How Important Is Prayer, Really?

Why do we pray?

How Important is Prayer?

How do we pray?

These are some of the questions I answer in my video message series, Revolutionizing Your Prayer Life.  This is the first in the series and serves as an introduction to the series taken from what I consider to be the greatest prayer ever prayed – the one that Jesus prayed in John 17.

So if you are wanting to revolutionize your prayer life, focus your prayers, and deepen your faith through prayer, then join me for this series.  I will be putting up a new message each week.

Click here to link to the video message.  And may God surround you with his grace, fill you with his love, and capture your heart.

How Important Is Prayer, Really? Video message

Three Simple Ways to Follow Christ

Churches everywhere are constantly telling us that we need to follow Christ.  We are told that following Him is the ultimate road to joy and happiness while at the same time we are sometimes warned that following Him might mean up giving up aspects of our lives that we hold dear.  And all the while that we are left asking the question as to what following Christ actually means.  If we have been a Christian for any length of time, we have probably heard that to follow Christ we need to read the Bible, pray, go to church, etc.  Those are all very important things we need to be doing.  But is that all there is to following Christ?

Many of you are shaking your head no right now because you know there is much more to following Christ than simply following a checklist.   Many years ago, the phrase What Would Jesus Do? went global in its fame.  At its heart was the idea that before you do anything, simply ask yourself the question, What Would Jesus Do?   Then when you figured out your answer, you did what you thought Jesus would do.   There is nothing wrong with that philosophy, assuming that the answer you came up with was actually what Jesus would have done.  However, that question had the potential to lead to ambiguous answers as well as leaving us sill in limbo as to how we actively are to follow Christ.

A few years ago, while writing the devotional book, 10 Minutes to Better Living: Daily Applications From the Life of Christ, I changed the question from What Would Jesus Do?  to a more proactive question for follow Christ, What Did Jesus Do?  I found that learning to follow Christ was not as ambiguous as it had been before.  Look what Jesus did, pray about how God wants you to follow those principles, and then do it.   The following is an excerpt from the devotional showing three simple ways to follow Christ.

Three Simple Ways To Follow Christ’s Example

Read Matthew 4:23-25   

 

Believe it or not, learning how to follow Christ is not a deep mystery.  It is not even a difficult concept to understand.  The hard part is not in the knowing, but the doing.  As you read today’s reading, try to put aside all thoughts that following Christ is merely a set of rules to be followed.  Don’t think about the rules you have learned.  Don’t even think about the things you are expected to do or not do as a follower of Christ.  Today, we want to look straight at three things Jesus did that characterized his ministry.  If we could just be motivated to do a fraction of what He did, then we could change our world for God.

In a summary of Jesus’ early ministry, Matthew writes that Jesus traveled around Galilee, teaching in their synagogues, preaching good news, and healing people who were sick.  As a result of his newfound popularity, people who had any kind of illness or crippling disease were brought to Him for healing.  He was so popular that large crowds from all over the region followed Him everywhere He went.

 

Life Lessons

The four Gospels are full of ways that we can follow Jesus’ example while He was living on earth.  He lived life to the fullest and died for a purpose.  In today’s passage, we do not read words that Jesus says, but we see the example that He set.  We would do well to try to follow that example as best we can.

First, we are told that Jesus preached in the synagogues in each town He entered.  Though you may not be a preacher and you do not have a synagogue, you can still follow His example by teaching others in your neighborhood, family, church, or work how to live the Christian life. You can do this primarily through your example, but you can also do this by talking to people about what it means to live the Christian life.  In other words, the things that God has already taught you, pass on to others.

Secondly, we are told that Jesus proclaimed the good news of the Gospel to everyone in which He came in contact.  This means that the friends we have that are not yet Christians, we should be talking to them about Christ.  This does not have to be a difficult thing and we don’t have to have any special training.  All we have to do is live the life that we know God wants us to live, invite our friends to church, and be ready to share with them when the time is right about what Jesus has done for us.

Thirdly, Jesus healed every kind of disease and illness.  Though we might not be able to heal people from their sickness, we can heal many of the pains and hurts that they are going through.  We can offer them hope and peace that is found only in a life with Jesus.  Sometimes just a listening ear and a gentle hug is part of the healing process that they need.   And, it should go without saying, but we should continually be praying for those we know who are hurting.  Don’t just pray for them.  Let them know you are praying for them.

 

Making it Personal

Are you currently talking to other Christians and encouraging them to deepen their walk with God?  List a few ways that you are doing this.

Are you currently living a good example in front of your non-Christian friends that might draw them to Christ?  In what way?

How many people in the last year have you invited to church?

How To Always Be Happy – Part 2

This is the second in a blog series taken from my year long devotional 10 Minutes to Better Living: Daily Applications From the Life of Christ. 

Last week we began a blog series entitled How To Always Be Happy.  It is a series based on the Beattitudes found in Matthew 5.  In most translations of the Bible, each verse uses the word “blessed”.  That word from which “blessed” was translated could also be translated as “happy” or “fortunate.”  However, in reading these verses, it is sometimes hard to see how they bring about happiness.

Read  Matthew 5:4

Life Lessons

It almost seems like an oxymoron to say that in order to be happy, we need to mourn.  We often associate mourning with something we do during sad times like funerals.  However, God includes the attitude of mourning as one of the nine qualities he says makes us happy or fortunate.

They key is found in what we mourn about.  If we are mourning because our favorite football team lost, that does not constitute the kind of mourning that God says will make us happy.  If we are mourning because we don’t have enough money to buy the new gadget, then God does not promise us happiness for that mourning.   I do not believe that He is even talking about the mourning over the death of a loved one.  Although He will give us special grace to survive that tragedy and He does promise to comfort us (part of the promise in this verse),  I do not believe we are destined to happiness because we mourn the death of someone special.

The kind of mourning that Jesus is talking about in the Sermon on the Mount is the mourning because you recognize needs in people’s lives and you know that they cannot solve their problems or heal their hurt apart from God.  If you mourn because there is a need that you cannot meet and you present that need to Christ as the solver of problems, then He promises you that you will be comforted and you will be happy.

How does it work?  How does mourning over someone’s hurt that you cannot fix make you happy?  Simply it drives you to prayer.  You know that apart from God’s intervention, this need or hurt will not be fixed.  So you continue to pray.  God blesses those who constantly pray for other people.  And when God blesses, you are made happy.  Of course another level of happiness comes when you see God answer the prayer for the people you have been mourning for and praying for.

Jesus promises to everyone who mourns in this fashion, that they will be comforted.  So often that comfort comes in resting in the knowledge that you have given this problem over to God and it’s now His to do with as He wants.

Making it Personal

Is there someone or something in your life that you are mourning over?

Is this mourning driving you to be in continual prayer over this issue?

Can you think of a time in your life that you have mourned and prayed over a certain situation that has resulted in God comforting you?

Follow this blog to be  informed when the next post in this series is available or buy the year long devotional from Amazon or Nook now.

How To Always Be Happy – Part 1

 This is the first in a blog series taken from my year long devotional 10 Minutes to Better Living: Daily Applications From the Life of Christ. 

How to Be Truly Happy – Humility

Read Matthew 5:3

Everyone wants to be happy.  Life is always easier if we are happy.  It is those days when we are unhappy our life seems like such a drag.  In the coming weeks, we are going to look at several ways that Jesus says will make us happy.  At first glance, several of these ways will not appear to bring us happiness.  But looking deeper into it, we will see how our life can be so much better and happier if we learn to develop these characteristics in our lives.

At the beginning of what is considered by many to be the greatest sermon ever preached (commonly known as the Sermon on the Mount), Jesus gives us eight qualities that every Christian should be developing that brings about happiness.  The word that many translations of the Bible translate as blessed appears nine times in the Matthew passage and it literally means happy or fortunate.

At first many people might view these qualities (commonly known as the beatitudes) as negative things because so many of the words used to describe these qualities appear negative.  However, in God’s eyes, they are not bad things.  A closer examination of what each one means might help shine the light on why these qualities are designed to make you happy or fortunate. 

Life Lessons

Have you ever known someone who talks and acts like he or she is God’s gift to the world?  Perhaps they are wealthy or hold a high position at their job.  They know it and sometimes they let everyone else know it too.  We call these people arrogant.  They like to talk about themselves and they think everyone else likes to hear about them.  They always want to be the center of attention and cannot stand to be in a secondary role in anything.  Hopefully you are not one of these people.  God never has anything good to say about people who are full of pride.

However, He does have a lot of good to say to those who are humble.  The very first quality mentioned in the famous Sermon on the Mount is humility.  Now humility does not mean you go around saying you are terrible and no good.  It does not mean you put down yourself all the time.  Humility is simply recognizing who you really are before God.  It means you know that apart from God you can’t do anything good.  You know that nothing you do on your own can amount to much, but what God does through you has a great impact.

If you want to be really happy in life and you want God to bless you, then the first thing you need to do is realize your need for Him.  Those arrogant people we all know are actually not truly happy.  They have to build up themselves and get approval from other people and even stay in the limelight to be happy.  They base their happiness on what they have done or how they look.  God wants us to base our happiness on the fact that we don’t have to perform or even be anything special.  We just have to lean on Him and let Him live through us.

This verse goes on to tell us that for those who recognize their need for God, the Kingdom of Heaven is given to them.  That means 1) when they die, they will go to Heaven because they had the proper relationship with God.  And 2) they will be ones who will see on earth God’s kingdom moving because they are looking at God, rather than themselves.

Making it Personal

Ask yourself, ask God, ask your spouse, and ask your friends if you are known as being an arrogant person.  If they say, no, then write that down in your journal.  If they say, yes, then write that down as well.

Do you make it a habit to thank God regularly for what He has given you?

When someone congratulates you for something, do you feel good because you have done something great?  Or do you immediately pass on the praise to God because you know in your heart that apart from Him, you could not have done it?

Are there things you have seen that you know God has done and you know you cannot take credit for them?  If so, list some of them.

Follow this blog to be  informed when the next post in this series is available or buy the year long devotional from Amazon or Nook now.