prayer coach

image courtesy of Tom Cochrane

This post will be a bit different as it is personal and may be harder to pull out an application for you, but bear with me as I still feel it is important. The other day I was driving through town and came to a stop light that just turned red. I was going to turn right so I was watching for my opportunity to pull out. After about a minute I perceived it was safe to go. However as I started I heard someone shout.

I quickly stopped and there was a man on a bike at the left front of my car. I had completely clipped him and bent his back tire. He came from my right and was riding across the intersection, and somehow I completely did not see him.

Thankfully he was not hurt and I am not sure who was more scared. We talked and worked out the details. When I finally got back in the car, my heart was still pounding. I quickly turned my attention to God asking what did all that mean?

I have not mentioned this in some time, but I believe that God uses everything to get our attention. God has committed Himself to intimacy with His children and will use anything to draw us closer to Him.

When I got to where I was going, I had no answers, but I got my heart rate down enough to call my wife and let her know. I also let some friends know that I was meeting. I had to move past the shame of the event.

image courtesy of Shelton Interactive

Recently I was approached by Shelton Interactive to do a review for Anything: the prayer that unlocked my God and my Soul by Jennie Allen. This is not a paid review, but my opinions on this book.

This book is a journey with Jennie through her life the last couple years. It starts giving her background of a good Christian girl and comfortable pastor’s wife. Her life gets turned around after coming in contact with a blog by Ugandan missionary, Katie Davis. Katie Davis was also the all-American girl, but she ended up dying to all the normal American dreams to serve Jesus in Africa. As Jennie read Katie’s blog, areas of her heart came alive and reawakened desires to give it all to Jesus.

While this book is mainly Jennie’s journey, her husband Zac was also being lead by God to the same abandonment. Together they prayed a simple prayer, “God we will do anything.” This book is primarily about the consequences of that prayer, through the many things that gave up and the extraordinary things they gained.

God is incredibly in love with us, but the things our hearts desire keep us from fully giving ourselves to Him. We say that God loves us, but we believe that we loves ourselves more than He does. We live our lives as if we know what would make us happy. Jennie’s journey shows her giving up things she thought would make her happy and moving toward things that scared her. But in the end what she found was that the things God was calling her to were things that made her come alive.

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)

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.

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.

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.

image courtesy of Adam Jones

The book of Genesis tells of two drastically different men: one who had to work hard to get anything he wanted; the other seemed to have things fall into his lap. It is interesting that the former was father of the latter. More interestingly, how do we become like the latter?

These two men were Jacob and Joseph. Jacob is well known as being a striver. He connives his brother out of his birthright and cons hims out of his blessing. He runs away for fear of him and then gets conned into working 14 years for Rachel. The tragedy of Jacob’s life is more than the difficulties that arise, you get the impression from Jacob that he feels alone in the world. Even when he left working for his father-in-law, he leaves under deception.

Joseph, on the other hand, had much greater difficulties arise against him. The tragedy that befalls Joseph may make some balk at my earlier statement of having things fall into his lap. However, no matter what hardships arose, Joseph met each of them with success.

What I noticed about these two men that was significantly different was the way that each of them was raised. Jacob was raised by Isaac who favored Esau over him. Joseph was raised by Jacob who favored him above each of his 11 brothers. Joseph knew the love of his father, which brought special attention, favors, and gifts. Jacob felt overlooked by his father and had to trick him to get attention, favors, and gifts.

image courtesy of Message in a Bottle

Most of Christians view prayer as a message in the bottle. We pour our hearts out in a one-side communication to our God who we hope has affection for us. Our prayers are cast out into the empty sea of quietness. Where are you God? I’ve just reached down into my soul and realized how I long for you. Please reply.

We are desperate for God’s voice—His words of affirmation, words of acceptance. We strain to hear Him in the crashing of the waves, in the thunderclaps, within the hurricane, but God’s voice was not there.

We sit back on the vast beach looking out into eternity and feel so small and insignificant. We lean back and feel the sand between our fingers, and once again are plagued by thoughts of insignificance. “I’m only just a grain of sand in this world.”

We need to persevere as Elijah and realize that God’s voice is in the whisper—the still small voice. Even though this grain of sand appears small, it represents one wonderful thought that God has for you. His amazing thoughts about you are as numbered as each grain of sand. One small handful has hundreds of grains. As you look up and down the beach, the sand endlessly goes on and on. Each one is a response to our request for returned affection.

The world is screaming at us that we are worthless and for the most part we have believed it. God is whispering it is not true. We are royalty in God’s kingdom (1 Peter 2:9). We are ambassadors of His Son (2 Corinthians 5:20). We are more than overcomers (1 John 5:4). We are the apple of His eye (Psalm 17:8). He risked it all that we may realize how much we mean to Him. He delights in us (Zephaniah 3:17).