Prayer is our response to the echoes of Eden where we long to walk with God in the cool of the day.
– Philip Nation in Habits for Our Holiness
Tag: God
Our Declaration
In the LORD I take refuge.
– Psalm 11:1a
David knows where to turn in his trial. He turns to the LORD.
This isn’t a prayer; it is a declaration.
David declares what we should declare:
In the LORD I take refuge.
What about us?
When faced with trials, suffering, struggles, do you declare?
In the LORD I take refuge.
When you have struggles with your health, do you declare?
In the LORD I take refuge.
When there are struggles in your family, do you declare?
In the LORD I take refuge.
When there are problems at work, do you declare?
In the LORD I take refuge.
When you read or watch the news and see mess our world is in, do you declare?
In the LORD I take refuge.
When you are afraid, anxious, or worried about something, do you declare?
In the LORD I take refuge.
When you are weary, exhausted, feeling overwhelmed, do you declare?
In the LORD I take refuge.
Whatever the trial, whatever the trouble that springs up in our lives, let us boldly declare with David:
In the LORD I take refuge.
One Greater
In prayer, you recognize that there is One greater than you and you are needful of His intervention in your life.
– Philip Nation in Habits for Our Holiness
Let Us Ask
And this is the confidence that we have toward him, that if we ask anything according to his will he hears us. And if we know that he hears us in whatever we ask, we know that we have the requests that we have asked of him. – I John 5:14-15 (ESV)
We can have confidence toward God, boldness to actively approach God. We are God’s beloved children and so we approach Him as children approach a loving parent.
When my toddling grandson is hurt, he runs to mommy. When he is hungry, he runs to mommy. When he needs help, he runs to mommy. When he is happy, he runs to mommy.
In the same way, when we are hurting or hungry or need help or are happy, we should run to God as His children, as instinctively and automatically as my grandson runs to his mommy.
The cosmic conflict is bigger than us. All the conflicts we see around us are bigger than us. The conflict you face today is very likely too big for you. But none of these conflicts are too big for God. God is bigger. God is stronger. We can run to Him.
We run to God with confidence – and we ask, and He hears, and we receive. This is the equation for prayer that John gives us: We ask + He hears = We receive. Do you believe that? Do you have that confidence? Do you grasp that God delights to answer your prayers, delights to give you what is good?
Now we must ask according to His will. He won’t just give us anything we ask for. Why not? Because He is a good Father. If my grandson wants to play in road or play with a stick of dynamite, his daddy is going to say “no” because it is not good for him. In the same way, we all too often don’t know what is best for us. But our Father knows what is best for us, and so He screens our requests according to His will. His will is not against us, but for us. Do you believe that? Will you trust Him?
Come to Him and make your request. He will hear and gives us what is best.
Enabled to Love
Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God, and whoever loves has been born of God and knows God. Anyone who does not love does not know God, because God is love.
– I John 4:7-8 (ESV)
How are we able to love one another? Do we strive to muster up the willpower on our own. No, that will never work – at least not for long. Rather, we must be enabled to love.
Love is from God. He enables us to love. How?
First, because He is love. God is Father, Son, and Holy Spirit in a perfect loving relationship for all of eternity. Love is what characterizes our Triune God. It is who He is. And because God is love, He is the source of love. Love comes from Him. But how does this love come to us and enable us?
That brings us to the second point – we have been born of God; that is, born of the Spirit. The Holy Spirit dwells within us, connecting us to God. The Spirit of love connects us to the God of love so that we might love.
A power outlet has power available to run an appliance, but we must plug the appliance into the outlet for the power to run the appliance. God has all the love needed to enable us to love, but we must be plugged into God in order to love. And we are! And so we are without excuse.
You and I are enabled to love by the Holy Spirit living within us, connecting us to the God of love. May we make use of His enabling. Let us love one another.
The Need to Stop
God gave us regular, weekly times to stop in order to know (because we’re bound to forget) that it is God who is God, not us.
– Adam Mabry in The Art of Rest
Saturday Strands
Loose strands for our growth:
God Beckons Through Beauty: Where Our Deepest Longings Lead – Jon Bloom (DG)
We long to be in the place where — or more accurately, with the Person from whom — all the beauty, all the glory, comes from….
How to Reach Our Neighbors in a Post-Christian Culture? – Josh Butler (TGC)
For our neighbors to encounter Jesus and trust in him for salvation, the church must embody the reality of his kingdom in practical ways that bear witness to the good news of his reign. What would this look like in today’s post-Christian culture, where some have never heard Jesus’s gospel and most simply consider it irrelevant to modern life? Three themes are significant….
The Secret Of Contentment – Seth Lewis
Think about it: If you tie your contentment to anything in this world, then it will always be insecure. Everything we have and experience here on earth, no matter how wonderful, is temporary and fragile.
Understanding the Metamodern Mood – Brett McCracken (TGC)
Why, when we look at contemporary pop culture—movies, music, TV, campus protests, meme culture, and TikTok (especially TikTok)—does the word “incoherence” often come to mind? Why does so much today feel random, disconnected, contradictory, aimless, and altogether void of coherent logic and purpose?
Flashback: Gentle Words
Gentle words can diffuse an angry conflict and bring healing and life to the hurting. Harsh words can stir up conflict and break the spirit of the bruised and battered. God calls us to turn from harsh words and grow in gentleness.
Saturday Strands
Loose strand for our growth:
Good News! You Can’t Engineer an Experience with God – Trevin Wax
The presence of God can feel elusive to us, even when we ask for it, because prayer isn’t magic. We aren’t conjurers. We cannot manufacture a true religious experience. Prayer is an encounter with the living God. The feeling that sometimes results from an encounter with God is uncontrollable because we’re dealing with a personal God, not a force we can harness through incantations.
Win the Next Generation with Love – Kevin DeYoung (Crossway)
Jesus said it best: “By this all people will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another” (John 13:35). Jesus did not say, “They will know you are my disciples by how attuned you are to new trends in youth culture.” Or “They will know you are my disciples by the hip atmosphere you create.” Give up on “relevance” and try love. If they see love in you, love for each other, love for the world, and love for them, they will listen. No matter who “they” are.
When Self-Centeredness Sets In – justinmykoagpangan (By Grace Alone)
We are naturally self-centered. We live as if we are the center of the universe. We live to achieve what we want in life. We live for the aim of our self-centered pursuits in life. Our dreams, wants, and longings revolve around us.
The Case Against the Abortion Pill – Rachel Roth Aldhizer (First Things)
In this story, medical abortions induce an unnatural process, one in which up to 20 percent of women experience a complication—four times the complication rate of surgical abortion. The medical abortion process is designed to hide adverse events and discourage patient follow-up. Women seeking abortion receive lower standards of care than do women suffering miscarriage….
Flashback: A Gentle Life
A gentle person doesn’t attack others with her words. She doesn’t speak evil of people, slandering and maligning them. She doesn’t fight with others, quarreling or brawling. A gentle person is courteous, considerate, and polite towards others.
Abundantly
This is profound consolation for us as we find ourselves time and again wandering away from the Father, looking for soul calm anywhere but in his embrace and instruction. Returning to God in fresh contrition, however ashamed and disgusted with ourselves, he will not tepidly pardon. He will abundantly pardon. He does not merely accept us. He sweeps us up in his arms again.
– Dane Ortlund in Gentle and Lowly
Infinite
Christianity is not about coming to God so that he can direct us to something or someone better than himself, some other thing that will make us ultimately happy. No, God himself is the one in whom all our joy, pleasure, and happiness are found. If we are made for infinite happiness – and that is what every person in the world is groping after – then the only place one will find it is in the one, and only one, who is infinite.
– Matthew Barrett in None Greater
Brian J. Mikul 