VIDEO Transforming Your Prayer Life

 “You ask and do not receive, because you ask amiss . . .” — James 4:3

What do the following bestseller titles communicate to you about our society: The Virtue of Selfishness and Looking Out for Number One? What does it mean to you that we buy books like these in droves?

Tragically, selfishness characterizes our age. Our society has hurled God from the throne and crowned self as monarch. Then we’ve turned around and treated God as the conduit to all our desires. We “conjure up” God as if He were a genie in a bottle, commanding Him to manipulate the world to our liking.

But we shouldn’t treat God as a means to whatever we want. He isn’t a means to our own ends; He Himself is the end we should seek. If we think otherwise, we should ask the Lord to change our selfish hearts.

Selfishness is at the root of many an unanswered prayer. When we “ask amiss,” we ask for fulfillment of our selfish desires, not for the furtherance of God’s kingdom. But Christ showed us, through the Lord’s Prayer (found in Matthew 6), that we must seek God’s kingdom first, not our own. The first petition in the Lord’s Prayer is “Hallowed be thy name.” We should make it our priority to praise and honor God when we pray. The second petition reads, “Thy kingdom come.” We should diligently beseech Jesus Christ to bring His kingdom into this world and into our lives. The third petition is “Thy will be done.” We need to lay our will at Jesus’ feet and ask Him to fulfill His purposes through our lives.

Today pray, “Lord, what would you have me do this day?” Then make yourself available to do His will and further His kingdom in whatever way He desires. Pray every day, focusing your petitions not on yourself but on your King.

““Seven days without prayer makes one weak.””

—Allen E. Bartlett

---

Grace and Getting Along – James 4:1-6

Blessing in the Tears

Blessed are those who mourn. Matthew 5:4

I received an email from a young man in England, a son who explained that his father (only sixty-three) was in the hospital in critical condition, hanging on to life. Though we’d never met, his dad’s work and mine shared many intersections. The son, trying to cheer his father, asked me to send a video message of encouragement and prayer. Deeply moved, I recorded a short message and a prayer for healing. I was told that his dad watched the video and gave a hearty thumbs-up. Sadly, a couple days later, I received another email telling me that he had died. He held his wife’s hand as he took his final breath.

My heart broke. Such love, such devastation. The family lost a husband and father far too soon. Yet it’s surprising to hear Jesus insist that it’s precisely these grieving ones who are blessed: “Blessed are those who mourn,” Jesus says (Matthew 5:4). Jesus isn’t saying suffering and sorrow are good, but rather that God’s mercy and kindness pour over those who need it most. Those overcome by grief due to death or even their own sinfulness are most in need of God’s attention and consolation—and Jesus promises us “they will be comforted” (v. 4).

God steps toward us, His loved children (v. 9). He blesses us in our tears.

By:  Winn Collier

Reflect & Pray

What places do you encounter sorrow in your story and in others’ stories? How does Jesus’ promise of blessing alter how you view this grief?

Dear God, when I’m awash in grief and sorrow, please help me to experience Your blessing even in the tears.

Learn more about coping with loss.

The Fruit of Perseverance

Don’t underestimate the impact of your faithfulness on future generations

2 Corinthians 4:1-18

The apostle Paul often wrote about perseverance. If anyone demonstrated endurance, it was Paul. He urged believers not to tire of following Christ, even when persecuted. He’d been beaten, stoned, whipped, driven out of town, shipwrecked, reviled, and abandoned. Despite having a thousand reasons to be disheartened, he knew his obedience to God wasn’t in vain. 

Consider the awesome harvest that resulted from the apostle’s faithfulness. The gospel spread across the Roman Empire, and the early church grew far beyond the Jewish world. What’s more, the seeds Paul planted by writing his epistles have resulted in billions of lives being transformed. And to think that any strength or insight we draw from these letters is fruit of the hardships he endured! 

Do you realize how impactful your life is? Don’t be deceived by Satan’s lie that your suffering or obedience will amount to nothing. Your faithfulness to God never goes to waste. Paul didn’t know the extent of the fruit God would produce through his steadfast obedience. Neither can you gauge how the Lord will use you. So don’t lose heart. Keep your focus on eternal things, not the hardships of this life.

The Indwelling Christ

“And they glorified God in me.” (Galatians 1:24)

One of the greatest doctrines of the Christian faith is the amazing truth that the Lord Jesus Christ indwells each believer through His Holy Spirit. “Christ liveth in me,” said the apostle Paul (Galatians 2:20), and, since that was true experientially as well as doctrinally, he could invite people to see Christ and hear Christ and follow Christ by seeing and hearing and following him. This might seem incredibly arrogant if it were not real.

He could say, for example, that “it pleased God, who separated me from my mother’s womb, and called me by his grace, To reveal his Son in me” (Galatians 1:15-16). And he could say, as in today’s verse, that those who heard him “glorified God in me.” He also commanded, “Those things, which ye have both learned, and received, and heard, and seen in me, do: and the God of peace shall be with you” (Philippians 4:9).

The Lord could say to His disciples, “He that hath seen me hath seen the Father” (John 14:9), and no one thinks it inappropriate because He fully manifested the heavenly Father in word and deed. Similarly, Paul said that “the truth of Christ is in me” and referred to “Christ speaking in me” (2 Corinthians 11:10; 13:3), noting that Christ was “mighty in me toward the Gentiles” (Galatians 2:8).

This was not boasting, for Paul acknowledged that “in me (that is, in my flesh,) dwelleth no good thing” (Romans 7:18). Still, he was bold to exhort, “Be ye followers of me, even as I also am of Christ” (1 Corinthians 11:1).

Now the same Spirit of Christ who dwelled in Paul also indwells all true Christians, for “if any man have not the Spirit of Christ, he is none of his” (Romans 8:9). We should be able to say with Paul, in practice as well as theory, that “Christ liveth in me.” HMM

“As Thou Wilt”

Matthew 15:21-28

JESUS’ ministry in the coasts of Tyre and Sidon is marked by the wonderful story of the Syrophenician woman (Matt. 15:21-28; Mark 7:24-30). He had not planned a public ministry in these parts, but Mark tells us “He could not be hid.” Neither can a true Christian be hidden; men will find him out.

This woman, outside the pale of His ministry to Israel, besought Him for her demonized daughter, but we read, “He answered her not a word.” Prayer often meets such a Divine silence, but few of us press on to an answer as did this needy soul. Too often we take silence to mean refusal.

The disciples, bothered by her begging, asked our Lord to respond and send her away. These poor men were continually trying to handle the cases that came to Jesus, but not in His way. He answers, “I am not sent but unto the lost sheep of the house of Israel,” which indicates that they had meant for Him to grant her request to get rid of her. It is another clear declaration of His ministry to the Jew first. “He came unto His own and His own received Him not.”

Not rebuffed at this, the woman beseeches Him, “Lord, help me,” identifying herself with her daughter’s need. Still stronger is the Lord’s reply: “It is not good to take the children’s bread and to cast it to dogs.” It is a severe answer. We pass over the sternness of our Lord in these soft, sentimental days. Had the woman come with less than genuine, importunate faith, this would have sent her away insulted—this calling the Jews “children” and the Gentiles “dogs.” But our Lord uses the term for little household dogs, and the woman catches the clue. “True, we may not have the bread, but surely we may share the crumbs.” Here is humility and perseverance that will not be denied! It is he who is willing to take crumbs who receives bread.

Such faith draws from our Lord the gracious answer: “O woman, great is thy faith: be it unto thee even as thou wilt.” Notice, it is as thou wilt. There is a faith that desires and asks, but here faith goes further and wills. Jesus tells us (Mark 11:23) that whoever shall command a mountain to be moved and shall not doubt but believe, he shall have whatever he says. Mind you, He does not say, “Whosoever shall ask God to move the mountain,” but “Whosoever shall say unto this mountain, Be thou removed.” Here is faith that dares to command. “Concerning the work of My hands, command ye Me” (Isa. 45:11). Mark tells us that He said, “For this saying go thy way; the devil is gone out of thy daughter.” Such faith always sends us on our way; and as we go we are cleansed, as it was with the lepers (Luke 17:14). The woman went, Mark tells us, and found it even as He had said. So did the nobleman (John 4:51). Oh, how rare is the faith that takes Him at His word and goes on believing!

“We are the children of promise.”

Galatians 4:21-31

Paul teaches us how to gather instruction from the ancient story of Ishmael and Isaac. Writing to those who were anxious to introduce Jewish ceremonialism into the Christian church, he says in—Galatians 4:21-31.

Galatians 4:21

Are ye not able to see a meaning in the incidents it records? Will ye only learn one part of its teaching, and shut your ears to the rest?

Galatians 4:28

We were not made sons of God by the energy of nature, but by the power of divine grace.

Galatians 4:29

Pharisees and self-righteous persons display great enmity towards those who depend upon the grace of God in Christ Jesus. They call them presumptuous, and revile their doctrine as tending to licentiousness.

Galatians 4:30

The system of salvation by works must be banished if grace is to reign; you cannot mix the two systems. The power and energy of self must also be no longer our trust if we desire to be saved through the promise. Human merit, the child of the flesh, will never agree with faith, the offspring of the promise.

Galatians 5:1-6

Galatians 5:1

Do not go back to legal hopes, and ceremonial observances. You are freeborn; do not submit to the yoke of bondage.

Galatians 5:4

If a man could be justified by the law he would have left the system of grace altogether, for the two are diametrically opposed. Thanks be to God, we dare not even hope for a legal righteousness, and if we never fall from grace till we have become justified by the law, that evil will never befall us.

Galatians 5:5

Our confidence is in the promise and grace of God; thus we are true Isaacs, born of the promise of God.

Galatians 5:6

The outward is disregarded and the inward becomes all-important. The flesh, like Ishmael, is sent away, and the newborn nature abides with the father, and inherits the covenant promises. All believers understand this riddle: can all of us in this household interpret it?

Once all my servile works were done

A righteousness to raise;

Now, freely chosen in the Son,

I freely choose his ways.

“What shall I do,” was then the word,

“That I may worthier grow?”

“What shall I render to the Lord?”

Is my enquiry now.

God’s Boundless Power Is All Around Us

And what is the exceeding greatness of his power to us-ward who believe, according to the working of his mighty power, Which he wrought in Christ…. Ephesians 1:19, 20

God is spirit and His universe is basically spiritual!

Scientists change their beliefs radically from time to time and I do not want to quote them in confirmation of Christian truth, but there does appear to be a startling parallel between the atomic theory of matter and the biblical concept of the Eternal Word as the source and support of all created things.

Could it be that, as certain mystics have insisted, all things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, are in reality but the goings forth of the power of God?

Whatever God is He is infinitely. In Him lies all the power there is; any power at work anywhere is His. Even the power to do evil must first have come from Him since there is no other source from which it could come.

Lucifer, son of the morning, when he lifted up himself against the Most High, had only the abilities he had received from God. These he misused to become the devil he is.

I am well aware that this kind of teaching raises certain very difficult questions, but we should never retreat before truth simply because we cannot explain it.

The fact of sin introduces a confusing element into our thinking about God and the universe and requires that we suspend judgment on many things. The wise man will note that the things we cannot understand have nothing to do with our salvation.

We are saved by the truth we know, and true Christians know that the boundless power of our infinite God is all around us, preserving us and keeping us unto salvation ready to be revealed.