Author: Lisa Groen
Category: Devotional and prayer
God definitely has some thoughts about what should be happening on the Earth, at any given time and we can be confident that the One who created the Heavens and the Earth is also running the show. God is in control of what is allowed to happen on the earth. God is Sovereign and has a plan for “making all things new”, for “vengeance is mine, I will repay” He says, and a plan for “healing of the nations”, for “healing the brokenhearted”, for “redeeming people from the curse” that is “found upon the face of the earth”. God has “broken the power of sin” and “put sin to death in the body of Jesus”, and “came to save his people from their sins”. God has promised a future place where there is no strife, where people “will no longer learn war”, where people will be generous, loving, good to their neighbors, serving one another, live long and healthy lives, where people work to “rescue the helpless, and help rebuild broken cities”. God in scripture has gone on record saying that for man to be alone is not a good thing. He hates when His people are isolated from Him and others in the family of God, and he has gone on record saying he hates injustice, immorality, and inequality. God hates it when people in the world are hurt by other people’s sin.
Proverbs 6:16-19 There are six things the Lord hates, seven that are detestable to him: haughty eyes, a lying tongue, hands that shed innocent blood, a heart that devises wicked schemes, feet that are quick to rush into evil, a false witness who pours out lies and a person who stirs up conflict in the community.
The facts are that sin does hurt people. Even the sin that a person may commit when he is alone may eventually end up surfacing and hurting someone else, as far as something like pornography being viewed, or of a person ruminating over any selfish, prideful, or bitter thoughts. The Bible says God hates those things. Getting hurt is such a common experience that everyone on the face of the earth can unfortunately experience this multiple times a week, if it were not simply getting hurt by the “sin” that we see around us that is described to “vex” one’s soul, as in “Rivers of waters run down mine eyes,
because they keep not thy law” (Ps 119:136). And righteous Lot was vexed, which is to say, greatly distressed with the depraved and sexualized words and conduct of the wicked Sodomites (2 Pet 2:7). One of the qualities that is spoken about of God’s wonderful promises for the future telling that he will one day “make all things new” is a wonderful place to start ruminating over all the hope we can have in a trustworthy God who is aware of our circumstances, our pains, our needs and knows every injustice we have ever suffered, so that meditating on his promises surely can shape our perspectives of what is happening presently all over the globe, shape our understanding of the past and can shape our understanding of what will happen in the future.
1 Corinthians 13:7 says “(Love) always protects….” And “1 John 4:16 says “God is love, and all who live in love live in God, and God lives in them.” Or, “God is love, and he who abides in love abides in God, and God in him.” So, to see the ways God protects people in scripture and in the world around us is surely a picture of his loving heart. Needless to say, some scholars say at least 5 and possibly 6 out of 10 of the 10 commandments were laws God made to keep us free from the pains of sin, and from hurting one another, and in the OT there are many additional laws God put in place to bring aide to the hurt or defrauded, where the scripture tells in detail how to go about paying restitution.
Therefore praying for protection and/or avoidance of pain can be one of the most prayed-for topics that exists: “God I ask for safety for my patients”…from the lips of a surgeon… “God, please keep my classroom safe today…” from the lips of a school teacher, “God please keep all food bourn illness away from my business…” from the lips of a restaurant owner, or butcher. God please protect this person, we ask for traveling mercies…” from the lips of all who travel, and bus drivers and airplane pilots. “God please keep the campground safe today…” from the lips of state recreation area workers, just to name a few.
But for those who believe in the Sovereignty of God, we can be sometimes taught wrong or tempted to think “everything” that “just happens” is His will, so that means therefore we just simply need to “embrace everything” as coming directly from Him. The idea that we should “be completely humble and not try to fight against anything” so as to be relieved from our duty of imploring God through our belief in the God who protects is an all too deeply accepted half-truth/half-lie that has served to make lame and impotent the Christian church today.
So, here is just a snapshot or short list of “unnecessary pains” the church should not enable by the sin of not thinking it necessary to pray and fast, or enable by the sin of omitting prayer and fasting at times!
Unnecessary Pains:
- The pain our sin causes. We need to fight our sin and not accept it, even though our righteousness has been paid for in full not by our works, God has called us to follow him. We should not “shrink back” in our fight of faith. There may be times when we need to “re-coup” and “regain strength” but we should not become passive in our fight against our own sin.
- The pain of bad treatment from others. We should not accept all treatment from others as always something needed to keep us in God’s will. God’s people prayed for deliverance from Egypt. Paul was let down by a basket over a wall and was taken to a place where he would be safe from death threats. King David fought many fights against the armies of pagan nations and God gave him and Israel the victory many times over. Esther did not accept the idea of genocide for the people of Israel, and was called on by God to trust Him although her life could be at stake going before the King to ask for a law to be changed. And she called on the nation of Israel to fast and pray for 3 days, and they did, and God granted that the law be changed, by touching the heart of the king of Persia. God rallied the King to literally kill the corrupt person who wanted a nation killed and this shows that her refusal to “accept” what was already in place for genocide of the Jews to happen in the law. So we see it was her knowledge of the God she knew and loved as a God who delivered his people from death, proved again to be the living and active part of the personality of the God who massively is able to save nations full of people!
- The pain of misused authority from husbands or religious leaders. Issues where scripture is taken out of context by abusive husbands and tell their wives that they must submit even when the husband has no interest in protecting the welfare of his wife or family. To counter this, we must remember God does not put authority on the totem pole above the safety of innocent people. God is the God who protects. Issues where leaders take scripture out of context and tell their congregants “they must submit” even when there may be questionable practices or questionable attitudes by the leadership of the church is another place and time people must remember the “God who always protects” and prayers should be made regarding how God would like to reveal truth to save people from getting hurt.
- The pain of not being able to preach the whole truth of the Bible because of some “anti-Christ societal norm creeping in”. Issues where “people who seem to want peace, and equality for everyone” in the secular world who may try to shut down the preaching of God’s word or the speaking of Biblical truth is another thing today’s Spirit filled Christian should not accept but fight against through prayer and fasting.
- The pain of corrupt laws like legal abortions, the legalization of marijuana, and the legalization of homosexual marriages cause people to sin more freely than when those sins were not legal. The pain of these legalized sins warps the collective mind of society. Therefore, these things enable greater numbers of people to get hurt by those sins, simply by looking on at what is happening in society. We must keep before our minds that the Bible shows us corrupt laws CAN change through prayer and fasting EVEN though God might be allowing suffering under these sins for a season! We have many opportunities to see our whole world change even down to some laws that can be pivotal in turning our society away from sin, and with the hope of maintaining a more truthful collective mindset in discerning good from evil.
- The pain of corrupt laws trying to prevent the true communication of God’s word, and God’s standards. Evil people do not want God’s word to go forth. Corrupt people have tried to shut down his truth since the garden of Eden and the jealousy of Cain. When God’s people pray to keep the Christian Church to continue worshipping Him and serving Him as we should, God often averts the plans of the enemy and preserves his Name, His reputation, and His Truth in the land!
All the above are injustices and evils the Bible mentions we should not accept and should not be lazy in standing against in our Christian walk. Although God is completely Sovereign and can use what the enemy meant for evil for the good of someone or for all his people, can use hardship to sanctify his people, and change the oppression or injustice, let us remember the many Biblical accounts where God changed something, some battle, some law, the heart of some elected official, or some famine or pestilence from shutting down the people of God he has sent to proclaim the kingdom of God. May we remember from which stock we come from, and remember our calling and election and make it sure through a firm footed and steady fight of faith! Pray with me against the above evils!
Prayer:
Oh Gracious Heavenly Father! Many or all of the evils I have listed are happening even as I speak at any time in the world and the enemy has been rampaging against the body of Christ! It’s as if our society has shifted into some grey and nebulous callous and warped un-reality zone! It’s as if there is an underlying message that unless the church shows anything besides being meek and mild we are labeled as “hateful intolerant bigots who need to be quickly woke!” Many times the “wives submit to your husbands card” is played under wrong circumstances, and my heart Lord is not to say that scripture is wrong, but to say it can be used by those with spiritual authority over God’s women and make them stripped of emotional sanity. And likewise, the “submit to your spiritual authorities” card is played under false pretense to suggest they belong to an “right and only right group of spiritual know-it-alls”. Please Lord teach the body of Christ how to address these evils so we can protect the body of Christ more like Jesus does! Teach us how to be loving in our messages proclaiming the word of God without compromising on truth, and may the pains of society screaming for us to “stop preaching the word of God as it is in the Bible”, be quenched and silenced! Oh God, may you bring your will to be done in our nation and other nations to establish your Kingdom and to revise and abolish the corrupt laws put in place by corrupt people to kill innocent children, to brainwash our society out of their God given sexual identities, and to steal our minds through drugs, Oh God! Please undo the pains we Christians have caused or allowed our nation by our passivity toward the corrupt laws now in place, and may Your will be established, and Godly laws put in place in our world to correct the unnecessary pains that I have just mentioned! And Lord, we know it is our personal sin that you overcame on the cross and that we can surrender to you for part of the reborn heart environment in which you have given the Christian to live. Many or most who are reading this know Lord we live in a world birthed by your Spirit, and by your Spirit we have been given a heart to love You, and be grieved by our own compromise! Oh God may we be granted progress by your Spirit within us, grant us true strength from heaven to go forward by your Spirit as we grow by absorbing your virtue, like the rain and snow from heaven! And may You feed us Lord with your truth so we may proclaim its many benefits and glories, and may you utterly change the face and heart of our lives, of our families and our country, and all the world around us so that You would be seen and glorified more and more in our world on a more massive level Oh Lord Our Lord, for You are Mighty to Save Oh God!
Amen!
Keep growing in the Word! LG
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