prayer coach

Every Christian seems to have their technique for keeping from sin. We have to—if we are trying to follow God, we will be aware of our sin. It must be dealt with.

The Easter season makes this more prevalent because of the so many participating in the tradition of fasting things for Lent. This is wonderful tradition to prepare us for the Easter celebration.

Some of the tools Christians use for motivation not to sin are the following:

• Accountability: If I sin, I’ll have to tell someone what I have done.
• Consequences: If I sin, I’ll do something. This may be 100 pushups, give someone money to pay “the fine,” run an extra mile, etc.
• Think It Over: If I sin, I’ll go contemplate how bad that decision was, how it made God feel, and how bad I feel afterwards.
• Guilt: If I sin, I’ll sit in guilt.
• Shame: If I sin, I’ll beat myself up. Sin is bad, and if I sin I must be bad.
• Ignore It: If I sin, I’ll quickly move on. That’s not who I am. Plus, I am forgiven already.
• Sense of Value: I am too good to sin.

I have heard each of these options from preachers over the years, and not all of them are bad ideas. Very rarely have I heard how God motivates us not to sin.

God’s main motivation is love. It’s His kindness that leads us to repentance (Romans 2:4). Jesus said if you love me, you will do what I have commanded (John 14:15). Find out what pleases the Lord and have nothing to do with the fruitless deeds of the flesh (Ephesians 5:1-13). We are not to beat ourselves up over our sins. We are not even to focus on how bad it makes God feel when we sin. Sin has been dealt with. Our motivation for not sinning is an expression of love to the One who loves us. When Jesus comes to Peter after his denial, Jesus gets Peter to focus on his love. “Do you love me?”  (John 21:15-17)

Heart image courtesy of Skitch

This may not be an encouraging title for a Valentine’s Day post, but unfortunately this is a common query people use to come to the blog. Love is made to be lasting, and while your love may still be on, at times the person of our affection stops returning our love. How can we move on?

We were created for love, and for some for some that is a wonderful encouragement. It gives you hope for a satisfying and lasting love with another. For others the idea of love is filled with a painful mixture of a few happy moments and powerfully hurtful ones. While the other person has seemingly moved on, you are stuck with some strange connection to this person who has called you so much pain. You only hope is the cry, “God, please remove them from my heart.”

Listen to God’s words to you. That person was never supposed to fill your needs for love. I am the One who created you for love so that I may be the One who would satisfy your longings. Come to Me. My arms are open to receive you. Lay your head on My chest and pour out your heart. Tears open you up for the healing. Cry for the disappointment and loss, but not for despair for I give you hope. Freedom is coming. My love is on.

Freedom is found similarly to forgiveness. Here are some simple steps to help you find your freedom.

1. Confess how you have placed too much of your heart on the other person. Confess how you have trusted them over God.
2. Thank God for His forgiveness. It is already there for you. Receive it through giving thanks.

This video may well be old for many people, but this a celebration event that Oprah Winfrey put on for African-American women in 2005. She desired to honor the lives of those who have paved a way for others to come behind. Honor was given, love was displayed, and then in the words of Oprah herself, “Jesus showed up.”

Bebe Winans took the stage pulled in legendary singers from the crowd to piece together a wonderful menagerie of praise. “Not one note was planned or rehearsed,” but the effect was felt by all that was there. Diane Sawyer said, “For the rest of my life I think that may be the most transcendently spiritual moment I’ve ever been part of.”

Sometimes as believers we are so caught up in trying to convince people of the Gospel that we forget to give people a chance to experience Jesus for themselves. It is possible that not one person there placed their faith in Jesus that day, but all of them there had an opportunity to experience Jesus that will contradict any negative feelings they have ever encountered with Christians.

I love this video, and I hope you are encouraged by it.

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If you want to improve, be content to be thought foolish and stupid. – Epictetus

What a great description of the examples the Bible gives us of people of faith. Noah built a large boat that he was going to collect some of every animal inside during a forthcoming flood. When will the flood happen? How will he get all of the animals inside? The Bible doesn’t say if he knew, but he steadily worked on it for 100 years. Moses leaves the sheep and family to rescue a million slaves from the most powerful nation of his world. Why do we give him a hard time for questioning God? Joshua takes over command after the highly successful Moses to conquer the Promised Land. For his first battle plan after crossing the Jordan was to circumcise every male. Let’s immobilize the army a stone’s throw from the enemy. Couldn’t this have been done in the safety of the desert?

These types of actions are not limited to the Old Testament. Jesus waits for Lazarus to die before going to check on him. Jesus also kept talking about his death when everyone wanted to crown him king. Is this the kind of life we are expected to live?

My prayer is that the way you live your life makes zero sense to unbelievers and encourages fellow Christians to step out in faith. – Francis Chan

For me this is more than some wise sounding words. I also try to follow them. We serve a God who tells us that His ways are not like our ways. Therefore our lifestyle cannot always make sense to natural thinking.

image courtesy of Put Me in the Zoo by Robert Lopshire

“The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy; I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full.” – John 10:10

Shame speaks lies to us. Instead of letting us know when we make mistakes, shame tells us we are a mistake. The Scriptures tell us that there is an enemy that is the father of lies, and his goal is to steal, kill, and destroy. He will continue to use shame to feed lies in our hearts to keep us from living out of who God made us to be. Jesus said, “I am the way the way, the truth, and the life,” and “the truth will set you free” (John 14:6 and 8:32). Living out of the truth will free you up to live out of who God created you to be.

It takes time to transform our minds, but repeating truth instead of the lies will get us there quicker. We have grown up with lies that the enemy placed there through misinterpretation of events in our childhood. The lies are about ourselves, God, and others. While we may never agree intellectually to the lie, they feel true so we live out of them. We must choose to believe the truth Jesus has said because truth is whatever Jesus says is true. Here are some of the truth statements that God has gave me to replace the lies of shame that I have been living out of.

1. God loves me, my wife loves me, and there are many other people in my life who love me for who I am.
2. I am a godly man of integrity, and the people who know the real me are drawn to me.

image courtesy of the World Wildlife Fund

Thinking about the post Heaven is Where God Is, I was taken again to Jesus’ statement that the spirit is willing but the body is weak (Matthew 26:41). A couple week’s ago we looked at this in the post about What Motivated Gethsemane. It highlighted Jesus’ desire for prayer at that time.

Our spirit is strengthened in the presence of God. This is why staying in God’s presence is so important for ministry, prayers, and life. Important decisions need to be made in God’s presence. Our prayers need to be made there. We want our spirit as strong as it can be because it is the part of us that is always desiring agreement with the things of God.

To take this further, God deliberately takes us to greater levels where we need less body and more spirit. This is how He encourages us to die to ourselves and take up our crosses (Luke 9:23). God’s ways are not our ways and as long as we trust in our own abilities, we will be in danger of being led askew (not necessarily toward evil, just away from God’s plans).

We need to die to anything that keeps us from saying yes to God. We need to hand all of our fears over to God. Nicodemus was afraid that God would ask him to give all of his money away, and that fear kept him from following Jesus. He just might call you to live in the bush of Africa; He might ask you to seek money from others; He send your to Iran to hand out Bibles; He may nudge you to give your car to someone; He may tell you that you need to vote Democrat (or Republican). We need to die to our rights to these things. Why is it important that I die to my rights to these decisions? Because each death is a statement of faith that God’s ways are better than ours. And, with each death we get closer to the resurrection.

A willing spirit + a resurrected body = supernatural power!

image courtesy of Stephen Roach

For the past year, I have really been into Stephen Roach’s song, Room Enough to Dream. This song pulls at a core motivation in my life, which is that God can do immeasurably more than we can ask or think (Ephesians 3:20).

I don’t want to settle for basic Christianity. Jesus said He came that we might have life and life to the full (John 10:10). I want to live that. I want to enter into the lavish nature of my loving Father (1 John 3:1).

Steve Jobs once said that your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Let’s don’t waste our lives living beneath the life Jesus died to give us. Connect to the dreams God has placed in your heart. Connect to the whispers from heaven for you. Don’t settle for the day-to-day.

God is calling us out of our comfort zone into a life of complete surrender to the cross. – Steve Camp

Room Enough to Dream

Fields of Your presence
They are a spacious place
Room enough to dream
For the heart to play
I am setting out from the familiar ground
Too much more for me to see
To keep on hanging ‘round
And yesterday’s still mundane
Among the same old place
Our inheritance is much more than we’ve seen

Lord, You are our portion
But on this boundless quest
The only limit that you set
Is Your limitlessness
There is no too far
Only how will we go
I am stepping out into the unknown

This song is found Stephen’s album Closer to the Burning

“It is for freedom that Christ has set us free.” – Galatians 5:1

Freedom is very important to God (Galatians 5:1-15). He is not trying to control us, but what does it mean that it is for freedom you have been set free (v.1)?

Free people have the right to choose. You can make good choices or bad choice, but they are your choices. That’s why God put the tree He did not want us to eat in the middle of the garden. He wanted to give Adam and Eve the choice to follow Him. That’s why the father of the prodigal son allows his son to go with his half of the inheritance. God knows if you don’t have a choice than it cannot really be called love.

Some may argue that God hasn’t given us freedom, but instead a lot of rules. First in the Old Testament He gives Moses 10 commandments, then in the New Testament He make them harder. I would agree that the rules have in themselves have gotten harder, but God is not trying to get us to conform to rules anymore. Jesus fulfilled the law because we never could. Now that the pressure to obey is gone, we can see the heart of God behind the rules. Rules in themselves subvert dependence and deny you responsibility for your decisions. God is aiming to lead us to greater faith where are dependence is on God to keep us from going astray (v.6).

The whole offense of the cross was that we did not have to do anything to become righteous before God (v.11). Why were people going around insisting circumcision? They were trying to insist that you must do something to prove to God that you are worthy. Paul’s issue was not that circumcision (or any part of the law for that matter) was bad; it was the heart that you must earn God’s favor.