The Believer's Prayer Book

I love that the Bible is a book of prayer! The Holy Spirit has given us a whole book filled with prayers, and of course, the Psalms is one of the most wonderful sources of prayer that we could ask for.

For years I have spent a lot of time in the Psalms, praying the prayers with which this book is filled. Right now I'm in Psalm 80 again, so I thought I'd share it with you, pointing out how much fuel for prayer there is in this psalm.

First of all, it's important to remember that Psalm 80 is a prayer first of all for Israel and that we must keep Israel in the forefront of our mind as we read the Word. God has very definite plans for Israel that are yet to be realized, and the Church's prayers for Israel are critical for the fulfillment of God's purposes for Jesus' natural family.

The great thing is that however we see God relating to Israel is how He relates to all those who belong to Him, and so we can take such Scriptures, whose first application may be to Israel, and find them to be perfectly suited to us in our walk with God on this earth. And so while praying Psalm 80 for Israel, I am also praying it for the spheres of influence that the Lord has given to me.

I'll simply list out all of the petitions that the psalmist makes in Psalm 80:

1. "Give ear, O Shepherd of Israel..."
2. "Shine forth..."
3. "Stir up your might"
4. "Come to save us"
5. "Restore us, O God"
6. "Let your face shine..."
7. "Restore us, O God"
8. "Let your face shine..."
9. "Turn us again, O God of hosts"
10. "Look down from heaven, and see"
11. "Have regard for this vine..."
12. "Let your hand be on the man of your right hand"
13. "Give us life"
14. "Restore us, O Lord God of hosts"
15. "Let your face shine..."

What wonderful prayers for us to use in praying for our family and ministries, etc.! If you don't do this as a regular thing, I would encourage you to practice praying out of the Bible. For example, taking this psalm, you could do something like the following:

• First, go through this psalm and meditate on Who it is addressed to. This is very important, because without pondering the One you are praying to (in light of what the psalmist says about Him), then it will be difficult to pray in faith when you make your petitions. For example, at the beginning of the psalm, the psalmist addressed God as the "Shepherd of Israel...who is enthroned on the cherubim." Meditating and gazing on this truth will awaken faith to believe that such a God can really do something about the person or situation that you are asking about.
  
• Go through the psalm and pray for Israel, remembering the deep passion God has for His chosen people and agreeing with that through praying this.
• Pray these phrases over a particular person or situation or group in your personal sphere. The phrase can act as a jumpstart into your own prayer for the particular thing on your heart.
  

Praying Scriptures in faith is very powerful because we have the assurance that they are prayers that God delights to answer since He wrote them in the first place! I tell my students that praying in agreement with prayers in the Bible is like adding your signature to a check that requires two signatures. God has already signed off on these prayers but needs a second signature in order for the check to be valid (the prayer to be answered).

The Lord bless you and inspire your prayers as you agree with His prayers that are easily accessible to us. It would be great for you to find one or more others who will pray the prayers in the Word with you; that adds even more power when two or more agree together with God!

Have a good week in Him; may you continue to grow in your experiential knowledge of Him and of what He's doing on the earth in this season of history!

Lovers of Truth

I've been thinking a bit about the Apostle John as being a "lover of truth." His Gospel and epistles have a major focus on the word "truth", which is repeated many times over in these writings.

John says in his third epistle, "I have no greater joy than to hear that my children are walking in the truth."

There's a vast difference between being a "lover of Truth" and being one who simply knows true information or true doctrines. I believe that one thing that defines John as being a "lover of Truth" is that he loved and knew Truth personified, the Lord Jesus! John's writings about Jesus are very personal writings; much more than simply giving data and facts about the Man, John shares from a deep personal knowing of Him. And the fact that he could receive the vision of the book of "The Revelation of Jesus Christ" from the Holy Spirit speaks to me of John's love of the Truth. His genuine love of Jesus, the Truth, empowered him to be able to receive understanding of Jesus that was very different from what he had known of Christ in the flesh.

To love the Truth (as opposed to having correct information) means:

• To be agressively seeking Jesus, the Truth; i.e., not settling for facts and doctrines about Him but when seeking Him in the Scriptures, crying out to His Spirit for encounter with Jesus and revelation of Who He is and what He's like and how He feels and thinks about His creation in general, and me in particular.
• To have a holy dissatisfaction with what I know about Him and His kingdom; i.e., never content with what I have learned. I'm grateful for what I know but I should be ever pressing into Him and His Spirit for further revelation of the God-Man Who is infinite in His power and wisdom and emotions, etc. The fact that He's infinite means I will be learning from and about Him forever.
• To want Truth so much that I'm willing to "unlearn" what I thought was truth; i.e., there is a lot that we learn along the way that must be unlearned as we mature in God. This is very painful for fallen humans because we find identity and security in believing that everything that we believe is right. It disorients us to discover that something I was so sure of a little while ago isn't quite aligned with the full truth of the Gospel of the Kingdom of God. It takes great courage and humility and desire to love the Truth.
• To walk in the Truth; i.e., to not be hearers only but doers of the Truth, obeying Jesus as He comes to us and instructs us how to walk.
  

I want to be a lover of Truth and so I set my heart before the Father and ask His Spirit to blow on the weak flame of this desire until it is a raging fire that won't be put out by religious arguments and cultural inhibitions nor by the world, the flesh and the devil.

Spirit of God, Spirit of Jesus (Truth), come once again and breathe on our weak desire for Truth. Raise up a Church in these end times that loves Truth, not merely knows truth academically. Here we are; we can't crank up artificial desire but we can place our hearts and minds before You and ask You to awaken desire for Jesus to such a degree that we will embrace Truth even when it cuts across the flesh and human pride. May we, like the Apostle John, find our greatest delight in intimately knowing Truth and having many "children" who are walking in the Truth.

God bless you this week with encounter with Truth Himself!

God's Ability to Protect and Keep

This week I was struck in a fresh way with the Apostle Paul's words in II Timothy 1:12 -

"...But I am not ashamed, for I know whom I have believed, and I am convinced that he is able to guard until that Day what I have entrusted to him."

When the Holy Spirit quickened this word to me, it was a wonderful reminder of God's keeping power. It also reminded me once again that the promise to guard is directly related to "that which I have entrusted to him until that Day."

There are three words/phrases in this verse that I want to focus on:

1. Convinced that He is able - Paul's faith and certainty about God was founded on His experiential knowledge of the nature and character and works of God; he had utmost certainty about His power and ability to perform the impossible.
   
2. Guard/protect - the meaning of the word here includes the idea of a fixed gaze on the situation ("a watch; to guard from loss or injury"). Paul not only knew that God was almighty and able to intervene for humans but that He wanted to. This desire to help is reflected in the fixed attention that He gives those of us who are His own. He is not disinterested.
   
3. Entrust - this word carries the idea of a "deposit". Paul understood that God's ability to actually guard and protect specific issues on behalf of His own was contingent upon his "depositing" that situation in Him; in other words, leaving it in His care.
   

One thing I love about God is His unbelievable desire to be and work with humans. He, the almighty One Who can do anything without help from outside Himself, is such a God of love that there are things He won't do without human companionship/partnership!

So my simple encouragement to you and to myself is to take the time to study and meditate on the character and the works of God so that faith grows in us; the more we focus our attention on the beauty and the power of God (Psa. 63:2), the more faith grows and we become increasingly "convinced that He is able". Practical ways of studying and meditating on His power are to meditate on Scriptures that talk about His great works on behalf of His people in Bible history, to reflect back on His powerful interventions in our own lives and the lives of others that we know, to worship and thank Him for His greatness and power, to sing about His wonders, and to give testimony to others of His great works. All of this offsets the massive lies of the evil one related to God's inability and/or lack of desire to intervene and to handle a difficult situation.

As our inner life is being fed truth and light, it becomes easier to believe that God can "guard that particular issue/person/ministry from loss or injury," and once we can really believe that He is not only able to do this but wants to do it, then "depositing" the matter at His feet becomes an outflow of trust in One Who has proven Himself trustworthy, not only in my personal life but in every human being's life in all of history.

If I have a large sum of money that I want to be protected from loss or thievery, I entrust it to the bank down the street rather than hide it under my mattress. That's because I know some things about the bank that empower me to entrust my money to them rather than try to protect it myself. This illustration isn't perfect because a bank can be robbed, but the point is that I have faith that the local bank can do a much better job of guarding my money than I can; and so I "entrust" it to them. That means I must let it go; I can't hide it under my mattress and deposit it in the bank at the same time.

And so in very practical issues of life, whenever a little (or big) fear clutches at my heart, I need to acknowledge that I don't have what it takes to protect that which I fear losing; then I must look once again at the One Who is able to guard it. This awakens true faith in me, and I can redeposit it (as many times as is necessary) to His safety box where it is kept from loss or injury through faith in both His desire and in His ability to fulfill what He has promised.

Often we fall into the temptation to think that we care more about the things and people God has entrusted to us in this life than He does, and when we do, we hold onto them tightly for fear of loss. When we do this, God is not able to guard them. The Apostle Paul understood that the only safe place for anything he had been given was in God's hands. This can be scary because it means we step back and only engage the situation as the Spirit directs us, taking the "risk" that God might not come through the way we want Him to. However, as our eyes are increasingly fixed on Him and faith grows, we find that His ways are much higher and better than ours.

One last observation...the Apostle Paul says that God will guard all that we deposit in Him until the final Day! So this isn't a promise just for the moment but is long-term. What a God!

Lord, right now I redeposit into Your heavenly bank that which you have given to me to steward in this life. I look at You and Your long history of doing wonders for Your people and it inspires faith in me to lay these issues at Your feet again and again for You to guard and to bring to fulfillment. I acknowledge once again that You care infinitely more about that which You've given me than I could ever care about. Forgive me for wrongly "owning" that which came from You in the first place and thereby accusing You of not caring as much as I do. I love Your ways, dear Lamb and Lion of God!

The Lord bless you this week and fill you with the knowledge of His goodness and control over your life and all that He has given to you.

We Would See Jesus - Final Chapter

Chapter Nine: Seeing Jesus - For Others

We've come to the final chapter of this wonderful little book, and it ends appropriately by focusing on the inevitable overflow to others that there is when a believer is truly living the first commandment (loving the Lord with the whole heart and soul and mind and strength) as his first priority. When the first commandment is my primary concern in all my life (i.e., my preoccupation is to wrestle for this reality), then the overflow toward others will be spontaneous and pure because it is the very love of Christ for others that's compelling me, not a religious or fleshly sense of duty.

Just as I love God because He first loved me, so I love others because He first loved them. The second commandment to love others as we love ourselves flows out of the first commandment. God's love must be the source of all self-giving love.

This chapter opens with an interesting sentence: "It is only when we have truly seen the Lord Jesus to be the End that we have come to the beginning of the real Christian life that God has for us." In other words, the more all other ends/goals bow to the one ultimate Goal, Jesus Christ, the more we will walk in fullness of life, experiencing what God has intended for humans who are in vital union with Him to experience. The fullness of Christian life in Christ includes the second commandment, impacting others for Him. As the authors say, "...instinctively everyone who makes this new discovery knows that it is for others."

The authors go on to warn that this chapter could seem to make those of us who live in the climate of law rather than grace feel like we are finally on familiar ground with this topic of outreach and ministry to others. "But no, not even here does grace quit the field. There never comes a time when grace ends and self has to begin again, and this applies to what we call our service as much as to any other part of our Christian lives. In no place do we need to know the Way of Grace more than in the impartation of this Life to others. Our service for our fellows does not come from strained efforts on our part to live for them, but rather from seeing Jesus doing so, and then simply making ourselves available to Him..."

The theme of this chapter is beautifully presented in the last chapter of the Song of Solomon in which we see the Shulammite (who is now experiencing mature love for her Lover) showing concern for her "little sister" who is immature and selfish. As she has matured in intimacy with Him, she begins to see others who are in need of discipling, but she is looking at them with Him, not through the lens of seeking favor or of drivenness to activity, etc. She speaks to her Lover in terms of "our" little sister. In other words, she doesn't see the discipling of the immature one as something that she does apart from Him; she isn't independently running into ministry without His leadership. This immature one is "their" sister. She sees herself in partnership with Him in the discipling of their little sister.

This is a massive truth about our Christian walk; we easily get burnt out with ministry if we aren't intimately partnering with Jesus in it. John 15 is a focus of this chapter. The branch cannot bear fruit apart from vital union with the Vine, and neither can the Vine bear fruit apart from the branches. Such is the intimacy that God wants with His own, and out of that union much fruit comes that will remain.

The fruit God looks for from this union is the fruit of the Holy Spirit, the very life of Jesus flowing through us. It's not the fruit of one's natural life straining to live up to the standard of Christ's life, but it's the very life of Jesus within the believer rushing through him out to others so that they touch Christ in us when they encounter us. The fruit of the Spirit can't be imitated; it must be birthed through vital union/connection with Christ in God.

The chapter concludes by addressing what it means to "abide in Christ":

1. A willingness to repent quickly when the Holy Spirit convicts us of the sin of assuming the position of the Vine; this ready repentance keeps us in the correct position as a "branch."
2. Continually seeing Jesus as the Vine, living and acting for others as the only Source of life in and through us. (We do this through worship and meditation on the Word.)
   
3. Continuous faith that counts on this union with the Vine. This faith doesn't beg to be united to the Vine but rather walks as though it is so because it is so! Faith offers praise and thanksgiving to God for this reality.
4. A brokenness and tenderness that continually yields up one's rights and interests to Jesus in order to be available, as a branch, to the Vine.
5. Pouring out of love to others, both in words and in actions.

I love that the authors keep using the word "continually" - this is a life-long journey of maturing in and with the Lord Jesus. The Holy Spirit must keep us always moving further into the life of the Kingdom or we quickly stagnate and live on yesterday's "manna/bread."

Lord, thank You for grace to keep following Your leadership, no matter how long we have walked with You. I want to continue to learn and grow and mature in Your love. Thank You that this is not only possible in You but that You aggressively fight for us in this journey. We love You!

For at least the remainder of this year, I will be sending out simple weekly thoughts on this blog as I did during the summer months. God bless you this week with His beauty and nearness!