Prayer of consecration – groenintheword.blog

Prayer of Dependence on God-6

Author: Lisa Groen

Category: Christian prayer aiming for true Christian growth

Dear Heavenly Father, we come to you today seeking your face, seeking to lift up your name and to ask your will to be done. We surrender our hearts. You have taken us your people through some painful times. At times we have faced insurmountable odds, extreme situations that seemed to press on our hearts as much as an olive press would press the olives in Bible times, and found your grace pulling us through tricky situations that show us that your ways are not our ways but are keeping us ever so dependent upon you. We praise you that we have seen your hand of love move on our behalf. We give you praise for your unmerited favor. We praise you for bringing us through fire, deep waters, things like hailstorms, windstorms and spiritual earthquakes. We give you praise for taking our brokenness, our inabilities, our failure, our weakness, our griefs and doing something with them we could never do that point to your shaping ability, shaping our lives to praise you through our pains and suffering. We praise you Lord for how excellent you are at getting your will done, and we get to go along for the ride, and you are placing your fingerprints more deeply into our lives. We praise you for showing your goodwill toward men, and for somehow making something of us that we never could have become without you, till something else in our lives points to your glory and goodness. We praise you for the fact that it is you alone who sustains us, provides for us, grants hope to us, for putting into us personality characteristics, gifts, talents, potential and limitations that you are somehow sovereignly shaping by your goodness to shape us into the image of your Son, and for giving us the Holy Spirit Comforter to bear with us in our weaknesses and to somehow bring something through our lives that will reflect your light, bear witness of you, and spark hope, endurance, perseverance, virtue and the stamina of your Spirit by your heavenly power. We praise you for the Comforter, who cries with groaning that words cannot express to bring or birth something into our lives, or out of us for a witness to the world that will in hope make us vessels fit for your use, and endue us with your heavenly garments, as we are sown a mortal body, and one day we believe we will be raised a spiritual body. We are sown in dishonor, but one day we will be raised in honor, we are sown in weakness, one day we will be raised in power, we are sown in corruption, and one day we will be raised in incorruption… I believe the following passage will greatly encourage those of us who are going through the pains of the death of the flesh, so let us consider carefully the words that Paul has written, and stay encouraged, friends.

1 Corinthians 15:37-58 reads, “And as for what you sow—you are not sowing the body that will be, but only a seed, perhaps of wheat or another grain. 38 But God gives it a body as he wants, and to each of the seeds its own body. 39 Not all flesh is the same flesh; there is one flesh for humans, another for animals, another for birds, and another for fish. 40 There are heavenly bodies and earthly bodies, but the splendor of the heavenly bodies is different from that of the earthly ones. 41 There is a splendor of the sun, another of the moon, and another of the stars; in fact, one star differs from another star in splendor. 42 So it is with the resurrection of the dead: Sown in corruption, raised in incorruption; 43 sown in dishonor, raised in glory; sown in weakness, raised in power; 44 sown a natural body, raised a spiritual body. If there is a natural body, there is also a spiritual body. 45 So it is written, The first man Adam became a living being; the last Adam became a life-giving spirit. 46 However, the spiritual is not first, but the natural, then the spiritual. 47 The first man was from the earth, a man of dust; the second man is from heaven. 48 Like the man of dust, so are those who are of the dust; like the man of heaven, so are those who are of heaven. 49 And just as we have borne the image of the man of dust, we will also bear the image of the man of heaven. 50 What I am saying, brothers and sisters, is this: Flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God, nor can corruption inherit incorruption. 51 Listen, I am telling you a mystery: We will not all fall asleep, but we will all be changed, 52 in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet. For the trumpet will sound, and the dead will be raised incorruptible, and we will be changed. 53 For this corruptible body must be clothed with incorruptibility, and this mortal body must be clothed with immortality. 54 When this corruptible body is clothed with incorruptibility, and this mortal body is clothed with immortality, then the saying that is written will take place: Death has been swallowed up in victory. 55 Where, death, is your victory? Where, death, is your sting? 56 The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law. 57 But thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ! 58 Therefore, my dear brothers and sisters, be steadfast, immovable, always excelling in the Lord’s work, because you know that your labor in the Lord is not in vain.” Amen!

Keep on growing in the Word! LG

Is It Our Weakness, Or God’s Opportunity?

Author: Lisa Groen

Category: Devotional and prayer

Jeremiah 9:23-25 “‘This is what the Lord says: The wise person should not boast in his wisdom; the strong should not boast in his strength; the wealthy should not boast in his wealth. 24 But the one who boasts should boast in this: that he understands and knows me—that I am the Lord, showing faithful love, justice, and righteousness on the earth, for I delight in these things. This is the Lord’s declaration. 25 “‘Look, the days are coming—this is the Lord’s declaration—when I will punish all the circumcised yet uncircumcised:

So having a circumcised heart goes right along with knowing the Lord who delights in faithful love, justice, and righteousness on the earth. The Lord shows that he overrides a person’s strength, money, and wisdom to put them level on the same playing field as the man or woman without these things that still knows the Lord. It is a true blessing to be able to come to God without wisdom necessarily, without strength per se, without wealth as a prerequisite, and to receive the benefit this scripture speaks of which is the privilege still of being able to understand and know God, and to be among those who have a circumcised heart.

Isaiah 40:28-29 Do you not know? Have you not heard? The LORD is the everlasting God, the Creator of the ends of the earth. He will not grow tired or weary; His understanding is beyond searching out. 29 He gives power to the faint and increases the strength of the weak.

So, the Lord overrides the weak man’s weakness and faintness, and he blesses them with strength. It is a true blessing to be able to come to God being on the verge of fainting, and to receive the benefits this scripture speaks of which is the privilege still of having your power and strength to be increased.

Romans 9:16 So then it does not depend on the man who wills or the man who runs, but on God who has mercy.

What else could it be but the mercy of God to override our lack of will and lack of taking action and grant us something good we don’t deserve? It is a true blessing to be able to come to God being on the verge of not having your own will set for action, and without your body set for performance and this scripture speaks of the privilege still of being a candidate for God’s mercy.

2 Chronicles 20:12 O our God, will You not judge them? For we are powerless before this great multitude who are coming against us; nor do we know what to do, but our eyes are on You.”

So, Jehoshaphat had faith that God could override the power of his enemies and level the playing field and take the powerlessness of his own army, and “work something out on their behalf”

I am not one to promote lack of wisdom, poverty, lack of taking action, weakness, or a lack of battle strategy or to say we don’t need to apply ourselves in our faith-walks. But it is encouraging to know that in all these situations it was clear the messages God is showing us are that when we feel like we have absolutely nothing to give out or draw from out of our personal reserves, we can lean upon our God, and his strength will be made perfect in our weaknesses.

2 Chronicles 20:3-4 Jehoshaphat was afraid and turned his attention to seek the Lord, and proclaimed a fast throughout all Judah. ⁴So Judah gathered together to seek help from the Lord; they even came from all the cities of Judah to seek the Lord.

In Jeremiah 9:23-25, Isaiah 40: 28-29, and the Romans 9:16 scriptures, what we see highlighted are the wonderful transcendent virtue attributes of God, based on God’s initiative and willing action on his people’s behalf. But when a little bit of fasting gets involved, then this happens: In 2 Chronicles 20:3-4, Jehoshaphat was afraid and turned his attention to seek the Lord, and proclaimed a fast throughout all Judah. ⁴So Judah gathered together to seek help from the Lord; they even came from all the cities of Judah to seek the Lord. Then later in vs. 21-23 When he had consulted with the people, he appointed those who sang to the Lord and those who praised Him in holy attire, as they went out before the army and said, “Give thanks to the Lord, for His lovingkindness is everlasting.” ²²When they began singing and praising, the Lord set ambushes against the sons of Ammon, Moab and Mount Seir, who had come against Judah; so they were routed. ²³For the sons of Ammon and Moab rose up against the inhabitants of Mount Seir destroying them completely; and when they had finished with the inhabitants of Seir, they helped to destroy one another. 25When Jehoshaphat and his people came to take their spoil, they found much among them, including goods, garments and valuable things which they took for themselves, more than they could carry. And they were three days taking the spoil because there was so much. 30 So the kingdom of Jehoshaphat was at peace, for his God gave him rest on all sides.

When we aim to add fasting, praise and worship, to our seeking God out of our weaknesses, we can expect him to magnify his gracious attributes before us despite our weaknesses, however ugly they may seem to cling to us or cover us, and His glory is shown in spite of what we are not.

Let’s be encouraged in who our Gracious Heavenly Father Is— “the Lord, showing faithful love, justice, and righteousness on the earth, for I delight in these things”, He says.

Prayer: Dear Heavenly Father, as we meditate upon your Godly attributes which you possess in your reliable self-autonomous self-existence, you shed your grace upon us. How wonderful it is that you are so unchangeable, and your steadfast love and your loving-kind ways are often magnified before our very eyes. Your desire is towards your people Oh God, and you draw us with chords of compassion. May we meditate this week on the countless ways in which your strength is made perfect in our weaknesses, and may those who are led to do so fast, pray, and worship you Lord! For you are worthy above all else and above everyone else, Oh God our Gracious Rock and Redeemer! Amen!

Keep growing in the Word! LG

Fasting as a Way to Improve Spiritual Eyesight and Turn Away From Carnal Indulgence

Author: Lisa Groen

Category: Devotional and prayer

If any of us happen to consider fasting today, we can be sure that The Lord will use it in some way for His Kingdom if He leads us to do so.

As young or as old as I am I have gotten to the point of having this pervading thought–When you get older you generally get less excited about things. You also get excited less often about things. This may be because we feel like we have seen it all, or we tell ourselves it will take too much energy to get excited or passionate, or we convince ourselves that if you’re smart you can just end up getting the best things in life coming to your door through Amazon without needing to get very excited. We might tell ourselves that getting pumped up or zealous about something is for the young and naïve and foolish. Everything we do as we get older is about saving our energy, or saving ourselves some trouble or making our schedules run as smoothly and conveniently as possible. Life becomes a lot about what we like and what we have a taste for and what we think will make us comfortable. We need our favorite drinks or teas, our favorite foods when we go shopping, our favorite kinds of books or bicycles, our favorite cookware, clothing, soaps and toothpaste and our favorite pastimes. (Notice I didn’t even get to the topic of electronics—I made this list true even if one doesn’t have a plethora of money, even true for people living in third world countries) Our lives smell heavily of the smell of “ME, MINE and MY, what I like, what I want, what feels good to me, smells good to me,, tastes good to me, relaxes me, what makes me look good, what keeps people liking me, and what KEEPS ME HAPPY!

And although all that is unfortunately true we can all say that if we were honest, I’ll bet each of us could easily think of 3 or 4 big areas in our lives that if God had absolute control of, or to put it in a theologically more correct way—if we absolutely and completely surrendered those areas to the absolute control of our Sovereign and deeply good Father of pure love and lights, then, our lives and potentially the lives of all of those around us would be radically different from an eternal rewards perspective or at least would be taken up several notches spiritually speaking! But, we think what we have is good enough!—“What more do I need!?”, we tell ourselves! I am comfortable, I am warm, I have nice cologne, I look good in my clothes, my car doesn’t need any repairs, my shrubs are well manicured, my home is well furnished, my vacation is planned, and my hotel booking is paid in advance for the holiday coming up, that we forget what it’s like to be cold, to be poorly dressed, have leaky roofs, and holes in our shoes, to have an infestation of insects eating our garden but our garden was all we had to eat from, to have to walk 5 miles for some medicine that our relative really needs or they will die, to be inconvenienced for one entire day to take someone to the doctor, but not too many days out of the year, because we have to get back as quickly as possible to our wonderful lives, and because we can’t afford to take a day off work without pay too often regardless because we have no PTO and no sick pay on this job!!

Now, to use your imagination, if every physical comfort I just mentioned in the comfortable scenario was a metaphor for a spiritual comfort and spiritual health provision, does that mean that if you have all your physical comforts in place we’d automatically be supplied with just as many spiritual provisions and spiritual comforts from God to match all of our material comforts? The answer is an obvious NO! But, I dare say it is soo easy to respond to a spiritual emergency in a “comfortable way” when we have physical comforts. Would you RATHER do the spiritual work with spiritual zeal and spiritual persistence to get rid of the spiritual poverty and spiritual holes in your shoes, or to obtain by spiritual efforts the rare and distant spiritual medicine that you or a family member needs even if you might be saddled with physical poverty, or would you do the spiritual hard labor so to speak that it would take with passion for a whole day if needed to get an enduring spiritual roof with as much zeal and gusto and passion as you would the physical roof in the rainy season of Africa?

Part of the issue I dare say is that when we get comfortable and lose our zeal a lot of times we lose our desperation for change. Nothing is “REALLY THAT BAD!! I LIVE IN THE NICEST COUNTRY IN THE WORLD AND I DON’T HAVE TO BE DESPERATE ABOUT ANYTHING!!” we tell ourselves. But can you see properly whether your spiritual roof IS leaking? Can you see properly if you have spiritual holes in your shoes? Can you see properly if you have spiritual insects raiding your spiritual garden on a continual basis? Can you see properly if you have a desperate need for spiritual medicine that is so deep of a need that you might die if you don’t obtain it and that you must compel yourself to go track down that distant rare medicine by walking five spiritual miles because no one else will walk it for you? This physical world BLINDS us with physical comforts and we don’t even perceive WHAT OUR SPIRITUAL NEEDS ARE much of the time even when our spiritual needs are desperate. But we have been called to walk by faith and not by sight!!

Rev 3:14-22“To the angel of the church in Laodicea write: The Amen, the faithful and true Witness, the Origin of the creation of God, says this: ¹⁵‘I know your deeds, that you are neither cold nor hot; I wish that you were cold or hot. ¹⁶So because you are lukewarm, and neither hot nor cold, I will vomit you out of My mouth. ¹⁷Because you say, “I am rich, and have become wealthy, and have no need of anything,” and you do not know that you are wretched, miserable, poor, blind, and naked, ¹⁸I advise you to buy from Me gold refined by fire so that you may become rich, and white garments so that you may clothe yourself and the shame of your nakedness will not be revealed; and eye salve to apply to your eyes so that you may see. ¹⁹Those whom I love, I rebuke and discipline; therefore, be zealous and repent. ²⁰Behold, I stand at the door and knock; if anyone hears My voice and opens the door, I will come in to him and will dine with him, and he with Me. ²¹The one who overcomes, I will grant to him to sit with Me on My throne, as I also overcame and sat with My Father on His throne. ²²The one who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches.’”

In the passage above the elements are in verse 17 that they first said they had become rich and wealthy, then the people grew comfortable and had become lukewarm, then they also said they had no need of anything. Now it is true that not everyone who is rich, wealthy, or comfortable is lukewarm and in danger of being spewed out of the mouth of God. But we must ask ourselves why Jesus warns us that it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven, (Math 19:24) but no evidence of Jesus saying, “it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a poor man to enter the kingdom of heaven.” Don’t think that I am necessarily against money; I, just like any number of persons (and it should be no surprise) have no doubt found numerous benefits can be had when money is had. But all Christ followers and even the unsaved should be aware of and alarmed about the blindness that wealth can bring when the wealth is gazed at too long. Could it be part of the cost Jesus speaks of in v. 18 “…to buy from Me gold refined by fire so that you may become rich…white garments..and eye salve…” might be accessed as we draw near to Jesus more fervently, or to draw more closely to Him? Isn’t prayer along with fasting a proven and effective way to draw near to God and to pursue the Lord? Isn’t fasting a discipline we can apply to become spiritually sensitive? We need to be able to see our condition before God in order to “wash and make ourselves clean” (2 Cor 7:1), to cleanse our hands when we are double minded, (Jam 4:8) to cleanse ourselves from common purposes to be a vessel fit for a noble use (2 Tim 2:21). And it’s plainly true, what we gaze at we become like. (Gen 30:38-39, Heb 12:2) When gazing at the natural world, we lose our spiritual awareness, and lose sight of our spiritual optimum and what we should aim for in our spiritual shape, sensitivity, spiritual liveliness, and spiritual virtues. I Samuel 16:7 But the Lord said to Samuel, “Do not look on his appearance or on the height of his stature, because I have rejected him. For the Lord sees not as man sees. For man looks on the outward appearance, but the Lord looks on the heart.” May we seek you for the spiritual vision we need for walking closely with you Oh Lord. Amen.

Prayer: Lord I pray for five simple things today—I pray for the spiritual vision so we can see our spiritual health for what it really is, I pray for the spiritual vision to see what spiritual shape we should take as well, and I pray for the spiritual zeal and fervency to respond to the truth whether it is, either mild or needing our passion that we may respond rightly regarding it. I pray that the kind of change spoken of in 2 Corinthians 7:11 would unfold in whatever way may be necessary in our lives—that we would embody earnestness, godly sorrow, vindication of ourselves, indignation at our own wrongs, fear of doing anything unholy, longing for change and righteousness in our hearts and deeds, zeal and energy and all the sister adjectives that go along with those for the purpose of our needed changes, and avenging of the wrongs we have done! In everything may we demonstrate ourselves to be innocent in these matters, Oh God!

Amen and Amen!

Keep growing in the Word! LG