Tomorrow I will be releasing a new booklet (33 pages, 9700 words) in digital format:
Be With Him, Be Like Him: Why and how to pray
This book will be available for purchase from Amazon. You can read any Kindle edition book on your PC or iPad just by downloading the free Kindle for PC app.
All book sales go towards supporting our ministry here in Argentina.
Thank you!
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There is an overwhelming force that wants to silence you. There is a strong sense of uneasiness in the world. We all feel it – all is not well. But that unseen force wants you to keep quiet about your uneasiness. It wants you to be isolated and anesthetized. “Be silent,” is says. “Do not speak as there is no hope.”
Do not keep quiet. Do not let this voice of darkness silence your heart.
Cry out!
Cry out to the one that hears you always. Cry out to God. He is there, and He is listening. He is so very real.
Let your wounded and hardened heart make a noise, a yell, a shout out to the Lord. Do not let the world silence you any longer! Do not let fear and doubt close your heart anymore. Indeed, all is not well in the world, but in Christ all things will be well.
“But I don’t need to believe,” your mind seems to say. “I don’t need faith; all will be well for me without faith.” But the uneasiness gnaws away at you, and the muzzle tightens around your heart ever more. Do not wait any longer. Cry out to the Lord.
Cry out against the world that sells you the lie that science, technology and money will fix all your problems.
Cry out against the deception that God is dead or silent or that he ignores the suffering.
Cry out against the arrogance of man and the devil bombarding your senses with non-stop messages of distraction, diversion, perversity and death.
Do not let the battle for your soul be given up so easily. For remember, there is an Eternal King that fights for you. He has stood up for you upon the cross and bled for you. Never forget this great battle he won for you against the forces of darkness that strive to suffocate your heart.
Remember this King that has shown you how to conquer suffering through love instead of power.
Your heart wishes to cry out. “I’m tired,” it says. “I am exhausted from the fight. I am almost dead perpetuating the lies in my life – that I am well and that those around me are not suffering. I ignore their cry as I ignore mine, and we are all dying slowly, suffocating in our denial. Our denial of a Savior.”
Come Jesus! Come forth now to me! Pierce my hardened heart with your love. Pour over me your Spirit and your blood alone that can cleanse me. Show me what it means to feel again. Show me what it means to care again. Show me what it means to love again.
Do not wait one minute longer, Jesus. I will keep quiet no longer.
Hear my cry out to you!
When I was young I did some stupid things. I remember those cold Pennsylvanian winters when I would go outside without a coat. My mother would urge me to dress warm. But I was stubborn and thought that going out with just a T-shirt was cool. So there I stood shivering at the bus stop trying to impress someone.
If I had caught pneumonia would it have been the my mom’s fault? I had plenty of warm clothes, but I was pig-headed. If I had gotten sick it would not have been because my mother didn’t love me.
Many times we say, “I don’t believe God would condemn anyone. He’s too merciful”. So we like to imagine that in that final moment, when we stand in his presence, that he will wave a magic wand and make it all better.
Or we sometimes say, “Who doesn’t want to go to heaven?” Yet I look around and see many people frozen in a spiritual winter.
How many choose to hurt themselves? And how many choose to reject the healing that Jesus offers day after day, month after month, and year after year? We create a god that suits our fancy instead of accepting who He really is.
Others say, “At the time of judgment, who wouldn’t choose heaven over hell? God will give everyone that choice at the last moment”. Many will choose at that moment, just as they do now, complete condemnation.
Why wait until the last moment to choose Christ? We say, “Sure! I will accept him at the final moment”. Why do we think we will accept him then if we do not now? When I was younger I was stupid, but not ignorant. I knew the cold could make me ill, but I rejected my mom’s loving care of my own free will.
The final moment is now! We are given a chance to choose heaven every single moment of every single day of our lives. Is the destiny of your soul so unimportant that you choose to wait until the last second? Do you do this if your roof is leaking? If you do you end up with a house full of water. Do you do this with your finances? If you do you end up bankrupt. Do you behave this way if you are very ill? If you do you end up hospitalized. Do you do this if your car is rapidly approaching a brick wall? If you do you end up dead.
If you exercise prudence with these worldly things, then why not with your own soul? Wake up!
We are in the end times. Some choose not to go to heaven every day of their lives. Why do they think that in the final moment they will choose otherwise? How often do we condemn ourselves every day in the most eternal of ways? Don’t string God along anymore! Respect Him! For he is Absolute Goodness, and anything stained with evil cannot stand to be in his presence.
But God gives us a way. A perfect way. So in that last day we can stand, clean, white as a freshly driven snow. Dressed in the coat of Christ. God does not see our imperfection or our sin. He sees us washed clean with the Blood of the Lamb of God.
We run to our Father’s arms with great joy.
We do not gain the Kingdom of Heaven because we are “good people”. We don’t become true followers of Jesus Christ because we are do-gooders or because of some elevated spiritual status. The Christian faith is a faith of the broken and the weak. We are saved because we need a Savior.
You did it. You broke the glass. It seems that you were in a hurry or you just didn’t look where you were going. It fell to the ground and shattered. Just look at the mess you made.
In bare feet you walk upon the glass. The mess you made. You don’t clean it up. You just can’t do it. So you walk upon the glass in bare feet, and the shards make wounds that bleed.
You might walk upon the glass for seconds. Or minutes, days… or years. On bleeding feet you walk.
Then Jesus comes. He has you sit and rest your broken feet. He kneels and gently pulls out the glass, piece by piece. He washes your feet clean of blood.
Then the Lord then sets you upon your feet again. Restored.
Later, you realize that it was not glass that was broken. It was your heart. A heart of stone shattered on the floor.
And now, Christ has given you a heart of flesh.
photo credits: walking on glass: Getty
praise: http://www.credomag.com/2011/11/23/let-us-praise-mercy-a-thanksgiving-mediation-from-spurgeon/
Why do you want a puny god? Basically a do-nothing god that has nothing to say. A puny god can do nothing for you.
Why do you want such a puny, little god? A god that is barely a footnote in your life. Maybe if he’s lucky he gets an hour or so each Sunday. There, there. There’s a nice little god.
Wouldn’t you rather have a God of justice, power and grace? Why not choose this God?
A God that restores you, heals you, frees you and saves you.
A God that puts your life in order.
In love, power and all the abundance of the Spirit.
A God that reaches down, pulls you out of the pit and places you upon a throne.
A God that gives all for a speck of flesh clinging to a tiny clot of earth in His great universe. All His great love poured out for you.
That would be a God you could worship and bow down to in reverence and repentance.
A God you could devote to and obey.
That would be a great God.
image credit: Adam L. Clevenger, http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Jamaica_sunrise.JPG
The other day I was planning to pray. But I didn’t want to. I tried to blame it on the worries of the world, but deep down I knew there was another reason. Work, family, the knee-high grass growing in the yard… there are things to be done I told myself.
But in my heart I knew the real reason…
I simply did not want to pray.
In a way, yes, the world suffocates my desire to commune with the Lord. But I willingly join in.
But God is good. He gave me the will to force myself upon my knees. Yes, it was forced.
Like forcing yourself to get up and go to work. Or forcing yourself to study or to get physically fit.
Or facing a crisis in your family… or in your life…
These things are not always done joyfully… we don’t skip gleefully towards Calvary. But only there will we find Victory.
So there I was, forced down upon my knees. Sleepy, tired, frustrated, distracted… everything but in ecstasy…
I wanted to pray for myself… for my selfish needs. “Please help me Lord,” I began to plead. But then I was moved to pray for others. To give. Only the Spirit can do this kind of thing to my selfish flesh.
And I prayed.
It was one of the greatest days of my life.
My exterior life is pretty stable (for now). No major crisis. But a great battle was won that day over the enemy who tries to keep me off my knees.
That day, I cried out, “Yes Lord! I need you! We need you!”
“Have mercy on us!”
Never let the world suffocate your cry.
Cry out to Him.
When you are left with nothing, when everything is gone. Everything. Who are you then?
What happens when you lose all your possessions? Your house, your car, your money… All your books and phones and gadgets… gone in the blink of an eye.
What happens then?
Your job… gone. Your family… gone. Even your clothing… gone.
That’s right. You might as well be dead. In fact, you will be dead someday.
And it will all be gone.
You will stand naked. Alone.
Or not?
Will you wait until then to see you are God’s child?
A child he loves with the greatest love story ever told?
Why wait until you are dead?
Instead, live forever. Know that you are a child of God.
Jesus died. He rose again. For you.
image credits: nothing: http://rootfun.net/wallpapers/animated-wallpapers-2013/attachment/i-see-nothing-wallpaper/
praise: http://www.klove.com/blog/post/2010/10/11/God-Rocks!-K-LOVEs-Day-of-Praise!.aspx
