4 Habits to Help You Pray without Ceasing

pray without ceasing
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“Are you the man who prays?”  The question humbled me.

I had just finished leading a voluntary staff prayer meeting at nearby organization when she posed the question.  I’ve had the blessing of leading prayer times with the team there several times over the last two years.  I never realized the impact those prayer times were making beyond the special needs for which we prayed.  I answered her question in the affirmative, now I need to make sure I was telling the truth.

As disciples of Jesus, we are supposed to pray; we are commanded to pray; we are instructed how to pray.  However, if we are honest with ourselves we often talk more about praying than we actually pray.

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Thoughts on Life and Death

life and death
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The news of the death of Marlin’s pitcher Jose Fernandez shocked the sports world Sunday morning.  Fernandez, only 24 years old, was an incredibly talented pitcher with a larger than life personality.  His exuberance inspired his teammates and often infuriated his opponents.  His shocking death in the prime of his life gives reason for us all to reflect on our lives.  What are your thoughts on life and death?

Life is fragile, and one inescapable statistic is that 1 out of every 1 people die.  For some, like Fernandez, that death seems to come much to early. For others, death comes as a welcomed release from a long struggle for survival.  Regardless of it’s timing, however, death eventually visits everyone, and we must prepare while we can.

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Change All Around Us, But God Does Not Change

change

Facebook has a new feature that I kind of enjoy.  When I sign on for the first time most days, Facebook displays a past post for me to remember. Most often on my feed, it is a picture of my daughter from her younger years.  Those pictures provide warm memories but also a chilling reminder of how much things have changed over the years. Change is inevitable.

Indeed many things have changed over the course of my life.  In fact, things have changed more in the last 10 years than the first 42 years of my life combined.    The cost of living has risen while cultural morality has declined. We now call entertainment things that used to shame us. And we pay big bucks for that entertainment.  My daughter will come to adulthood in a totally different world from the one which greeted my adulthood.

[Tweet “Things have changed more in the last 10 years than the first 42 years of my life combined. “]

Many are unsettled by both the abundance and uncertainty of the change that is taking place around us.  Many have exchanged hope, peace, and confidence for fear, stress, and disillusionment.  The good news is that while the world may change around us, our God has not changed, nor will He.

In Malachi 3:6, God declares, “I, the Lord, do not change.”  When things are changing uncontrollably around us, we can turn to the ONE who never changes.  Theologically, we call this attribute of God His Immutability.  God’s unchanging nature is not just an intellectual reality, but a relevant truth on which we can hang our faith.  Consider these ways our God does not change.

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Proactive Prayers You Should Be Praying

proactive prayers
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Do you often feel like you are on the defensive against the devil?  You pray from crisis to crisis, asking God to deliver you from the latest mess in which you find yourself.  Or maybe you find yourself only praying for your family or others AFTER something happens to them. We react to these circumstances with desperate prayer in hopes that God will intervene. How different would our prayers be if we prayed proactive prayers instead of reactive prayers?

Recently, I attended a conference in which Dr. Chuck Lawless led a session on spiritual warfare and prayer.  Dr. Lawson is a professor at Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary and has studied spiritual warfare for over 20 years.  At the conference he introduced us to the idea of praying proactively. In a recent blog,“12 Strange Ways We Pray,” he exposes the folly behind some of our most reactive prayers.

Praying reactively is like waiting for a downpour before you open your umbrella.  Proactive prayers either prevent or prepare us and those for whom we pray for life’s difficulties.  So allow me to suggest some proactive prayers you should pray.

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5 Proactive Prayers You Should Pray

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Don’t Be an Eeyore, How to Maintain Joy

maintain joy
“It’s not much of a tail, but I am sort of attached to it.”  That’s how Eeyore describes his tail which is always falling off. Eeyore is a melancholic, pessimistic “old, grey donkey” in the A.A. Milne stories ofWinnie the Pooh. He never expects anything to go right, and even when something seems to go right, he doesn’t enjoy the good, but rather expects something to go wrong soon. What do you expect from a donkey who lives in a corner of The Hundred Acre Wood called “Eeyore’s Gloomy Place: Rather Boggy and Sad.” He never seemed to know how to maintain joy.
Do you know any Eeyores? I do. Sunny days hold the threat of rain tomorrow. Glasses are always half empty, never half full. Up is really down and in must surely be out. “Oh, bother!” They can suck the life out of the rest of us if we let them.
For the Christian there is no reason to become Eeyores, in fact, the Bible encourages us to adopt an opposite attitude: JOY. Nehemiah tells us that the joy of the Lord is our strength. Could that be the reason we see so many weak believers?
Joy differs from happiness. Happiness depends on what happens to us, but joy is a settled, calm assurance from deep inside that is the result of our satisfaction in God and our relationship with Him. The Greek word for joy is chairo which closely relates to charis the Greek word for “grace.” We can have joy because we have experienced grace.

4 Keys to Maintain Joy

Philippians 4:4-9 gives us some keys to maintaining joy in our lives.

1. Recognize the presence of God.

In verse 5, Paul tells us that a distinctly gentle spirit in the midst of our circumstances should characterize us because “the Lord is at hand” (near). Our happenings are not the source of our joy, but rather the presence of God and His accompanying power present reason to rejoice (re-joy; joy over and over again).

2.  Bring all your anxieties to Him in prayer.

In verse 6, Paul challenges us to worry about nothing but pray about everything. Prayer puts us in a position to give thanks in advance, knowing God hears us and will answer.

3.  Train your mind to think positive thoughts.

Negativity saps the joy from even the stoutest heart. However, the mind trained to dwell on the right things focuses not on what is but on what is possible. Verse 8 challenges us to train our minds to think on “these things,” and identifies 8 qualities of positive thinking.

4.  Learn to practice what is right.

In verse 9, Paul reminds the people in the Philippian church that in the past they had learned, received, seen, and heard, a good example. Their responsibility then was continually to do the good they had seen modeled. Athletes redundantly practice fundamentals so that when game time comes, those fundamentals come naturally. Likewise, making it a disciplined habit always to do the right things puts us in a position to experience a deep seated joy. Even when doing the right thing yields what seems to be an unpleasant result, we can have joy in the fact that we did right.

None of us need be the human equivalent of an old grey donkey whose primary diet consists of prickly thistles. Jesus Christ lives in us, He has made us victorious, He accepts us, and He is developing us into something for His glory. Turn that frown upside down. God loves you . . . and so do I!

Accountability – Does It Really Matter?

accountability

Does it bother you when people do wrong things and face no consequences?  It bothers me.  Sometimes it seems people get away with things I never could, yet without any accountability.  We wonder if anyone – especially God – notices what they did, and how could they get away with such things?  Whether or not we realize it, God is watching, and accountability is coming.

In the last two blogs we have learned Life Stewardship requires us to understand the principles of ownership and investment.  A Life Steward knows that all of life is a trust from God and that He owns us and all that is ours.  We also understand that we must intentionally and urgently work with God’s blessings to yield a fruit for His Kingdom.

Today we consider the third important element of Life Stewardship, accountability. Again, we turn to Jesus’ parable of the talents found in Matthew 25:14-30.  After a long while, the master return to see how his servants had fared and to settle accounts with them. 

As believers, Jesus has rescued us from wrathful judgment of our sins.  However, we still face the judgement seat of Christ where we will give account for our stewardship of this life. (See 1 Corinthians 3:10-15, 2 Corinthians 5:9-10, and Romans 14:10-12) 

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Investment – What Am I Doing?

investment
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The Stock Market report is important news to many people.  People entrust some their earthly to brokers who make an investment on their behalf.  As a result, they want to know how their investment is growing. In a greater way, God has entrusted a precious investment in us.

In Monday’s blog, we learned that Life Stewards recognize that everything we have and experience belongs to God.  Today we will see that life stewards take what God entrusted them and invest it in His Kingdom agenda.

Three Investment Strategies of a Life Steward

As we continue our look at Jesus’ parable of the talents, we can discover three effective life investment strategies.  Jesus said the two effective servants “went at once and traded..” and as a result they “made…more.”

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Ownership – Whose Life Is It Anyway?

ownership
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“When I get to the end of my life, how will I know that I did it right?” 

I’ve had that question posed to me more than once, and I have considered it myself on a number of occasions.  We want to know that this life matters and that we are doing things the right way. 

In the large view of eternity the thing that matters most is our relationship with Jesus.  Did we turn from our sin and trust His death on the cross for payment for our sin?  Did we surrender our live to Him and devote our lives to following Him?  If the answer those questions is anything other than a confident “yes,” please go to this link and read about what it means to have a life-changing relationship with Him. 

If you are confident in your relationship with Jesus, then these three blogs this week are for you.  We will look at what Jesus had to say about the stewardship of life in His parable of the talents.  You can read the parable at Matthew 25:14-30.  We will discover three very important life stewardship principles: ownership, investment, and accountability.

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Renaming the Reality of Your Life

reality
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It had been 45 years since Caleb had been in the area, but he could not forget what he had seen – a land flowing with milk and honey. He and Joshua had realized the potential, but the other 10 spies could not see past the present reality.

That present reality was a giant named Arba and his family of gigantic men. These men towered over other men and presented a formidable and seeming insurmountable obstacle to the conquest of the land. So pervasive and intimidating was Arba’s presence that the city was named after him – Kiriath-Arba. He defined the region. These giants were bad news. You can read the story in Joshua 14:6-15.

Joshua and Caleb may have battled physical giants, but today our giants take on different forms – health issues, financial difficulties, relationship ills, job stress, family crises, and many others. While our giants may not be physical they are just as intimidating. Just as Arba’s presence defined a city, so also our giants attempt to define our reality. We cannot seem to see beyond our giant.

Some 45 years after first seeing these giants, Caleb asked Joshua to give him the hill country and he would drive the giants out of the region. Eventually he did, and the Bible refers to the city “Hebron…formerly named Kiriath-Arba. The giant was a mere memory and no longer defined the reality of the region.

Truths that Define Our Reality?

Giants do NOT have to define our reality. The same motivations that allowed Caleb to succeed in removing the descendants of Arba also can help us move past our giants. What were (and are) those motivations?

1. The purpose of God.

Caleb spends the first part of his appeal to Joshua reminding him of the plan God presented them 45 years earlier when Moses sent them to spy out the land. They knew the giants were there and God knew the giants were there, but the mission was clear: God intended to move the giants out and move His people in.

God will use whatever circumstances come your way to work in your life for His purposes (Romans 8:28; Philippians 2:13). His purposes are (a) to bring glory to Himself, (b) to remake us to be more like Jesus, and (3) to work through us to reach others. Our giants are nothing more than tools that God can use to accomplish His purposes. Don’t let them intimidate you, let God grow you.

2. The presence of God.

Caleb was convinced of his success because he knew “God will be with me.”

You do not face your giants alone. While it may seem God has abandoned you, He is in front of you, behind you, beside you. He is right in the middle of your circumstances and you can be assured of His presence.

3. The promise of God.

Caleb reminded Joshua of a truth they both knew: God promised them that land, every place that their feet had trod. God did not promise that it WOULD BE theirs but that as far as He was concerned it ALREADY WAS theirs. He concluded his appeal to Joshua with the reminder, “just as the Lord said.”

The Bible promises us that with God for us, nothing can be against us; nothing separates us from the love of God in Christ Jesus, and that we ARE (not could be or will be) MORE than conquerors. (Romans 8:31-39) Hang on and let God finish His work through your circumstances. It may take years. Even though Caleb drove the giants away, it would be years later when Judah finally destroyed them for good (Judges 1:10). Give God time. He WILL bring you victory if you look to Him.

Do not let your giants define you and your reality. Let God rename your reality to match what HE IS DOING in your life.

Where Does a Sermon Go After It’s Preached

sermon recycle

Have you ever wondered what happens to a sermon after the preacher preaches it?  Most pastors I know, myself included, invest a lot of prayer, time, thought, and heart into preparing a message.  Most of us preach ourselves out physically, emotionally, and spiritually delivering the sermon.

Each week, many pastors stand at the front door of the church and listen to a variety of comments attenders make about the sermon, almost always positive.  ALMOST always.  I’ve heard some “doosies” in my days.  Here are a few of the more entertaining ones.

“Preacher, I can tell you spent a lot of time on that sermon today.” (Like I don’t every week?)

“Everything you said today was important.” (What? Unlike every other week?)

“You sure told ‘em today, preacher.” (Said by the man I had in mind during the sermon.)

“You must get your sermons from Charles Stanley.  I heard him preach it once.” (No, but we DO use the same source book.)

In all fairness, most of the comments – 99.9% at least – come from genuine people who encourage  me and express appreciation for the message.  Occasionally, someone will even mention something specific from the sermon that addressed a particular need in their life.  Nothing makes a preacher feel more satisfied than specifics.

I also like to listen to people’s side conversations, and those can reveal a lot about a sermon’s effect.  One night after preaching my guts out in a service at a friend’s church, we stood at the front door. The first person to speak to my friend was a deacon who went into a tirade about the church’s thermostat.  I think we all know what effect the sermon had on him.  Zero. 

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