God is Creating Weakness in Your Life

Author: Lisa Groen

Category: Devotional and thoughts to ponder

One of the most encountered questions people face when doing evangelism is “Why does suffering and evil exist in a world that a good God created?” In fact, this question and others like it are questions Pastors also face much of the time when ministering one on one to congregants, and may be one of the questions that plague the minds of countless people contemplating the decision of whether or not they can trust in a God who created and manages our unique universe. Some go so far as to say –like screen writer and film director Jamie Uys,– “The Gods must be crazy” that the universe looks like it is being managed with a loose and crazy hand!

Due to the broad scope that the question brings, “Why does suffering and evil exist if God is good?” and all its inherent implications, it is in fact the root prompting for other questions that must be answered first, or alongside it, if this question is to be attempted to be answered by any person accurately. Some of those questions are, “If God knows everything, and is Omniscient, how is it that he knows about the pain and suffering I am going through, but allowed it to happen without seemingly doing anything about it?” Or “If God is all-powerful as in omnipotent, why is he able to do something to have prevented the evil in my life and can do anything needed to change it, but doesn’t seem interested in helping?”. “If God IS love, why is he acting in a way that seems contrary to the way an all-loving God should act if he were to care about my suffering?”. “If God is sovereign, and manages everything like a tight ship, why does he seem to be allowing a lot of sloppy problems to be unfolding in my life right now?”, and “if God wants me to have a soft heart, why is he allowing people to be rude, brash, and callous towards me?” Or “If God is righteous, why does he seem to be allowing me to suffer a lot of injustices and unrighteousness at the hands of people that don’t seem to care one whit about God?” We could extend the questions with scores of other questions like these! We think we are describing something that should be appropriate only for one kind of anomaly after another, but these are all sadly too plentiful—at least for our taste!

The utter irony of these questions, seem to have a common theme: “Why isn’t God living up to his full potential for me in my life?”, when we should be asking ourselves the question: “Why am I not living up to my full potential for God?”, and further the irony, when all that is done, Jesus speaks fittingly in Luke 17:7-10 “Which one of you having a servant tending sheep or plowing will say to him when he comes in from the field, ‘Come at once and sit down to eat’? Instead, will he not tell him, ‘Prepare something for me to eat, get ready, and serve me while I eat and drink; later you can eat and drink’?  Does he thank that servant because he did what was commanded? (it is understood that the answer is “No!”) In the same way, when you have done all that you were commanded, you should say, ‘We are unworthy servants; we’ve only done our duty.’”

For some in the body of Christ there is much confusion in what to believe about good and evil, in the way of what health and wealth teachers like Andrew Womack teach—“if it’s good, it’s from God, and if it’s bad it’s from the devil”. He has a whole series on YouTube entitled “How to Receive God’s Best”. Because of the plethora of ideas like this in the world today, ultimately, we must define what we call good, and see if it matches what God may be determining good by looking at God’s actions and preferences in scripture, and what he promotes. His will is “good, pleasing and perfect” as seen in Romans 12:2: “Do not be conformed to this age, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, so that you may discern what is the good, pleasing, and perfect will of God.” Paul Washer has an eye-opening video to enlighten us on this theme entitled “God Is Creating Weakness In Your Life, (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pbOzYh9n4OA) and in his video he states:

“Always remember this one thing—there’s only one hero in this story, and that hero is Jesus Christ. There are no great men of God, there are no great men of prayer. There are only tiny, weak, faithless men of a great and merciful God who has granted them grace.”…You’re problem is not—it’s never—that you’re too weak. As a matter of fact God—what he does in our life, from the moment that we’re born again to the moment we die is he’s constantly working to create weakness in us. The problem is not that you’re weak, the problem is that we don’t know how weak we are, because that weakness would drive us to prayer, as being truly incarnate drove our Savior to prayer…..God spends decades seeking to do one thing to a man and a woman—cultivate weakness! Create weakness! Everything that’s put before us—that we can’t—Lord this time you gave me a mountain—I can’t, I -–everyone of those is to convince you of something, that you should’ve been convinced about with regard to the smallest mole hill you’ve ever had to deal with: You can’t, but He can! He can! Remember this, God always uses the runt of the litter…”

If you are facing hardship, weakness, difficulties, trials, inconveniences, pains, suffering, or a dilemma or two today, let us take in the scripture to put it all in perspective for us, that God may have ordained, or even planned your weaknesses and difficulties to shape you into the image of Christ. Do not look at it as punishment, because if you’re not in open rebellion to God you may just be undergoing the pinching, pulling, squishing, rolling, poking, cutting, shaping, molding and remaking of a clay pot shaped by the Master potter who is creating for Himself a vessel “fit for the Master’s use.” (2 Tim 2:21) Let’s end with this scripture James 1:2-12 “Consider it a great joy, my brothers and sisters, whenever you experience various trials, 3 because you know that the testing of your faith produces endurance. 4 And let endurance have its full effect, so that you may be mature and complete, lacking nothing. 5 Now if any of you lacks wisdom, he should ask God—who gives to all generously and ungrudgingly—and it will be given to him. 6 But let him ask in faith without doubting. For the doubter is like the surging sea, driven and tossed by the wind. 7 That person should not expect to receive anything from the Lord, 8 being double-minded and unstable in all his ways.  9 Let the brother of humble circumstances boast in his exaltation, 10 but let the rich boast in his humiliation because he will pass away like a flower of the field. 11 For the sun rises and, together with the scorching wind, dries up the grass; its flower falls off, and its beautiful appearance perishes. In the same way, the rich person will wither away while pursuing his activities. 12 Blessed is the one who endures trials, because when he has stood the test he will receive the crown of life that Godhas promised to those who love him.” Amen!

Keep growing in the Word! LG

Prayer of Dependence on God-5

Author: Lisa Groen

Category: Christian prayer aiming for true Christian growth

Lord, we come to you to seek nearness to you. We seek your presence in a deep and profound way. We pray for a visitation from you Lord.  (Psalms 80:14 Return, we beseech thee, O God of hosts: look down from heaven, and behold, and visit this vine;) We want to leave behind our fleshly tendencies and actually draw closer to you. (James 4:8 Draw near to God, and he will draw near to you. Cleanse your hands, you sinners, and purify your hearts, you double-minded) We are tired of a powerless existence in which there seem to be just a few we are ministering to, and some people seem uninterested. (I Cor 4:20 For the kingdom of God is not in word, but in power.) It is not that it’s about us, and it’s not that we are ungrateful, but we seek you because we believe that you really can move among us through your word, through our seeking you, through our worship, and other ways and we believe that your ministry among us can be greater and more noticeable and we would like to see that shown in fruitfulness in more lasting, deeper and life impacting ways on a broader scale. (Acts 4:13 Now as they observed the confidence of Peter and John and understood that they were uneducated and untrained men, they were amazed, and began to recognize them as having been with Jesus.) My prayer for us is that when people see us they would not see just us,— but you Lord– looming bigger than we ourselves in the light of all that’s happening. I am impressed with the reality of the scripture “He must increase, and I must decrease”. (John 3:30) I pray you would lead us all in seeking that. I ask for you to be magnified, and for us to step back out of the way to get a better glimpse of you. (Luke 19:1-10) We devote our hearts and minds to you Lord afresh today. We devote our attention and thinking processes to you Lord. (Provers 4:20 My son, pay attention to what I say; turn your ear to my words.) I repent on behalf of myself and others for how the daily responsibilities press on us and we are in a battle with both the enemy and with you and the battle is the pull on our attention. Oh Lord, it is right to place our eyes and attention on you when we have things happening that are little things in comparison to who you are, pressing on us. (Hebrews 12:2-3 fixing our eyes on Jesus, the pioneer and perfecter of faith. For the joy set before him he endured the cross, scorning its shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God. 3 Consider him who endured such opposition from sinners, so that you will not grow weary and lose heart.) I want to lead us all in a surrender of our daily pressures. Lord, we believe you care —the Bible tells us to not worry and to be of good cheer—you care about the whereabouts of our phones, you care about if something was stolen from us today—you care about how much money we will need to cover our next 6 months of bills, you even care about every need for the rest of our lives. You care about our protection—whether we are remembering to put on our armor, or not. (1 Peter 5:7  casting all your anxieties on him, because he cares for you.”) Lord you remind us to put on our armor so we can stand in the evil day and to continue to stand. You care about our transportation, our homes, and everything around us. You care about the people in our lives, you care about what is going through their minds and you care about us and what is going through our minds. You desire truth in the inner man, what a man desires is kindness, (Proverbs 19:22) you care about that we are walking in your Spirit, and you care that we are able and willing to lean upon you Oh Lord! You would have us to recognize that you are fit to run every section of our lives, the parts that we do understand, as well as the parts we don’t understand. (Genesis 1:1, Psalm 146:6) You would have us to grow in our understanding, and grow in our awareness of what you do and who you are. You would have us to be teachable, to receive the impressions of your word being written upon our hearts. (Proverbs 8:32 “Now then, my children, listen to me; blessed are those who keep my ways.) You would have us to ask you: “What is it you want to do with me and in me? With as many weaknesses as I have, and as many insufficiencies as I have—am I seeing it right –what you want to do with me, Lord?”—yes the Lord looks at us differently than we look at ourselves. Can we still depend on God in the same way after we receive a gift as we did before we receive the gifts he will give us? We can pray a very strategic prayer—“Lord how would you have me to minister to you and to other people right now?” and “what would you have me to learn or practice?”. Lord help us to not be so taken with your Sovereignty that we adopt a “whatever will be will be attitude” and not be against your sovereignty that we forget that you fully know everything that we are going through and forget your interest in our lives. May we also not forget the war we are in and the draw from You Lord to fight the good fight of faith in every area. Help us to be pliable clay in your hands, (Jeremiah 18) that we would think on how to please you, but surrender our questions. Help us to not come out of our Christian personality in the midst of the challenges we face. We ask for your nearness and fully bring ourselves to you, our weaknesses, our ugly parts, and our clean and tidy parts. Lord, blow upon us, wash and cleanse us, send your river of life through us and fill us with yourself afresh. May your virtue and strength be infused within us and turn us back to you! May our hearts not waver in our pursuit of you and if it does, strengthen us again until we are more molded into your image. Lord, we lay aside impatience, bitterness, jealousy, exhaustion, and exasperation, and greed, selfishness, overeating, pride, doing things our own way, and looking down on those that we think are not as spiritual as we are. We repent of any of these things that may have jumped off the page and waved hello at us. Please forgive us, wash us, cleanse us, as we lay our filthy rags at the foot of the cross. (Isaiah 64:6) We ask you for the white linens of your righteousness that Jesus paid for with his blood for us to put on and keep upon us day and night, and every day of the week! Please renew us Oh God! Please grant us to draw near to you today and may we really start going deeper into partaking of your spiritual victories, and letting the victory you won Lord on our behalf to change us from the inside out! Amen!

Keep growing in the Word! LG

Man in the Cold

Author: Lisa Groen

Category: Devotional and prayer

Today after I went to Walmart, I took the freeway home and came up to a stop light as I was exiting from the freeway. This corner was less than one block from a friend’s home. He was married to a former roommate of mine from the late 1980’s and early 1990’s. That’s when I recognized him standing on the corner under the traffic light holding a sign that said: “Anything Helps, God Bless!”. When he saw me looking at him he pulled his mask over his mouth and pulled his hood tighter over his head. I had just hired him about 2 months ago for about an hour to move some large boxes of books, a shelf and end table out of my apartment which were a bit awkward for me to manage. He has been a most reliable friend for many years, and he actually loves to pray for people. I have no doubt that his faith is measured in the scales of heaven with favor and the Lord looks down upon him and smiles. This friend of mine serves in church and has basically taken on the role of butler to the pastor of his church. His faith is sincere and sweet, but he honestly has some misunderstandings of what it means to be his pastor’s “Armor Bearer”. He believes that his struggles on the job and loss of employment mean that there is more time to serve his pastor and believes that if he puts his pastor first and does everything the pastor wants him to within reason, then the Lord will count his faith as worthy of rewarding and will promote him with a better paid job because of sacrificing this way in how he “gives to the Lord”.

His own testimonies over the years have testified of his misunderstandings of the Holy Spirit. There have been at least 2 jobs that he has lost in the last 20 years from him falling down, rolling on the floor and laughing hysterically, because he said he got hit by the Holy Spirit with “Holy Laughter” and the people he worked for were not “sensitive to the Holy Spirit”. In addition to this there are at least 2 other jobs in which he got fired from his bosses not understanding why he laughs a bit too long, too hard, and too freely over jokes that are not really that funny. In fact, many of them are not funny at all. He truly acts like he thinks he is experiencing the Holy Spirit every time he laughs. This is why he gets fired, and this is why he struggles financially. My friend is living in the church building as the caretaker of the church he attends, and I am guessing he would be homeless if it were not for his subservience to his pastor. He may have had a short time being addicted to drugs, but that part of his past is more than 18 years old.

I really don’t want to open up a doctrinal can of worms or gravitate to mentioning the false teachings of Rodney Howard Browne, the original “Holy Ghost Bartender”. However, I do think that it is worth mentioning that the belief in many false teachings have cost numerous people a lot of jobs, relationships, and just the plain opportunities for having a “normal life”. In fact, the belief in false teachings have GIVEN numerous people a lot of jobs, relationships, and the unusual opportunities for having a “wealthy life”, up to the “King of The Hill”—even millionaire status. God forbid that and may our doctrine always be checked carefully!

While it is true that God has made us His peculiar people, he does not make us peculiar alone, as if “peculiar” was its own reference point to describe us without God choosing to leave his fingerprints on us. However, aside from being a peculiar people, what we all have in common with my friend, is that he and we are all “beggars– before the Living God.” I would remind us that everything we have received from God has always been a gift. We are the beneficiaries of God’s extensive benevolence. It will never be accredited to us as one who has “worked our way to heaven” or “earned a gift from God”. I came to a crisis point several years ago and I became keenly aware that every breath I took was because of the gracious mercy of God. Every beat of our hearts is a gift, every blink of our eyes is a gift, because we can move only by the mercy of God, every thought we can think is a gift, every drink of water, and on up from there. Each day we all literally experience thousands upon thousands of gifts from the benevolent mercy, kindness, and watchful eye of our Gracious Heavenly Father.

Let’s take some time to go through our homes and hearts, look around, and be thankful for what we have received, and been endowed with, with our abundance, and thank God as well for any lack we have, and also pray for those neighbors of ours who are less fortunate than we are. Paul said, “I know how to be abased, and I know how to abound.” It is for certain, that at some time in our lives we will have experienced both.

The links I have attached are of Steph Macleod, a professional singer/songwriter/worshipper from The United Kingdom. He has a testimony of living on the street due to alcoholism and got saved when he went to a shelter/mission for those living on the street. His song “Man In The Cold” is autobiographical for him and you will sense the heartbreak and loneliness in hearing his song. His song “When I found Jesus” is also autobiographical and is a real winner of a song capping off how his life was changed. I added it to complete the picture in his testimony and give poetic justice to say the least. It tells of the way Jesus found him in his utter brokenness and lifted him up from there. My friend who was holding the sign up today is another Jesus has lifted up quite a ways since I met him in 1989, but still needs prayer of course—then again, we ALL need prayer!

Prayer:

Our Gracious Heavenly Father, how easy it is for myself to quickly pray for many things in any one day and keep asking for more, and miss enjoying what you have already done. It is even a gift to be thankful, because we get to magnify your goodness in thinking through things one at a time and mention your name as the one who thought to bring that thing into our lives. How quickly and swiftly you move, like you were dancing through our prayer requests, and showing your glory, and goodness and your kindness. I thank you for what I have seen of You Oh God! How wonderful Lord it is to meditate upon the fact that you think my prayers are worthy of your consideration! And how even greater it is to think that when my prayers are not worthy of your consideration, you move to change my heart to provide for me opportunities to have my prayers become worthy of your consideration! Oh Lord, we bless your name for bearing with us in our brokenness, in our imperfections, in showing you are alive and living through us and blowing your wind through our lives. As cold as it’s been outside, You’re the One to warm the coldest heart! You’re the One to change the most stubborn of us all! How gracious you have been in letting us work, in giving us skills and talents, and gifts to share with the world, for granting us transportation and granting us food, clothing and shelter. Thank you that you grant us friends and family members to love us and talk to and share with, and people to “practice” our loving skills upon. Thank you that you have given us things to be involved with to do with others, to work towards, and people to serve, and songs to sing to you, truths to celebrate, meals to share with one another during holidays, and special times, and some get this opportunity every single day. We are blessed by your hand Oh God! And enriched in countless ways!

We pray for those who are less fortunate! We ask that you would be with them and help them. We ask that you would guide many out of false doctrines, and grant them stability, hope, an anchor for the soul, and grace to grow and learn, and move things out of their lives that they may have been tripping over. We ask you for your heart to warm those neighbors of ours who are out in the cold, just hoping that someone will give them an extra buck or two to make ends meet. We ask for their dignity to not be diminished, we pray that you would speak to them and to sharpen their sense of hearing. We pray you would help meet every need in their lives. We ask that they would lose all their taste for drugs, if that is the problem, and lose their taste for false doctrine if that has been something stealing from them. We ask that they would lose their taste for anything they have been tripping over, anything that gets them fired, anything that keeps them from being a good roommate, anything that keeps people from wanting to work along-side of them. Give them I pray, and us as well, a deep hunger and thirst for you Oh Lord! May you warm us to your love and mercy! May we exude our love and mercy for you in our praise and worship. May we lose our judgementalism for those out in the cold who are begging, maybe life has just gotten so confusing for them they don’t know what else to do. Give them the vision of themselves that you want them to see,–may they truly see themselves in their true spiritual condition—Lord in the light of you. Some are in you, and some are not, and we pray that those that are not would see your love, and mercy and goodness and that it would draw people to you for your kingdom. For those that belong to you, may they see their true spiritual condition in the light of you—we pray for eye salve! We ask for the light of your countenance to shine upon them and enlighten them! Help them all, the unsaved and the saved to overcome the battles they are now in—help them to see the hope they have in you! Renew their faith so they don’t give up and throw in the towel, or commit suicide. Give them hope so they don’t believe the lies they have stumbled over. Help them to overcome! Lord, please grant us as your people, and all our neighbors and spheres of influence to be moving toward you! May you help everyone to throw out whatever belongs to the sinful nature, and really do spiritual house cleaning, so that those who need to get saved will become saved, and so we will put on Christ and together be able to truly present ourselves and those we minister to for eternity in whatever way you have led us, to become “perfect, sanctified, stable, and whole” before you on the day that you return to take us home to be with you, Oh Lord, our God, King, and Gracious Heavenly Father! Amen! And Amen!

Man In The Cold (Live) | Steph Macleod  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T6Uu7omVMes

When I Found Jesus (Live) | Steph Macleod https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eTUV5G9gLsY

Keep growing in the Word! LG

Praying for Nearness to God– Seek Him With All Your heart!

Author: Lisa Groen

Category: Devotional and prayer

Christianity would be a meaningless religion if it were nothing more than what some say it is—a way to “get on God’s good side with my good works so I can earn my way to heaven”. It would fall apart if that were its depth of reality. It would be a heathen religion if that were its description. Why–you ask? Because there is no eternal or transcendent power in the power that comes from me alone. We become our own idol when we put our works as a ticket to gaining the benefits of salvation. And it offends the grace of God. However, God calls us to seek Him with all our hearts!

Do you feel the tug on your heart to draw near to God? Have you looked at times hoping to see great progress in your witness but the emptiness in your witness calls you to seek him? Have you looked at times hoping to see growth and healing in your relationships, but the brokenness of your relationships calls you to seek him?

Now, I am not talking of using God to gain a successful life. And I am not speaking of a relationship with God in order to make life easy. But what is God’s goal in telling us to seek him? Do you know God said he would come when we seek Him? How often do we seriously aim to make it a goal to dwell with God verses simply trying to pray for God’s help? What does it mean to “abide with Christ”?  Is it something we can swiftly turn on with an “On” switch in our prayer life? This is not simply talking about not rushing through prayers and not rushing through Bible studies. Abiding with Christ is more than a passionate seeking of a God who told us to seek him with all of our hearts. It is a square look at what we are not and a deep surrender of the painful bent of the world’s imprint upon my soul. Again, how do I tell if I have sought God with all of my heart? What am I to wrestle with? I have to come to the end of myself in some way to truly seek him in truth from that barrenness!! I must see the emptiness of my earthly strength and power for a desperation to arise out of my deficits! We put a short in our relationship with God when we cringe away from our barrenness and deficits and run to spiritual band-aids and aspirins, and quick one liner or two liner prayers and short glances at our spiritual bankruptcy as if it had no impact on us and if it didn’t matter that much anyway because “God’s sovereignty would just fix everything automatically”!

We shift off our brokenness quite easily because we think our deficits make us look bad. And they do! But we shortchange God of opportunities to fill us up when we don’t surrender our flesh to his filling us and to his power. Paul Washer tells of how God loves us in his video “The Way God Loves You”:

–”It is so easy to learn principles about holiness, it is so easy to learn attributes of God as they’re set forth in statements, but how many men are so sick and tired of not being in the presence of God that they are willing to depart from absolutely everything and if it means running like a wild man through the woods for a week, throwing rocks at heaven, they will not rest until the presence of God is real in their life. I warn college students all the time Dr. Piper has a tremendous following among college students and I’ll hear college students preaching some of the things that …preaching…lets even go back farther… preaching some of the things Edwards wrote. And I tell them, you’re nothing more than a parrot—You’ve memorized what Edwards says but you don’t know what he knew. And you’ve never been in the presence of God like him, you’ve never tarried in prayer! You know nothing of the prayer life of David Brainerd. Dew has never fallen on your head although you’ve read his diary a thousand times. And one of the greatest reasons why ungodliness even among the people of God is because many times we’re nothing even though we stand in a pulpit we’re little boys parroting things from other men! Our ears have heard about him, but our eyes have not seen him! That would be offensive to you only if it’s true! How much time do you spend in the presence of God?! How much time do you lay before Him? How much time do you pull away from everyone else and even from your studies dear brother do you throw yourself down before him and seek his face?!…You’re going to become nothing but a bunch of cold principles if the presence and power of God is not in your life….Song of Solomon 4:8 says …come down to me…from those high proud independent places of yours where danger lurks…”

From https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lo6b4dckj5A

The Song of Solomon Bible book was written through the vessel of a man who ended up needing it quite desperately! Solomon drifted gravely from God! Oh how his life would have been different if he would have sought deeply what intimacy the Lord God was seeking to make known to him! I don’t think he squarely perceived the gravity of the importance of this intimacy God was speaking to him about! On the website https://bible.ucg.org/bible-commentary/1-Kings/Solomon-turns-from-God;-Adversaries-raised-up/ It is explicitly stated that Solomon turned away from God “when he was old” (1 Kings 11:4). First Kings 11 begins by succinctly stating the cause of Solomon’s idolatry: “But King Solomon loved many foreign women, as well as the daughter of Pharaoh: women of the Moabites, Ammonites, Edomites, Sidonians, and Hittites…. He had seven hundred wives, princesses, and three hundred concubines; and his wives turned away his heart.” …many of Solomon’s wives and concubines were undoubtedly the result of foreign alliances, as was the custom of the day. God knew these customs, and He commanded Israel’s kings not to engage in them.” So, it boils down to the customs of the day and his own lusts were taking a toll on Solomon, Solomon had God’s word, and ignored parts of it, and faced the grave consequence of drifting from God.

Let us not make the same mistakes Solomon did! We have more than the tools Solomon had for intimacy with God! Let’s make use of all we have and cry out to God in our real brokenness, barrenness, and desperate spiritual bankruptcy and cry out till we are assured of nearness to our one and only God and Savior! We have no earthly good to travel with us to heaven! Amen!

Prayer:

Lord, as we are recognizing our powerlessness, and the possible danger of just becoming a bunch of cold principles apart from Your nearness and power, may we sense your pull on us to seek you with all of our hearts! May we take serious time day after day, even week after week or month after month till we find you and till we empty ourselves of ourselves, and wait before the fountain of living waters for a fresh and abiding baptism, and seek you with eyes wide open to catch a glimpse of your heavenly face of love! Till we see you and imbibe on you and become utterly transformed in our faith and in the expression of our lives Oh God may we learn to abide in your presence until our zeal and love for you truly becomes fresh and awakened in Your power and might! We pray these things in your gracious name Oh Lord! Amen and amen!

Keep growing in the Word! LG

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

How Fasting Can Cultivate the Fruit of Humility

Author: Lisa Groen

Category: Devotional and prayer

The reality of belonging to Jesus comes with many indications of our new identity in Christ. The reality of Christ’s own personality shows us many unearthly things that are “given” for what the believer will one day look like (Rom 8:29a  for those whom He foreknew, He predestined to be conformed to the image of His Son…). He will share certain characteristics with us and these characteristics for those born again have become part of our new nature and were planted within us at the time of salvation and shape the direction of our growth which is from God. From this we can know that to study the personality of Christ is strategic and greatly beneficial for us because it focusses our eyes on the eternal Savior.

The characteristics of God are either incommunicable attributes or they are communicable. The ones he shares with us are the communicable characteristics and those that he doesn’t are the incommunicable characteristics. A short list of incommunicable attributes God possesses are his sovereignty, omnipotence, omnipresence, and his omniscience, which are all traits that as mere people whom God has created we will never possess, because to possess any of those characteristics would make one God-like. However, the communicable attributes from the personality of God that he intends for us to share exist because he has destined us to look like Christ. John 1:12-13 reads “But to all who did receive Him, to those who believed in His name, He gave the right to become children of God— children born not of blood, nor of the desire or will of man, but born of God.” So, it is clear that if we are born of God, we should be aimed by God to resemble Christ and to possess those certain attributes of God that distinguish us as his children.

A short list of communicable attributes of God includes his righteousness, (Ephesians 4:22–24), which says we “are created to be like God in true righteousness and holiness”, His love, (1 John 4:16God is love..) peace, (Isaiah 9:6b And He will be called …Prince of Peace) patience, (1 Cor 13:4 Love is patient, Joel 2:13b …Slow to anger) kindness, (Gal 5:22) and humility (John 13:1-17, Jesus stooped down to wash the disciples’ feet, and Ps 18:35b…You have stooped to make me great.)

We have been predestined to the praise of the glory of his grace—the only thing that will praise him is that we would end up looking like Jesus in our hearts. John MacArthur said several things worth quoting in his message “The Benefits of Being a Saint (https://www.gty.org/library/sermons-library/1811/the-benefits-of-being-a-saint) that “You are sanctified” – it’s the same root word as saint – “you are called saints” – in order to make them aware of the fact that the foundation for his exhortation to their behavior is in the fact that they are saints.”…. “The fact of who we are is the premise upon which the word of God bases the fact of what we ought to act like. You might put it this way: the indicative, you are, is the basis for the imperative, you ought…In fact, it tells us that we are holy because of what Christ is; therefore, we ought to be like Him. We ought to act like Him. Our lives ought to conform to Him.” 

I venture to say humility is not natural to any of us, because pride is at the heart of sin. Pride was the sin that caused Satan to fall, and pride just may be what Satan might most often tempt us with. To counter this reality, the motivation to put forth a concerted effort to exercise humility by the act of crucifying our pride through the act of fasting and prayer, can address a very real need and be a part of a very natural way of life for the person who would prize the goal of becoming Christlike.

Because we ought to conform to Him we have a long way to go. Now although we can be assured the fruits of the Spirit listed in Gal 5:22-23 and other communicable attributes of God were placed within us at salvation, and a tree does not strain itself to bring forth its good fruits, but we also can be assured that we must at times put forth our own effort since Christ himself put forth spiritual effort to exercise the fruits of the Spirit being manifested in him. So even more so for us, it is a good rule of thumb to say that if there is an attribute of Christ that is not natural to us, (surely all of them, but some more noticeably not natural!) we ought certainly put forth effort as Christ did that we should aim for whatever in our flesh may be prone to oppose the nature of Christ would be crucified or wounded by the Spirit which opposes our flesh, as we lean on God for the spiritual efforts we must put forth, of course by receiving the Spirit’s help for this warfare.

So based on these things I have written, I challenge us all again to humble our souls with prayer and fasting. (Psalm 35:13, 69:10-20) We should be ready for those days where Jesus calls us to do as he did, to “take off our street clothes, make time in our schedule to get down on our knees, and walk out the humility of washing the feet of the saints”. This was not optional, but a command. Would we discern his voice, if we heard him call us to this humility? If we submit to the training of humbling our souls, fasting indeed can be one strategic way to prepare for such days ahead that will certainly come.

Prayer:

Dear Lord, may we be willing to do whatever you are calling us to do, and may we be preparing for with abandon of whatever you have for us that demands the crucifixion of our pride, and through this steady warfare seek the growth and development of humility in our lives. Amen!

Keep growing in the Word! LG

Finding the Power to Do Hard Things

Author: Lisa Groen

Category: Devotional and prayer

I have 3 simple truths about the joy of the Lord for us to consider today. It is the knowledge of this joy that can help us to do hard things with a joyful momentum. They are:

  1. We get to rejoice and bring our joys to the Lord because we are chosen by God for serving the Lord, and this is invigorating that our rejoicing blesses him.
  2. We get to receive joy from the Lord even doing hard things as we are serving the Lord
  3. And as we bring our service to the Lord and recognize the grace from God upon our lives to live a changed life by his power, our actions can help serve to feed our joy in the Lord and create a joyful momentum, that seems to “come back to kiss our faces”.

To show these truths I bring us a glimpse of Psalm 119:4-5. These 2 scriptures give us a very simple reason we can rejoice in the Lord steadily even while doing hard things. Let’s read: 119:4-5 “Their voice goes out into all the earth, their words to the ends of the world. In the heavens he has pitched a tent for the sun, 5 which is like a bridegroom coming forth from his pavilion, like a champion rejoicing to run his course.”

God’s strength and power are surely seen in the stability of the sun and with the immensity of heat and light it carries by radiating day after day almost seemingly without fail. It is something to consider the strength of the sun’s shining and it’s rising at one end of the sky and setting in another as if the sun were “rejoicing as a strong man to run his course”.

God is declaring his glory through the heavens in this Psalm. Although Psalm 119 is about how the glory of the sun is pictured as a strong man, its poetry gives us the feeling that there is a picture we can have about how powerful the knowledge of God’s glory is to propel us forward along with anything else touched by his glory. I can believe as we picture the application of truth from verses 4 and 5 we see that being touched by the glory of the Lord as the sun, can give those touched by God’s glory the expectation and experience of being propelled forward with strength and rejoicing by God’s declaring his glory in our lives.

If a Christian is saved for any length od time, we have recognized we can safely believe that God is consciously in the habit of providing all his children a strength comparable to magnet like adherence to a run a course for God with power and indistinguishable light although the sun is less touched by the glory of God inasmuch as Jesus didn’t die for the sun to be saved; he died for us to be saved. We may not keep to the path perfectly, to which we aree called, but the glory of God’s forgiveness and cleansing touches us, and we are revived and go on rejoicing stronger to run our course with God. God’s gravitational pull on us so to speak is a strong “gravity” or “staying power” he gives to keep us on course with him as a gift to pull us to him and a power to run in the path of his commands. Truly God makes us radiate his truth and love along our path as we rejoice, and he propels us forward with a powerful joy in our course in the Lord.

So, lets recap our 3 truths:

  1. We get to rejoice and bring our joys to the Lord because we are chosen by God for serving the Lord
  2. We get to receive joy from the Lord even doing hard things as we are serving the Lord
  3. And as we bring our service to the Lord and recognize the grace from God upon our lives to live a changed life by his power, our actions can help serve to feed our joy in the Lord.

Prayer: Oh God, may these truths with scriptural meditations serve to give us the joyful momentum to do hard things like fasting before you Oh God, and even long term or regular fasting Oh God. And may it also serve to give us a joyful momentum to do the hard thing of praying continuously before You Lord with gladness and willingness and find power and joy to fulfill our callings, and like a magnet “keep to our course” empowered with the heavenly touch of Your glory. Amen  Lord, Amen!

Keep growing in the Word! LG

Pains Christians Encounter That Are Unnecessary

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:

  1. 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.
  2. 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!
  3. 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.
  4. 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.
  5. 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.
  6. 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

The “Necessity” of Christian Hardships

Author: Lisa Groen

Category: Devotional and prayer

The gospel when proclaimed in a Biblically sound way does and should, bring peace to us all. While this is true there also seems to be a notable number of scriptures that inform us that the God who sent Christ to earth to pay with his blood for peace to be established between the believer and God is also the one who deserves our trembling and shaking before him. He is the same Jesus who said in Mathew 7:13-14 Enter through the narrow gate. For wide is the gate and broad is the way that leads to destruction, and many enter through it. But small is the gate and narrow is the way that leads to life, and only a few find it.

With the many topics that the Lord introduces to his people in the NT that seem hard, “fasting” would fit the bill. Perhaps you’re a little like me, who have compared the OT plan of drawing near to God with the NT plan for such a work. We think the OT plan should be hard, and, we, —should be done with “hard” in the NT. I believe because we have a nuanced gospel, and can be so prone to settle for a quick and “easily explained” definition for telling what our Christian habits should be, and can get tempted to think that for us NT folks, if each part of our walk with God is not “ease producing” then it also cannot be “peace producing”, but that is simply not true. “Ease” for the Christian is not synonymous with “peace”. To use our distinguishing abilities, we will have to pull the reference cards out of our minds for these two words and closely examine some similarities and differences for discernment purposes on them, mentally write details to edit our definitions with important markers on them and file them away again for future use. We so much need to glean from the many “holy difficulties” that are either sent by Providence, or captured by God for His divine purposes having been sent from the “drizzle” attack of our blind Enemy.

Isn’t it true the Bible says in Luke 13 to make every effort to enter by the narrow gate? Luke 13:23-24 says, “Someone asked him, “Lord, are only a few people going to be saved?” He said to them, 24“Make every effort to enter through the narrow door, because many, I tell you, will try to enter and will not be able to.” 

We can take the word “narrow” in this sentence to be an invitation from the Lord to do hard things. And we can take it as an invitation from the Lord that some hard things The Lord introduces to us are absolutely necessary for us to embrace and “take in” to make a regular part of our lives for a walk with God that stays on the narrow path.

1 Peter 2:20-21 CEV “You don’t gain anything by being punished for some wrong you have done. But God will bless you, if you have to suffer for doing something good. 21. After all, God chose you to suffer as you follow in the footsteps of Christ, who set an example by suffering for you.” I don’t bring up this short passage to suggest we need to be told about the subject of being punished for wrong doing but to suggest that if God would allow others to cause us to suffer and to “capture” different conditions of the suffering the enemy might like to dish out to us and have it all somehow be woven into part of His genius plan for us for our sanctification, then this plan that He has had from before the foundation of the world, just magnifies the amazing qualities of foreknowledge and Providence of our redemptive Shepherd King.

May we travel the hard road of the desert/wilderness with Christ, fasting as often as He may lead, and laying down “every weight and burden, and the sin that so easily besets”, so that we may go swiftly with Him and with perseverance, even running with Him as He leads!

Prayer:

Dear Lord, some days I feel nothing that excites me about going through the routines of the day, of getting out of bed, doing the morning rituals , hopping in the car and going to work, that I much consciously “spit out the lukewarm aftertaste” left from dinking of the world too much, remember that you have called me to yourself, think of your jealousy, and count the cost you paid again to “cleanse my palate to taste again what is truly true”. Help me Oh God, to not be slow to show up for prayer, and as much as only you can cause my drawing near to you to be a taking in of your substance Lord, and a breathing out of your goodness; may I ever keep my eyes on you to wash myself from the world, over and over and over again until others see really clearly, Christ in me. Amen!

Keep growing in the Word! LG

Swing the Sword of the Word, Thou Prayer Warrior!

Author: Lisa Groen

Category: Encouragement to pray the Word

I want to encourage us today that there may be some of us that seem like we may have been brought full circle in battle by the Lord which can be symbolized by a full 360-degree rotation of a swinging sword wielded by a warrior of an ancient kingdom. We may have had victories in one area or another, but we should not give up the fight or throw in the towel. We should not make light of previous battles we have fought and won but seem to be numb over. We should not downplay our previous spiritual victories as meaningless or powerless, because they did take real spiritual virtue in prayer and life and faith to fight successfully, and we needed God’s love in those areas of our lives to be victorious. Do not despise your previous battles thinking their spiritual size is just “small” in the “victory realm”  because they are not meaningless and not without spiritual “stakes” in the ground. We may need to regain strength, and regain flexibility, regain vital virtue, and goodness and kindness and love  in the areas we may have become systematic and militant in, or burnt out and robotic in or just going through the motions. Let us stretch again forward in faith and in our wielding the spiritual sword in prayer and live out this precious gift of faith and ask for God’s Spirit to fill our lives to overcome our battle fatigue and to overcome our own frustrations with our own cumbersome weaknesses and find his virtue. Let us find his power to hate our sin and by his unfailing love to maintain purity and passion, and to overcome by his Spirit our innate spiritual clumsiness because we have been granted to be filled with his life, strength, and grace.

Keep growing in the Word! LG