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Everything Rides on Hope Now

Everything Rides on Hope Now

Tag Archives: prayer

Anatomy of a Prayer that Moves God to Act

05 Sunday Oct 2014

Posted by Candace Roberts in purpose

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

Bible, Body of Christ, Call, Christianity., confession, prayer

This year I got a new Bible and because it was brand new with no marks in it, I was encouraged to start reading from the beginning of the book.  In the midst of this journey, the Lord began to show me exactly how important prayer is to our life in this world.  I don’t mean to sound like I thought it was unimportant.  I am a firm believer in our cliché that “prayer changes things”…only I think that we would rather spout that off these days than actually pull away from the busyness of life and go before the throne.

As the evil in this world waxes worse and worse, we are seeing a desperate return to prayer.  I watched an interview the other day with an Ebola doctor in Africa whose answer to what they were doing to rein in the crisis was “we are all on our knees”.  It was an acknowledgement that the situation was out of the hands of man.  And although it is horribly sad that we would exhaust human resources before we beseeched the Almighty for help, this kind of thing has happened since the beginning of time.  Man has always had the tendency to believe that he could solve his own problems or that he should solve his own problems without involving the Creator of the Universe.

Only he can’t.  You can’t.  I can’t.  Without Him, we can do nothing. Action taken without Him is wasteful and impertinent.  It is embarrassing to me when I consider all the times that I relied on my own human energies to try to solve problems that He could have overcome in an instant.  The times that I heard the call of the Holy Spirit to ask and receive, but couldn’t bring my pride low enough to admit that I needed help.  The times that I pretty much looked up at the Lord and said “I’ve got this.” Laughable. I wonder if He ever chuckled and replied “Let Me know when you give up.”  Big fat messes is what I always made.  Messes that required so much mercy to clean up that I have been sure at many points that I have exhausted His resources.  Fortunately, they never run dry.

They didn’t run dry for Ninevah.  I was just reading about that revival last night.  A nation of Assyrians who were Godless people.  They did some of the vilest things imaginable and yet the Lord sent a prophet to them… a half-hearted one at that.  The minute that the Ninevites heard the message of Jonah, they turned from their wickedness and their entire culture was revolutionized.  Mercy.  He is so FULL of it.  In a heartbeat, He forgives and restores those that choose to humble themselves in prayer.

There are so many GREAT prayers in the Bible and I began to come across them as I studied the Word from the beginning.  I began to see a pattern in these prayers that it seemed God immediately heard and answered.  This pattern resonated within me, because I think even those of us who are praying feel pretty clueless about how it should be done.  Not that God is particular, but He is a God of order and He has already set out principles in His Word to be followed.  We find His power is most effective when we live and breathe by His principles.  Those of us who like to pick and choose the principles are going to wonder why we are not seeing His power at work in our lives, in our prayers, in our communities, and in our nations.  If we can’t love His principle, we will find ourselves having a whole lot of difficulty developing a prayer life.

I wish I could share all the amazing prayers that I have come across with you because they are just chalked full of encouragement, hope, holiness, and God acting on behalf of His people, but for the sake of those who will not have time to read them all, I will simply list a few that you can look up for yourself (this isn’t an exhaustive list and I would love to hear about a prayer in the Bible that has helped you pray).  When you read these prayers, remember to read the context…search out what was happening when they were prayed…and then stick around to see how God answered.  I think you will see what I am talking about.

  • David (II Samuel 7)
  • Solomon (I Kings 8)
  • Hezekiah (II Kings 19)
  • Jehoshaphat (II Chron 20)
  • Ezra (Ezra 8)
  • Nehemiah (Nehemiah 1)
  • Daniel (Daniel 9)

Then of course, there is the most famous prayer in the Bible…the one that Jesus left for us when His disciples asked Him how to pray.

“Our Father in heaven, Your Name be honored as holy. Your Kingdom come, Your Will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Give us today our daily bread and forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors.  And do not bring us into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one. For Yours is the Kingdom and the power and the glory forever. Amen.”

What a summation of exactly what prayer should be!  As you read through some of the prayers I have listed, you will notice how they conform to the Lord’s prayer in many ways. And here’s what I have noticed about prayers that move God into action.

They acknowledge the absolute holiness and matchlessness of Creator God.  Hezekiah put it this way “Lord God of Israel, who is enthroned above the cherubim, You are God – You alone – of all the kingdoms of the earth.”  He began by completely acknowledging that the Lord had all power and authority to do what he was about to ask him to do.  I’m getting excited just typing it.  God doesn’t need to be “puffed up”.  He’s God.  He has no insecure part to Him.  No, He wants us to acknowledge and to hear ourselves acknowledge how big and great He really is…how completely separate He is from this earthly domain’s rules…how the nations, they are but a speck of dust in His Hands.  He can DO ANYTHING!!  The fear and awe of God has been hacked out of our churches in favor of a powerless “me and Jesus, we are pals” gospel.  Yes, Jesus loves you, but He’s GOD.  He brought you into this world and He can take you out.  His mercy is everlasting and His Truth endures forever.  When everything else fails, HE stands.  We have to bring this back into our perspectives.  We don’t serve some psychological nice God who is kicking back in heaven with some tunes and watching chaos reign on the earth.  We serve a holy, patient, and merciful God with a plan that would probably shock us all if we knew all its details.  He is our Judge, we are not His.  Yes, yes, yes, He loves us…which is why He left us with His Word…a whole instruction manual for living with a prosperous soul.  Friends, we have to start acknowledging His vast holiness and greatness, if not only to remind ourselves of how very small we are. “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge, but fools despise wisdom and instruction.” (Prov 1:7)

They confess sin and include humility.  Ezra covered it best, perhaps, at the beginning of his prayer. “My God, I am ashamed and embarrassed to lift my face toward You because our iniquities are higher than our heads and our guilt is as high as the heavens.”  Maybe you don’t “feel” guilty, but you are.  We all are.  We all fall short on a daily basis.  We all pile up sin often without even being conscious of it.  Prayer is an opportunity to confess that we fall short, that we can’t measure up, that Jesus is the ONLY righteousness that we bring before Him.  In addition, Ezra confessed for his entire nation.  He stood in the gap as if he was speaking for all of Israel, as if he was asking the Lord to include him with all of the wrongdoers and listen to him on their behalf.  He was a righteous man before God, yet he humbled himself to the status of mere sinner.  Many might say to me “Yes, but we are in right standing with God when we accept Jesus.  We are His friends, not His slaves.  We can approach boldly with our heads held high.”  Yes, I know that God looks at us and sees Jesus, but all the more reason to humble ourselves and acknowledge our sinfulness.  If I had given up my only Son for you to be saved and you walked into my presence with your head held high, sat down next to me, popped a piece of gum in your mouth, and basically acted like you had every right to be there now, I might be a little indignant (I’m not speaking for God here, but you see what I mean about our attitudes).  Ezra approached the throne with a boldness that knew the same God who had answered the prayers of his forefathers would hear him out.  We can approach the throne with a boldness that knows the same God who sacrificed His Son in our place will hear us out.  But we are still coming before a holy and matchless God.  He hasn’t changed. He hasn’t lightened up.  He hasn’t lowered His standards.  He simply made a way for us to meet them.

They remind God of His promises.  Jehoshaphat prays one of my favorite prayers in all of Scripture that includes this reminder to God, “Are You not our God who drove our the inhabitants of this land before Your people Israel and who gave it forever to the descendants of Abraham, Your friend?  They have lived in the land and have built You a sanctuary in it for Your name and have said ‘If disaster comes on us – sword or judgment, pestilence or famine – we will stand before this temple and before You for Your name is in this temple. We will cry out to You because of our distress, and You will hear and deliver.'”  The Bible promises that if we ask ANYTHING according to His Will, He hears us and we know that if He hears us than we have the requests we have asked. (I John 5:14)  If God has promised, He WILL do it.  When our prayers include a repeating of His promises, we know we are on the right track, that we are praying according to His Will.  Jehoshaphat was in essence saying “Because you promised to deliver us if we did what we are now doing, I fully expect that You will deliver us.”  That, my friend, is faith.  Not making up the promises, but resting in them.  He who promises IS faithful and will also do it.

They ask for help.  Nehemiah knew that when He approached a pagan king to ask to travel to his homeland and rebuild the temple of a captured people that he was attempting the impossible so he ended his prayer like this, “Please Lord, let Your ear be attentive to the prayer of Your servant and to that of Your servants who delight to revere Your name.  Give Your servant success today and have compassion on him in the presence of this man.”  I don’t feel like I have adequate words here to convey the point, so I ask, Holy Spirit, that You will speak to hearts through what I am about to write.  The Church is helpless without prayer.  Prayer on an individual level and prayer on a corporate level.  Literally, we are wasting our time.  Yes, there are many in the Church that are caught in a stronghold of apathy, but there is also so much being done around the world that is just “works of the flesh” because of a guilt trip or for the purpose of “working” our way to heaven.  Those works might temporarily feed some people, they might give somebody a home for a while, they might save someone’s earthly life, but tomorrow, the people will still need to eat, their children will need homes, and they might leave this world for eternal damnation.  Without Him, it is all dust.  IT IS ALL DUST.  He has the ONLY eternal power in this earth and anything with eternal value only comes through Him.  When He feeds people, they stay fed.  When He gives them a home, it is for generations.  When He saves a life, the salvation is eternal. Yes, we MUST GO. But we can’t go with an expectation that He is following us. On the contrary, WE follow HIM. Hear me, Church.  Let’s not wait for total destruction to ask for help.  “Look, the nations are like a drop in a bucket; they are considered as a speck of dust on the scales.” (Isaiah 40:15)  “I will lift up my eyes to the mountains; From where shall my help come? My help comes from the LORD, Who made heaven and earth…” (Psalm 121:1)

Our God is greater, He is stronger, He is higher than any other.  He is merciful to the point of instant forgiveness for ANYONE who asks.  He is faithful even when we are not.  He is THE everlasting God and He is the ONLY One worth living for.  He wants all men to come to the saving knowledge of Christ which is why He presses upon our hearts the call to live out loud. And to fulfill this call, we MUST be active in prayer.  The more we pray, the more we will realize that He really IS the Answer.  In a book that I am currently reading, Malcolm McDow puts it like this “…prayer is the track upon which people move toward the Holy God and their heavenly home…without prayer, there is no power.”

NO. Power.

NO. Action.

NO. Help.

NO. Hope.

“You do not have because you do not ask God.” James 4:2b

I’d say that’s enough to drive us to our knees.

AWAKE, oh Sleeper!

08 Friday Aug 2014

Posted by Candace Roberts in purpose

≈ 133 Comments

Tags

Christianity., church, Ebola, Iraq, ISIS, mission, persecution, prayer

Burdened is the only way I can describe my heart recently.  I have this constant feeling in the pit of my stomach that something is very wrong.  It’s a feeling like one of my children is in danger and I am helpless to protect them.  I go to sleep at night with the feeling and I wake up with it.

Around the world, Christians are suffering for their faith.  They always are, but lately it has been overwhelming to watch and hear about.  The headlines on Christian persecution do not end right now.

  • Over 250 schoolgirls were kidnapped by a terrorist group named “Boko Harem”.  These girls were kidnapped because they attended a “Western”, “Christianized” school in Nigeria.  The Islamic extremists forced most of them to convert to Islam, raped some, and sold some as child brides.
  • In Iraq and Syria, an evil, twisted faction of Al Queda named ISIS (Islamic State of Iraq and Syria) is currently waging war without rules on Christians and minority groups.  They are beheading children and adults and placing their heads on poles around the country (if you have a hard time believing this there are some really insane and unreal pictures of it on the internet).  They have chased thousands of families from their homes and into the mountains where they are dying of thirst because it is a better alternative than being raped and beheaded.  Many have pushed their children off the mountain to save them from a worse fate.  They are calling it genocide and what else can you call it when over 1500 are murder in one day??
  • In Gaza, Hamas, another Islamic terrorist group is using innocent civilians as shields and setting up rocket launchers in public places.  They are also shooting rockets into Israel every day which threatens innocent Israeli families.  This kind of evil has stated things on the record like “we love death like Israel loves life”.
  • Ebola is a disease with worldwide repercussions.  Though it is wreaking havoc so far away, we still feel the shockwaves like they are right here in the US.  Ebola does not play favorites and it leaves only 40% of its victims with life still in them.  It has yet to be a threat in our country (despite the huge uproar about bringing our sick citizens home for treatment), yet it has wiped out over 1000 people and does not look to be slowing as people hide when they are sick rather than seek medical attention.
  • China is cracking down on churches as we speak and many have been demolished by the government.  While this may pale in comparison to some other threats, imagine showing up at your church on Sunday morning to find it flattened.
  • There are rumors of war in Ukraine again as Russia lies in wait for another opportunity strike.  And with the focus turning toward Israel/Gaza and Iraq, it could be days or weeks before we see casualties once again in this region and our Christian brothers and sisters are once again in harm’s way.

With so much travesty happening to people of faith all over the world, I have found it difficult to carry on as normal.  I mean, what if it were me?  It could just as easily be my family?  What makes us, as American Christians, think that we are above facing life threatening circumstances?  And how should we respond, as Christians, to this heart-wrenching news that we are facing every day?

I struggle, I really do.  I struggle because the way that I want to respond…what my human nature wants to do is to feel guilty… for everything.  It wants to feel guilty that I am swimming in a pool when so many children are dying of thirst.  It wants to feel guilty that my children are all healthy while others are dying of the blood loss that comes with Ebola.  It wants to feel guilty that I live in a country where I can post on Facebook what I think about Jesus without fear that someone will be knocking at my door in 15 minutes to take me to prison.  It wants to feel guilty that I am not on a plane to serve internationally…that I am not on the mission field…that I am not in a position to contribute to a solution on any of these fronts.  So with this guilt, I went before the Lord.

I sat outside and looked into the blue sky and cried out to my God.  “What in the world, God? WHAT IN THE WORLD?  Why are you allowing the nations to rage?  Why are you letting them say ‘Where is your God?’  Why aren’t you doing something? Rise up and defend Your NAME!”  And here is where He took me almost right away.

“For we don’t want you to be unaware, brothers, of our affliction that took place in Asia: we were completely overwhelmed—beyond our strength—so that we even despaired of life.  Indeed, we personally had a death sentence within ourselves, so that we would not trust in ourselves but in God who raises the dead.  He has delivered us from such a terrible death, and He will deliver us. We have put our hope in Him that He will deliver us again while you join in helping us by your prayers. Then many will give thanks on our behalf for the gift that came to us through the prayers of many.”  2 Corin 1:8-11

Did you hear what Paul just said?  He didn’t lay a guilt trip on his fellow Christians.  He didn’t say, “Why weren’t you with us in Asia?”  He didn’t say, “While you all were getting to live your life in peace, WE were in Asia despairing of life.”  He didn’t say, “God had to deliver us because you all were unwilling to come to our rescue.” 

NO, he said these two things… The grievous trial that made them despair of even living was given so that they would not trust in themselves, but in the God who raises even the dead (He became their ONLY hope) AND the PRAYERS OF THE SAINTS HELPED HIM!  Can I just shout it again?  THE PRAYERS OF THE SAINTS DELIVERED A GIFT TO HIM THAT EVEN THEIR PRESENCE COULD NOT. 

American Church!!!  Awake, oh sleepers!!!  These things are meant to shake us awake.  God is giving us an opportunity to watch Him do great things AND to be prepared for the days that WE will need the prayers of the saints!!  I will take it as far as to say, if you are not in a time of desperate need of prayer, you should be desperately praying for someone else.  THERE IS NO TIME FOR SLEEP! There is no time for wasting away in recreation. It is time to WAKE UP and PRAY!

As I meditated on this Scripture, I began to realize… I began to see with different eyes… I began to get a zoomed out view of these happenings around the world.  When do people cry out to God?  I don’t mean followers of Jesus.  I mean, the normal, average person…when does he/she cry out to God?  When no one else can save.  And you know what? Noone can save all the people in Africa that are perishing from a vicious disease.  A cry is going up to a Higher Power.  And you know what? Thousands of Christians and minority groups are seeking refuge together on a mountain and in churches and in small villages in Iraq.  These people are watching children leave for eternity together.  I cannot imagine that the Gospel is not really powerful when spoken in such situations.  And you know what?  China’s underground church is GROWING.  Despite strong resistance from the Communist party, Christianity in China is on the rise as people devote not just their time and money, but their VERY LIVES to Christ in order to share the Word.  Theirs is no shallow Christianity that ducks at the slightest shadow.  It is brave and strong and firm.  And you know what?  We see Jesus working all over the world.  In the evilest of evil, He is working.  HE IS THE HOPE and many people are starting to see that.  Unfortunately, it has always taken “shock” to call people back to God…even from the very beginning when it took a worldwide flood.

So now that we have established hope in the midst of articles filled with horror…now that we have established that guilt is a useless distraction from your real job as a Christian…let’s talk action.

Stop feeling helpless and start crying out to God on the behalf of these people who need help from Somebody far more able than any of us.

Stop wishing you could be the hero and start joining your cries with those of these suffering saints who need miracles beyond our capabilities.

Stop wandering around in guilt and start asking where the Lord wants you positioned in this battle…is it in your church leading a prayer meeting?  is it on your knees in your bedroom? is it in one of these affected countries?

Stop reading articles that make you feel sick and start printing them out and laying them before the Lord, asking Him to intervene in specific situations.

Stop wondering if you could ever make it through the reality that saints in other nations are facing and start taking active steps to search out Christians, missionaries, and pastors in these nations to pray for them…to write encouraging words to them…to give money or resources to the cause of Christ where they are.

Whatever you do, STOP SLEEPING.  There is no time left for snooze on the alarm clock.  These people NEED our prayers.  Our prayers are the best gift that we can give to them.  Whatever you do, don’t just read this!  Get with the Lord and ask Him where He wants you in this battle formation.  ASK HIM what you can do to serve these people around the world.  May they, one day, be able to say, “He has delivered us from such a terrible death, and He will deliver us. We have put our hope in Him that He will deliver us again while you join in helping us by your prayers. Then many will give thanks on our behalf for the gift that came to us through the prayers of many.“

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