Passion for God; Compassion for Souls
Conference Edition
by Doug Stringer
Prayer Point Press January 2001
"Men reach for thrones to build their own kingdoms; Jesus reached for a towel to wash men's feet."
Misconceptions About Unity . . .
Please don't misunderstand my passion for unity. True unity is more than an event or an affiliation, it is a choice, a lifestyle and a mind-set. It means more than having our names on some membership role, for it requires a genuine bonding of our hearts. Daniel Bernard, coordinator of Somebody Cares Tampa Bay says it well; "Two cats can be united by tying their tails together, but they won't be experiencing true unity!"
Nor am I advocating ecumenical unity, which is merely unity for unity's sake. Rather, we need unity with a purpose. To accomplish that purpose - fulfilling the Great Commission - we must first be reconciled to God and each other. Only then can we fulfill our calling as ministers of reconciliation who rescue lives!
When some Christians hear talk of unity, they fear that they will lose their identity and be swallowed up by some big religious bureaucracy. This isn't the objective at all. Instead of creating an authoritarian headquarters, we are simply a network of related ministries that are intent on a common purpose. Rather than losing our identity in the process, we are actually finding our unique calling and role as we relate to other Christians and ministries.
Some of the leaders in our city were initially concerned that we would create unity only by sinking to the "lowest common denominator." The result has been just the opposite: We have rallied around Jesus Christ Himself, and He is our highest common denominator.
These ministers are not just talking about unity, nor just talking about the problems in our city. They are working in practical ways to impact the city at a grassroots level. Unity with a purpose is in action, and we desire to see a great harvest, not only in Houston, but also across this nation and the nations of the world.
We have not created anything new, but have merely identified what God is already doing. Ministers who are already touching lives are linking arms with others who are doing likewise. We recognize that we are not the only network, but desire to identify and then link those who are already reaching out at a grassroots level.
There are many people still to be reached, and together we can make a difference. We must walk in a right relationship with the Lord and with each other so that His light will shine in us and draw people to Him. We must be witnesses who point the way to Christ. he is sending us out for this purpose.
How will our communities be reached? What must we do? We must intercede and then intervene for the multitudes still in the balance of eternity. The only way we will reach our cities is if we have an intimate relationship with our Heavenly Father and with each other. Then we will be living witnesses, compelling the lost to come.
"There are preachers who love to preach, then there are preachers who love those to whom they preach." Anonymous
A city will come to Christ as you and I lay down our lives for its people. We must pray for God's wisdom and strategy, but then we must act. People are hungry to see the real Jesus, and Jesus wants to love them through you and me. Too often Christians have placed the responsibility for witnessing on the senior pastor or on the inner-city minister. But God is requiring each Christian to be a living witness.
Our desire and ability to embrace those of different racial groups or backgrounds must begin within the body of Christ. We must undergird our Christian brothers and sisters who are working in the inner city. We must support those ministers of different racial groups and come to understand the cultural issues they face. They have been called to reach communities we may not be able to reach. They need us and we need them. We are called to build each other up, not tear each other down. Yet, to do so we must get past the obstacles that have hindered both our relationships within the church and our effectiveness in reaching the lost.
the unchurched must see that our relationships with the Lord and one another are genuine. How we care for those within the body of Christ tells the world how we will love them. We are seeing breakthroughs among the Christian community in Houston, as Anglos, Hispanics, African-Americans, Jews and Asians are serving together. In corporate gatherings and outreaches, we are bridging the gaps that have divided us for so long. For more walls to come down, we must continue to build and maintain these relationships. In so doing, we find that we have much in common, particularly our agreement on our common purpose.
When I envision the type of bride God is preparing for His Son, she is radiant with His character, full of charity, with no division in her heart. She does not quarrel over her rights or set boundaries for her service. She willingly offers herself for the sake of the Bridegroom.
Micah chapter four speaks of the people of God gathering at His holy mountain, and in that passage we see people for all nations - including the lame, the outcast and the afflicted - join together and form a strong nation (Mic. 4:1-7). In verse three we read that the people "shall beat their swords into plowshares, And their spears into pruning hooks; Nation shall not lift up sward against nation, Neither shall they learn war any more."
This kind of unity will only occur as we focus on the harvest. That is God's primary calling to the church today. In the world we will continue to hear of wars and rumors of wars, but there is group of people who are setting aside their differences. They have a common identity, a common enemy, and a common purpose.
Micah 4: 6-7 speaks of the kinds of people who will make up the harvest: "In that day, says the Lord, I will assemble the lame, I will gather the outcast, and those whom I have afflicted; I will make the lame a remnant, and the outcast a strong nation." What a beautiful sight that will be! Already the Lord is beginning to gather His people in such a way, taking outcasts and making us into "a strong nation."
In Genesis chapter 37, Jacob gave Joseph an exquisite gift, a coat of many colors.
...we can imagine the beauty of the tunic Jacob gave Joseph.
That coat must have been brilliant in its color and its quality. As its colors were interwoven, a beautiful fabric was displayed.
Likewise, as the body of Christ becomes a united bride, we become a coat of many colors - red, white, brown, black, yellow, woven together. Though we are diverse in ethnicity and culture, through Christ we are being knit together from every background to become a strong nation. Regardless of our racial or ethnic background, we are now part of the culture of Christ.
Joseph's brothers resented him for the favor he had with his father and for the dream he shared with them. They became jealous and sought to destroy Joseph. Likewise, within the body of Christ we must guard against animosity, jealousy, envy or bitterness that would divide us from other brothers and sisters in Christ. These resentments can be against those with a different vision or can spring from jealousy of the way God is blessing another's ministry. We must also recognize and repent of any prejudices against other nationalities.
Unity among the brethren is not an option, but rather our responsibility to the Lord and one another. Taking steps of reconciliation toward our brothers and sisters is essential if we are going to work together to see God's kingdom established. After years of division or misunderstanding, it is a time-consuming process for hearts to be opened so we can embrace each other and work together for the gospel. Nonetheless, we should desire that kind of unity and stay alert to whatever things would prevent it.
The Bible says Satan is the accuser of the brethren. If he uses Christians to accuse or blame other Christians, then we have become unwilling pawns of Satan. We must keep this in mind anytime we are tempted to back bite, murmur or tear down a brother or sister in Christ. Whatever offenses we've held must be released. Some of the unforgiveness harbored may be due to events that happened years ago in a particular denomination or with someone of a particular racial background. We must get past these hindrances if we ever intend to impact our communities.
When we put on Christ, we must also put on the perfect bond of unity - love (Col. 3:14). Jesus displayed His love in dying for us while we were still sinners (Rom. 5:8). He chose willingly to lay His life down for all nations, all peoples, and all cultures. We did not earn or deserve His love, but Christ chose to love us anyway.
With one fishing pole, we each can catch one fish at a time. But with a net we can bring in many fish at once.
The fire of God that ignites flames of revival is the same fire that brings judgment. The difference is the condition of our hearts.
The body of Christ is called to be one holy "nation," abiding in peace and intent on fulfilling its commission to reach the lost. We are called to a unity that transcends all culture, socioeconomic standing, and racial identity. This means not only embracing theories about reconciliation; it means embracing each other.
If we say we love God but do not love our brother, something is wrong. It is one thing to say we love one another, but love is an action.
Dr. Edwin Louis Cole, founder of the Christian Men's Network, says, "We become intimate with the One to whom we pray, the one with whom we pray, and the one for whom we pray."
...individually and corporately, we must seek God for His strategy to reach our communities. We must pray, but pray with a purpose: "God, what would you have us do?"
Prayer is fundamental to our relationship with God, but from that place of prayer we must move to a place of action.
How do we pray for our cities? We first must recognize the biblical roots of cities and why the first city was established.
...we must identify what specific strongholds are keeping the presence of God from permeating a community. Why is this important? Our ultimate goal is to break the strongholds that are keeping people's hearts hardened to the gospel. We must persistently seek God for spiritual breakthroughs, while consistently sowing seed into the soil of souls.
In 1988, during the first Jericho Drive, Pastor Mike Cave of New Life Christian Center in Houston shared a message that is still pertinent today:
The cities of the world are in a time of change, and major cities will sooner or later go through a time of crisis. The changes taking place in cities today will either move them toward more evil, more corruption, and more vileness, or else there is going to be something that intervenes to reverse the trend and move the cities toward godliness. Whoever takes the lead in these major mega-centers of our world is going to affect the course of history.
We cannot run from the problems of the city, because they will follow us. People are drawn to the city with a false hope of security in jobs, in commerce and in all the things they mistakenly assume the city will provide for them. In reality, the spirit of the city is nothing but a web that draws people into its clutches. The church must intercede and cry out to god for mercy.
In America today we have more people praying for revival than ever before. We are crying out to God, claiming the promise of 2 Chronicles 7:14 that if we humble ourselves , pray, seek His face, and turn from our wicked ways, He will hear from heaven and heal our land. But often we have forgotten the requirement of Isaiah 58 that we reach outward to the needy in addition to reaching upward to God. When we commit ourselves to both the upward and outward thrusts, nothing can stop revival from bursting forth: "Then your light shall break forth like the morning, your healing shall spring forth speedily, and your righteousness shall go before you; the glory of the Lord shall be your rear guard."
Isaiah 28:5-6 speaks of God strengthening His people for the battle that is at the gate. In Scripture a "gate" represents the entryway into a city. Our city's pastors and ministry leaders represent the gatekeepers of the city. Our spiritual leaders are battling for the souls of their flock and of the lost. We must faithfully pray for the leaders in our city, for the heat of battle is intense. As the body of Christ goes beyond mere talk and begins to corporately stand in the gap for souls, we will be met with even more opposition.
God wants the spiritual wall of our city rebuilt, but this will require us to pray with focus and seek His strategies. It means more than devising an elaborate spiritual infrastructure, for the real issue is rebuilding the lives of people shattered by the consequences of sin.
We need eyes of faith to persevere through the opposition of the enemy.
Prayer is not just talking to God, it is listening to His voice. As we develop an intimate relationship with the Lord and with each other, we will receive His corporate instruction. When we receive a strategy to reach our communities, we must then follow through with action. As we collectively join our faith and work with a common purpose, we will impact our communities.
During the long period of peace and prosperity in America, many of us Christians have become apathetic and complacent in our comforts. It is time to ask ourselves the question posed by the late statesman, Leonard Ravenhill: "Are the things you are living for worth Christ dying for?" The Lord wants to stir us from lethargy and raise us up to be a mighty army.
Many of us have prayed, "God whatever it takes, whatever You want, I will do it" - but our lives do not reflect that radical abandonment to God. The children of Israel once approached Jeremiah and said, "Go find out what God wants us to do, and whatever it is, we will do it." Yet when Jeremiah came back and told them what God wanted them to do, they called him a liar! (see Jer. 42.) They spoke the right words with their lips, but their hearts had already decided what they wanted to do. So the question comes back to us today,"Do we have ears to hear and obey what the Lord is saying?"
Jesus did not say, "Take up My cross and follow Me." Rather, He said, "Take up your cross and follow Me." Our lives are the sacrifice we offer to God, our wholehearted obedience to His will. When we hear Him speak, we must die to our own desires. When we obey Him even when we do not want to, we have come to understand total surrender to His will.
When we enjoy the sweet presence of the Lord in our corporate prayer gatherings, let us remember why we are gathered. We will have all eternity to enjoy the Lord's presence, but we must redeem the time for the ones who still do not know Him. Do we hear the Lord's cry as He weeps for people? Will we look beyond our own needs and desires for a cause far beyond any we could ever imagine? Let us pray the price for the sake of souls. Let our prayers echo the prayers of Bob Pierce, founder of World Vision, "God break my heart with the things that break Yours."
If we are going to reach this generation, we must do more than just get together for fellowship and for prayer. Yes, prayer is foundational, and fasting helps us die to our flesh. But we must pray with purpose. We must fast, but we must fast with purpose.
Isaiah 58 clarifies the purpose for times of prayer and fasting. We are told that if we "do these things" [do the stuff], our healing will come quickly. We must move from prayer and fasting to the purpose. Praying and fasting will enable us to hear the Lord's voice and be filled with His power, but then we must do the stuff.
"If what we do does not equate into changed lives and lost souls coming to Christ, it stops short of being a true revival."
God's authority and power are poured out when we worship Him. When worship goes up, His glory comes down! But His glory doesn't come down just to give us spiritual goose bumps. There is a clear purpose when His glory comes down: that we would go forth in His authority to fulfill the Great Commission.
Having hearts prepared to serve and sacrifice includes a willingness to receive the needy people He brings our way. Some of these have been very battered by the consequences of sin, and they may not look like the kind of people we want to hang out with. Others will come from racial and ethnic groups that we may have previously harbored prejudice toward. Yet, if we are willing to serve them as unto the Lord, then God promises to give us power and authority to be His witnesses.
Dr. Richard Halverson, the former chaplain of the U.S. Senate, has succinctly summed up the history of the church: "Christianity started in Palestine as a relationship with a person - Jesus. It went to Greece and become a philosophy, went to Rome and became an institution, and went to Europe and became a culture. Then it came to America and became an enterprise." For the church to be restored, it is helpful to see how we have fallen prey to these perversions of the true gospel.
A genuine revival is not a matter of hoopla, or emotionalism, or even spiritual refreshing - it is a matter of transforming individuals and then entire communities.
A few years ago I was interviewed for a radio program and was asked if I thought God was going to bring judgment or revival to America. I paused for a moment and replied, "Both." God is going to bring revival to His people, and it will either come by choice or by judgment. The line has been drawn, and we must make a choice. The Lord cannot force us to consecrate our lives, but He can surely put pressure on us so we will seek Him. He will do whatever it takes to get our attention! We will either surrender all to Him, birthing a revival, or through our disobedience, He will allow judgment. We will go to our knees either to seek Him by choice or by judgment. We cannot expect to have the Lord's peace and joy if we cling to that which is of this temporal world - things that are destined to perish.
This is not a day to give up on the church, on yourself, or certainly not on the Lord. Instead, it is a day to get on our knees and seek the Lord for His grace. The Lord is raising up people all across the land who want to see a true outpouring of the Holy Spirit. It will not be limited to any one crusade or meeting, but the Holy Spirit will move through individuals, ministries and churches that are preparing themselves and seeking the Lord.
We as Christians need to repent of pursuing happiness above holiness. God is looking for a people who are hungry for His holiness, His character, and a deeper relationship with Him.
During extended periods of peace and prosperity, the church tends to become selfish, self-self-centered and self-focused. God wants to bless His people, but the blessings are for a purpose: to get the gospel out.
Many Christians across the land are praying for a move of God that will impact thousands of souls. If we really believe God is going to move like that, we have to prepare our hearts now. We must examine our own lives and allow Him to show us the things in us that are displeasing to Him. This is the necessary first step for revival: We must examine ourselves.
Genuine passion for God allows no room for compromise or mediocrity!
The outpouring of God's Spirit is going to require us to change. If we have been doing things the same way for years, it is probably time for a new mind-set, a clean garment, and a change of heart. In Scripture the infilling of the Holy Spirit has been referred to as new wine. If we are going to be able to contain the new wine, we will need new wineskins.
There are those who will resist the change God must bring, saying, "The old is better!" Will this be true of us? Will we hold on to our traditions, our old ways, our old thinking, or will we allow God to do what He must to change us? To have hearts prepared for the new season, we must take off the old wineskins and embrace the new. Let's not be the ones saying, "The old is better."
Taking off old wineskins is at times more difficult than we think, for it can be quite painful. The old wineskin has become comfortable, but we must not allow that comfort to hinder us from moving on with God. We need to face the fact that our old condition is not suitable for the new work God desires to do.
Few Christians realize how much we can hinder God's intention to pour out His Spirit across our community. No one intends to do this, but unless we circumcise our hearts, that is exactly what will happen. We must cast off our old wineskins and deal with the things that have caused division within the body of Christ.
Pride stops a move of God, and leaders are the first ones to be challenged on this issue.
It is crucial for leaders to see beyond their own churches, desiring God to move throughout the city, without jealousy, envy or strife.
Dr. Cole says, "The character of the kingdom emanates from the character of the king." Ministry leaders and pastors are the ones setting the example for the body.
As spiritual leaders we must be the first to humble ourselves and then weep for the countless millions still to know Christ.
something has to die in order for something new to arise. The old has to pass away for things to become new (2 Cor. 5:17).
"Revival that leads to harvest and awakening is always first a revival of holiness and consecration."
God wants to birth a move of His Spirit through us, His church. It's not about denomination, intellect, race or economics - it's only about Jesus. It's about Jesus wanting to love people through us. He wants the Good News to reach all people, and it will take all the church to reach all the lost. Together we are a 'church without walls," infiltrating every area of society with the fragrance of Christ (2 Cor. 2:14).
In the early chapters of Acts, the church was of one spirit, of one mind, and of one heart. Consequently, there was great grace upon them to do miraculous exploits, and there was no lack. To receive God's blessings and the outpouring of His Spirit that we long for, we too must be of one spirit and one heart. Only then will we have the great power and grace to fulfill God's plan.
One of the reasons it will take all of us to reach all of them is that God wants to reach people from every background, racial and economic group. Not only does He want us to reach the down-and-outers, he also wants the up-and-outers to come into the kingdom.
This is a crucial time for the world. We have been commissioned to tell them the truth and offer them the hope that is in Christ. They will not believe us based upon our words alone, but only as they see the sincerity of our actions.
It is sad that the church has most often united in times of poverty and persecution - and that is when revival has most often come.
When we are in times of peace and prosperity we tend to compromise and become divided, concerned mostly with building our own kingdoms.
The body of Christ must quit tearing itself apart, and begin at once to build itself together in preparation for what is ahead.
The body must come together as never before, uniting for the purpose of winning the world to Jesus. We have been called for such a time as this, and must not miss our date with destiny.
"We should not come together in unity for unity's sake. We must come together in unity for His purpose."
Thursday, August 24, 2006
Wednesday, August 23, 2006
The Great Giveaway ~ Chapter 6: Justice
Justice (Our Understanding Of)
Practicing Redeemed Economics:
Christian Community in but Not of Capitalism
For anyone united to Christ, there is a new creation: the old order has gone; a new order has already begun.
2 Corinthians 5:17 REB
We were a small gathering of about forty-five people meeting in an old church on Sunday nights in Chicago. This night, a person stood up during congregational prayers and announced to everyone that she had cancer. She told us that she needed an operation and had no health insurance and did not know how she was going to pay for it. No one knew how to react, so we just prayed for her. To my knowledge, no one did anything else significant that night to help this woman. Prayer is good but empty if we separate it from social justice. Several months later this woman with cancer cautiously asked someone in the church to second mortgage his house and help her pay for her operation. That person responded with the question, “I don’t own my house free and clear, besides have you second mortgaged your house?” This perhaps was a legitimate question but no one, including the woman with cancer, would dare get involved in discerning the answer to this question. It seemed too big of a threat, not only to the homeowner but also to the woman with cancer. As a result, this woman with cancer was basically left alone with her economic problems despite being part of a close community. This same community, however, could get enthusiastic about volunteering aid to the local soup kitchen, offering financial help to the homeless, or walking miles to raise funds for pro-life and anti-poverty campaigns. But we did not know what to do when someone in our own community stood up and announced such a great need. Eighty thousand dollars (the cost of the operation) would surely have bankrupted us all. It seemed that this woman threatened everyone else’s financial survival. She put all of our own individual securities at risk and we were paralyzed. We didn’t have a way to “be the church” in the moment of her need. We didn’t know how to discern justice or mercy, what we should do, or what she needed to do.
I contend this episode is a metaphor for what happens in various and sundry ways in the majority of North American evangelical churches. Larger congregations may have benevolent funds to help out such a woman, but rarely do we take communal financial responsibility for one another. Larger evangelical churches may have committees to meet needs of hurting people in times of emergency, but rarely do we engage in what it means to restore justice and righteousness among us as a body of Christ in terms of economic disorder, conflict, and other issues of injustice. Yet when it comes to ministering social justice outside of the church, evangelicals are more active today than they have ever been before.1
I contend this disparity is dangerous because it leaves our churches prone to compromising the justice of Jesus Christ in society at large. If we do not practice justice among ourselves as Christians under Christ’s lordship, we will not have the skills to discern it out in society either. Inevitably, we will be influenced by a formula for justice that comes from some place other than the body of Christ. In the case of evangelicals, this place often proves to be America’s own liberal democracy and capitalism. The social politics of democratic capitalism ends up determining the way we do justice more than the politics of Christ. This then renders our justice unrecognizable as Christian justice in the world.2 Truly, without the local church as a visible reference point, any justice we practice in society in Christ’s name inevitably will blend in with other forms of contested justice active in the postmodern societal marketplace. And if we do separate our justice from society’s, our justice becomes just another disingenuous argument without a living visible representation of what justice looks like among a people of God. In either case, we end up “giving away” the justice of Christ to forces external to the church.
This chapter argues that the work of social justice in Christ begins with the woman with cancer standing in the middle of the congregation. Only from such a concrete outworking of justice under his lordship can we then locate and do justice in the world. The following seeks to uncover how and why evangelicals do justice and why it fails as a work of Christ’s justice in a society at the end of modernity. It asks how we can return the work of justice to the concrete body of Christ. It then suggests the reinvigoration of an old church practice through which we can receive back Christ’s justice as his church in but not of capitalism and then offer it to the world.
===>Click here for more information on The Great GiveawayThe Great Giveaway by David Fitch (Ph.D., Northwestern University) ... the author of The Great Giveaway (Nov. 2005) from which this chapter is excerpted. Fitch is the pastor of Life on the Vine Christian Community of the Christian and Missionary Alliance in Long Grove, Illinois, and is adjunct professor of ministry, theology, and ethics at Northern Seminary.
Used with permission of Baker Books, a division of Baker Publishing Group copyright (C) 2005. All rights to this material are reserved. Materials are not to be distributed to other web locations for retrieval, published in other media, or mirrored at other sites without written permission from Baker Publishing Group
Friday, August 11, 2006
Help A Missionary
If you could help a missionary without cost to you, would you do it? Here’s your chance! My name is Debbie Wohler. I’ve been a Home Missionary for the North American Mission Board in the Tahoe City, CA area for 26 years. During the school year we minister to 70-90 children a day. In the summer there are even more children! I also coordinate church services at 6 different ski areas each Sunday during the ski season. You can see more information about the mission work here by going to: www.tahoeministries.com
The ministries are in need of a new van and a house for future staff. The vans are used to pick up children at schools and bring them to the church where they hear about Jesus. The vans are also used to take children and youth on field trips and church camp in the summer months. The cost of housing is very outrageous in our area ($700,000-$1.5 million to buy a normal house.) If we don’t get housing for future missionaries and a pastor, the mission work here won’t be able to continue after those of us who are here now retire.
We are asking you and your church to save empty computer inkjet print cartridges, laser toners, and cell phones that are no longer being used. We can get cash for these items! Wouldn’t it be great to help a mission project that tells children and families about Jesus? This will be an ongoing project. There is no deadline for completion. We’ll collect until we reach our goal. We will send you a monthly update via
e-mail. This update has stories about the mission work, financial reports on the project, and updates on how to ship your items. If you don’t have an e-mail address, have someone from your church that does have e-mail give Debbie their e-mail address and she’ll send the reports to them. This will save the mission project huge amounts of money in postage. Be sure to keep Debbie posted on your e-mail address changes. Please add me to your list of approved receivers on your e-mail address list.
Empties4Cash has just made an exclusive deal for us. They will now accept the ink jets, cell phones, and laser toners. For the rest of their customers they are only accepting the ink jets. They have also dropped the minimum number required to get the free shipping. There are now no minimums required! This company will send you free boxes with prepaid shipping labels. Here is the contact information for the company.
Empties4Cash
15042 Parkway Loop, Unit C
Tustin, CA 92780
1-800-456-4320
Our Empties4Cash ID: 14716 (Put our ID number on the outside underneath your return address. Please put our 14716 ID number inside the box as well.)
- Ink jet cartridges with print heads will continue to be paid the prices listed on their web page. We get $1-4 each for these.
- Cell phones. They do not want the accessories. They just want the cell phone itself. They will pay $1 for each phone we send them. Please do not send bag phones.
- Laser toners. They will pay $1 for each laser toner we send them.
- Ink jets without print heads will get us .02 per ink jet. They are paying more on everything else than anyone else. And they are giving us free shipping and free boxes! So whatever we can do to help them is wonderful. They ship the non print heads off to a recycling company and they only get .05 per cartridge and this is after they pay their own shipping.
HOW TO GET STARTED:
- Call Empties4Cash at 1-800-456-4320. Tell them that you are saving for Debbie Wohler, ID number 14716. Ask them to send you some free boxes and free posters for publicity.
- Make announcements at church, in your church newsletter, at work, school, through e-mail and any other way you can think of to get the word out.
- When you get a box full of items, call Empties4Cash at 1-800-456-4320. Tell them you have a box ready for pick-up. You will need to tell them our ID number (14716) and read them the number of the Fed Ex shipping label that is already on the box.
- The box comes to you already addressed to them and with a prepaid Fed Ex sticker. Put your return address on the outside of the box and our account number (14716) underneath your return address. Please put a sheet of paper inside the box with our account number on it as well. Let them know the hours that Fed Ex can pick up the box.
- E-mail Debbie at debbiewohler@sbcglobal.net and let her know that your box is on the way. When I get the check and the report, I’ll e-mail the report to you. You’ll get a detailed report of how much each item you sent was worth and the total amount that you just contributed to our mission project. This will encourage you and your church. E-mail is the cheapest way and most time efficient way for us to keep in contact with all of our wonderful supporters.
Packing and shipping details:
- There is now no minimum number of items that you need to send in to get the free boxes and free shipping. We should send as many as we can at a time so that they don’t get killed on the shipping charges. However, they trust us and have dropped the minimum number requirement for free shipping. If you only have a few ink jets, they have smaller prepaid envelopes for you to use.
- You can send all of the items in the same box if you want. We are suggesting that you put the cell phones or laser toners in the bottom of the box and the ink jets on the top of the box. Please continue to layer things with protection in between layers (bubble wrap, newspaper, or Wal-Mart type plastic bags.) We also wrap our ink jets in plastic sandwich bags to protect the print heads from getting damaged in shipping. It would be easier for them if you would keep the same kinds of items together in a layer. For example: The bottom of the box has cell phones or laser toners, then layers of ink jets with print heads, and then a layer of ink jets with no print heads.
- Some of the laser toners will fit into their free boxes and some of them won’t. If you have laser toners that are too big for their free boxes, you will have to get your own box. Then call 1-800-456-4320. Tell them that you have laser toners ready to ship and that you need a prepaid shipping label. Tell them your address but be sure to give them our Empties 4 cash ID number: 14716. Tell them that you are helping us out. They are very familiar with us and will understand what’s going on.
If you are still reading all of this you are a saint! Thank you for loving Jesus. Thank you for loving us here in Tahoe City. Our children, families, and church members think you are wonderful too! It is a testimony to them that even though you don’t know us, you help us. You are showing God’s love in a tangible way to many families who don’t know Jesus. We had 739 families who attended one or more of our programs last year. We are trying to raise up a new generation who love and know Jesus. We are raising up the army of the Lord. You are helping to make all of this possible. Please don’t miss out on this exciting movement of God. Please get this effort started in your church as soon as possible. You will be encouraged and blessed to see how God works through this project.
If you have any questions, please don’t hesitate to contact me. If I don’t know the answer, I’ll find out.
THANK YOU SO MUCH!!! Your love, prayers, support, encouragement, and help mean so much to me.
Debbie Wohler, NAMB Home Missionary
PO Box 7452
Tahoe City, CA 96145
(530) 583-2925 (Pacific Standard Time)
Sunday, August 06, 2006
Praying Backwards: Transform your Prayer Life by Beginning in Jesus' Name
Praying Backwards
Transform your Prayer Life by Beginning in Jesus' Name
by Bryan Chapell
published by Baker Books 2005
{Phil's underlines from reading Praying Backwards. . . }
How would your prayer change if you began where you normally end?
Often we focus on asking god to ease our worries and satisfy our wants before adding"in Jesus' name" as an obligatory spiritual seasoning to make our petitions palatable to God.
But Jesus is not like a genie in a bottle whom we can command by invoking his name.
Prayer does not relieve all suffering, but it assures us that no difficulty comes without a purpose.
In this fallen world you cannot avoid suffering; you can have peace in the midst of it. You cannot avoid trials; you can have confidence of their purpose. You cannot bind God by your prayers; you can guarantee his blessing. You cannot direct the will of God; you can pray according to his will and rest in the assurance of his love.
Through Jesus we pray without the limitations of our wisdom or faith.
We ask for his blessing based on God's wisdom, not ours. We trust in his faithfulness, not in the adequacy of our faith.
So why wait to the end of a prayer to tag on Jesus' name?
When our routines have desensitized us to his priorities, then it's time to begin where we end. Praying backwards will inevitably turn our prayer priorities upside down. By saying "in Jesus' name" first, we will more readily discern when our prayers go astray from his purposes, hijacked by our self-interest.
When Jesus' priorities come first, our prayers will change. They will be less self-oriented, more Christ-directed, more blessed, and ultimately most satisfying to our hearts.
After almost three years of walking with Jesus, watching his life, and hearing his words, the apostles came to Jesus and said, "Lord, teach us to pray" (Luke 1:1). You would think they would already know.
Something in us whispers that it is not right to treat our God like a celestial vending machine into which we place faith nickels to get the jackpot we want. Such faith would seem to put more confidence in our wisdom about how the world should work than in an infinitely wise God. Somehow proper prayer must put more trust in God's will than in human wants; otherwise failure to get the things we want will force us to doubt either the power of prayer or the ability of God.
Praying entire prayers in Jesus' name profoundly alters our priorities and powerfully sends our requests to God.
Our prayers are not more powerful because we chant our Savior's name like a magic spell. If we use Jesus' name as some sort of spiritual incantation, then we fall into the error of the sorcerers in the book of Acts who thought that using Jesus' name was just another way of saying "abracadabra" or "shazam" (see Acts 19:13-16).
When we pray in Jesus' name, we confess that we are not coming to God or asking for his blessing on the basis of our merit.
Praying in Jesus' name is automatically a confession our unworthiness and a proclamation of his worthiness.
...Prayer in Jesus' name is not an incantation to make us worthy of divine attention; it is a confession that we are unworthy of even approaching God apart from the mercy and merits of our Savior. We pray in the name of Jesus to profess our need of him and to proclaim our trust in the provision of righteousness he made for us.
Not only does Christ's intercession grant us spiritual paupers the ability to have our appeals lovingly heard by the Father, Jesus' continuing work grants us direct access to the Father.
When we pray in Jesus' name, we are summoning the power of the Holy Spirit to accomplish his purposes.
The Spirit has no more pressing business than advancing the name of Jesus. So when we pray in Jesus' name, we are summoning the power of the Holy Spirit to accomplish his purposes.
Throughout the Bible persons use the name of God to indicate that fulfilling his purposes is their highest priority.
To do anything in the Lord's name means to do it for his purposes. When we pray in Jesus' name, we are petitioning God to bring glory to Jesus and we are asking for his will to be done in everything so that he will be honored above all. Prayers in Jesus' name are enveloped with concern that he be represented, blessed, and glorified. By appealing to Jesus' name, we surrender our prayers to his purposes. This means that, while we should present many kinds of petitions to God, a prayer offered in Jesus' name ultimately requests his desires.
Praying backwards helps clarify the priorities of our prayers so that we can distinguish childish from mature petitions.
...pray backwards means we back away from making ourselves, our wishes, or our wants the primary concerns of our prayer. We always put the purposes of Jesus first. We echo in heart if not in actual words the attitude of the psalmist who prayed, "Not to us, O Lord, not to us but you your name be the glory" (Ps.115:1).
Yet our trust in God is based not on our circumstances but on his character.
Jesus' suffering, death, and resurrection prove God's purposes are not thwarted by pain, and his affection is not exhausted by our experiences on this earth.
Then I rediscovered the Lord's Prayer. As a child, I learned the prayer that Jesus taught his disciples. I have recited it so many times that it can run out of my mouth and hardly tax my brain--or touch my heart.
When we pray in Jesus' name, we petition God to fulfill the purposes of his kingdom and bring him glory.
Psalm 37, which says God gives "the desires of your heart," begins with the command, "Delight yourself in the Lord. When we delight most in fulfilling his purposes (having his name reverenced and his kingdom furthered), then God gives us the desires of our heart.
He does not want to deny us our desires but helps remove the false objects of our affections so that we will have the greater blessings he longs to lavish on us.
The prayer for daily bread reminds us of God's provision of manna in the wilderness.
Their sin was not in desiring tastier bread but rather in not appreciating the God who sustained them.
The prayer for daily bread is really a petition for spiritual vitality to do heaven's work on earth.
When Christians pray for daily bread, we are not simply praying for our natural wants. We are praying for the ability to please God, because pleasing God satisfies us.
The more we desire to honor the Lord who loves us so, the more we recognize our constant need of his grace. Jesus' willingness to teach these words as a regular pattern for our prayers greatly encourages us, because we know that we will not exhaust his mercy.
The Bible...does not say where to include the phrase or even the precise words to use (see, for example, Eph. 5:20).
Perhaps the reason for the Bible's lack of specific direction is that the name of Jesus is the fountain, as well as the foundation, of every petition we offer when we pray as he taught us. Faithful prayer begins with, ends with, and consists of the desire to honor our Savior.
...praying without any doubt would seem to require us to tell God what to do.
...if God's will is really under the control of my will, then wouldn't that make me God?
Proper belief is not unwavering confidence that something we want will happen, nor is it doubtless trust that we know what is best. Our trust is not in the thing that we want or in our sufficient faith. The success of our prayers does not lie in exceptional confidence that we have pumped enough of our own faith into our prayer (and extracted enough doubt) so that now God must respond. Our belief must be in God. He, not our desire, is the object of our faith.
Praying in Jesus' name requires seeking first the kingdom of God and his righteousness with the absolute trust that God will then add all that is best for us (Matt. 6:31-33).
..do not let anyone make you feel guilty or ashamed for praying as Jesus did in the Garden Gethsemane.
He said, "Yet, Lord, not my will but your will be done." Jesus was not expressing doubt because he prayed for God's will to be done. Our Savior was right both to offer his petition and subject it to God's design.
...we seek him first, he will answer to glorify his Son.
...he will answer our prayers better than we can ask.
Faith in God's sovereignty actually causes us to rejoice that we do not bind God with the limited wisdom and mixed motives of our prayers.
...where in all of history has God most glorified himself? He did it at the cross of Jesus Christ, and it wasn't by delivering Jesus from the cross, though he could have.
I have often encouraged others not to pray for God to heal if it is his will -- as though maybe he will heal and maybe not. Instead, I encourage my friends and family to pray for God to heal according to his will.
Praying without doubting God's sovereignty can be tough.
...because god knows our needs better than we do, it might seem that we should refrain from praying about anything specific.
He knows what we need before we ask (Matt. 6:8), but he still likes to be asked. He urges us to pray in ways that deepen our love and trust of him. Even though we cannot fully understand or anticipate what God should do, we should not hesitate to pray. Not only do our prayers please God, the Holy Spirit uses them to accomplish heaven's purpose on earth.
With more fervor than we can express, and with the urgency of a mother in childbirth, the Spirit cries before the throne of grace, "Holy god, bless your people. God of Creation, bend the world to your glorious purposes for those seeking you. Heavenly Father, work all things together for your children's good."
We know that god's will is to make us more Christlike (I Thess. 4:3). but apart from this goal, we can rarely (if ever) know god's desires precisely.
We do not have to abandon prayer, however, simply because we cannot fathom the will of God. The Holy Spirit takes our humble prayers and conforms their content to God's will. When we pray in Jesus' name, we offer our desires to God with the foundational desire that he will accomplish his purposes through us. By his Holy Spirit that is exactly what God does, and this is why the Bible urges us to pray in the Spirit (Eph. 3:14-19; 6:18).
Praying in the Spirit is not so much seeking magical expressions of God's power to fulfill our desires as it is asking that our Savior's priorities shape our desires.
We find the path easier when we discover prayer is a privilege for us rather than a bribe for God.
Key Thought: god does not give finite people the burden of solving the world's problems. Determining precisely how to pray to accomplish god's eternal will would devastate us. Instead, our God provides his Holy Spirit to match the fervor, content, and desires of our prayers to his purposes. The Spirit not only conforms our prayers to God's purposes but in doing so confirms how precious we are to God so that we will seek and trust him more.
Virtually every committed and nominal Christian knows to call on God in a time of trouble. But those who truly discover the power of his abiding presence do not reserve prayer for periods of isolated retreat. In addition, they converse with their heavenly Father through private thoughts on busy streets, in crowded stadiums, in stressed offices, on family outings, and through every day. The great nineteenth-century preacher Charles Surgeon wrote; "I never pray more that five minutes at a time, but I never go five minutes without praying."
Big prayers get out of hand not because we request miracles but because we demand them.
The extraordinary providences, whereby God suspends the physical laws of the universe or marvelously coordinates them, are never designed for entertainment. Rarely do miracles occur for the ease of God's people. In the Bible, miracles come as precursors of the expansion of God's kingdom - often to encourage those who will soon suffer for their faith.
The confidence that we express in such bold prayer is not in the answer we desire but in God. Others have expressed the essence of biblically bold prayer this way: "We should confidently petition God to be God."
Bringing specific petitions to God is not the same as demanding specific responses from God.
When Christians join together in expectant prayer, God's hand often becomes especially evident.
The Bible encourages corporate prayer because when God's people unite their hearts, they are more likely to encourage one another to pray, to examine the appropriateness of their prayer, to maintain their prayer, and to express thanksgiving for God's answers.
The crucial factor for powerful prayer is not the number of persons but the purpose that calls them together.
Great response to specific, corporate prayer still occurs. At the St. Nicholas Church in Leipzig, Germany, strong and weak believers gathered for prayer during the days of Communist domination. The nation had wearied of ineffective political rallies and demonstrations protesting the cruel regime. The prayer group grew weary too. Numbers rose and fell with the mood of the nation. At times only a dozen or fewer prayed in the massive church.
Then in 1989 the Spirit ignited the hearts of his people and hundreds began to come to the church to pray. East German troops blocked the exits of the autobahn on the days of the prayer meeting to keep people from the town. Systematic arrests of the prayer group's leaders were ordered on days prior to the meetings. Communist sympathizers even filled the seats of the church so there would be no place for those wanting to pray.
The praying crowds still came. They stood inside and outside the church while the Communists, at first, listened, and then many joined the prayers. When the numbers of those praying reached the thousands, troops were summoned to handle the anticipated revolt. The people did not revolt but continued to pray with candles in both their hands to show that they had no weapons. Word of the courageous and persistent prayer swept the nation. Though the corporate prayer movement lasted only a few weeks with these numbers, the Communists lost all public support. The government collapsed, and German history began a new chapter without barbed wire, machine guns, and tanks.
A member of the Communist Central Committee later wrote, "We had planned for everything. We were prepared for everything. But not for candles and prayers." What Communists could not prepare for, Christians must do. We pray corporately and specifically because we expect that in his time and according to his purposes, iron curtains will yield and God's Spirit will triumph.
Often those the Bible commends for their great faith did not receive an immediate answer to prayer.
Faithful prayer is not marked by the immediacy of answers as much as by persistent petition.
But why does God want persistent prayer? He can answer any prayer in the blink of an eye. Why does he sometimes delay his answer?
Persistent prayer in the face of initial disappointment can become the instrument of divine nurture. We grow to trust God more by seeing that often he prepares something better than our initial prayers did (or could) request. In fact God's greatest gifts may come through prayers that seem to be unanswered. Our persistence can help us discover why God blesses by not answering as we ask.
By persisting in prayer for answers that require the processes of time, we confess to God our perpetual need of him. Regular prayer for continuing needs also testifies to others our confidence in God's continuing work in our lives.
We trust our Saviour because he works perfectly, not because he works quickly.
When we pray for God to provide good for us, we are implicitly asking to be more like Jesus - for our lives to further Christ's glory. This is another reason we pray in Jesus' name. A prayer in our Savior's name submits more than its content to his purposes. By invoking Jesus' name, we also submit ourselves to Christ's purposes. We ask God to do whatever he wills to make us all that he wants. And we know he wants us to reflect Christ's glory more and more. God alone knows whether Christ will receive more glory through the removal of our trial, through our continued faithfulness in the midst of suffering, or through an ultimate sacrifice that takes us to heaven where pain is replaced by eternal praise of unending joy.
It is more important to obey God's Word than to try to predict his will. Only through obedience can we know God's will - and pray for it.
Praying to be Christlike is more than pious exercise; it is spiritual power. Prayer in Jesus' name promotes his purposes, and his greatest purpose in our life is for us to reflect him to the world. By praying to God to make us more like Jesus, we ensure that he will do all that his sovereign power determines will most glorify Jesus through us. Heaven and earth bend to his will when we pray for the Father to glorify Jesus in us.
Praying for courage to obey God's Word is a better sign of faithfulness than pretending to know more than God's Word says.
Respected Scottish pastor Eric Alexander gives a modern account of believers praying with spiritual sensitivity. In the 1950s three evangelical ministers - James Philip, George Philip, and William Still - felt compelled by the Holy Spirit to pray that God would revive the Church of Scotland. They met regularly and prayed for an increasing number of Bible-believing pastors. Then, after four years of fervent, joint intercession, the three ministers felt released from this burden of prayer. When they stopped, they confessed to being disappointed. They saw no evidence that God had chosen to revive his church.
Twenty-five years later, these same ministers hosted a conference for Bible-believing ministers who had begun to fill the pastoral ranks. About two hundred pastors came - roughly about one-third of all Scottish ministers. One of the three pastors who had prayed for this increase asked for a show of hands by those who had been converted during those initial four years of prayer. A number in the room raised their hands, including Eric Alexander. Then the conference leader asked those present who had been born during those four years to raise a hand. Most of the rest of the pastors then raised a hand. God had answered the prayer of the original three ministers in a way they could not have expected. Now they also know why the Holy Spirit had released them from their prayer compulsion after those four years of concentrated effort.
Prayer is more than a conversation with God.
Too often references to prayer as a conversation with God create a false expectation. Believers think they will speak to God and he will speak back with a voice made audible in our mind or whispered on the wind. Then, for lack of hearing this voice, many consider their prayers ineffective. We could avoid much disappointment by recognizing that the supernatural process of prayer has no easy analogy in our natural experience.
Healing thrives in the recognition that God listens. Christian psychiatrist and author Paul Tournier says, "It is impossible to overemphasize the immense need that humans have to be really listened to, to be taken seriously, to be understood."
Praying in Jesus' name is not merely the postscript to a good prayer; it is the prelude to God's providing the best of all things for his loved ones. Putting the name of Jesus first when we pray is not really praying backwards. Such prayer is actually putting first the purposes of the One whose glory and delight it is to give us the best of earth and heaven forever. By praying backwards, we always move forward with the assurance God will use whatever life brings for the Savior's glory and our good. He can do no less than provide his best for those who offer prayer in Jesus' name. Such prayer is our great privilege, power, and peace.
Jesus taught us never to voice a prayer we could not pray backwards. We utter every petition with a heart of praise, seeking first the honor of our Savior. Praying in Jesus' name is ultimately no sacrifice because he chooses to glorify himself by providing the best of his kingdom for his people. When the greatest desire of our heart is his glory, the greatest joy of his heart is our blessing.
We pray in Jesus' name because we have the blessed assurance that the Father will do for the sake of his Son all that is best for him and those he loves. With this confidence, we have the privilege, joy, and peace to pray to him again and again, "Thy will be done. In Jesus' name, amen."
Perhaps the best measure of the impact of our habitual prayers is the frequency of impromptu prayer in our lives.
Transform your Prayer Life by Beginning in Jesus' Name
by Bryan Chapell
published by Baker Books 2005
{Phil's underlines from reading Praying Backwards. . . }
How would your prayer change if you began where you normally end?
Often we focus on asking god to ease our worries and satisfy our wants before adding"in Jesus' name" as an obligatory spiritual seasoning to make our petitions palatable to God.
But Jesus is not like a genie in a bottle whom we can command by invoking his name.
Prayer does not relieve all suffering, but it assures us that no difficulty comes without a purpose.
In this fallen world you cannot avoid suffering; you can have peace in the midst of it. You cannot avoid trials; you can have confidence of their purpose. You cannot bind God by your prayers; you can guarantee his blessing. You cannot direct the will of God; you can pray according to his will and rest in the assurance of his love.
Through Jesus we pray without the limitations of our wisdom or faith.
We ask for his blessing based on God's wisdom, not ours. We trust in his faithfulness, not in the adequacy of our faith.
So why wait to the end of a prayer to tag on Jesus' name?
When our routines have desensitized us to his priorities, then it's time to begin where we end. Praying backwards will inevitably turn our prayer priorities upside down. By saying "in Jesus' name" first, we will more readily discern when our prayers go astray from his purposes, hijacked by our self-interest.
When Jesus' priorities come first, our prayers will change. They will be less self-oriented, more Christ-directed, more blessed, and ultimately most satisfying to our hearts.
After almost three years of walking with Jesus, watching his life, and hearing his words, the apostles came to Jesus and said, "Lord, teach us to pray" (Luke 1:1). You would think they would already know.
Something in us whispers that it is not right to treat our God like a celestial vending machine into which we place faith nickels to get the jackpot we want. Such faith would seem to put more confidence in our wisdom about how the world should work than in an infinitely wise God. Somehow proper prayer must put more trust in God's will than in human wants; otherwise failure to get the things we want will force us to doubt either the power of prayer or the ability of God.
Praying entire prayers in Jesus' name profoundly alters our priorities and powerfully sends our requests to God.
Our prayers are not more powerful because we chant our Savior's name like a magic spell. If we use Jesus' name as some sort of spiritual incantation, then we fall into the error of the sorcerers in the book of Acts who thought that using Jesus' name was just another way of saying "abracadabra" or "shazam" (see Acts 19:13-16).
When we pray in Jesus' name, we confess that we are not coming to God or asking for his blessing on the basis of our merit.
Praying in Jesus' name is automatically a confession our unworthiness and a proclamation of his worthiness.
...Prayer in Jesus' name is not an incantation to make us worthy of divine attention; it is a confession that we are unworthy of even approaching God apart from the mercy and merits of our Savior. We pray in the name of Jesus to profess our need of him and to proclaim our trust in the provision of righteousness he made for us.
Not only does Christ's intercession grant us spiritual paupers the ability to have our appeals lovingly heard by the Father, Jesus' continuing work grants us direct access to the Father.
When we pray in Jesus' name, we are summoning the power of the Holy Spirit to accomplish his purposes.
The Spirit has no more pressing business than advancing the name of Jesus. So when we pray in Jesus' name, we are summoning the power of the Holy Spirit to accomplish his purposes.
Throughout the Bible persons use the name of God to indicate that fulfilling his purposes is their highest priority.
To do anything in the Lord's name means to do it for his purposes. When we pray in Jesus' name, we are petitioning God to bring glory to Jesus and we are asking for his will to be done in everything so that he will be honored above all. Prayers in Jesus' name are enveloped with concern that he be represented, blessed, and glorified. By appealing to Jesus' name, we surrender our prayers to his purposes. This means that, while we should present many kinds of petitions to God, a prayer offered in Jesus' name ultimately requests his desires.
Praying backwards helps clarify the priorities of our prayers so that we can distinguish childish from mature petitions.
...pray backwards means we back away from making ourselves, our wishes, or our wants the primary concerns of our prayer. We always put the purposes of Jesus first. We echo in heart if not in actual words the attitude of the psalmist who prayed, "Not to us, O Lord, not to us but you your name be the glory" (Ps.115:1).
Yet our trust in God is based not on our circumstances but on his character.
Jesus' suffering, death, and resurrection prove God's purposes are not thwarted by pain, and his affection is not exhausted by our experiences on this earth.
Then I rediscovered the Lord's Prayer. As a child, I learned the prayer that Jesus taught his disciples. I have recited it so many times that it can run out of my mouth and hardly tax my brain--or touch my heart.
When we pray in Jesus' name, we petition God to fulfill the purposes of his kingdom and bring him glory.
Psalm 37, which says God gives "the desires of your heart," begins with the command, "Delight yourself in the Lord. When we delight most in fulfilling his purposes (having his name reverenced and his kingdom furthered), then God gives us the desires of our heart.
He does not want to deny us our desires but helps remove the false objects of our affections so that we will have the greater blessings he longs to lavish on us.
The prayer for daily bread reminds us of God's provision of manna in the wilderness.
Their sin was not in desiring tastier bread but rather in not appreciating the God who sustained them.
The prayer for daily bread is really a petition for spiritual vitality to do heaven's work on earth.
When Christians pray for daily bread, we are not simply praying for our natural wants. We are praying for the ability to please God, because pleasing God satisfies us.
The more we desire to honor the Lord who loves us so, the more we recognize our constant need of his grace. Jesus' willingness to teach these words as a regular pattern for our prayers greatly encourages us, because we know that we will not exhaust his mercy.
The Bible...does not say where to include the phrase or even the precise words to use (see, for example, Eph. 5:20).
Perhaps the reason for the Bible's lack of specific direction is that the name of Jesus is the fountain, as well as the foundation, of every petition we offer when we pray as he taught us. Faithful prayer begins with, ends with, and consists of the desire to honor our Savior.
...praying without any doubt would seem to require us to tell God what to do.
...if God's will is really under the control of my will, then wouldn't that make me God?
Proper belief is not unwavering confidence that something we want will happen, nor is it doubtless trust that we know what is best. Our trust is not in the thing that we want or in our sufficient faith. The success of our prayers does not lie in exceptional confidence that we have pumped enough of our own faith into our prayer (and extracted enough doubt) so that now God must respond. Our belief must be in God. He, not our desire, is the object of our faith.
Praying in Jesus' name requires seeking first the kingdom of God and his righteousness with the absolute trust that God will then add all that is best for us (Matt. 6:31-33).
..do not let anyone make you feel guilty or ashamed for praying as Jesus did in the Garden Gethsemane.
He said, "Yet, Lord, not my will but your will be done." Jesus was not expressing doubt because he prayed for God's will to be done. Our Savior was right both to offer his petition and subject it to God's design.
...we seek him first, he will answer to glorify his Son.
...he will answer our prayers better than we can ask.
Faith in God's sovereignty actually causes us to rejoice that we do not bind God with the limited wisdom and mixed motives of our prayers.
...where in all of history has God most glorified himself? He did it at the cross of Jesus Christ, and it wasn't by delivering Jesus from the cross, though he could have.
I have often encouraged others not to pray for God to heal if it is his will -- as though maybe he will heal and maybe not. Instead, I encourage my friends and family to pray for God to heal according to his will.
Praying without doubting God's sovereignty can be tough.
...because god knows our needs better than we do, it might seem that we should refrain from praying about anything specific.
He knows what we need before we ask (Matt. 6:8), but he still likes to be asked. He urges us to pray in ways that deepen our love and trust of him. Even though we cannot fully understand or anticipate what God should do, we should not hesitate to pray. Not only do our prayers please God, the Holy Spirit uses them to accomplish heaven's purpose on earth.
With more fervor than we can express, and with the urgency of a mother in childbirth, the Spirit cries before the throne of grace, "Holy god, bless your people. God of Creation, bend the world to your glorious purposes for those seeking you. Heavenly Father, work all things together for your children's good."
We know that god's will is to make us more Christlike (I Thess. 4:3). but apart from this goal, we can rarely (if ever) know god's desires precisely.
We do not have to abandon prayer, however, simply because we cannot fathom the will of God. The Holy Spirit takes our humble prayers and conforms their content to God's will. When we pray in Jesus' name, we offer our desires to God with the foundational desire that he will accomplish his purposes through us. By his Holy Spirit that is exactly what God does, and this is why the Bible urges us to pray in the Spirit (Eph. 3:14-19; 6:18).
Praying in the Spirit is not so much seeking magical expressions of God's power to fulfill our desires as it is asking that our Savior's priorities shape our desires.
We find the path easier when we discover prayer is a privilege for us rather than a bribe for God.
Key Thought: god does not give finite people the burden of solving the world's problems. Determining precisely how to pray to accomplish god's eternal will would devastate us. Instead, our God provides his Holy Spirit to match the fervor, content, and desires of our prayers to his purposes. The Spirit not only conforms our prayers to God's purposes but in doing so confirms how precious we are to God so that we will seek and trust him more.
Virtually every committed and nominal Christian knows to call on God in a time of trouble. But those who truly discover the power of his abiding presence do not reserve prayer for periods of isolated retreat. In addition, they converse with their heavenly Father through private thoughts on busy streets, in crowded stadiums, in stressed offices, on family outings, and through every day. The great nineteenth-century preacher Charles Surgeon wrote; "I never pray more that five minutes at a time, but I never go five minutes without praying."
Big prayers get out of hand not because we request miracles but because we demand them.
The extraordinary providences, whereby God suspends the physical laws of the universe or marvelously coordinates them, are never designed for entertainment. Rarely do miracles occur for the ease of God's people. In the Bible, miracles come as precursors of the expansion of God's kingdom - often to encourage those who will soon suffer for their faith.
The confidence that we express in such bold prayer is not in the answer we desire but in God. Others have expressed the essence of biblically bold prayer this way: "We should confidently petition God to be God."
Bringing specific petitions to God is not the same as demanding specific responses from God.
When Christians join together in expectant prayer, God's hand often becomes especially evident.
The Bible encourages corporate prayer because when God's people unite their hearts, they are more likely to encourage one another to pray, to examine the appropriateness of their prayer, to maintain their prayer, and to express thanksgiving for God's answers.
The crucial factor for powerful prayer is not the number of persons but the purpose that calls them together.
Great response to specific, corporate prayer still occurs. At the St. Nicholas Church in Leipzig, Germany, strong and weak believers gathered for prayer during the days of Communist domination. The nation had wearied of ineffective political rallies and demonstrations protesting the cruel regime. The prayer group grew weary too. Numbers rose and fell with the mood of the nation. At times only a dozen or fewer prayed in the massive church.
Then in 1989 the Spirit ignited the hearts of his people and hundreds began to come to the church to pray. East German troops blocked the exits of the autobahn on the days of the prayer meeting to keep people from the town. Systematic arrests of the prayer group's leaders were ordered on days prior to the meetings. Communist sympathizers even filled the seats of the church so there would be no place for those wanting to pray.
The praying crowds still came. They stood inside and outside the church while the Communists, at first, listened, and then many joined the prayers. When the numbers of those praying reached the thousands, troops were summoned to handle the anticipated revolt. The people did not revolt but continued to pray with candles in both their hands to show that they had no weapons. Word of the courageous and persistent prayer swept the nation. Though the corporate prayer movement lasted only a few weeks with these numbers, the Communists lost all public support. The government collapsed, and German history began a new chapter without barbed wire, machine guns, and tanks.
A member of the Communist Central Committee later wrote, "We had planned for everything. We were prepared for everything. But not for candles and prayers." What Communists could not prepare for, Christians must do. We pray corporately and specifically because we expect that in his time and according to his purposes, iron curtains will yield and God's Spirit will triumph.
Often those the Bible commends for their great faith did not receive an immediate answer to prayer.
Faithful prayer is not marked by the immediacy of answers as much as by persistent petition.
But why does God want persistent prayer? He can answer any prayer in the blink of an eye. Why does he sometimes delay his answer?
Persistent prayer in the face of initial disappointment can become the instrument of divine nurture. We grow to trust God more by seeing that often he prepares something better than our initial prayers did (or could) request. In fact God's greatest gifts may come through prayers that seem to be unanswered. Our persistence can help us discover why God blesses by not answering as we ask.
By persisting in prayer for answers that require the processes of time, we confess to God our perpetual need of him. Regular prayer for continuing needs also testifies to others our confidence in God's continuing work in our lives.
We trust our Saviour because he works perfectly, not because he works quickly.
When we pray for God to provide good for us, we are implicitly asking to be more like Jesus - for our lives to further Christ's glory. This is another reason we pray in Jesus' name. A prayer in our Savior's name submits more than its content to his purposes. By invoking Jesus' name, we also submit ourselves to Christ's purposes. We ask God to do whatever he wills to make us all that he wants. And we know he wants us to reflect Christ's glory more and more. God alone knows whether Christ will receive more glory through the removal of our trial, through our continued faithfulness in the midst of suffering, or through an ultimate sacrifice that takes us to heaven where pain is replaced by eternal praise of unending joy.
It is more important to obey God's Word than to try to predict his will. Only through obedience can we know God's will - and pray for it.
Praying to be Christlike is more than pious exercise; it is spiritual power. Prayer in Jesus' name promotes his purposes, and his greatest purpose in our life is for us to reflect him to the world. By praying to God to make us more like Jesus, we ensure that he will do all that his sovereign power determines will most glorify Jesus through us. Heaven and earth bend to his will when we pray for the Father to glorify Jesus in us.
Praying for courage to obey God's Word is a better sign of faithfulness than pretending to know more than God's Word says.
Respected Scottish pastor Eric Alexander gives a modern account of believers praying with spiritual sensitivity. In the 1950s three evangelical ministers - James Philip, George Philip, and William Still - felt compelled by the Holy Spirit to pray that God would revive the Church of Scotland. They met regularly and prayed for an increasing number of Bible-believing pastors. Then, after four years of fervent, joint intercession, the three ministers felt released from this burden of prayer. When they stopped, they confessed to being disappointed. They saw no evidence that God had chosen to revive his church.
Twenty-five years later, these same ministers hosted a conference for Bible-believing ministers who had begun to fill the pastoral ranks. About two hundred pastors came - roughly about one-third of all Scottish ministers. One of the three pastors who had prayed for this increase asked for a show of hands by those who had been converted during those initial four years of prayer. A number in the room raised their hands, including Eric Alexander. Then the conference leader asked those present who had been born during those four years to raise a hand. Most of the rest of the pastors then raised a hand. God had answered the prayer of the original three ministers in a way they could not have expected. Now they also know why the Holy Spirit had released them from their prayer compulsion after those four years of concentrated effort.
Prayer is more than a conversation with God.
Too often references to prayer as a conversation with God create a false expectation. Believers think they will speak to God and he will speak back with a voice made audible in our mind or whispered on the wind. Then, for lack of hearing this voice, many consider their prayers ineffective. We could avoid much disappointment by recognizing that the supernatural process of prayer has no easy analogy in our natural experience.
Healing thrives in the recognition that God listens. Christian psychiatrist and author Paul Tournier says, "It is impossible to overemphasize the immense need that humans have to be really listened to, to be taken seriously, to be understood."
Praying in Jesus' name is not merely the postscript to a good prayer; it is the prelude to God's providing the best of all things for his loved ones. Putting the name of Jesus first when we pray is not really praying backwards. Such prayer is actually putting first the purposes of the One whose glory and delight it is to give us the best of earth and heaven forever. By praying backwards, we always move forward with the assurance God will use whatever life brings for the Savior's glory and our good. He can do no less than provide his best for those who offer prayer in Jesus' name. Such prayer is our great privilege, power, and peace.
Jesus taught us never to voice a prayer we could not pray backwards. We utter every petition with a heart of praise, seeking first the honor of our Savior. Praying in Jesus' name is ultimately no sacrifice because he chooses to glorify himself by providing the best of his kingdom for his people. When the greatest desire of our heart is his glory, the greatest joy of his heart is our blessing.
We pray in Jesus' name because we have the blessed assurance that the Father will do for the sake of his Son all that is best for him and those he loves. With this confidence, we have the privilege, joy, and peace to pray to him again and again, "Thy will be done. In Jesus' name, amen."
Perhaps the best measure of the impact of our habitual prayers is the frequency of impromptu prayer in our lives.
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