prayer coach

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.

Most of us if we are honest with ourselves, know that we are lacking in love. We may have the ability to love those who love us, but somewhere between that and our enemies we falter. This is not to discourage us, but just to show us we need supernatural help to fulfill what God has asked of us. We need God’s assistance to be able to love.

How do we pray for love?

The first thing to remember is that we love because God first loved us (1 John 4:19). Any trouble we have in loving is directly tied to a lack of experience with God’s love for us.

• God open my heart to receive more love from you. Make me aware of what may be blocking my ability to receive from you.

The second thing to help you is to know that fear is the opposite of love (1 John 4:18). Your inability to love is directly related to an area of fear in your life. Are you afraid that person will hurt you, take too much of your time, or make you be someone you are not? Or, are you afraid that God will not take care of you?

“God, send me anywhere, only go with me. Lay any burden on me, only sustain me. And sever any tie in my heart except the tie that binds my heart to Yours.” – David Livingstone

I came across this quote from David Livingstone in a book I was reading today. Immediately, it reminded me of a conversation with my wife almost 10 years ago. We were at that time missionaries in the Middle East (although they did not know this because of their view that missionaries were some branch of the US government).

We were coming to the end of the year there and were deciding whether or not we were going to return for another year. I was up for it, but my wife had a very hard year. You can only imagine how difficult it is to be a women in a society that treats them less than human. Not all men over there were like that, but it was ingrained in their society and as an intercessor my wife felt it often.

Through this discussion about what we were going to live the follow year, and I said, “I will be happy anywhere in the world as long as I am with you.” I don’t know if I had fully thought that through before it came out, or if it was just unearthed through the discussion, but it was and still is most definitely true.

My wife is my family, my best friend, and my constant source of support. I love her like I never knew what about love before. And, at this point of my life she was even more important to me than God. That summer we were separated. That position I held her at was to heavy for her to carry. She could not be my God, nor did she want to be.

• [Jesus and the apostles] obviously believed that they knew the will of God was before they prayed the prayer of faith.
• [Meditation is] the detachment from the confusion all around us in order to have a richer attachment to God.
• Attuning ourselves to divine breathings is spiritual work, but without it our prayer is vain repetition.
• Christian meditation, very simply, is the ability to hear God’s voice and obey his word.
• Confession begins in sorrow, but it ends in joy.
• Do we really think we can experience integration of heart and mind and spirit with an erratic prayer life?
• Either option is painful. To not grow in His likeness is to not enjoy his fullness. When this happens, a haunting voice continues to ask, ‘What could I have become in him if I would have been a man of prayer?’ To grow in His likeness is to enjoy His fullness. When this happens, the priorities of the world begin to fade away.
• God delights in showing us exciting new alternatives for the future.
• God has ordained the Disciplines of the spiritual life as the means by which we place ourselves where He can bless us.
• I determined to learn to pray so that my experience confirmed to the words of Jesus rather than try to make his words conform to my impoverished experience.
• If we are unwilling to change, we will abandon prayer as a noticeable characteristic of our lives.
• If we long to go where God is going and do what God is doing, we will move into deeper, more authentic worship.

• Faith never knows where it is being led, but it loves and knows the One who is leading.
• We tend to use prayer as a last resort, but God wants it to be our first line of defense.
• We pray when there’s nothing else we can do, but God wants us to pray before we do anything at all.
• We don’t want to wait for God to resolve matters in His good time because His idea of ‘good time’ is seldom in sync with ours.
• The remarkable thing about God is that when you fear God, you fear nothing else, whereas if you do not fear God, you fear everything else.
• Faith is deliberate confidence in the character of God whose ways you may not understand at the time.
• We have to pray with our eyes on God, not on the difficulties.
• One of the greatest strains in life is the strain of waiting for God.
• If through a broken heart God can bring His purposes to pass in the world, then thank Him for breaking your heart.
  
• The most important aspect of Christianity is not the work we do, but the relationship we maintain and the surrounding influence and qualities produced by that relationship. That is all God asks us to give our attention to, and it is the one thing that is continually under attack.
• There is no joy in the soul that has forgotten what God prizes.
• Intercession is putting yourself in God’s place; it is having His mind and His perspective.

image courtesy of Dream Culture

“Take delight in the LORD, and he will give you the desires of your heart.” – Psalm 37:4

God created you and knows what will bring you the greatest pleasure. He knows that if He can get you to do what He created you to do, you will find the greatest satisfaction in your life. Therefore if we are to see ourselves as children of God and to see God as our Heavenly Father, we must see that we are birthed out of an expression of His pleasure. Children are a celebration of love. God wants us to enjoy who He created us to be.

The desires of your heart are those things that God placed in you to reveal what you were created to do. These desires are opportunities to connect with your heart. This is extremely important because it is from the heart that we connect with God. He wants to connect to the person He created, not the facade that we put on for others to like us.

For a man the thought of connecting to his heart can be overwhelming. Heart issues have always implied feelings or the need to cry. For better of for worse those were turned off at a young age.

Connecting with our desires is a non-threatening approach to the heart. It has to do with future and creating what is not yet. It is powerful and manly.

Delving into the desires of our hearts is a partnering with God to call up the dreams that God has placed in us. Since God was the One who put them there, we have His grace behind our partnership to fulfill them. We connect with the purpose for which we were created and we enter into the abundant life promised. Partnering with the desires of our heart is a holy process. We are ushered into experiencing more of God, and hope fills our lives.

This video is in Korean, but you will not miss the message. The contestant on the show was put in an orphanage when he was 3 and left the orphanage to live on his own at age 5. You cannot miss that this guy does not believe in himself. As you listen to his story, it is hard to imagine if anyone ever has. The video is inspirational and inspiring, but it also displays the power of belief and encouragement.

We can have a powerful effect on this world if we would just believe in ourselves. If we would just believe that we have something in us that is worthwhile.

With God as our creator, we have amazing things within us to make a positive impact on the world. Will we tap into it?

Do we also believe this for our friends? Our co-workers? Our children? Our neighbors? As ambassadors of Christ, we have a responsibility to speak life into others. We may be the only one who will ever believe in them. They may not believe in themselves, but we are called to look for the treasure that God placed there and bring it into the light.

I have often heard the quote that the world has yet to a see what God can do through a man that is totally devoted to Him. If that is true, imagine a world where everyone was living up to the potential that God deposited in them. Now that is true revival!

Encourage someone to live up to their potential today!

I have collected over 1,600 quotes on prayer from preachers, theologians, and people following hard after God. Here is a small sample of how some of them defined prayer. Which one is the most encouraging and helpful to you?

1. Prayer at its best is living with mind and heart utterly open to God. – Albert D. Belden
2. Prayer at its best is the expression of the total life, for all things else being equal, our prayers are only as powerful as our lives – A.W. Tozer
3. Prayer at its highest is a two-way conversation and for me the most important part is listening to God’s replies. – Frank Laubach
4. Prayer at its holiest moment is the entering into God [where] miracles seem tame … by comparison. – A.W. Tozer
5. Prayer is a sacred and appointed means to obtain all the blessings that we want, whether they relate to this life or the life to come. – Isaac Watts
6. Prayer is a silent surrendering of everything to God. – Soren Kierkegaard
7. Prayer is a work to which we must commit ourselves if we are to make sense of our lives in light of eternity. – Terry Glaspey
8. Prayer is about knowing God – not manipulating Him. – Tom Blackaby
9. Prayer is acceptable in any situation. – Kevin Shorter
10. Prayer is always in danger of degenerating into a glorified gold rush. How to get things from God occupies most [books]. – A.W. Tozer
11. Prayer is an art which only the Spirit can teach us. He is the giver of all prayer. – C.H. Spurgeon