach 10 people and a good day over 20.
Since April God has inspired over 200 posts. To date we have had 13,000 visits to this new site. I praise Him for that but I am not satisfied. Let me tell you what I dream. I dream of a day when over a 1,000 people a day will visit and be blessed by this site all free of charge. People in the United Sates as well as all around the world. I dream of a day when our total visitors will surpass 100,000 again. That is not enough for me. I want to see God bring 1,000,000 visitors in my lifetime. I want to write thousands and thousands of blogs. Only through Jesus is this possible. [Phil 4:13]"I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me."
God might use you to help make that dream a reality. If you read these posts and can point others to this site I will be grateful. I celebrate what God has done in the past nine months. I wonder what He will do in 2019. I trust He will bring well more than 13,0000 visitors next year. I also trust He will continually inspire me with new material to write to help people on their journey. Thank you for reading. Thank you in advance for passing on the word to others.
28 Days To Trust And Obey - Day 17
Why are you in despair O my soul? And why have you become disturbed within me? Hope in God, for I shall again praise Him for the help of His presence.”
Psalm 42:5
I saw the desperation in a father’s eyes as he walked down an aisle in a small country church far from here near Lake Sam Rayburn. He walked up to me after the sermon I had preached and asked me if I would pray for his young married daughter who was the mother of three. She had cancer, and this loving father was asking me to pray for a miracle for his daughter. Here was a man trying to cling to hope in a hopeless situation.
I knelt by another man’s bedside, holding his hand as he labored to breathe. He was dying and he knew it. He asked me to pray that he would remain strong in his faith until the very end. We took his hopeless chronic condition and went to God pleading for hope - hope to endure in the faith. We rejoiced in the hope of Heaven. This scene repeated itself several more times until this larger-than-life man was taken from us. Even in a hopeless situation, this man never lost hope.
I watched a different man in a worship service recently sinking under the weight of the world seemingly sitting on his shoulders. Though a man’s man in every way, on this day the pressures of life were so burdensome on his soul that he sat in a pew with his head and heart bowed to God in a desperate pleas for help. He was crying out for hope. I watched his countenance change by the end of that service as this warrior in the faith received the tender and loving touch of his Heavenly Father and he left with hope renewed.
She battled cancer for years but she never gave up hope. She posted scriptures around her living room and bedroom trusting God for healing. She fought the fight of faith to the end. Sadly, her healing did not come this side of heaven. She is in glory now perfectly healed. She did not give into despair. She fought the good fight of faith valiantly.
I saw another man at the end of his wits kneeling at the front of the sanctuary to unload his burdens to the Lord during a worship service. He pleaded for hope to carry on. In life this man carries a lot of authority, but yesterday he was just another child before God needing help and hope.
Everywhere you go people are in need of hope. We can live without a lot of things, but to live without hope is a cruel punishment few can endure. What is causing you to despair and lose hope? You don’t have to look around long to find reasons. There are hopeless situations everywhere. This is a problem that dates back to biblical times. The psalmist experienced it when he wrote Psalm 42:5. He knew the dark dungeon of depression and how it strangles hope in the heart. The writer knew the agony of feeling backed into a corner with no way of escape, and as a result hope oozed from his heart like water out of a bucket with a hole in the bottom.
Even in the middle of feeling hopeless, the psalmist counsels himself as well as the rest of us with, “Hope in God.” The word hope in this verse means to wait patiently on God and to expect God to come and help. That might sound easy as words splashed in black ink on a page, but in real life it is a little more difficult. How do you hope in someone you can’t see, can’t prove exists scientifically, and who seems so far removed from the hopeless situations in our lives? How do you maintain hope in someone who can remain silent in times when you need Him most? Many of you have waited on God and it seems you have waited in vain because you expected Him to come through and it appears that He let you down. But appearances can be deceiving.
Suffice it to say that multitudes have thought God had abandoned them in their hour of crisis, only to find in hindsight that God was there providing strength, comfort, support, provision, and yes, hope too. God is the one who grants you the optimism that better days are coming, things are going to turn around, the crisis will pass, and hope is not in vain. God does not fail His children when they are most in need of help and hope. He does not leave us high and dry in our most critical times of need (Psalm 50:15, Psalm 46:10.) In difficult times He is very present and He is our helper. (Ps 46:1) I urge you to take your troubles and roll them onto God’s massive shoulders today, trading your despair for His hope. Let Him turn your perspective from despair and gloom to optimism and expectation. Like the old song says, “Let us have a little talk with Jesus and tell Him all about our troubles and He will hear our faintest cry and will answer by and by. Just a little talk with Jesus makes it right.” A little talk with Jesus can restore hope for the hopeless soul.
Steps to Trust and Obey:
1. How are you doing in the hope department? On a scale from 1-10, where would pinpoint your level of hope today?
2. If your hope is waning can you identify what has happened to cause you to feel this way?
3. Where is God in this situation? What is the last thing He has spoken to you? Do you believe Him?
4. Is the Lord speaking to you today? If so, what is He saying and calling to you to do in response to His voice?
Psalm 42:5
I saw the desperation in a father’s eyes as he walked down an aisle in a small country church far from here near Lake Sam Rayburn. He walked up to me after the sermon I had preached and asked me if I would pray for his young married daughter who was the mother of three. She had cancer, and this loving father was asking me to pray for a miracle for his daughter. Here was a man trying to cling to hope in a hopeless situation.
I knelt by another man’s bedside, holding his hand as he labored to breathe. He was dying and he knew it. He asked me to pray that he would remain strong in his faith until the very end. We took his hopeless chronic condition and went to God pleading for hope - hope to endure in the faith. We rejoiced in the hope of Heaven. This scene repeated itself several more times until this larger-than-life man was taken from us. Even in a hopeless situation, this man never lost hope.
I watched a different man in a worship service recently sinking under the weight of the world seemingly sitting on his shoulders. Though a man’s man in every way, on this day the pressures of life were so burdensome on his soul that he sat in a pew with his head and heart bowed to God in a desperate pleas for help. He was crying out for hope. I watched his countenance change by the end of that service as this warrior in the faith received the tender and loving touch of his Heavenly Father and he left with hope renewed.
She battled cancer for years but she never gave up hope. She posted scriptures around her living room and bedroom trusting God for healing. She fought the fight of faith to the end. Sadly, her healing did not come this side of heaven. She is in glory now perfectly healed. She did not give into despair. She fought the good fight of faith valiantly.
I saw another man at the end of his wits kneeling at the front of the sanctuary to unload his burdens to the Lord during a worship service. He pleaded for hope to carry on. In life this man carries a lot of authority, but yesterday he was just another child before God needing help and hope.
Everywhere you go people are in need of hope. We can live without a lot of things, but to live without hope is a cruel punishment few can endure. What is causing you to despair and lose hope? You don’t have to look around long to find reasons. There are hopeless situations everywhere. This is a problem that dates back to biblical times. The psalmist experienced it when he wrote Psalm 42:5. He knew the dark dungeon of depression and how it strangles hope in the heart. The writer knew the agony of feeling backed into a corner with no way of escape, and as a result hope oozed from his heart like water out of a bucket with a hole in the bottom.
Even in the middle of feeling hopeless, the psalmist counsels himself as well as the rest of us with, “Hope in God.” The word hope in this verse means to wait patiently on God and to expect God to come and help. That might sound easy as words splashed in black ink on a page, but in real life it is a little more difficult. How do you hope in someone you can’t see, can’t prove exists scientifically, and who seems so far removed from the hopeless situations in our lives? How do you maintain hope in someone who can remain silent in times when you need Him most? Many of you have waited on God and it seems you have waited in vain because you expected Him to come through and it appears that He let you down. But appearances can be deceiving.
Suffice it to say that multitudes have thought God had abandoned them in their hour of crisis, only to find in hindsight that God was there providing strength, comfort, support, provision, and yes, hope too. God is the one who grants you the optimism that better days are coming, things are going to turn around, the crisis will pass, and hope is not in vain. God does not fail His children when they are most in need of help and hope. He does not leave us high and dry in our most critical times of need (Psalm 50:15, Psalm 46:10.) In difficult times He is very present and He is our helper. (Ps 46:1) I urge you to take your troubles and roll them onto God’s massive shoulders today, trading your despair for His hope. Let Him turn your perspective from despair and gloom to optimism and expectation. Like the old song says, “Let us have a little talk with Jesus and tell Him all about our troubles and He will hear our faintest cry and will answer by and by. Just a little talk with Jesus makes it right.” A little talk with Jesus can restore hope for the hopeless soul.
Steps to Trust and Obey:
1. How are you doing in the hope department? On a scale from 1-10, where would pinpoint your level of hope today?
2. If your hope is waning can you identify what has happened to cause you to feel this way?
3. Where is God in this situation? What is the last thing He has spoken to you? Do you believe Him?
4. Is the Lord speaking to you today? If so, what is He saying and calling to you to do in response to His voice?
Monday, December 17, 2018
28 Days To Trust And Obey - Day 16
Now to Him who is able to do exceeding abundantly beyond all that we ask or think according to the power that works within us.
Ephesians 3:20
Hanging on a wall in my office across from my desk used to be a small cross-stitched picture with these simple words on it, “He is able.” This morning as I was reading scripture I came across Ephesians 3:20. What really jumps out of that passage is that our God is able. You say, “Able to do what?” and the answer is, whatever you need Him to do.
.
He is able to break through rock-hard hearts that have rejected the grace of Jesus for decades, and melt those hearts before the cross. He is able to forgive anyone for any sin committed no matter how vile, cruel, or wicked. He is able to turn impossible situations into paths of possibilities. God is able to birth divinely planted dreams into reality. He is able to meet any financial need and to connect His provision with your lack no matter where you are. He is able to lift any burden that weighs you down and to comfort any broken heart. He is able to turn irreligious people into passionate warriors for Christ. He is able to heal any disease and bring peace and tranquility into any tumultuous and stormy situation.
The question is not if God is able. He is more than able! The real issue is do we trust Him? Do we trust His bountiful promises made in scripture? Do we trust His love for us in the nights of weeping? Do we trust Him when the deadline is approaching fast and the answer has not come? Do we trust Him to really forgive our heinous sins? Do we trust Him when the doctor’s report reveals the grim reality of sickness and disease? Do we trust Him when everything and everyone around us say God has forsaken and abandoned us?
God is trustworthy. He is worthy of my trust and yours no matter what trials we are facing today or will face tomorrow. He is worthy of our confidence and assurance to move mountains, calm our fears, bind up our broken hearts, open shut doors, offer direction and insight, and grant peace where peace is unexpected. God keeps His promises - all of them, forever.
In Psalm 119:160, David says to God, “The sum of Your word is truth and every one of Your righteous ordinances is everlasting.” We can count on Him. He is able to come through and keep His word over and over again. He is no fair-weather God who abandons us in our time of need. He is faithful, true, sure, a present help in times of trouble, consistent, and available to help in our time of need.
No matter what you are facing today, I challenge you to be reminded “He is able.” He is able whether you sit in a hospital room, stare across an empty room where a loved one used to sit, look at an empty check book, see a loved one being crushed by unwise decisions, feel a marriage crumbling, or see a society disintegrating right before your eyes. Our God is able. Trust Him today and behold His faithfulness. Consign your confidence to Him and watch Him save the day. Be assured He is able to handle every situation in your life today and all the days to come, while at the same time being able to meet my every need, along with every need of every person from every tribe, kindred, and nation.
There is a little praise chorus I used to sing from time to time that I am reminded of while writing this. “He is able. He is able to accomplish what concerns me today. He is able – more than able to handle anything that comes my way. He is able – more than able – to do much more than I could ever dream. He is able – He is able.”
I am reminded of God’s incredible power and I mount this day like a knight riding full speed, charging into battle with confidence. The banner we carry in our hands and our rallying cry shall ever be, “HE IS ABLE.”
Steps to Trust and Obey:
1. What are your wildest dreams and desires in your heart? Let your imagination and spirit come together to collaborate in praying today.
2. In what ways is God bigger than what you crave for Him to do? Is it really possible?
3. Is your God able? Finish this statement in prayer; My God is able to ___________.
4. Has the Lord given you any specific steps to obey today? How will you follow through?
Ephesians 3:20
Hanging on a wall in my office across from my desk used to be a small cross-stitched picture with these simple words on it, “He is able.” This morning as I was reading scripture I came across Ephesians 3:20. What really jumps out of that passage is that our God is able. You say, “Able to do what?” and the answer is, whatever you need Him to do.
.
He is able to break through rock-hard hearts that have rejected the grace of Jesus for decades, and melt those hearts before the cross. He is able to forgive anyone for any sin committed no matter how vile, cruel, or wicked. He is able to turn impossible situations into paths of possibilities. God is able to birth divinely planted dreams into reality. He is able to meet any financial need and to connect His provision with your lack no matter where you are. He is able to lift any burden that weighs you down and to comfort any broken heart. He is able to turn irreligious people into passionate warriors for Christ. He is able to heal any disease and bring peace and tranquility into any tumultuous and stormy situation.
The question is not if God is able. He is more than able! The real issue is do we trust Him? Do we trust His bountiful promises made in scripture? Do we trust His love for us in the nights of weeping? Do we trust Him when the deadline is approaching fast and the answer has not come? Do we trust Him to really forgive our heinous sins? Do we trust Him when the doctor’s report reveals the grim reality of sickness and disease? Do we trust Him when everything and everyone around us say God has forsaken and abandoned us?
God is trustworthy. He is worthy of my trust and yours no matter what trials we are facing today or will face tomorrow. He is worthy of our confidence and assurance to move mountains, calm our fears, bind up our broken hearts, open shut doors, offer direction and insight, and grant peace where peace is unexpected. God keeps His promises - all of them, forever.
In Psalm 119:160, David says to God, “The sum of Your word is truth and every one of Your righteous ordinances is everlasting.” We can count on Him. He is able to come through and keep His word over and over again. He is no fair-weather God who abandons us in our time of need. He is faithful, true, sure, a present help in times of trouble, consistent, and available to help in our time of need.
No matter what you are facing today, I challenge you to be reminded “He is able.” He is able whether you sit in a hospital room, stare across an empty room where a loved one used to sit, look at an empty check book, see a loved one being crushed by unwise decisions, feel a marriage crumbling, or see a society disintegrating right before your eyes. Our God is able. Trust Him today and behold His faithfulness. Consign your confidence to Him and watch Him save the day. Be assured He is able to handle every situation in your life today and all the days to come, while at the same time being able to meet my every need, along with every need of every person from every tribe, kindred, and nation.
There is a little praise chorus I used to sing from time to time that I am reminded of while writing this. “He is able. He is able to accomplish what concerns me today. He is able – more than able to handle anything that comes my way. He is able – more than able – to do much more than I could ever dream. He is able – He is able.”
I am reminded of God’s incredible power and I mount this day like a knight riding full speed, charging into battle with confidence. The banner we carry in our hands and our rallying cry shall ever be, “HE IS ABLE.”
Steps to Trust and Obey:
1. What are your wildest dreams and desires in your heart? Let your imagination and spirit come together to collaborate in praying today.
2. In what ways is God bigger than what you crave for Him to do? Is it really possible?
3. Is your God able? Finish this statement in prayer; My God is able to ___________.
4. Has the Lord given you any specific steps to obey today? How will you follow through?
Sunday, December 16, 2018
28 Days To Trust And Obey - Day 15
Let us therefore draw near with confidence to the throne of grace that we may receive mercy and may find grace to help in our time of need.
Hebrews 4:16
The great pastor Charles Haddon Spurgeon once preached a sermon on this passage and made the following comments about the subject of prayer: “True prayer is an approach of the soul by the Spirit of God to the throne of God. It is not the utterance of words, nor is it alone the feeling of desires, but it is the advance of the desires to God, the spiritual approach of our nature towards the Lord our God. True prayer is not a mere mental exercise, nor a vocal performance, but it is deeper far than that – it is a spiritual communion with the Creator of heaven and earth. Prayer is a spiritual business from the beginning to end, and its aim and object end not with man, but reach to God Himself.”[1]
I hope by this time in our journey together that we are all more spiritually minded than when we started and our prayers are more authentic and prayed with more confidence and boldness. Prayer is a spiritual business as Spurgeon said and if we are not becoming more spiritual in our hearts and minds, we are not going to make much progress in the art of praying.
It is my sincere hope that by this time you have seen God work in amazing ways and you have a great list of praises and testimonies. There is always more to believe God for. As you approach the throne of grace today what is your attitude in coming? Are you coming with doubts hounding your soul? Are you coming casually today because you do not want to put forth the effort to meet with God in a spiritual way? Are you coming with confidence and with boldness? We are exhorted to draw near the throne of grace with confidence.
This is not done on our own merit. We are not worthy to come into the throne room of God. Our only admission to the throne of grace is based on the redemptive work of Jesus Christ. We only ever come into the Lord’s presence pleading the blood of Christ. His grace and mercy have given us, not only salvation, but also entrance into His presence to talk with Him about anything and to obtain help when we need it.
Coming boldly or confidently into His presence means that we come and speak to Him bluntly, outspokenly and frankly. God is not interested in our eloquence; He wants sincerity accompanied by faith. If we need His help we must forthrightly ask for it. I know many of you have been asking. For days you have been asking and perhaps no help has come. Nothing has changed. You have prayed with faith and you have not lost heart and not given up. Still nothing has changed for you. You are tired of asking for help and not getting any.
I know how you feel. One of the things I am trusting God has not come to pass. In fact things appear much worse on that front. Still I keep bringing that petition before the throne of grace confidently. In my mind I see the answer. It is like I can reach out and touch it almost. So I press on as I hope you are too.
My counsel to you would be to keep coming before the Lord and to keep asking for help. You might even ask Him “Why the delay?” You might not get an answer but that is the kind of frank praying we are encouraged to do. Why not take the time today to spill your heart out to the Lord. There are things you might be frustrated about - talk to Him about it. There are things that seem unfair to you - visit with Him about it.
If you are coming and giving some mental exercises or making great oratory in your speech but not being authentic in your soul, those prayers are not going to accomplish very much. Take the time to talk to Him about the true feelings you have. You may be elated with all that you have experienced over these days and filled with joy. Praise Him! If you are struggling with doubts and confusion, take some time to talk to Him about it. He already knows anyway. If you do this I am confident that even if you do not get what you have been asking for, you will come away with peace of heart and mind and a renewed trust in the Lord.
Steps to Trust and Obey:
1. What is your attitude in approaching the throne of grace? Do you need to adjust your attitude according to Hebrews 4:16?
2. Are you timid in your prayers or do you with pray with bold confidence?
3, What do you need to talk to the Lord about very frankly?
4, What is He speaking to you and how are you going to respond?
[1] Charles H. Spurgeon, Classic Sermons on Prayer; “The Throne of Grace.” Grand Rapids, Kregel Publishers, 1987, p. 27.
Hebrews 4:16
The great pastor Charles Haddon Spurgeon once preached a sermon on this passage and made the following comments about the subject of prayer: “True prayer is an approach of the soul by the Spirit of God to the throne of God. It is not the utterance of words, nor is it alone the feeling of desires, but it is the advance of the desires to God, the spiritual approach of our nature towards the Lord our God. True prayer is not a mere mental exercise, nor a vocal performance, but it is deeper far than that – it is a spiritual communion with the Creator of heaven and earth. Prayer is a spiritual business from the beginning to end, and its aim and object end not with man, but reach to God Himself.”[1]
I hope by this time in our journey together that we are all more spiritually minded than when we started and our prayers are more authentic and prayed with more confidence and boldness. Prayer is a spiritual business as Spurgeon said and if we are not becoming more spiritual in our hearts and minds, we are not going to make much progress in the art of praying.
It is my sincere hope that by this time you have seen God work in amazing ways and you have a great list of praises and testimonies. There is always more to believe God for. As you approach the throne of grace today what is your attitude in coming? Are you coming with doubts hounding your soul? Are you coming casually today because you do not want to put forth the effort to meet with God in a spiritual way? Are you coming with confidence and with boldness? We are exhorted to draw near the throne of grace with confidence.
This is not done on our own merit. We are not worthy to come into the throne room of God. Our only admission to the throne of grace is based on the redemptive work of Jesus Christ. We only ever come into the Lord’s presence pleading the blood of Christ. His grace and mercy have given us, not only salvation, but also entrance into His presence to talk with Him about anything and to obtain help when we need it.
Coming boldly or confidently into His presence means that we come and speak to Him bluntly, outspokenly and frankly. God is not interested in our eloquence; He wants sincerity accompanied by faith. If we need His help we must forthrightly ask for it. I know many of you have been asking. For days you have been asking and perhaps no help has come. Nothing has changed. You have prayed with faith and you have not lost heart and not given up. Still nothing has changed for you. You are tired of asking for help and not getting any.
I know how you feel. One of the things I am trusting God has not come to pass. In fact things appear much worse on that front. Still I keep bringing that petition before the throne of grace confidently. In my mind I see the answer. It is like I can reach out and touch it almost. So I press on as I hope you are too.
My counsel to you would be to keep coming before the Lord and to keep asking for help. You might even ask Him “Why the delay?” You might not get an answer but that is the kind of frank praying we are encouraged to do. Why not take the time today to spill your heart out to the Lord. There are things you might be frustrated about - talk to Him about it. There are things that seem unfair to you - visit with Him about it.
If you are coming and giving some mental exercises or making great oratory in your speech but not being authentic in your soul, those prayers are not going to accomplish very much. Take the time to talk to Him about the true feelings you have. You may be elated with all that you have experienced over these days and filled with joy. Praise Him! If you are struggling with doubts and confusion, take some time to talk to Him about it. He already knows anyway. If you do this I am confident that even if you do not get what you have been asking for, you will come away with peace of heart and mind and a renewed trust in the Lord.
Steps to Trust and Obey:
1. What is your attitude in approaching the throne of grace? Do you need to adjust your attitude according to Hebrews 4:16?
2. Are you timid in your prayers or do you with pray with bold confidence?
3, What do you need to talk to the Lord about very frankly?
4, What is He speaking to you and how are you going to respond?
[1] Charles H. Spurgeon, Classic Sermons on Prayer; “The Throne of Grace.” Grand Rapids, Kregel Publishers, 1987, p. 27.
Saturday, December 15, 2018
28 Days To Trust And Obey - Day 14
Now He was telling them a parable to show that at all times they ought to pray and not lose heart.
Luke 18:1
It is very possible that by this time, some of you have already seen God intervene in your life in powerful ways. You may have had the opportunity to testify about how good God is and tell others what He has done for you. It is also quite possible that some of you have heard these testimonies and feel like God has forgotten about you. Nothing has changed - You have prayed and you've kept going through this challenge but for you, things are as bad as they have ever been. Things may have even gotten worse for you since this challenge began and you are thinking about giving up.
Perhaps you came today in a last desperate attempt to hear from God. You are at a critical point in this journey. If you are one of these people, what you choose to do and what you choose to believe will have huge implications. If you abandon ship now you will stay stuck where you are and perhaps never see the deliverance of the Lord. If you keep praying, keep asking, and keep believing to possess the land, your whole life could change. Which choice will you make? You have nothing to lose but everything to gain.
Notice what Jesus said before going into the parable about the widow woman and the wicked judge. He said two things that we must embrace, and for some of you, it must be embraced and received today. Jesus told His listeners that they should keep praying at all times and they should not lose heart.
Let’s get real – there are times I do not feel like praying. There are days when things seem so bad it appears God is not even listening. There are days when the waves of life hit so hard our knees buckle and we plunge beneath the surf of our circumstances gasping for breath. There are days when the darkness will not seem to lift and we can’t find a ray of hope even through prayer and scripture reading.
What are we supposed to do in such times? Keep praying. Now, I am not talking about merely going through the motions of prayer. I am not referring to half-hearted and feeble attempts in prayer that we know we do not believe. At all times we are supposed to pray. Remember when we learned about prayer and faith according to Hebrews 11:1? This is the day when we need assurance, we need hope and expectation that God is listening and God will intervene. There are many delays for the child of God waiting for prayers to be answered. Expect them and prepare for them. Preach to your soul that God has not forgotten you and by all means do not become jealous if there are those around you who are seeing their prayers answered. Pray at all times.
Instead of sinking into hopelessness, why not step up your prayer efforts? God may be using this time to strengthen you or to orchestrate your circumstances and His intervention in such a way that He will get the maximum amount of glory. I cannot tell you how many times the Lord has required me to wait until the last moment before He stepped in and saved the day. He is often the God of 11:59 – meaning that if you are facing a 12:00 deadline, God often waits until 11:59 to step in, to test your faith and bring more glory to Himself.
If you find yourself waiting on Him for something, determine that you are going to wait in faith. Determine that you will stay busy seeking Him and serving Him while you are waiting and do not become idle. When we become idle the Devil has ample opportunity to put his conniving and deceitful thoughts into our heads. He is the one who leads us to lose heart, or to put it another way, to become discouraged and to sink into despair. We must keep praying, keep trusting and keep being willing to obey even in these times.
One of the tactics of the enemy is to convince you that nobody else understands what you are going through and you therefore begin to isolate yourself. God knows and has counsel for you from His word. “Be of sober spirit, be on the alert. Your adversary, the devil, prowls about like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour. But resist him, firm in the faith, knowing that the same experiences of suffering are being accomplished by brethren who are in the world.” (I Peter 5:8-9) You are not in this alone. It seems when I am struggling Brenda's faith is strong and when she gets discouraged I am filled with belief. She helps me. Perhaps you need someone to pray with to help you too.
Even if you are one of those who are on top of the world, do not let your guard down. Keep praying. At all times, pray. In the good times, pray. In the bad times, pray. In the mundane times, pray. In the challenging times, pray. In any and every season of life, keep on praying and keep on asking for God’s help.
Do not lose heart. What is the opposite of losing heart? Take courage. Keep on trusting. Keep on being encouraged in the scriptures. Over and over again the pages of scripture shout to us on our lofty mountain peak experiences as well as when we are trudging through the valley of the shadow of death that our God is reliable, trustworthy, and faithful. Fill your heart and mind with those truths today.
Steps to Trust and Obey:
1. How is your prayer time going? Do you still pray with faith even when you do not feel like praying and do not feel like God is listening?
2. What season are you going through right now? Are you encouraged or discouraged? What is helping you gain and maintain the victory?
3. What truth about prayer can you learn from reading Luke 18:1-8?
4. Ask the Lord to help you not lose heart over the remainder of this challenge and to have the desire to even want to pray.
5. What is the Lord speaking to you and what steps of obedience is He calling you to take?
Luke 18:1
It is very possible that by this time, some of you have already seen God intervene in your life in powerful ways. You may have had the opportunity to testify about how good God is and tell others what He has done for you. It is also quite possible that some of you have heard these testimonies and feel like God has forgotten about you. Nothing has changed - You have prayed and you've kept going through this challenge but for you, things are as bad as they have ever been. Things may have even gotten worse for you since this challenge began and you are thinking about giving up.
Perhaps you came today in a last desperate attempt to hear from God. You are at a critical point in this journey. If you are one of these people, what you choose to do and what you choose to believe will have huge implications. If you abandon ship now you will stay stuck where you are and perhaps never see the deliverance of the Lord. If you keep praying, keep asking, and keep believing to possess the land, your whole life could change. Which choice will you make? You have nothing to lose but everything to gain.
Notice what Jesus said before going into the parable about the widow woman and the wicked judge. He said two things that we must embrace, and for some of you, it must be embraced and received today. Jesus told His listeners that they should keep praying at all times and they should not lose heart.
Let’s get real – there are times I do not feel like praying. There are days when things seem so bad it appears God is not even listening. There are days when the waves of life hit so hard our knees buckle and we plunge beneath the surf of our circumstances gasping for breath. There are days when the darkness will not seem to lift and we can’t find a ray of hope even through prayer and scripture reading.
What are we supposed to do in such times? Keep praying. Now, I am not talking about merely going through the motions of prayer. I am not referring to half-hearted and feeble attempts in prayer that we know we do not believe. At all times we are supposed to pray. Remember when we learned about prayer and faith according to Hebrews 11:1? This is the day when we need assurance, we need hope and expectation that God is listening and God will intervene. There are many delays for the child of God waiting for prayers to be answered. Expect them and prepare for them. Preach to your soul that God has not forgotten you and by all means do not become jealous if there are those around you who are seeing their prayers answered. Pray at all times.
Instead of sinking into hopelessness, why not step up your prayer efforts? God may be using this time to strengthen you or to orchestrate your circumstances and His intervention in such a way that He will get the maximum amount of glory. I cannot tell you how many times the Lord has required me to wait until the last moment before He stepped in and saved the day. He is often the God of 11:59 – meaning that if you are facing a 12:00 deadline, God often waits until 11:59 to step in, to test your faith and bring more glory to Himself.
If you find yourself waiting on Him for something, determine that you are going to wait in faith. Determine that you will stay busy seeking Him and serving Him while you are waiting and do not become idle. When we become idle the Devil has ample opportunity to put his conniving and deceitful thoughts into our heads. He is the one who leads us to lose heart, or to put it another way, to become discouraged and to sink into despair. We must keep praying, keep trusting and keep being willing to obey even in these times.
One of the tactics of the enemy is to convince you that nobody else understands what you are going through and you therefore begin to isolate yourself. God knows and has counsel for you from His word. “Be of sober spirit, be on the alert. Your adversary, the devil, prowls about like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour. But resist him, firm in the faith, knowing that the same experiences of suffering are being accomplished by brethren who are in the world.” (I Peter 5:8-9) You are not in this alone. It seems when I am struggling Brenda's faith is strong and when she gets discouraged I am filled with belief. She helps me. Perhaps you need someone to pray with to help you too.
Even if you are one of those who are on top of the world, do not let your guard down. Keep praying. At all times, pray. In the good times, pray. In the bad times, pray. In the mundane times, pray. In the challenging times, pray. In any and every season of life, keep on praying and keep on asking for God’s help.
Do not lose heart. What is the opposite of losing heart? Take courage. Keep on trusting. Keep on being encouraged in the scriptures. Over and over again the pages of scripture shout to us on our lofty mountain peak experiences as well as when we are trudging through the valley of the shadow of death that our God is reliable, trustworthy, and faithful. Fill your heart and mind with those truths today.
Steps to Trust and Obey:
1. How is your prayer time going? Do you still pray with faith even when you do not feel like praying and do not feel like God is listening?
2. What season are you going through right now? Are you encouraged or discouraged? What is helping you gain and maintain the victory?
3. What truth about prayer can you learn from reading Luke 18:1-8?
4. Ask the Lord to help you not lose heart over the remainder of this challenge and to have the desire to even want to pray.
5. What is the Lord speaking to you and what steps of obedience is He calling you to take?
Friday, December 14, 2018
28 Days To Trust And Obey - Day 13
And without faith it is impossible to please Him, for he who comes to God must believe that He is and that He is a rewarder of those who seek Him.
Hebrews 11:6
We've spent a great deal of time looking at faith. Today we are going to look at one of the reasons faith is so important and what God does for those who live and operate by faith. I remind you today as you continue to trust and obey, to not trust what you see but trust in Whom you believe and what you believe Him for.
Without faith it is impossible to please God. Apart from trust in Him a person cannot be saved and forgiven of their sins. Without belief in God’s character a person will be tempted over and over again in life to shrink back in unbelief. If we cannot trust God with the day-to-day affairs of our lives, how can we trust Him with something so big as our eternal salvation? Everything hinges on faith that God is able and trustworthy to do what He says.
It is utterly impossible and we are too weak to please God apart from our confident assurance in His ability. What is your motivation for living? Who do you seek to gratify? If we are honest, a great deal of the time we live to gratify ourselves, but our ultimate goal should be to live in such a way that we please or gratify God. This is done by committing ourselves to living day in and day out by faith. Hence the phrase “trust and obey.” Faith is trusting, but if we really trust God we will take steps of obedience even though they may not make any logical sense to us and our eyes may deceive us as to the wisdom of such steps of obedience.
Do we really desire to please the Lord? If so, we must surrender our lives, plans, and agendas and be willing to do what He leads us to do and to believe Him for what He is calling us to believe Him for, even if it looks impossible and appears outlandish to others around us. It is in obeying God by faith that we demonstrate our trust and confidence. It is in our faith steps that we see powerful hand of God come to help us and do the miraculous when needed.
Several years ago for eighteen months God called me to live without a salary. He also instructed me not to ask people for money or get a job other than serving as the pastor of a very small church and traveling to preach as He gave me opportunity. That was a difficult time, a severe time of testing and trials, but God honored those steps of obedience and met our family’s every need. Few really believed that the Lord had instructed me to live that way, but I have walked with Him long enough that I know His voice. During that time, He came through for our family over and over again in tangible ways. I am talking about bags of groceries, money for utility payments, Christmas presents, house payments, transportation and car repairs. God called me to a lifestyle that did not make sense to the world, but He worked miracles in that season that silenced the doubters and has inspired hundreds and hundreds of people to trust God in their own circumstances. He still calls me to live by faith. To this day Brenda and I are still taking those faith steps.
When we come before the God of this universe we believe that He Is. He is the great I Am. There is not a need we have on this planet that He is not more than sufficient to meet. What do you need today? Healing? He has infinite power to heal every disease He wills to heal. If you need wisdom, He is the source of unlimited wisdom. If you need financial provision, His storehouse never runs dry of resources and He shares liberally among those in need. If you need strength to cope with adversity, He is the source of endless strength to help you day-by-day and even moment-by-moment. There is nothing that you will ever need in this life that He cannot and will not supply. He is Savior, Counselor, Wisdom, Peace, Healer, Provider, Refuge, Helper, Comforter, Deliverer, Leader, Mighty, Sustainer, Light of the World, Bread of Life, Great Physician, Shepherd, the First and the Last, and so much more.
If we spent more time meditating on the character of God we would have more faith to trust Him and a greater willingness to follow His leadership. Because we do not really know Him, we therefore do not really trust Him, which does not honor or please Him. So many have spent years as Christians filling their heads with knowledge that somehow never got down into their hearts. They know a lot about God but they do not really know Him. If they knew Him more they would trust Him more.
This is what needs to be the focal point of our time with the Lord today. We need to ponder the greatness of God’s character until we come to the part of His character we need Him to be for us in our situations. Once we have settled on that we must diligently seek Him for intervention in our situations based on His character and the glory that will be brought to Him when He comes through.
What does God do for people who base their faith on His character and seek to please Him by living lives of trusting confidently in His abilities? God rewards such people. The word “reward” means to remunerate, pay back wages, to give. Each time you and I come to make our petitions in faith it is like making a deposit into the bank of Heaven. The reward is when God blesses us and we get to make the withdrawal of the things we have trusted Him for.
Everybody wants the reward but we cannot skip the process of pleasing Him by living by faith and seeking Him. Each of those steps is vitally important. As we seek Him, do we want Him more than the gifts that He can give us? Ultimately He is the reward. Walking in relationship with Him is the ultimate reward. God also rewards those who take leaps of faith initiated by Him in other ways. I cannot even begin to recount all the times the Lord has rewarded my family when we have trusted Him.
During that eighteen months in which God led me to live without a salary, we learned to trust God from day to day. One summer we had mustered up enough money to put the boys in Red Cross swimming lessons. One morning after they finished we chose to take them to a park to play. When we arrived I noticed the mother of a lady who had formerly attended our church. We caught up and visited about the death of her husband and how the Lord was leading her. She talked about all the Lord was doing in her life. As I got up to leave she reached out to shake my hand and put something in it. I looked down to see it was some cash wadded up. I tried to refuse but she insisted the Lord had led her to do it. We parted ways and I discovered upon sitting in our car that she had given us $100. Without us saying a word about our financial needs. Only God could have orchestrated that gift.
A couple of years before, Brenda and I had been praying about buying another car and as I was seeking the Lord for direction one morning, my secretary’s voice came over the intercom, interrupting my prayer by telling me I had an unexpected visitor. This same lady walked into my office and we talked for a while. When she got up to leave she opened her purse and wrote a check for $2,500 which she felt the Lord had once again called her to give to us. Again, it was an answer to prayer. A huge reward from the Lord for faith walking. Why she felt prompted to come to my office and give that gift I do not know except that she also sought the Lord and walked by faith. Her giving was an obedient act of faith too.
As I sat in my car in the park that day, staring at the wad of cash in my hand, I was humbled and amazed. Then I realized that I was sitting in the car that same lady’s gift had helped us to purchase a couple of years earlier. Do you believe that God will reward you for the steps of faith He is leading you take? What is He calling you to do in this moment? Trust His character and you will be rewarded, but you have to be willing to obey Him and walk in complete trust.
Steps to Trust and Obey:
1. Find some facet of God’s character that correlates with your need and spend time searching the scriptures for verses that relate.
2. Ask the Lord what He is calling you to do and what He is calling you to trust Him for.
3. Commit to take steps of obedience regardless of how frightening that may appear as you sense Him directing you.
4. Ask the Lord to reward you for your steps of faith and your desire to please Him.
Reprioritize your life so that today you focus on living to please Him.
Hebrews 11:6
We've spent a great deal of time looking at faith. Today we are going to look at one of the reasons faith is so important and what God does for those who live and operate by faith. I remind you today as you continue to trust and obey, to not trust what you see but trust in Whom you believe and what you believe Him for.
Without faith it is impossible to please God. Apart from trust in Him a person cannot be saved and forgiven of their sins. Without belief in God’s character a person will be tempted over and over again in life to shrink back in unbelief. If we cannot trust God with the day-to-day affairs of our lives, how can we trust Him with something so big as our eternal salvation? Everything hinges on faith that God is able and trustworthy to do what He says.
It is utterly impossible and we are too weak to please God apart from our confident assurance in His ability. What is your motivation for living? Who do you seek to gratify? If we are honest, a great deal of the time we live to gratify ourselves, but our ultimate goal should be to live in such a way that we please or gratify God. This is done by committing ourselves to living day in and day out by faith. Hence the phrase “trust and obey.” Faith is trusting, but if we really trust God we will take steps of obedience even though they may not make any logical sense to us and our eyes may deceive us as to the wisdom of such steps of obedience.
Do we really desire to please the Lord? If so, we must surrender our lives, plans, and agendas and be willing to do what He leads us to do and to believe Him for what He is calling us to believe Him for, even if it looks impossible and appears outlandish to others around us. It is in obeying God by faith that we demonstrate our trust and confidence. It is in our faith steps that we see powerful hand of God come to help us and do the miraculous when needed.
Several years ago for eighteen months God called me to live without a salary. He also instructed me not to ask people for money or get a job other than serving as the pastor of a very small church and traveling to preach as He gave me opportunity. That was a difficult time, a severe time of testing and trials, but God honored those steps of obedience and met our family’s every need. Few really believed that the Lord had instructed me to live that way, but I have walked with Him long enough that I know His voice. During that time, He came through for our family over and over again in tangible ways. I am talking about bags of groceries, money for utility payments, Christmas presents, house payments, transportation and car repairs. God called me to a lifestyle that did not make sense to the world, but He worked miracles in that season that silenced the doubters and has inspired hundreds and hundreds of people to trust God in their own circumstances. He still calls me to live by faith. To this day Brenda and I are still taking those faith steps.
When we come before the God of this universe we believe that He Is. He is the great I Am. There is not a need we have on this planet that He is not more than sufficient to meet. What do you need today? Healing? He has infinite power to heal every disease He wills to heal. If you need wisdom, He is the source of unlimited wisdom. If you need financial provision, His storehouse never runs dry of resources and He shares liberally among those in need. If you need strength to cope with adversity, He is the source of endless strength to help you day-by-day and even moment-by-moment. There is nothing that you will ever need in this life that He cannot and will not supply. He is Savior, Counselor, Wisdom, Peace, Healer, Provider, Refuge, Helper, Comforter, Deliverer, Leader, Mighty, Sustainer, Light of the World, Bread of Life, Great Physician, Shepherd, the First and the Last, and so much more.
If we spent more time meditating on the character of God we would have more faith to trust Him and a greater willingness to follow His leadership. Because we do not really know Him, we therefore do not really trust Him, which does not honor or please Him. So many have spent years as Christians filling their heads with knowledge that somehow never got down into their hearts. They know a lot about God but they do not really know Him. If they knew Him more they would trust Him more.
This is what needs to be the focal point of our time with the Lord today. We need to ponder the greatness of God’s character until we come to the part of His character we need Him to be for us in our situations. Once we have settled on that we must diligently seek Him for intervention in our situations based on His character and the glory that will be brought to Him when He comes through.
What does God do for people who base their faith on His character and seek to please Him by living lives of trusting confidently in His abilities? God rewards such people. The word “reward” means to remunerate, pay back wages, to give. Each time you and I come to make our petitions in faith it is like making a deposit into the bank of Heaven. The reward is when God blesses us and we get to make the withdrawal of the things we have trusted Him for.
Everybody wants the reward but we cannot skip the process of pleasing Him by living by faith and seeking Him. Each of those steps is vitally important. As we seek Him, do we want Him more than the gifts that He can give us? Ultimately He is the reward. Walking in relationship with Him is the ultimate reward. God also rewards those who take leaps of faith initiated by Him in other ways. I cannot even begin to recount all the times the Lord has rewarded my family when we have trusted Him.
During that eighteen months in which God led me to live without a salary, we learned to trust God from day to day. One summer we had mustered up enough money to put the boys in Red Cross swimming lessons. One morning after they finished we chose to take them to a park to play. When we arrived I noticed the mother of a lady who had formerly attended our church. We caught up and visited about the death of her husband and how the Lord was leading her. She talked about all the Lord was doing in her life. As I got up to leave she reached out to shake my hand and put something in it. I looked down to see it was some cash wadded up. I tried to refuse but she insisted the Lord had led her to do it. We parted ways and I discovered upon sitting in our car that she had given us $100. Without us saying a word about our financial needs. Only God could have orchestrated that gift.
A couple of years before, Brenda and I had been praying about buying another car and as I was seeking the Lord for direction one morning, my secretary’s voice came over the intercom, interrupting my prayer by telling me I had an unexpected visitor. This same lady walked into my office and we talked for a while. When she got up to leave she opened her purse and wrote a check for $2,500 which she felt the Lord had once again called her to give to us. Again, it was an answer to prayer. A huge reward from the Lord for faith walking. Why she felt prompted to come to my office and give that gift I do not know except that she also sought the Lord and walked by faith. Her giving was an obedient act of faith too.
As I sat in my car in the park that day, staring at the wad of cash in my hand, I was humbled and amazed. Then I realized that I was sitting in the car that same lady’s gift had helped us to purchase a couple of years earlier. Do you believe that God will reward you for the steps of faith He is leading you take? What is He calling you to do in this moment? Trust His character and you will be rewarded, but you have to be willing to obey Him and walk in complete trust.
Steps to Trust and Obey:
1. Find some facet of God’s character that correlates with your need and spend time searching the scriptures for verses that relate.
2. Ask the Lord what He is calling you to do and what He is calling you to trust Him for.
3. Commit to take steps of obedience regardless of how frightening that may appear as you sense Him directing you.
4. Ask the Lord to reward you for your steps of faith and your desire to please Him.
Reprioritize your life so that today you focus on living to please Him.
Thursday, December 13, 2018
28 Days To Trust And Obey - Day 12
Acts 20:35 (NKJV)
35 I have shown you in every way, by laboring like this, that you must support the weak. And remember the words of the Lord Jesus, that He said, 'It is more blessed to give than to receive.' "
35 I have shown you in every way, by laboring like this, that you must support the weak. And remember the words of the Lord Jesus, that He said, 'It is more blessed to give than to receive.' "
At this time of year so many are focused on receiving. Jesus puts the focus on giving. "It is more blessed to give than to receive." What joy can be experienced in giving. What freedom there is from the tyranny of materialism when you release your resources and possessions to God and share them willingly. It is all His anyway. [Ps 24:1]
Over the years Brenda and I have been on both sides. We have delighted in giving. We have given clothes, money, and two vehicles to people in need. It delighted us to do so. We have sacrificially given to churches we've served. We want to hold our possessions with open hands.
We have also been on the receiving end more times than I can recount. Many of you have heard many of these faith stories. We never grow tired of telling them. As we walk this road of faith we are grateful for the people God has used to partner with us in so many ways and to be the answers to our prayers for help.
Recently I preached a revival meeting in Lavaca, AR. After one service a man approached me and commented on how much he loved my tie. Immediately I felt prompted I was supposed to give him the tie. I took it off and gave it to him joyfully and not begrudgingly. Now giving a tie is not a big deal. I have a closet full of ties. What if God requires you and me to give more? Like when He prompted me to give away my fairly new truck. Again I did so in faith and joyfully. I never regretted it. It is more blessed to give than to receive.
Brenda and I have been on the receiving end a lot. We don't like it. We prefer to be the ones giving. Truth is on our journey of faith we have needed to receive. It is a blow to our pride. Like yesterday. I have someone who blesses me with $20 each week. I have resisted and protested. That $20 blessing still arrives on my desk. While my pride hates to receive it this week it is the only $20 our family had for gas. Thank God for that willing vessel.
You very well might be God's vessel to answer someone's prayer. Somewhere someone is crying out to God for help and provision. He hears those prayers and then prompts you to intervene. God calls you to meet their need. What you do in response speaks to your faith. Do you trust God to obey? Do you rationalize the thoughts of giving away?
God used Dr. Willis to be the vessel to bless me with a Jeep Grand Cherokee many years ago for traveling and preaching. He used multiple people to provide down payment money for my family when we believed God to buy our first and second homes. He has used people to provide for my family for the past several years. When Brenda and I needed provision we pleaded with God to help. He placed our needs on people's hearts and they responded.
Like the day I faced a $900 need. Brenda and I did not tell anyone. We prayed and begged God to help us. Someone stopped by my office later that week. Before they left they shoved a folded check across my desk saying they felt prompted by God to give it. When they left I opened that check. You guessed it. $900. God heard our cries and connected our prayers with a vessel with the means to meet the need. Praise His glorious name. That is jut one example out of hundreds I could give.
Right now, this very moment, God may choose to connect you with someone's prayers for help. It is more blessed to give than to receive. In our passage today the word give means to yield and to reward. What do you possess today that God wants you to yield to Him and reward the faith of someone else who has a need?
It is an awesome thing to be God's vessel and channel of blessing to someone else. It is amazing that God can choose you to be the answer to somebody's prayer today. I urge you to be sensitive to His leadings and promptings.
On many occasions I have felt impressed for certain people to be used of God to help us without ever telling them. It has been encouraging to watch God over and over again touch those people and lead them to respond to the very things I petitioned the Lord for. In this way God is glorified ad the power of God to respond to prayer is magnified.
Somewhere somebody has a need. You may have the resources to meet that need. God may choose to connect your resources with that need and you will be the vessel through which that prayer will be answered. God will be glorified through your giving and their receiving. The need may be pressing. I urge you to be very attentive to God's leadership in these matters as some of these prayers are time sensitive.
On this journey to trust and obey may we all need to be sensitive not just to pray for what we need, but to also be available to be the answer to prayer for someone else. To God be the glory.
Steps To Trust And Obey:
1. Has God brought anyone to mind with a need as you read this?
2. Is God calling you to be the vessel to answer that prayer for someone?
3. If so will you obey God promptly?
4. What need do you have?
5. Pray trusting God to place your need on someone's mind and heart and to respond in faith.
Wednesday, December 12, 2018
28 Days To Trust And Obey - Day 11
But when you pray, go into your inner room, close 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
I love my early morning times with the Father in the secret place. He and I enjoy some of the sweetest times together. . I love my little office off our bedroom. It is my secret place. What I love about it is the fact that I have some very significant encounters with the Lord in this place. It is my secret place.
Far too many believers are content to pray petite prayers, many of which are prayed publicly. God is not only inviting us but also calling us to a life devoted to prayer in isolation from the rest of the world. He wants to hear those desires of our hearts and He wants to speak to us. There are conversations that take place through prayer in the secret place that the rest of the world may be unaware of, but God takes notice.
I love getting up early, shutting myself up in this private sanctuary, and meeting with God through scripture reading, private pleadings, and fervent intercessions for those I love. Nobody knows what takes place in those times together except the Lord and me. It is the best part of my day, the highlight I look forward to and often I am very reluctant to leave when I am pulled away by other responsibilities. I love the inner room, my secret place, and prayer closet to fellowship with the Father in.
Do you have such a place? The physical location is not nearly as important as having a place you have designated to meet God, making it sacred. I have two such spots; the one I use most is my office. As I mentioned earlier, I love this office because the Lord sanctifies this little nook with His infinite presence. There is another place that is dear to my heart - I call it my prayer cabin. Oh, how I have met with God in that little rustic cabin. At all costs, find a place where you are going to meet with God in secret over these next days and beyond.
The word “secret” in this passage means concealed, private, hidden. We must conceal ourselves alone with God for extended periods of time to ask Him for His help. Time spent in the secret place seeking the Lord is not time that is wasted. It is an investment of our time and we shall be rewarded.
The word “reward” means to give back, to restore. God gives us His blessings, presence, counsel, and miracles in response to time spent in the secret place. We might be seeking Him in secret but His rewards very often come publicly as we have the opportunity to testify about God’s greatness and His power. I assure you He longs to do more for us, in us, and through us than any of us desire to ask Him for.
Do not wait any longer. Today is the building block for habits that will benefit you the rest of your life. We must pray in faith. God rewards those who live by faith and seek Him. Now, we must set aside time, long sustained times, in the secret place to enjoy Him, to seek Him, to ask Him for the things that burden our hearts. Conceal yourself in privacy for the purpose of a heart-to-heart talk with Jesus. It is just you and Him. You do not have to use flowery language or pray with eloquence, all you need is to come to Him in sincerity, confess any known sin, and ask Him in faith for those things you are burdened over. The rest is up to Him.
Steps to Trust and Obey:
1. Before anything else, you need to establish a secret place and a designated time you will meet the Lord in that place.
2. Believe that your time spent in the secret place is time well invested.
3. Spend some time asking the Lord what He is saying to you. As He speaks, write down what you sense Him speaking to you.
4. Lay your requests before the Lord in detail.
5. Ask for increased faith and expectations that your prayers are not only being heard but that they will be answered as well.
Matthew 6:6
I love my early morning times with the Father in the secret place. He and I enjoy some of the sweetest times together. . I love my little office off our bedroom. It is my secret place. What I love about it is the fact that I have some very significant encounters with the Lord in this place. It is my secret place.
Far too many believers are content to pray petite prayers, many of which are prayed publicly. God is not only inviting us but also calling us to a life devoted to prayer in isolation from the rest of the world. He wants to hear those desires of our hearts and He wants to speak to us. There are conversations that take place through prayer in the secret place that the rest of the world may be unaware of, but God takes notice.
I love getting up early, shutting myself up in this private sanctuary, and meeting with God through scripture reading, private pleadings, and fervent intercessions for those I love. Nobody knows what takes place in those times together except the Lord and me. It is the best part of my day, the highlight I look forward to and often I am very reluctant to leave when I am pulled away by other responsibilities. I love the inner room, my secret place, and prayer closet to fellowship with the Father in.
Do you have such a place? The physical location is not nearly as important as having a place you have designated to meet God, making it sacred. I have two such spots; the one I use most is my office. As I mentioned earlier, I love this office because the Lord sanctifies this little nook with His infinite presence. There is another place that is dear to my heart - I call it my prayer cabin. Oh, how I have met with God in that little rustic cabin. At all costs, find a place where you are going to meet with God in secret over these next days and beyond.
The word “secret” in this passage means concealed, private, hidden. We must conceal ourselves alone with God for extended periods of time to ask Him for His help. Time spent in the secret place seeking the Lord is not time that is wasted. It is an investment of our time and we shall be rewarded.
The word “reward” means to give back, to restore. God gives us His blessings, presence, counsel, and miracles in response to time spent in the secret place. We might be seeking Him in secret but His rewards very often come publicly as we have the opportunity to testify about God’s greatness and His power. I assure you He longs to do more for us, in us, and through us than any of us desire to ask Him for.
Do not wait any longer. Today is the building block for habits that will benefit you the rest of your life. We must pray in faith. God rewards those who live by faith and seek Him. Now, we must set aside time, long sustained times, in the secret place to enjoy Him, to seek Him, to ask Him for the things that burden our hearts. Conceal yourself in privacy for the purpose of a heart-to-heart talk with Jesus. It is just you and Him. You do not have to use flowery language or pray with eloquence, all you need is to come to Him in sincerity, confess any known sin, and ask Him in faith for those things you are burdened over. The rest is up to Him.
Steps to Trust and Obey:
1. Before anything else, you need to establish a secret place and a designated time you will meet the Lord in that place.
2. Believe that your time spent in the secret place is time well invested.
3. Spend some time asking the Lord what He is saying to you. As He speaks, write down what you sense Him speaking to you.
4. Lay your requests before the Lord in detail.
5. Ask for increased faith and expectations that your prayers are not only being heard but that they will be answered as well.
Tuesday, December 11, 2018
28 Days To Trust And Obey - Day 10
28 Days To Trust And Obey - Day 10
Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for and the conviction of things not seen.
Hebrews 11:1
Recently, I was deeply stirred while listening to Canada missionary Dwight Huffman’s message and its two simple points: What do you see, and what do you believe? Dwight demonstrated how our physical eyes can deceive us as he told us the story of a church in Melfort, Saskatchewan. With only six adult members left after years of effort to establish a church, the small group contacted Dwight about shutting down and giving up. But when they prayed and asked God to intervene instead, He did!
In answer to their prayer, Melfort native Todd Goudy felt called to return to his hometown to pastor the Melfort church. Today the church has outgrown its facilities, sold them for $150,000, and purchased a Nazarene church facility much larger and newer than their previous building for $90,000, leaving them $60,000 left over. God has grown His church from six faithful souls to well over a hundred, and all of this in about two years’ time.
Right now your eyes are telling you something. They are telling you to give up, that there is no hope, there is no use, and that the odds are stacked against you. What do you see? Do you see impossibilities? Do you see challenges and obstacles? Do you see your own limitations or the frailty of your own trust in God to intervene? What do you see?
I challenge you now to ask yourself , “What do I believe?” What do you believe about God and His ability to intervene? As we continue on this incredible journey of faith we first need to know what faith is and what faith does.
The word “faith” in Hebrews 11:1 could also be translated assurance, persuasion, belief, or conviction. When we pray we are called to pray with faith or to pray with conviction and assurance that the thing we are praying for will come to pass; not because of our praying but because of God’s intervention. Faith is the oxygen that breathes life into our praying. Without faith our prayers are like wounded ducks shot from the sky and falling lifeless to the ground. Faith is simply believing that God can and will intervene.
As you continue on this 28 day pilgrimage, you have been challenged to identify some things you are asking God to provide. As you devote yourself to prayer today – pray with faith or with assurance and confidence that the thing you are praying for will come to pass. Pray with conviction and wrap this verse around your mind all day long. Do not entertain doubts that God will not come through. Doubt chokes and strangles faith which makes our prayers ineffective. Pray with persuasion that God is going to bring your petitions to reality.
Hebrews 11:1 reads that faith is the assurance…. that does not make sense. According to the way we just defined the word “faith” it would read “assurance is the assurance.” We just established the fact that the word “faith” means assurance and confidence. The word “assurance” in this passage has two insightful meanings: it means substance or actual existence. Stay with me here. When we pray with faith, which is our assurance, we should pray as if the thing we are praying for is actually in existence or real substance. That means we are to pray and see with our spiritual eyes what our physical eyes may not be able to behold at the moment. It goes back to the question, what do you see and what do you believe? When we are really praying with genuine faith, we have a concrete confidence that what we are asking the Father for will come to pass if we are praying according to His will (I John 5:14-15.) We will get into God’s will and prayer later on.
You might not behold the substance of your prayers yet with your physical eyes but what do you see with your eyes of faith? Can you see your request coming to pass? Many years ago God birthed in me the idea for a book to be titled Behold the Faithfulness of God. I prayed, wrote, rewrote, and edited while praying even more for God to put that book into print. I prayed in faith and could actually see myself holding the book in my hand and the book sitting on bookshelves. Now, mind you I did not see the details of the cover of the book but I did see that book with my spiritual eyes. In my spirit that book was substance and actually in existence for years in the spiritual realm. I waited for years before God intervened, provided a way for the book to be published and in December of 2008 I held that answer to prayer in my hand for the first time. We printed 5,000 copies of it. Even today I still have multiple copies of this book in boxes sitting in my garage.
What is it you see in your spirit but have not tasted in the physical realm? Ask the Lord in faith, believing that it will come to pass in actual existence. This is the essence of really trusting and obeying. We are not through, though. What are we praying for? What are we believing God for? What are we assured of and what is the substance and evidence of our faith?
These are vital questions in the quest to trust and obey. I would draw your attention to the word “things” in our Hebrews passage. What things? These are the tangible and specific things we are praying for. A new job. Healing of arthritis, kidney disease, brain tumors, and for healthy deliveries of infant children. Things like provision for bills, transportation, the success of businesses, provision for lost retirement money in the stock market, and even some of the desires of our hearts. What specific things are you praying for?
One other word I would like to focus on in our passage is the word “hope.” Hope is what prayer offered in faith provides, it gives hope, and “hope” defined means expected. I fully expect that God will bless our church and I fully expect that God is going to grow this little church that most people have never heard of. I fully expect that many of you this day are coming to a new understanding about faith and prayer, making you eager to pray with renewed enthusiasm. When we say amen and rise from our praying, we should get up and go about the rest of the day expecting and being assured that God will intervene. He might not do it right this moment, in this very hour, but if we have asked God with right motives and according to His will, we can expect answers to those things we have seen and petitioned the Lord for by faith. We can expect to witness, to hold, and to testify about God’s answers to prayer. May we all pray with fresh faith and the firm conviction that God does and will answer prayer because He is always faithful.
Steps to Trust and Obey:
1. What things do you need to ask God for in faith? Be specific and ask according to what we discovered about faith in Hebrews 11:1.
2. What do you see right now? What do you believe God will do?
Take some time to ask the Lord to enable you to believe Him for greater things over the next few weeks.
3. Read Heb 11:1 slowly, thinking about what you see with your eyes and what you believe in your heart.
4. Take some time to pray with as much faith as you can muster and be determined to rise and go about your day with hope and expectation.
Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for and the conviction of things not seen.
Hebrews 11:1
Recently, I was deeply stirred while listening to Canada missionary Dwight Huffman’s message and its two simple points: What do you see, and what do you believe? Dwight demonstrated how our physical eyes can deceive us as he told us the story of a church in Melfort, Saskatchewan. With only six adult members left after years of effort to establish a church, the small group contacted Dwight about shutting down and giving up. But when they prayed and asked God to intervene instead, He did!
In answer to their prayer, Melfort native Todd Goudy felt called to return to his hometown to pastor the Melfort church. Today the church has outgrown its facilities, sold them for $150,000, and purchased a Nazarene church facility much larger and newer than their previous building for $90,000, leaving them $60,000 left over. God has grown His church from six faithful souls to well over a hundred, and all of this in about two years’ time.
Right now your eyes are telling you something. They are telling you to give up, that there is no hope, there is no use, and that the odds are stacked against you. What do you see? Do you see impossibilities? Do you see challenges and obstacles? Do you see your own limitations or the frailty of your own trust in God to intervene? What do you see?
I challenge you now to ask yourself , “What do I believe?” What do you believe about God and His ability to intervene? As we continue on this incredible journey of faith we first need to know what faith is and what faith does.
The word “faith” in Hebrews 11:1 could also be translated assurance, persuasion, belief, or conviction. When we pray we are called to pray with faith or to pray with conviction and assurance that the thing we are praying for will come to pass; not because of our praying but because of God’s intervention. Faith is the oxygen that breathes life into our praying. Without faith our prayers are like wounded ducks shot from the sky and falling lifeless to the ground. Faith is simply believing that God can and will intervene.
As you continue on this 28 day pilgrimage, you have been challenged to identify some things you are asking God to provide. As you devote yourself to prayer today – pray with faith or with assurance and confidence that the thing you are praying for will come to pass. Pray with conviction and wrap this verse around your mind all day long. Do not entertain doubts that God will not come through. Doubt chokes and strangles faith which makes our prayers ineffective. Pray with persuasion that God is going to bring your petitions to reality.
Hebrews 11:1 reads that faith is the assurance…. that does not make sense. According to the way we just defined the word “faith” it would read “assurance is the assurance.” We just established the fact that the word “faith” means assurance and confidence. The word “assurance” in this passage has two insightful meanings: it means substance or actual existence. Stay with me here. When we pray with faith, which is our assurance, we should pray as if the thing we are praying for is actually in existence or real substance. That means we are to pray and see with our spiritual eyes what our physical eyes may not be able to behold at the moment. It goes back to the question, what do you see and what do you believe? When we are really praying with genuine faith, we have a concrete confidence that what we are asking the Father for will come to pass if we are praying according to His will (I John 5:14-15.) We will get into God’s will and prayer later on.
You might not behold the substance of your prayers yet with your physical eyes but what do you see with your eyes of faith? Can you see your request coming to pass? Many years ago God birthed in me the idea for a book to be titled Behold the Faithfulness of God. I prayed, wrote, rewrote, and edited while praying even more for God to put that book into print. I prayed in faith and could actually see myself holding the book in my hand and the book sitting on bookshelves. Now, mind you I did not see the details of the cover of the book but I did see that book with my spiritual eyes. In my spirit that book was substance and actually in existence for years in the spiritual realm. I waited for years before God intervened, provided a way for the book to be published and in December of 2008 I held that answer to prayer in my hand for the first time. We printed 5,000 copies of it. Even today I still have multiple copies of this book in boxes sitting in my garage.
What is it you see in your spirit but have not tasted in the physical realm? Ask the Lord in faith, believing that it will come to pass in actual existence. This is the essence of really trusting and obeying. We are not through, though. What are we praying for? What are we believing God for? What are we assured of and what is the substance and evidence of our faith?
These are vital questions in the quest to trust and obey. I would draw your attention to the word “things” in our Hebrews passage. What things? These are the tangible and specific things we are praying for. A new job. Healing of arthritis, kidney disease, brain tumors, and for healthy deliveries of infant children. Things like provision for bills, transportation, the success of businesses, provision for lost retirement money in the stock market, and even some of the desires of our hearts. What specific things are you praying for?
One other word I would like to focus on in our passage is the word “hope.” Hope is what prayer offered in faith provides, it gives hope, and “hope” defined means expected. I fully expect that God will bless our church and I fully expect that God is going to grow this little church that most people have never heard of. I fully expect that many of you this day are coming to a new understanding about faith and prayer, making you eager to pray with renewed enthusiasm. When we say amen and rise from our praying, we should get up and go about the rest of the day expecting and being assured that God will intervene. He might not do it right this moment, in this very hour, but if we have asked God with right motives and according to His will, we can expect answers to those things we have seen and petitioned the Lord for by faith. We can expect to witness, to hold, and to testify about God’s answers to prayer. May we all pray with fresh faith and the firm conviction that God does and will answer prayer because He is always faithful.
Steps to Trust and Obey:
1. What things do you need to ask God for in faith? Be specific and ask according to what we discovered about faith in Hebrews 11:1.
2. What do you see right now? What do you believe God will do?
Take some time to ask the Lord to enable you to believe Him for greater things over the next few weeks.
3. Read Heb 11:1 slowly, thinking about what you see with your eyes and what you believe in your heart.
4. Take some time to pray with as much faith as you can muster and be determined to rise and go about your day with hope and expectation.
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