Category: advice

Finding Time to Pray at Christmas

Our walk with Jesus should be strengthened by Christmas. Sometimes we might shelf our discipleship during the holidays. This can be something we’re not even aware that we’re doing. But I definitely believe that our discipleship needs Christmas. This isn’t really an option.

Maybe our faith should actually be intensified by the grandeur and splendor of Christmas?

After all, when we mull over this tremendous mystery of the incarnation our faith and praise can only grow. To think that God Himself came for us like He did is pretty potent stuff. God became a helpless baby, and needed breast milk and a change of diapers. That should rattle us if we really understand.

“The Almighty appeared on earth as a helpless human baby, needing to be fed and changed and taught to talk like any other child. The more you think about it, the more staggering it gets. Nothing in fiction is so fantastic as this truth of the Incarnation.”

J.I. Packer

Prayer is one of the best ways I know to incorporate this. I imagine that the Holy Spirit is pretty active right now as many believers meditate on what really happened in that manger in Bethlehem.

A CHRISTMAS PRAYER

Dear Father, it’s Christmas time again. Help me this year to season the celebration with reason. Teach me to plan with my family. May I avoid the clutter that dims my vision and burdens my time.

Keep me mindful of my budget. and help me to remember that a gift selected with love tugs forever at the heartstrings. Forgive me for past extravagance.

Remind me to decorate in good taste, treasuring all of the past blending it with the new, but holding steadfast to reason. Keep me, dear Father, from strain lest I stray from all thy teachings.

Guide me to the light of Christmas. Help me keep a candle’s flame of that light as a constant reminder of my goal . . . eternity.

I pray for thy love and help, in the name of thy beloved Son whose birthday we are observing.

Amen.


– Author Unknown

 

The Weakest Link is Us

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“Now when they saw the boldness of Peter and John, and perceived that they were uneducated, common men, they were astonished. And they recognized that they had been with Jesus.”

Acts 4:13

“God created the world out of nothing, and so long as we are nothing, He can make something out of us.”  

—Martin Luther

Consider this: the jawbone of a donkey, a sling shot. and barley loaves, a woman’s tears, a young boy’s lunch, a young colt, and a talking donkey, they all suggest that God touches the common and the insignificant. He uses what we consider of minor importance.

We often turn to the talented and gifted far too readily.

Peter and John are being seen by the Sanhedrin (the Jewish “Supreme Court”). They are to give account of themselves before the highest court of the land. There had been a healing, and there was the matter of preaching as well. Both Peter and John exude a confidence that these religious leaders couldn’t deny. Their perception was that they were ignorant men. Uneducated and common. But, they also knew they had been with Jesus.

However, in the minds of the leadership, they were nothing more than religious white trash.

God loves to use what we consider common. His revealed history has been to take anything at His disposal and utilize it to redeem lost souls. A staff or a sling-shot are used with an adroitness that seems extraordinary among men. The things we think are simple and common are used to further God’s work among mankind.

But the message always returns back to the preachers. The Sanhedrin knew of the disciples preaching. They had absorbed the fact of a miracle; a crippled man had just been healed. (This they couldn’t deny.) But they were troubled. And they didn’t really know what to do.

What more could this be, but a direct intervention of God? And yet, God is working through extremely “common people.” Then let’s look…

“…if we are being examined today concerning a good deed done to a crippled man, by what means this man has been healed,”

Acts 4:9

Within this preaching was woven this healing. The Holy Spirit was ‘rocking their  world.’ The people who came in contact with these disciples would never be the same. Paul tells the Corinthian church that:

“Instead, God chose things the world considers foolish in order to shame those who think they are wise. And he chose things that are powerless to shame those who are powerful.”

1 Corinthians 1:27, NLT

If God has a specialty it would be this. He desires all the glory. He goes out of the way to use the broken and weak. He shows His strength through insignificant and minor things and people. This is His heart given to nobodies.

“We are all wounded. But wounds are necessary for his healing light to enter into our beings. Without wounds and failure and frustrations and defeats, there will be no opening for his brilliance to trickle in and invade our lives.”
“Failures in life are courses with very high tuition fees, so I don’t cut classes and miss my lessons: on humility, on patience, on hope, on asking others for help, on listening to God, on trying again and again and again.”

Bo Sanchez

 

What Good are the Miracles of Jesus?

His touch makes the difference
His touch makes the difference

“But if I do it, even though you do not believe me, believe the miracles, that you may know and understand that the Father is in me, and I in the Father.” 

–John 10:38

The healing’s Jesus boldly attest to his claim to be God.  When we read about them, as recorded in the Gospels, we cannot doubt their real and supernatural flavor.  A normal person cannot give sight to someone who has been blind from birth.  I cannot raise a dead person, it’s simply not even in the basic realm of remote possibility.

Jesus performed hundreds and hundreds of healing’s.

Many of these are not recorded in the Scriptures except through a vague and veiled reference to them.  There were not just healing’s, but he also did miracles over natural laws.  Water gets turned into wine, He walks on the Sea of Galilee, see Him feeding 5000 people with a little boys simple lunch.

You would think that the presentation of each miracle would bring a person to faith.  But that is not the case.  We process them, and then assimilate them to the point where we can more or less nullify them.  “Sure Jesus raised a widow’s son from the dead,” we say–but then we inoculate ourselves against the truth of it.  We deafen ourselves, and by our mental silence nullify the miracle.

We roll right over it. How many miracles have we seen on any given day?

I need, I must re-visit these supernatural events again and again.  They are a tonic to my jaded soul.  These miracles require that I pick them up by their handle and make them my own.  Jesus Christ is waiting for us to accept him as supernatural, because that is what he is. Get used to it.

Does the Lord Jesus still work miracles for you?

“Remember the wonders he has done,
 His miracles, and the judgments he pronounced,”

–Psalm 105:5

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Can You Say No?

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11 “For the grace of God has appeared that offers salvation to all people. 12 It teaches us to say “No” to ungodliness and worldly passions, and to live self-controlled, upright and godly lives in this present age.”

Titus 2:11-12

My life runs better when I learn to say “no.”

I can’t make it any simpler. We have become part of a culture that almost always says yes. To deny ourselves the fulfillment of our particular desires seems impossible– considering our track record. We pretty much seek out our particular pleasure, and then take our lumps and absorb all the consequences.

Things then, digress and “solidify” from this point. Deeply ingrained habits become almost impossible to break. We are now being held in a very certain bondage. And all because we can’t say “no”.

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Perhaps this will become a learning point, when we start to say “no” to our desires. We can’t let temptation have its way, we must stand and say “no!” It is no sin to be tempted, Jesus was tempted, and yet did not sin against His Father.

When we consistently say no and to deny ourselves, we’re actually starting to obey and it’s then we begin to follow Him. Your discipleship depends on this.

“If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me.”

Mark 8:34

The deep and earnest passion of our Father is that we learn to do this. To joyfully discover each morning  we are “will-doers.” But in order to do this we must also be “no-sayers.”

There is an unholy trinity that is working against us: the world, our flesh, and Satan. When our enemy tempts us, we must object. We must take a stand against his schemes.

Will you just say “no” to the enemy? Can you say “no?” These are questions that only you can answer.

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