The Problem with our Prayer

I shared this picture a couple of weeks ago on my Facebook page thinking: Wow, that's so true! Today, I still believe it's true, but it's become apparent to me how true it really is. When I shared the picture I was in a short season of my life where I was praying a lot more than I had been and was building my prayer life up. Being a seminary student you would think it would easy to keep the prayer season going. I have found it to be quite the opposite. 

Now, don't get me wrong. I love everything I'm learning about in seminary, but I'm learning so much about so many different things in such a short period of time that I actually burned out a little on my spiritual life. My bible reading outside of what I had for seminary dropped to next to nothing. My prayer... Well it was about the same as my bible reading. And my spiritual life felt dry to be honest. It was just so drab and it felt so boring.

However I kept thinking of this picture. "The only enduring motive for prayer is that God is worthy to be sought. The only enduring motive for prayer is that God is worthy to be sought." I would see all the need for prayer in my own world and think about how I needed to pray for it but then think about how my own prayer life was struggling. Then I would remember: "The only enduring motive for prayer is that God is worthy to be sought." 

I think this is one of the truest statements I've heard in a long time, but the only way to get that motivation is to remember why He is worthy. And how else are we going to remember why He is worthy, but by reading His Word. God created us and we sinned. God called us back to him and we turned away. God had us taken away and we called out to him. God sent His son to save us and we rejected him. God's Son died on a cross for us and we realized it was too late. Then God rose His son on the third day in victory over the grave and we accepted the new life He gave us. God taught us how to live and we forgot to remember Him... 

God sent Jesus to die on the cross for us so that we might spend eternity with Him. He bridged the gap that we never could. He freely offers us a new life we could never earn. He, and He alone, is Worthy! Will we remember? Will we pray? 

"For God so loved the world that He sent His one and only Son, that whoever believes in Him, might not die, but have everlasting life." -John 3:16

He is worthy!

What is Salvation?

Salvation, in our case, is when a perfect person comes and saves us from our sins. I don’t think many people, if any, would disagree with that. What they might disagree with is how one attains salvation. Time and time again I hear, “Jesus came and died so that we could be saved from our sin and all that we have to do is accept it. I’m left wondering “how though? How do I become saved?” This is where conflict arises. Different religions and even different sects of religions will give you different answers. So today, I’m writing to tell you what the Bible says about how we receive this salvation. 

I wish I could say that it’s as simple as saying a couple simple words and poof you’re in, then again I’m glad that’s not it. Romans 10:9-11 says, 

“If you declare with your mouth,

 ‘Jesus is Lord,’ 

and believe in your heart that 

God raised Him from the dead, 

then you will be saved. 

For it is with your heart that you believe and are justified,

 and it is with your mouth that you profess your faith and are saved.”

So part of it is praying and declaring Jesus to be Lord, but another part of it is believing in your heart. I said I’m glad that it’s not as simple as saying a few words because if that’s all that salvation is about, then what’s the point? When you believe something in your heart, your heart changes, it starts to follow what you believe in. Words can be empty, but belief is trusting in what you believe in. When a person comes to Jesus and puts their trust in Him, their heart changes. It no longer desires what it wants but desires what Jesus wants. The heart no longer wants to be sinful but to share the good news of Jesus. This brings me to what happens when a person receives salvation. They repent. 

The word repent means ‘to turn away from’ and for us that means turning away from sin. So often professing our faith and believing is where we stop. It’s where our journey of faith stops because we don’t repent. After we receive salvation we stop moving toward sin and we start moving towards Jesus. We start the mission that He left for us. 

“Then Jesus came to them and said, 

‘All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. 

Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, 

baptizing them in the name of the Father, of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit,

 teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. 

And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.’”

Matthew 28:18-20

We begin to tell the world who Jesus is and what He did for us. We daily ‘take up our cross and follow Him’(Luke 9:23). So from here, we go together to the ends of the earth.

Light in the Darkness

Genocide. Disease. Broken hearts. Hurt. If you were to turn on the news this seems to be the vast majority of what you would hear about... Well maybe not the broken hearts but you more than likely see those everyday. We live in a fallen world. Ever since that fateful day in Eden (Genesis 3), humans and creation have been fighting to survive and make life a little better. We live in a day and age where for some of us life is pretty easy as far as being provided for and taken care of. Then disaster strikes. 

A number of things have happened in my church family recently that have left me and I'm sure others wondering where God is. We thought that He was all powerful and able to heal us? He is. He is still on His throne. He is still sovereign and He still cares. Then why aren't the diseases and hurt being healed? Why aren't the broken hearts being made whole? Why isn't the genocide stopping? I don't know. 

I wonder if maybe God hasn't  brought healing to us because He has a greater purpose behind the evil that has occurred. I think that even though God didn't cause the evil, maybe He allowed it to happen so that His Church would become unified. Maybe God allowed it so that through every bit of suffering that is occurring, the ones suffering would be met with the love of His people. I believe with all my heart that God will bring healing to the disease and the hurt and wholeness to the brokenhearted, but I also believe that God has a greater purpose beyond us. 

“For my thoughts are not your thoughts,

neither are your ways my ways,”

declares the Lord.

“As the heavens are higher than the earth,

so are my ways higher than your ways

and my thoughts than your thoughts."

Isaiah 55:8-9

We don't have to understand why things happen the way they do because we know that God's ways aren't our ways, and His thoughts are not our thoughts. We know that God is still in control. Through every sickness and every disease, through every heart break and every hurt, we know! We know that God is in control and we can trust Him. Maybe God hasn't allowed them to happen for the unification of the Church but He has purpose. 

So what do we do now? Almost ironically, we wait on The Lord. We pray, we pray our hearts out for the hurt that is going on. And we trust that God is good and He will come through. We be light in this fallen and broken world, and it starts with the church acting like the Church.

[The believers] devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and to fellowship,

 to the breaking of bread and to prayer. 

 Everyone was filled with awe at the many wonders and signs performed by the apostles.

 All the believers were together and had everything in common.

 They sold property and possessions to give to anyone who had need. 

 Every day they continued to meet together in the temple courts. 

They broke bread in their homes and ate together with glad and sincere hearts, 

praising God and enjoying the favor of all the people. 

And the Lord added to their number daily those who were being saved.

Acts 2:42-47

Waiting on the Lord

Wait on The Lord. Put your hope in God. Trust in God.

In a way these all mean about the same thing. In my research of Hebrew and my study's of a couple of other languages, there's generally one word that can mean to wait, or to hope. I've come to realize that there's a reason for this. When you wait on something, you are hoping that it will arrive, you are trusting that it is on its way. It's repeated throughout the scriptures: "Wait on The Lord, Put your hope in God, Trust in The Lord." 

Okay, so what? It's repeated big deal. That's the way something was emphasized in Hebrew literature. Where we might might raise our voice, they would repeat it. "Be strong and courageous" (Deuteronomy 31:6, Joshua 1:6,7, & 9). The same thing happened to Joshua, repeatedly God told him to be strong and courageous, He wanted to make sure that when Joshua needed to be strong and courageous, he would take heart in God, and know that He who brought Israel out of Egypt went with Him as He did with Moses (Joshua 1:5). Then again in Ezekiel 37, "this is what the sovereign Lord says." What kind of God is He? He is the sovereign Lord! Sovereign meaning supreme, with all authority. Whatever God says goes. He is proclaiming His authority to these bones, saying "Hey! Listen up, this is how it's gonna go down."

This is a big deal. We are so caught up in a society of I want it now and I'm going to get it now, but God's giving the reality check of "WAIT!" God works on His own time which is completely outside of time. We have to realize that God is the Almighty, the One in control. We are subject to Him, not the other way around. He's not a vending machine God, He is the God who will give you what is in His will, that which is good for you, and He will give it to you at the right time, His time.

Matt Chandler does a sermon jam on this topic and one thing that he says is that "waiting on The Lord isn't pleasant at all." In fact waiting on the Lord can be downright awful. At the time that I'm writing this there are Christians in the Middle East are being killed by a terrorist group called ISIS. These Christians are waiting on God to come through and be their salvation, but they know that "if they live, they live for The Lord and if they die, they die for The Lord" (Romans 14:8). It would be hard to say that they aren't waiting on God and trusting Him. 

There's a big difference between what's happening in the Middle East and here in America. They suffer persecution to the point of death sometimes, most of the persecution that we face is people saying no when we ask them to come to our Bible study. There's a lot of directions I could go at this point, but the direction I want to go down is why are they being persecuted and we're not? Could it be that we have so watered down the Gospel that we choose comfort over truth? I believe the message that is most often presented today is the good news that Jesus can save you and He wants you to be happy here in this life. 

This gospel message is yet another thing that takes away from waiting on God. I've heard many people being told that if you just wait and pray you'll receive rich blessings from God. I wouldn't go as far as to say that this is 100% false but I do think that for most people it's not. God might bless you with great riches to advance His kingdom, but there are countless other ways that God can bless you in order to advance His kingdom. I'm tired of waiting for things that won't last, I'm tired of waiting for thing that will bring me happiness for a moment. My prayers are for the advancement of the kingdom. 

I pray that we will recognize the false truths that are preached in America and dispose of them.  I pray that we recognize the true mercy of God toward us and repent. I pray that through our recognition of His mercy we will be given a sense of urgency to spread the true Gospel.

I'm waiting on The Lord. 

Faith, Works, or Both?

What good is it, my brothers and sisters, if someone claims to have faith but has no deeds? Can such faith save them? Suppose a brother or a sister is without clothes and daily food. If one of you says to them, “Go in peace; keep warm and well fed,” but does nothing about their physical needs, what good is it? In the same way, faith by itself, if it is not accompanied by action, is dead.

But someone will say, “You have faith; I have deeds.”

Show me your faith without deeds, and I will show you my faith by my deeds. You believe that there is one God. Good! Even the demons believe that—and shudder.

You foolish person, do you want evidence that faith without deeds is useless? Was not our father Abraham considered righteous for what he did when he offered his son Isaac on the altar? You see that his faith and his actions were working together, and his faith was made complete by what he did. And the scripture was fulfilled that says, “Abraham believed God, and it was credited to him as righteousness,” and he was called God’s friend. You see that a person is considered righteous by what they do and not by faith alone. In the same way, was not even Rahab the prostitute considered righteous for what she did when she gave lodging to the spies and sent them off in a different direction? As the body without the spirit is dead, so faith without deeds is dead.

James 2:14-26

A lot of things that are being taken from the Bible today are being mistaken. I think that this section of scripture is one that is vital to our beliefs and one of the most mistaken. There are two very important things to understand about this section:


1. The book of James is written to those who already believe. (-"To the twelve tribes scattered across the nations-" James 1:1b)

and

2.Faith is what brings salvation:

There is no difference between Jew and Gentile, for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and all are justified freely by his grace through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus. God presented Christ as a sacrifice of atonement, through the shedding of his blood—to be received by faith. He did this to demonstrate his righteousness, because in his forbearance he had left the sins committed beforehand unpunished— he did it to demonstrate his righteousness at the present time, so as to be just and the one who justifies those who have faith in Jesus.

Where, then, is boasting? It is excluded. Because of what law? The law that requires works? No, because of the law that requires faith. For we maintain that a person is justified by faith apart from the works of the law.

Romans 3:22b-28 

So what does the section in James mean?

True faith in Jesus will produce good works. And why wouldn't it? If we have come to Jesus and received salvation, then why wouldn't we be producing good works that fulfill what He commanded and advancing the Kingdom of God.

And what if we aren't producing 'good works?'

If this is the case then we should probably check the condition of our heart. Are we following God and His commands?

"For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith- and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God- not by works, so that no one can boast. For we are God's handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do."

Ephesians 2:8-10