Love Well!

This will be my last post for the month of September. I’ll be back in October with more self-examination and more challenge to live as people of God! I’m headed out of town on the vacation of a lifetime. I won’t be around to announce the new blog posts, so decided to just take the month off. I have no idea how you use my posts, if you use them regularly as devotions or as inspirational reading when you see my reminder. My guess is out of sight, out of mind. My blog is always there, so if you miss me, go to famousapril.blogspot.com and read back. Some of the oldies are goodies!

While I am gone I hope you will pray for me. Pray that I will be a good representative of Jesus where ever I am and whatever the situation. Pray that my words are kind. I’ll be traveling with both daughters and my mom, and they know how to push my buttons. I’ll be doing all the driving, and on the “wrong” side of the road, so pray for our safety! Pray that we aren’t ugly Americans, but that we respect the culture we find ourselves in. Pray that my words and actions are gracious and a living testimony. Pray that our money stretches far!

While I am gone I will be praying for you!

And this is my prayer: that your love may abound more and more in knowledge and depth of insight, so that you may be able to discern what is best and may be pure and blameless until the day of Christ, filled with the fruit of righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ – to the glory and praise of God! Philippians 1:9-11

God is working in you. He began a good work, and will keep working, stretching you and growing you and loving you, until Jesus returns and you are complete and mature (Phil. 1:6). He is faithful!

Have a good month, friends. Keep your eyes open for how God is working today, and your ears tuned to hear his voice. Love well!

Interceeding for Each Other

My friend is hurting tonight. I want to do something practical, something significant. Unfortunately I don’t have any of the resources that she needs, and this is a situation where even if I had all the resources in the world it wouldn’t be enough to ease her pain. I tell her that I will pray for her, feeling helpless. Saying I will pray feels like a cop-out. It feels like the thing Christians say when there is nothing we can do but don’t want to look weak.

The fact is that praying for each other is most we can do. Anything beyond that is icing on the cake or gravy on the biscuits. Praying for another person is what we call Intercessory Prayer. Its lifting each other up before the throne of grace and laying the other at the feet of Jesus, trusting that he will be the answer to our prayer. It is a great privilege.

Let us therefore draw near with confidence to the throne of grace, that we may receive mercy and may find grace to help in time of need. Hebrews 4:16

Why do we ever hesitate to pray for each other? I think there are a variety of reasons. We don’t want to offend the other person, as if they would be insulted to have you imply that they might need help. We all need help. I can tell you that when asked, “May I pray for you?” I have never had someone say, “No.” I’m sure there are some people who will, some who have so hardened their hearts toward God that they refuse to ask for his help, but I think it’s rarer than we might imagine.

Another reason we hesitate is because we overcomplicate prayer. I recently read these guidelines for intercessory prayer:

Always be creative and specific (because God doesn’t know the real need or might get bored).

         Don’t pray in front of the person (because you will remember, or they might get offended and promises are so easy to keep!)

         Make sure your prayers are positive and nice (because God doesn’t know how you really feel, or what, or who, the real problem is)

         Fill your prayer with words (because silence is so uncomfortable and a waste of time)

         Stay on track (because God can’t use your imagination, nor can he direct your prayer or bring people to mind)

         Don’t pray scripture (because God wrote those words and can’t know how I feel)

My comments are in parenthesis. I’m sorry if they are a little snarky. I don’t know who wrote these guidelines, but they are silly at best and at worst discourage us from praying. How we pray isn’t important. Just pray!

And in the same way the Spirit also helps our weakness; for we do not know how to pray as we should, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us with groanings too deep for words. Romans 8:26

Don’t worry about rules or guidelines, just pray. Share your heart with God. Just as a loving Father desires to share the hurts and joys and concerns and agony of his children, so God desires to have you bring the things that weigh your heart down to him. He wants to share your pain. The God who created everything and has all the resources of his divine nature at his fingertips wants to help in your situation. Call me crazy, but I think that’s Someone I want on my team!

It is said that intercessory prayer is reaching to God with one hand and to my friend with the other, in order to bring them together.

Tonight I am praying for my friend. I am praying for healing, for peace and especially for comfort. She can only find that in the arms of God, so I reach to him with one hand, and to her with the other, and I place her in his lap to receive the love of her Father.

Will you pray with me?

Pray like this...

“Pray then, in this way:  Our Father, who art in Heaven, hallowed be Thy name.”  Matt. 6:9

            The Lord’s Prayer is one of the best-known passages in the Bible.  Children memorize it in Awana Clubs and confirmation classes.  Churches the world over recite it every week.  Many of us have reduced it to a vain repetition, words often spoken but rarely thought about or intentionally prayed.  Tertullian, a church father, said “How gracefully has the Divine Wisdom arranged the order of the prayer; so that after the ‘Name’ of God, the ‘Will’ of God, and the ‘Kingdom’ of God – it should give earthly necessities also room for a petition!”

            Jesus instructs us how to pray.  We are first to focus on Who we are talking to.  “Our Father, who art in Heaven.”  Prayer begins with a humble faith in God, that He is, and that we have a loving relationship with Him.  We cannot come to God any other way, for without faith it is impossible to please Him (Heb. 11:6).  We must come to Him as trusting children come to their father.

            Next we are told to make God’s name holy.  “Hallowed be Thy name” puts the emphasis on God and His nature.  To ask that His name be holy is not to imply that it is not holy already, but instead to ask that it would be held as holy by men, specifically by me.  To pray “Hallowed be Thy name” is to pray that God be given the unique reverence that His holiness demands.  It is to pray that my life would honor His holiness in every action, in every word, and that I would be ever conscious of His nature.

            Jesus goes on in this model prayer to teach us to align ourselves with God.  Before we ask for earthy needs, we are taught to ask that His kingdom would be established, that His will would be done.  Only then do we look to our physical needs, and then only briefly.  We are led on to pray for each other, for forgiveness, and then for deliverance from spiritual battles.  The prayer ends with amen, not as a statement that says “that’s it.  That’s all I have to say or ask for”, but instead “May it be so in accordance with Your will.”  Our focus is to remain on the Father.

            Prayer is not a shopping list.  Prayer as Jesus taught is to bring us in line with the will and purpose of God.  It is not of way of presenting what we are going to do for God and asking Him to bless it, but instead is a means of bringing us, actions and attitudes, into conformity with the mind and heart of God.

            It has been said that prayer changes things.  Mostly, prayer changes me.

Pray like this...

“Pray then, in this way:  Our Father, who art in Heaven, hallowed be Thy name.”  Matt. 6:9

            The Lord’s Prayer is one of the best known passages in the Bible.  Children memorize it in Awana Clubs and confirmation classes.  Churches the world over recite it every week.  Many of us have reduced it to a vain repetition, words often spoken but rarely thought about or intentionally prayed.  Tertullian, a church father, said “How gracefully has the Divine Wisdom arranged the order of the prayer; so that after the ‘Name’ of God, the ‘Will’ of God, and the ‘Kingdom’ of God – it should give earthly necessities also room for a petition!”

            Jesus instructs us how to pray.  We are first to focus on who we are talking to.  “Our Father, who art in Heaven.”  Prayer begins with a humble faith in God, that He is, and that we have a loving relationship with Him.  We cannot come to God any other way, for without faith it is impossible to please Him (Heb. 11:6).  We must come to Him as trusting children come to their father.

            Next we are told to make God’s name holy.  “Hallowed be Thy name” puts the emphasis on God and His nature.  To ask that His name be holy is not to imply that it is not holy already, but instead to ask that it would be held as holy by men, specifically by me.  To pray “Hallowed be Thy name” is to pray that God be given the unique reverence that His holiness demands.  It is to pray that my life would honor His holiness in every action, in every word, and that I would be ever conscious of His nature. It is to ask that the whole world would make his name holy, would kneel in worship of him.

            Jesus goes on in this model prayer to teach us to align ourselves with God.  Before we ask for earthy needs, we are taught to ask that His kingdom would be established, that His will would be done.  Only then do we look to our physical needs, and then only briefly.  We are led on to pray for each other, for forgiveness, and then for deliverance from spiritual battles.  The prayer ends with amen, not as a statement that says “that’s it.  That’s all I have to say or ask for”, but instead “May it be so in accordance with Your will.”  Our focus is to remain on the Father.

            Prayer is not a shopping list.  Prayer as Jesus taught is to bring us in line with the will and purpose of God.  It is not of way of presenting what we are going to do for God and asking Him to bless it, but instead is a means of bringing us, actions and attitudes, into conformity with the mind and heart of God.

            It has been said that prayer changes things.  Mostly, prayer changes me.

Prayer

“Call to Me and I will answer you,

and I will tell you great and mighty things which you do not know.”  Jeremiah 33:3

            For many of us, prayer is a mystery.  It’s hard to talk to someone you cannot see, and yet God tells us to bring all things to Him.  We don’t understand it, yet we are better because of it. 

            As we look into His word, God shows us reasons to pray:

            First, we need it.  We need to bring our concerns, our burdens and needs before the throne of Jesus and leave them there.  Only by giving them to Him, by acknowledging our need for Him and His sovereignty in our lives can we experience His peace.  By coming to Him in petition and in worship we express to Him and to ourselves our trust in Him and His dealings in our lives.  He works through prayer.

            Second, because He asks us to.  For some reason almost beyond our comprehension, God desires a relationship with us.  He longs for fellowship with us.  He wants us to make our concerns known to Him and delights in answering them.  We can begin to understand this as we look at our own children.  Even when they are very little we desire a relationship with them.  We talk about their day, about what has happened while we were apart.  We delight in hearing them tell us what they are learning.  It wasn’t anything new to us; we mastered the alphabet years before!  Yet still we want to hear about it.  Their personality shines through, and often we end up laughing or crying together over events in their day.  As they grow and mature we continue to enjoy our conversations on topics of politics, current fashions, their love lives, and spiritual issues.  We are touched by how they deal with life.

            I imagine God feels the same about us.  He seems to want to be included in our lives and to delight in the ways we are maturing.  He wants a friendship with us, a cool-of-the-day kind of easy conversation that comes between people who are close.

            Non-Christians would say that the only power in prayer is psychological.  They are wrong.  We do not understand the power of prayer, but we do know that it holds power.  God works through the prayers of His people.

            Call out to God.  He is waiting.  He has great and mighty things to share.