Category: Prayer and devotional blend

On Repentance

Author: Lisa Groen

Category: Prayer and devotional blend

Dear Heavenly Father, from the time we have heard the Gospel, the true gospel, we heard that in our flesh “nothing good dwells” –Romans 7:18. We need oftentimes reminders that we have no good in ourselves to add to God’s desire to save us. Philippians 4:13 reads “for it is God who works in you to will and to act in order to fulfill his good purpose.” We have nothing in us that qualifies us for forgiveness, and nothing in us that adds up to meriting Christ’s gift of righteousness—Romans 3:9-20; Psalm 53:1-3. We must realize that all of salvation is an act of the Sovereign grace of God, and as we believe, and are overwhelmed by Your undeserved goodness Oh God, we feel the tug on our hearts to “put to death whatever belongs to our earthly nature.” Through believing we must realize our willingness to repent is a fruit of God already having done something in our hearts to cause us to want to repent. For Psalm 31:19 reads “How great is Your goodness which You have laid up for those who fear You, which You have bestowed before the sons of men on those who take refuge in You!  And Ezekiel 11:19 reads, “And I will give them singleness of heart and put a new spirit within them; I will remove their heart of stone and give them a heart of flesh”. May we sincerely meditate on Romans 6:1, and 6:15 which state: “What shall we say then? Shall we continue in sin, that grace may abound? Romans 2:4 reads “Or do you despise the riches of His kindness and forbearance and patience, not knowing that the kindness of God leads you to repentance?” We must be renewed in the truth Oh Lord it is You Alone who justifies the sinner based on the perfect and complete work of Christ already having died for us on the cross WHILE WE WERE YET SINNERS. Romans 5:8-9 states “But God proves His love for us in this: “While we were still sinners, Christ died for us. Therefore, since we have now been justified by His blood, how much more shall we be saved from wrath through Him!” And this giving us a clear hope and solid place to stand at the foot of the cross of Jesus. We must realize Oh God that Jesus is just as the song says the “Joy of my Desire” (In Haggai 2:7 the Lord says, “I will shake all nations, and what is desired by all nations will come, and I will fill this house with glory.”) May we be mindful of Psalm 34:8 which reads “Taste and see that the LORD is good; blessed is the one who takes refuge in him” and that there is no higher love that we get to taste while on this earth. You are seeking our love Oh Lord, and You are seeking our affection Oh Lord. Colin Smith in his blog https://unlockingthebible.org/lifekey/is-repentance-a-command-or-a-gift/ writes “God grants repentance. So you can ask God to give you a contrite heart. You can ask him to change your heart. You can cry out to him “Lord, restore repentance!” This is the promise of the gospel: God will give you a new heart (Ezek. 36:26–27).” Lord may everyone who comes into contact with this blog/prayer be touched and convicted Oh Lord that You are more interested in our spiritual health than we ever could be in this life and from that place of Your shielding us by providing hope in our deepest needs, we can find the grace to draw near and cry out to you for change from bondage and change in the places we still need to change, for the grace and virtue to both love the things you love –which in short is your truth, and righteousness and goodness, and to hate the things you hate, which in short is our sin, the unrighteous acts we have committed, and our proneness to folly. May we be people Oh Lord who prize the Love of Jesus above our highest Joy, and to Love Your righteousness and Goodness Oh Lord above anything this world may have tried to offer us—Psalm 45:7; Heb 1:9; Psalm 97:10. May we wash out our tastebuds and mouth in the milk of Your Word, Oh Lord, and wash our feet as often as we have come into contact with the world, and know that we may be prone to say at times what the lukewarm have said in their folly in Revelation 3:17 saying, “‘I am rich; I have grown wealthy and need nothing.’” But (as it says in the Word…) “you do not realize that you are wretched, pitiful, poor, blind, and naked.” Oh Lord!– we ask with one voice Oh Lord, that if this has been so about us, that seeing the reality of it we might be seeking you to do our part in undoing the bondage of the world, and only by Your grace find help to undo our pride, our self-sufficiency, our worldliness and our inordinate loves and that You would do what only You can do! We pray we would be enabled to take off our filthy rags by Your graces, lay them down at the foot of the cross, and put on Christ, (in your armor and in Your Very Sweet Person), and be nourished on the graces of your Word, and find hope in only what Jesus accomplished, and desire the pure milk of the Word, which is able to save and satisfy our souls and grow us up in You Oh Lord! Drain out from us anything worldly, and put in place of it the growth You would desire to see, and fill us with your Spirit, goodness, and truth, Oh Dear Lord! May we truly be done with our sin, and truly make room for You in all the places of our lives we might have held back from You, Oh Lord, we cry out for mercy, growth, cleansing, heart change, and stable progress in You and in all our manner of life Oh Lord! We pray these things for our lives themselves, and for the very lives that you would have us to minister to, as we seek Your abiding presence over those we love, and over those we are called to love, and we seek these things for everyone we are to live out our faith as examples to, and as servants of Yours as we work the field of souls we are called to work for Your Kingdom Oh Dear Lord! Amen! May we access God’s blessings in abundance, and may His grace lavishly cover every need–even those that are not “pretty”, and have no earthly answer! Amen.

Keep growing in the Word! LG

In Our Fight Against Our Sin, We Do Not War With Carnal Weapons

Author: Lisa Groen

Category: Prayer and devotional blend

Lord, by your good grace, may I and others lose our appetites for anything that is not like you Lord Jesus. As we fast, I pray you would help us deal with our sin habits, so that we can nip our sin habits in the bud. You have given us the directive in the word to leave our lives of sin, and to come follow you, but have not left us like helpless orphans! Help us to lose the enjoyment of indulging in excess because all sin is a snare! Help us to not justify our sins, or excuse them because of the “pluses” we think they add to our lives, or to love the things that snare us! May we hate the things in our lives Oh God that you hate Oh Lord! May we look squarely at the word Oh Lord, and pluck out of our lives the things that we are discerning that offend you Jesus! Dear Jesus, your word tells us that people can become sick with pockets of sin in their lives if that sin is not dealt with! Isaiah 1:5-7 reads, “Why should ye be stricken any more? ye will revolt more and more: the whole head is sick, and the whole heart faint. 6 From the sole of the foot even unto the head there is no soundness in it; but wounds, and bruises, and putrefying sores: they have not been closed, neither bound up, neither mollified with ointment. 7 Your country is desolate, your cities are burned with fire: your land, strangers devour it in your presence, and it is desolate, as overthrown by strangers.” This sounds so much like our lives in America!

May we not be like the people of Isaiah 5:18 who drag sin along as with cart ropes! We notice they were deceived in that verse, and notice that sin is heavy—like the weight of a cart that horses or multiple people would pull around! Or at least that would take the strength of two hands to drag along! May we count the cost of what sin habits rob us from and count the cost of what we might be losing by keeping sin habits in our lives! Even our complacency is a sin Oh God before you! And if we are not the deceived ones, is it not right and fitting for us to help others to become UNDECEIVED who are yet in the muddy swamp of deception?

Lord we are given evidence to believe in the scripture which tells us that you grant your people an inner holiness and to approach you in the same attitude of holiness poured into us from you, and this speaks of your Spirit alive in us having made us born again. Yet simultaneously you call us to chasten our souls with fasting! And we know this is not a work of asceticism! Asceticism is powerless in itself to do the work only grace can do in us as we see we are enabled by another (by God) to live out Philippians 2:13 –to desire and to act according to your good purposes! You call us to walk in the Spirit and be led by the Spirit, and to live in the grace of the Spirit, and yet it is a chastening lifestyle led by your Word for the holy crucifying of the flesh! We tell ourselves that grace should make it “easy and comfortable” and “easy to agree with!” But sometimes it seems I am far from the pure work of agreeing with your will for a flawless and undisturbed crucifying of the flesh, and how far I feel at times from boldly shouting “YES LORD! Your will and NOT MINE!” But I want to GO there! I want to be more willing and ready to run unhindered with you in the pathway of your commands Oh God! (Psalm 119:32)

Sometimes when spending a long time in one place, the scenery all begins to look the same, and we can lose track of the lessons God is giving us in life and the things we are positioned by God to remember. The scripture is the gift that is available 24 hours a day to remind us of what God has done throughout his plan of redemption. To know we have the benefit of God working in our hearts is a tremendous strength when battling the flesh. What God does in our hearts once we have been born again is to flood them with his Spirit and light. Thankfully this positions us for God to win the war in our hearts when we begin to separate from our idols. Looking at Galatians 4:6, and 2 Corinthians 4:6, we read, “Because you are sons, God has sent forth the Spirit of His Son into our hearts, crying, “Abba! Father!” and, “ For God, who said, “Let light shine out of darkness,” made his light shine in our hearts to give us the light of the knowledge of God’s glory displayed in the face of Christ.”

When struggling with the tool of fasting to crucify our flesh we are never expected by God to put confidence in the flesh, but we can put our trust in the Lord, so that through His Spirit we can crucify the flesh! Oh God, you put your light in our hearts for so many reasons but clearly to show us what we are, and who we are, to give us strength to live for you, to motivate us to strive to be like you and to leave our old lives of sin behind!

Even given our Biblical model, we are shown we cannot do the crucifying in our own strength! Jesus clearly carried his own heavy cross, but he did not nail his hands or feet to the cross! This tells me that some other factors Our God might allow in our lives to indeed help us “crucify” our flesh. That reality is both scary and relieving at the same time. Notice the purpose of suffering in 2 Corinthians 4 (beginning in v 7)But we have this treasure in earthen vessels, so that the surpassing greatness of the power will be of God and not from ourselves; 8 we are afflicted in every way, but not crushed; perplexed, but not despairing; 9 persecuted, but not forsaken; struck down, but not destroyed;  10 always carrying about in the body the dying of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus also may be manifested in our body. The purpose of enduring these painful motions and means of crucifixion is SO THAT THE LIFE OF JESUS ALSO MAY be manifested in our body!

Oh Lord, how encouraging it is for us to read the scriptures declaring the provision you have given for putting off the flesh and crucifying it and for seeing the reality of Jesus at work in our personalities! And we so much want to keep away from religiosity, legalism, and asceticism and the motions of works-righteousness, enduring a cold heart! On the other hand, we also want to stay away from laziness, slothfulness, gluttony, impulsivity, and a lack of self-control which springs from us doing our own things and keeping our own will in the center of our mind as if we were our own God or as a people who serve mainly themselves. Please may we take the next step in the journey you are taking us on, for sanctification, living in the spirit, pursuing holiness, pushing away from sin, in going the other way and in crucifying sin. We can do this successfully only by your Spirit at work in our hearts, and are empowered and led forth to obey you oh God, and this is a great and beautiful mystery! Praise to you Lord, for truly setting us up for victory in Jesus, gracious Lord! Amen!

Keep growing in the Word! LG