prayer coach

• Abiding faith attracts the promises of God.
• Any area that doesn’t have an expectation of good is under the influence of a lie.
• Any revelation that does not bring us into greater encounter only trains us to be more religious.
• Anything you think you know about about God, that you can’t find in the person of Jesus, you have reason to question.
• Arrogance isn’t thinking too much of ourselves but thinking too little of others.
• Don’t grade yourself differently than God does.
• Don’t let the “how to’s” of worship distract you from the “Who to.”
• Don’t let what you didn’t get in your childhood keep you from what God provides for His children – a perfectly faithful Father.
• Evangelism is the overflow of worship.
• Every season of growth is rewarded with pruning.
• Everything we do for people is just to get them to experience the Father. Striving for a Christian only exists in the absence of realizing the Father’s love.
• Faith doesn’t deny a problems existence. It denies it a place of influence.
• Faith is generated in the atmosphere of experiencing truth.
• Faith is not the absence of doubt, it is the presence of belief.
• Faith is the offspring of grace.
• Faith moves Heaven, so that Heaven will move earth.
• Faith offends the stationary.
• Faith provides eyes to the heart. Faith sees.
• Fear often looks like wisdom to those in unbelief.
• For the believer most closed heavens are between the ears.
• Gifts are free, but their development is really costly.

image source unknown

One of the scariest times for a Christian is when they cannot hear the voice of God. Jesus lived His life doing whatever He saw the Father doing (John 5:19). As Jesus’ followers we are to have the same closeness of relationship. And yet, we doubt our ability to hear God. We cling to the Bible for our security, but the Bible doesn’t tell us what career to go into, which house to buy, who to marry, etc. Life is full of decisions and full of trials that we need the constant companionship of the Spirit to get us through.

I have been thinking a lot on this lately as I have tried to come to grips with this current stage in my life. I’m desperate for God’s voice, but I keep floundering about what my next step should be. Jesus said that His sheep would hear His voice, and whoever belongs to God would hear His voice (John 10:27 and 8:47). Hearing God’s voice should be as natural to a believer as taking a breathe. It’s necessary. A quick read of the first half of Joshua also reveals plenty of example of our need to hear God’s voice.

Why is it hard for most Christians to hear God’s voice then? To attempt to answer this I am going to look at a section from Chronicles of Narnia, The Magician’s Nephew. After I quote the passage I will explain.

David started out with great passion but in the end of his life, he allowed trauma to shock him into passivity. We all need to come out of passivity and speak life into our world.

For forty days the Israelites were kept in a prison of fear through the taunts of Goliath. One thing that is missed in this story is that the Israelites remained in fear because Saul offered no encouragement to their situation. His inaction led to a bubble of fear over his troops. David comes on the scene and bursts that bubble by speaking hope.

Some fifty years later one of David’s sons rapes one of his daughters. This sets up hatred between two brothers to the point one kills the other. The murderer flees to his mother’s hometown and hides for three years. Both the rape and the murder makes David mad and sad, but there is no record of him doing anything. His silence allowed things to fester. David’s children are left to figure out life on their own.

Joab wakes David from his slumber to go retrieve his son from excile. However David does not allow this son, Absalom, to see him. Left on his own, Absalom goes down the path of attempting to take the kingdom from his father. How much of this could have been avoided if only David engaged in their lives?

Avoidance does not make our problems go away. We only delay the inevitable and often make the confrontation larger because of the passage of time. God gave us the Comforter because His plan was to call us places where we would have to deal with things that were uncomfortable to us. If we are more than conquerers than we need to be in some kind of battle.

I am going to take a brief break from normal posting in order to celebrate the inclusion of my alma mater into the NCAA tournament this year. After a Lowe period in Wolfpack basketball lore, we are back in. If you want to spiritualize this post, I would accept prayers for State to win.  I have included an excel version of this year’s brackets for people to download to help you enjoy this year’s tournament.

Here is the link to the 2012 Tournament Basketball Brackets (xlsx). I am asking that you donate $5 if you chose to use this version I created. It is completely on the honor system, but it will help offset some expenses on the Prayer Coach Blog.

If you are not familiar with Prayer Coach, here are a few posts that have been popular over the years:

• 7 Tips to a Better Prayer Life
• What is the Importance of Confession?
• How to Pray for Love
• 10 Things to Pray for Your Husband
• 10 Things to Pray for Your Wife

Thank you for stopping by. Blessings to you and your loved ones.

image courtesy of Leonard Ravenhill interview

After I posted the prayer quotes by Leonard Ravenhill earlier this week, I got interested in more about this man. I found a two-hour interview of him where he shared about past revivals and his view of Church today.Here are some takeaways I had from the interview.

1. Prayer was important to these revivals.

This may sound obvious, but when I listened to the interview I was overwhelmed at the intensity he held for prayer. He prayed with his elders for 45 minutes to an hour before any service. William Booth, founder of the Salvation Army, prayed with his team from the end of one day’s service for four hours for the next day’s service. Evan Roberts of the Welsh revival started meetings with 3 hours of prayer, spoke for 15 minutes, then prayed all night for the next day’s service. Their commitment to prayer was not idle words, but backed with a depth of experience. One statement of Ravenhill stood out to me, there were often more people packing the altar before a meeting than there was afterwards.

2. Holy living was an overflow of these revivals.

When William Booth or W.P. Nicholson preached, people will get so convicted of the Holy Spirit that pages of hymnals would be commonly shredded in the pews from people fidgeting as light came into their souls. When they converted, they gave all to God. Missionaries going to the far reaches of the world – not for a few years of sight-seeing, but giving their lives away. C.T. Studd immediately gave up his professional athletic career to follow Hudson Taylor to China. Studd’s words summarize the heart of many during that time:

Be sure to check out my guest post over at Revival Lifestyle blog on the 4 Steps to Supernatural Breakthrough in Prayer.

• …a man who kneels before God will stand before men.
• A man who is intimate with God will never be intimidated by men.
• At the judgement seat the most embarrassing thing the believer will face will be the smallness of his praying.
• Even so, to our knees, O Christians! Desist the folly of sprinkling today’s individual and international iniquity with theological rose water! Turn loose against this putrefaction those mighty rivers of weeping, of prayer, and of unctionized preaching until all be cleansed.
• Let the fires go out in the boiler room of the church and the place will still look smart and clean, but it will be cold. The Prayer Room is the boiler room for its spiritual life.
• Ministers who do not spend two hours a day in prayer are not worth a dime a dozen – degrees or no degrees.
• No man – I don’t care how colossal his intellect – No man is greater than his prayer life.
• Notice, we never pray for folks we gossip about, and we never gossip about the folk for whom we pray! For prayer is a great detergent.
• People are making salvation a mental decision instead of a heart decision. This is a shame.
• Prayer in its highest form is agonizing soul sweat.
• Prayer is not a preparation for the battle; it is the battle!
• Prayer is the most unexplored area of the Christian life.
• Prayerlessness is disobedience, for God’s command is that men ought always to pray and not faint. To be prayerless is to fail God, for He says, Ask of me.

image courtesy of The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian

I have been reading Prince Caspian to my daughter and came away with a beautiful analogy on the fear of God. The fear of God has always been a tough concept for me to comprehend. How does fear and love coincide?

Like many I was taught that the fear discussed in the Bible referred more to an awe of God. While this helped ease my tensions about God’s love, I still had a hard time believing that was all it meant. Whenever people encountered the Lord, they always fell face down to the ground (Joshua 5:14, Ezekiel 1:28, Matthew 17:5-7, John 1:17). Gideon fear his life because he only recognized he encountered the Lord afterwards and had looked on the Lord face to face (Judges 6:22).

The image in Prince Caspian comes right after the children had made a long detour trying to get to Caspian. There is a small hint of this in the movie, but the book brings it out in more detail. Lucy had seen Aslan before the detour, but could not convince the others to believe her. In the end they made a long trek in the wrong direction.

When the children started back in the right direction, Lucy sees Aslan again. As they talk we find out that Aslan had wanted her to follow him even if the others had not. Lucy had feared the opinions of her siblings over what Aslan wanted her to do.

Here is the definition for the fear of God: to care more about what God thinks than anyone else.

The fear comes in the disappointment of hurting the one you love so much. Susan expressing this when she admits that Lucy had been right about Aslan. She said she could have had believe Lucy from the beginning but she listened to her fears. As she apologized to Lucy, she expressed anxiety of what she would say to Aslan.

original image courtesy of Paul Martinez

Christians can be good at making laziness sound spiritual. Have you ever heard these statements?

• “I’m waiting on the Lord.”
• “I’m learning to rest.”
• “I don’t want to get ahead of God.”

These statements are meant to end the conversation. They are not meant for debate. How do you counter what someone feels that God have told them in their personal times with Him. But, are they really from God or just excuses.

Excuses make us feel better about ourselves when we know that there must be more there we are not experiencing.

What is Christian rest?

For the Israelites rest was the promised land (Joshua 1:13). The ones that came out of Egypt were not allowed to enter the rest due to disobedience (Psalm 95:8-11). Two-thirds of the tribes of Israel were given their rest (land), and had to help fight for the other’s rest (Joshua 1:14-15). Rest was not a lazy activity. It had to be fought for and was only attained be the promise of God.

Rest is also God’s presence—for the promise of the Gospel is an invitation to enter God’s presence (1 John 3:19, Psalm 62:1, Psalm 91:1, Hebrews 4:16, Exodus 33:14). This is the secret of not getting ahead of God. When His presence moves, we move. When it tarries, we set up camp (Numbers 9:15-23). But in order to do this, we must keep a watchful eye on His presence.

Passivity is not a fruit of the Spirit. It is not a synonym for patience. It is a deadening of your heart. It’s a sign of giving up or not caring.

I’m passive about golf, American Idol, and Greece entering the Euro zone. However, I am passionate about marriage, family, God’s love, and God’s view of business.