prayer coach

image courtesy of adidas

This past weekend I got to play soccer. Unlike most Americans I love the sport and have had moments of being good. I can even claim scoring goals on three continents. However most of those “glory days” have been in the past. This weekend it all came flooding back.

While playing men 10 to 15 years younger than me, I was weaving in and out of them with surprising ease. While several on the field were international and exponentially exceeded my passion for the sport, I outscored all of them combined.

I probably should add that I was the only one wearing cleats and that the grass was damp. Even knowing that I had an unfair advantage, the feeling of triumph made me feel like a star.

The truth is I feel that the Christian life should be the same way. I feel that I should have some special advantage over the rest of mankind to be able to run circles around them. Why not? We have the living God living within us. We have the mind of Christ. Why are we not ruling the world?

Do you ever wonder that God has something more planned for us that we are not tapping into? With all of the resources on our side, why can’t we be incredibly successful. Jonathan climbs the enemy’s encampment with just his armor bearer and turned the war for Israel (1 Samuel 14:13). Gideon blows a few horns and the enemy runs away scared (Judges 7:22). Moses throws some wood in bitter water to make it drinkable (Exodus 15:25). Jacob has his livestock drink water with strips of bark in it to make them have spotted babies (Genesis 30:37-39). Elijah lays on a dead boy and he comes back to life (2 Kings 4:32-35).

Joseph has a dream that he would have a position of authority. His dream is followed by 13 years of slavery and prison, in which he rises to the positions of authority. Each place has parts of his dream, but it never realizes until the day he is brought before Pharaoh.

David has an extraordinary experience of the chief religious leader of his time declaring him king of Israel after each of his brothers were overlooked for the position. He has some immediate successes with Goliath and advancement in Saul’s army, but it is 15 years before that word comes to pass.

Abraham gets a word from God, a promise that he would be made a great nation. He believes the word but has to wait 25 years before he even gets one son.

The thing that stands out to me is not necessarily the wait but the acceptance that the promise would come to pass. What assurances did any of these men have that what they were told would happen? How many dreams have you had at night were from God? How do you know what someone says to you is from God?

Even the story of Abraham doesn’t explain how God spoke to him. Did he hear an audible voice, or was it just God’s voice spoken into his thoughts?

I do not doubt any of these men’s experiences, but it makes me wonder how can I be so sure. Several months ago I started my newest walk of faith which I mentioned in my post, Does Your Life Make Zero Sense to UnBelievers. Now I face what Blackaby calls the crisis of belief.

image of Luke Sankey in prayer

The common thought is it takes 21 days to form a habit. I can’t tell you how many times I have heard this through high school youth groups to parenting training. If you can just stick with something for 21 days you will form a habit, then everything will be easier.

While it is true that repetition creates momentum, habits cannot form if we don’t really want them. I recently read a review of The Power of Habit by Charles Duhigg that simplified the process down to three steps.

“In order to build a habit you need to create a Cue, a Routine, and a Reward.”
- Charles Duhigg

The cue is the thing to remind you to do something. For instance if you want to start exercising, you may place your running shoes by the bed so it reminds you when you wake up to go for a run. Or, you can set up an appointment with a buddy to meet at the gym. The cue is the thing to be that personal reminder to do the habit you want to create.

The routine is the habit itself. This can be any habit you want to create. To be more precise, the routine is what you do in order to accomplish the habit you want to create.

The reward is what you want to get out of the habit. Using the exercise example, maybe the reward is a new pair of pants or running in a certain event. The reward is the motivation for creating the habit.

• 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.

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.

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:

images courtesy of Getty images

Christians are not new to professional athletics, but with first Tebow and now Lin, you would get the impression that this is a new trend. Still Tim Tebow and Jeremy Lin are similar in how they came in mid-stream and provided a needed spark to their respective teams. Both have weaknesses in their games that cause people to doubt them – passing for Tebow and turnovers for Lin. Ultimately, it is their quick thanksgiving to God for their opportunities that have linked the two together.

With the recent explosion of Jeremy Lin just after Tim Tebow’s rise a couple months ago, I have started wondering what God is up to. Is he media playing these two’s stories up because they know it will sell? Or is God trying to get our attention?

Since God is always trying to get our attention, I will choose that is what is going on here too. Therefore, what is God trying to say? Here is a list of possibilities:

1. Confidence is not pride. Both of these men are good at what they do. Tebow met with fans before each game using his platform to bless others. Lin has just started to shine, but he easily dishes out praise to his teammates building up the people around him. Pride is all about what you can get for yourself. Confidence is knowing what you have to strengthen those around you.
• Christians have too often been afraid of confidence for fear of being prideful.
2. Your biggest limitation is how you view yourself. Both have been criticized for what they lacked. Both had been overlooked in their positions. And yet, both prevailed when given the opportunity. They didn’t let the views of others hold them back. They believed in themselves and were ready when the time came.

• A vacant chamber of prayer means that a believer has gone out of business religiously.
• Don’t ask someone who has a history of being negative for advice about your step of faith that doesn’t make sense.
• Faith thrives in an atmosphere of prayer.
• Painstaking care, much thought, practice and labour are required to be a skillful tradesman in praying.
• Prayer honors God, acknowledges His being, exalts His power, adores His providence, secures His aid.
• Prayer is a trade to be learned. We must be apprentices and serve our time at it.
• Pride infects all our prayers, no matter how well worded they may be.
• The life of the individual believer, his personal salvation, and personal Christian graces have their being, bloom, and fruitage in prayer.
• The more praying there is in the world, the better the world will be; the mightier the forces against evil everywhere.
• Trouble and prayer are closely related. Trouble often drives men to God in prayer, while prayer is but the voice of men in trouble.
• Units of prayer combined, like drops of water, make an ocean which defies resistance.
• We can never know God as it is our privilege to know Him by brief repetitions that are requests for personal favors, and nothing more.
• We press our pleas because we must have them, or die.
• We repeat, not to count the times, but to gain the prayer.
• “The world needs more true praying to save it from the reign and ruin of Satan.”
• “Those who know God the best are the richest and most powerful in prayer. Little acquaintance with God, and strangeness and coldness to Him, make prayer a rare and feeble thing.”