Quiet Time

I love my quiet time with the Lord, early in the morning, before the sun is fully up, before everything else is stirring.

I will adjust the time I get up to spend time with the Lord, the earlier I have to be someplace, the earlier I get up for quiet time. I must say, that has led to some very early quiet times over the years.

It is ingrained in my day, the few times when I miss my quiet time, I do feel out of sorts for the rest of the day. I need that daily time of prayer, reflection, reading of the word, meditation, and just having a conversation with God, just the two of us. I love this pisture I took at the Grand Canyon a few years ago at dawn, it is a good mind picutre for me to focus on when I think of quiet time, standing here at a quiet time, taking in the stunning beauty of the Lord's creation.

I feel that if I am going to hear that soft, still voice leading me, coaching me, prompting me toward action (or in my case, more probably inaction on a particular item), it is going to be during these early quiet times of the day.

The only regret I have about my quiet times is that I always feel like I should have let them last just a little bit longer.

The Devil Is In the Liverwurst

Not really, but I thought it was a title that might actually attract some attention. We just had a brown bag lunch discussion with our ministry staff and I had a liverwurst sandwich for lunch. Well, I actually ate it before the discussion because I was hungry and could not wait, plus I moderated discussion and wanted to be free for that. No, the devil did not make me do it.

The topic for discussion was how could Satan hinder our efforts and what could we do to combat that. I will not get into the specifics of what we discussed but there are certain themes that came across:

• You don’t need to do it – a loss of focus or a distraction to keep you from doing what is important to do
• You are not good enough – a sense that you efforts might not measure up ( to some unidentifiable standard perhaps), that others can do it better than you so why bother trying
• You are doing the wrong things – a feeling that what you are doing or would be doing just isn’t the right thing to do

My solution, and the main line defense against these types of spiritual attacks?

Take it to the Lord in prayer my friend, ask Him to help you sort it out and get back on The Narrow Road that He has set for your life.

The Road Is Not Too Narrow, Your Feet Are Too Big

If you struggle with your walk of faith with the Lord, welcome to the body of Christ. Jesus was the perfect man, being wholly God and fully man, completely obedient to the will of the Father (Read the upper room discourse in John 13-17 to get the full flavor of that). With that in mind, with the fact that the model we are to follow is the Holy God incarnate, it is no wonder we struggle. Anyone who tells you they do not struggle is lying, and therefore by definition, struggling with their walk. They just do not want to admit it publicly.

So our sinful, prideful, lustful human nature are our too big feet to walk on the path Christ laid down for us to follow. So you need Lord's help each and everyday to follow hard after Him. Ask for it, He will grant it. You may still struggle, but you can win through.

Pray continuously. That is, live with a prayerful attitude. Turn to Him in tough times for help. Turn to Him in good times to thank. Turn to Him at all times in praise and worship. You are living the life He has decided for you to live, praise Him for it and ask for His guidance, His wisdom and help.

Be patient. With your circumstances. With others. And especially with yourself. The Lord is rarely early but never late. he shows up on time. You just need to accept it is His timing not yours.

Be thankful. For what you have. For what He has kept you from. But mainly, for what Christ died to give you for eternity.

Keep at it, do not despair. God knows what we are capable of, and He loves us anyway.

Have faith in Him.

Busy in Prayer

I have not been blogging much of late, but I have been quite busy the past month. Visiting family for Thanksgiving, trying to wrap up the semester at seminary. I have also stepped into a full time ministry position at EvanTell, joining the team there in the past week as Chief Operating Officer. I am excited about my role there, and what the future holds for the ministry and me.

I have also been in prayer, for my role within kingdom work, for on going support for the ministry I am now joining, for the planning of new year at my church. As I have watched my schedule grow fuller and activities escalate, I have come to realize I need to be in prayer more often.

The busier life is, the more to need to stop and come before the Lord. It is clear that there may never be enough time to do all I want, but there is never too much to do that I cannot stop, thank Him for His blessings, ask Him for His strength and acknowledge that His will, not mine, be done. The danger of a busy, productive life is in thinking that one is the prime mover in it, not God.

So I look to Him in prayer and thanks. For giving me opportunities, for filling my day with reasons for joy, for giving me what i need to do what he wants. A new role awaits me in 2010, one I would not have thought of as I entered 2009. But the comfort I have is the fact that He may have surprised me, but I am doing just what He planned.

Technorati Tags: EvanTell, prayer, 121 Community Church, God, Lord, Jesus, ministry

I Am Starting To Feel Bad

About my lack of posting lately. But, apparently not bad enough to start up actively and semi-regularly. I am not sure why this is, if it is an extension of my blog hiatus of the summer, making the activity of September to November something of a dead cat bounce. An interesting comment given the picture of the pooch. Whatever, it is an extended dry period. And the picture is designed to elicit some comment, even if not about the blog topic itself.

In any event, it is not for a lack of activity in my life, there is much going on. Maybe it is for a lack of time to devote to blogging and musing over topics. It is not due to any crisis of faith that I am not blogging, I am going as strong as ever and seeking the Lord daily.

I am just not in the mood or right frame of mind to write about it. I apologize to anyone who enjoys seeing my posts (it is possible you know). I will spend some time in prayer, thinking about why I am off the grid for so long. And I will pray for guidance to start writing again. Your prayers are appreciated too. But whatever I do, I give it up to Him to guide me in my faith.

Technorati Tags: Prayer, Blogging, Faith

Centering Our Prayer

A few weeks ago I posted about praying outwardly. The theme was starting with yourself and God and praying out from there, using the High Priestly Prayer of John 17 as a guide; using Jesus as a model for your actions. But as I thought about this post in the days and weeks that followed I realized I missed something. I should not have started with God and myself, but with God. After all, Jesus is God, so His prayer in John 17 does not just start with the Father and Him, it starts with God.

Several years ago as a relatively new Christian, I went through a study in a small group at church using the Navigators 2:7 series. It is a great was to either ground or refresh yourself in the basics of your Christian faith. I recommend it highly. One of the items reviewed is a way to pray, summarized by the acronym ACTS (Adoration, confession, thanksgiving, supplication). It is a way to focus your prayer time, making sure you not only make it about your needs, but making you focus on the wonder of God before anything else.

But even with ACTS the majority of the focus is on self: your sins, your thankfulness, your needs or requests. I have often thought since that session that the majority of my prayer time should be spent on praise, on Him, not me. So as I now think about prayer, and praying outwardly, I think about starting with God and not self. He knows my needs (better than I do), he knows my sins, my faults and weaknesses (way better than I do). Isn't it a glorious thought to want to spend the majority of your prayer time just praising Him in all His glory? Isn't it enough that He is god and He has reached out and saved me from myself?

As I look at the picture again, wouldn't it be so much better to think of self as the first circle, and the center to be the blinding light of the Lord?

Praying Out

Maybe I should have called this post praying outwardly. It is a reflection on John 17, often referred to as the High Priestly Prayer. It comes at the end of Jesus' last teaching of the apostles in a lengthy passage in John 13-16 referred to as The Upper Room Discourse. I want to focus on not what Jesus prayed for, although there is much that we can benefit from deep study of this chapter in John. I want to focus on how Jesus prayed here. He prayed outwardly.

Jesus prays for Himself in 17:1-5; He prays for His disciples in 17:6-19 and prays for believers everywhere and at all times in 17:20-26. He starts at the center and moves out, broadening the people covering by His prayer as He prays. I take a few things from this:

• It is not selfish to pray for yourself first. In fact, it is the opposite. Focusing your prayer on God and self first helps bring you to the right place to be when coming before the Father in praise and supplication. Get yourself centered in God, and let your prayer flow from that. Jesus prayed for a right relationship between Him and the Father first and foremost. How could the rest of His prayer be ineffective if He was right with God from the start?
  
• Take care of home. Jesus prayed for those closest to Him in friendship and ministry after He prayed for Himself. Clearly praying for those around you to be in a right relationship with God is of extremely importance to each of us. We need to encourage and exhort one another; we need that support in close to be effective in prayer across His kingdom.
  
• Keep going out. Pray for the familiar, but continue to pray beyond your backyard. Pray across the street and across the ocean. The body of Christ cherishes the prayers of the body, no matter from whence it comes.
  

The picture shows a depiction of our circles of influence my church used a few years ago. I think it is a good way to portray these thoughts on how we ought to pray. Follow the pattern of John 17, pray as you can learn to do at the feet of the Master.

How and What Are You Asking?

Our Lord does not mean that our lives will be free from external difficulties and uncertainties, but that just as He knew the Father’s heart and mind, we too can be lifted by Him into heavenly places through the baptism of the Holy Spirit, so that He can reveal the teachings of God to us...Just as Jesus stood unblemished and pure in the presence of His Father, we too by the mighty power and effectiveness of the baptism of the Holy Spirit can be lifted into that relationship...Once in that wonderful position, having been placed there by Jesus Christ, we can pray to God in Jesus’ name—in His nature.
Oswald Chambers - My Utmost For His Highest: May 29 Devotional

Jesus did not promise everything in our desire, He promised us everything in His name. If you feel that God is not listening, is it because you are not asking in His name?

The Lord wants us to have as He has, be in a relationship with Him that models the relationship within the Trinity. If you are not asking in the nature that Jesus prayed to His Father, do not be surprised at the answer you get. For that answer will be no. It doesn;t please God toi have to say no to us; the glory we give Him comes from our obedience, of our being in His name.

He Comes First

My post yesterday talked about peace, and coming to peace with God first. After writing that post, I read Oswald Chambers which I have excerpted below. I think I see a pattern here:

When we look at these words of Jesus, we immediately find them to be the most revolutionary that human ears have ever heard. ". . . seek first the kingdom of God . . . ." Even the most spiritually-minded of us argue the exact opposite, saying, "But I must live; I must make a certain amount of money; I must be clothed; I must be fed." The great concern of our lives is not the kingdom of God but how we are going to take care of ourselves to live. Jesus reversed the order by telling us to get the right relationship with God first, maintaining it as the primary concern of our lives, and never to place our concern on taking care of the other things of life.

Oswald Chambers - My Utmost For His Highest: May 21 Devotional

I have been trying to walk in my faith long enough to realize when the same message comes through different means it is something I should stop, stand still and listen to. Have I been thinking about myself more than I have been thinking about putting God first? I didn't think so, but the message coming through is "Yes, you have."

So now I need to stop, stand still and listen to what it is God is trying to tell me, to get through that thick skull of mine. (I have always felt that if I had become President of the United States, I would wind up on Mt. Rushmore. No extra granite needed, just put my skull up there after I am gone from this world.)

My prayers need to focus less on worry and more on listening for God's voice and God's will. Future plans for school, ministry and life are in His hands, I need to await quietly for Him to open Them and show me what He holds in His palm for my future.

Less anticipation of what I seek, more expectation of what He will provide. Less praying for specific direction (which turns out to be my view of things), more praying for opportunities to discern His will (which forces me to look at things the way He does).

He who is holy, who is true, who has the key of David, who opens and no one will shut, and who shuts and no one opens, says this:
Revelation 3:7b (NASB)

If God wills it, no one can stop it, nor make it happen if He wills it not. Let me put Him first in thought and prayer and the rest will work out. I get the message, I pray for wisdom and strength to carry it out.

Habit Forming

...Your god may be your little Christian habit— the habit of prayer or Bible reading at certain times of your day. Watch how your Father will upset your schedule if you begin to worship your habit instead of what the habit symbolizes. We say, "I can’t do that right now; this is my time alone with God." No, this is your time alone with your habit... Love means that there are no visible habits— that your habits are so immersed in the Lord that you practice them without realizing it. If you are consciously aware of your own holiness, you place limitations on yourself from doing certain things— things God is not restricting you from at all...Is there someplace where you are not at home with God? Then allow God to work through whatever that particular circumstance may be until you increase in Him, adding His qualities. Your life will then become the simple life of a child.

Oswald Chambers - My Utmost For His Highest: May 12 Devotional

I think I have been guilty of this from time to time, making my time alone with God a box to be checked so I feel good about myself. Making my prayer and worship, my reflection and meditation more about saying I did it than actually doing it for the pure purpose of being closer to Him.

Do you do that? Does your time with God become habot forming for the purposes of being able to say to others (and yourself) that you have the habit?

Do I need my one on one time with God?

Absolutely.

Do I need my all the time with God?

Even more.

Looking Forward to the New Normal

I am looking forward to developing a new routine for the summer, or maybe it is reestablishing an old one.

Reading books I want to read at my own pace. Following and commenting on blogs a lot more closely than I have been been doing. Sitting at the table for two with God a lot more than I have been doing. More prayer, deeper prayer.

More time in ministering to others as opposed to tending to self.

I think the greatest growth comes not only when we stretch ourselves, but when when we also stretch for others. Investing in others is so much more valuable than just investing in self.

I am looking forward to a valuable summer. I will try to keep you posted, but I may be too busy.

But I am out of school for the summer. I almost feel like a teenager. I said almost, I am too much of a realist to leave that word off.

Reflections

Are things winding down or are they just beginning to heat up?

Today is last day of classes and then I am off for a little over three months. Lots of time to think about my fairly new status as a student and how best to manage it going forward. Lots of time to pour into the ministries I have been supporting this past year. Lots of time to plan a get away with the wife this summer.

What I seem to lack is the imagination to deal with these. I am hoping some down time turns into an uplifting time, to allow me to map out what the Lord would have me do the next three months, the rest of the year and into 2010. (2010? Yikes the 00's are almost over! When did that happen? Seems like yesterday I was planning for the end of the world with Y2K. I must have slept in for a big part of the past decade).

So I will focus on thought, on reflection and most of all on prayer. To determine the next step to take to stay firmly planted in the middle of His designated path for me.

For I know that the Lord is not finished with me yet.

The Narrow Road Guest Blogs Today

I am a guest blogger at World Prayer today. Some of my thoughts that I have shared with you on the topic of prayer are there today. Please check them out daily, even if you do not go by today. They have some good people associated with their purpose and their blog.

Reflection on a Fast

I recently completed a 30 hour fast and made notes on some of my reflections during that period. I thought I would share them today:

The first evening of the fast I had a meeting of the leadership team at my church, 121 Community Church in Grapevine; a team I recently became a member of. Initially I was concerned that the fast would start with a “business” type meeting but those fears were immediately alleviated.

Our senior pastor asked up to break up into small groups for a period of focused prayer, both for individual needs and also guidance from the Lord in matters we were discussing involving governing the affairs of the church.

In both this small group of prayer, and then the larger group of the meeting itself, it was good to be with other men who were seeking the Lord’s face that evening, who were looking to be obedient to His will in how we directed the church. I find it strengthening to my own resolve to seek His will in this period of fasting, meditation and prayers, knowing how other men I look up to for their desire to be obedient to Him are seeking Him out in prayer as well.

In the morning, after my usual prayer time and bible reading, I opened Handbook to Renewal by Kenneth Boa to a random page to study some Scripture laid out in a topical format. The section I turned to was on Faith, Trust and Dependence in the context of My Relationship to God. There were many passages from the Psalms; I focused on several passages within the Psalms for deeper meditation:

20:7 – Some boast in chariots and some in horses, But we will boast in the name of the Lord, our God.

38:9 – Lord, all my desire is before You; And my sighing is not hidden from You.

55:22 – Cast your burden upon the Lord and He will sustain you; He will never allow the righteous to be shaken.

94:22 – But the Lord has been my stronghold, And my God the rock of my refuge.

As I study these passages, I realize I can hide nothing from Him and in my concern I reveal my own weakness not His; attacks on my faith, not assaults on His sovereignty.

As evening approached I reflected on how hard it is to wait on the Lord’s timing in my pride and impatience. When is He ready to reveal His will to me? Not until I am ready to receive, and that has a lot to do with how ready I am to be obedient to it.

During the evening I thought about the weakness of my flesh and the strength I have only in Christ, for without Him I am truly weak. I thought about who He would have me serve based on what he has given me and reflect on the following verses:

Isaiah 1:17 - Learn to do good; Seek justice, Reprove the ruthless, Defend the orphan, Plead for the widow.

Hebrews 13:2 - Do not neglect to show hospitality to strangers, for by this some have entertained angels without knowing it.

1 Peter 4:10 - As each one has received a special gift, employ it in serving one another as good stewards of the manifold grace of God.

From reading these I know I am to use the gifts He has given not for me, but for helping others, for it is through this service that I bring glory to His name and not gain to myself.

At night I also thought about being in the world amongst non-believers but not of the world. My wife and I have felt convicted recently about the lack of interaction we have with non-believers and we both know we need to do more. I reflected on the following verses as I thought about structuring our lives to make more time available to seek out and befriend those who do not know Jesus as Savior.

Luke 10:2 - And He was saying to them, "The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few; therefore beseech the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into His harvest.

2 Corinthians 5:11 - Therefore, knowing the fear of the Lord, we persuade men, but we are made manifest to God; and I hope that we are made manifest also in your consciences.

Ephesians 6:19 – and pray on my behalf, that utterance may be given to me in the opening of my mouth, to make known with boldness the mystery of the gospel.

I broke the fast the next morning after doing my morning prayers and bible reading. I also reflected on the following passage out of Oswald Chambers-My Utmost For His Highest which felt like a summary of the fast for me:

“As the disciples were commanded, you should also say nothing until the Son of Man has risen in you— until the life of the risen Christ so dominates you that you truly understand what He taught while here on earth. When you grow and develop the right condition inwardly, the words Jesus spoke become so clear that you are amazed you did not grasp them before. In fact, you were not able to understand them before because you had not yet developed the proper spiritual condition to deal with them. Our Lord doesn’t hide these things from us, but we are not prepared to receive them until we are in the right condition in our spiritual life“.

God's Timing in Our Problems

Some further musings from different years on the same day in my journal:

He said to David, "You are more righteous than I; for you have dealt well with me, while I have dealt wickedly with you.
1 Samuel 24:17 (NASB)

David chose not to kill Saul when an opportunity arose because he saw it as his timing and not God's. He chose to trust God's will and timing and not forsake it for what seemed like a huge immediate benefit.

For I was ashamed to request from the king troops and horsemen to protect us from the enemy on the way, because we had said to the king, "The hand of our God is favorably disposed to all those who seek Him, but His power and His anger are against all those who forsake Him."
Ezra 8:22 (NASB)

Ezra teaches of the wisdom of waiting on God's timing and trusting in His will. Although he wasn't referring to David in any way, how applicable is the wisdom of the passage to the situation David faced in the cave with Saul. Ezra and David could have turned to man, to self to solve a problem but waited for God's timing.

Are we waiting for God's timing as we face the troubles in the world today? As I look around, I cannot help but feeling that we are trying to solve our problems without God's help.

I cannot help but feeling that we are going to make an awful mess of it as a result.

Let us turn to the Lord in prayer and get ourselves on The Narrow Road.

Prayer From The Wallet and Not From The Heart?

How wrong is this? I cannot begin to say. I hope it is all a joke, although if it is, I do not get it.

"Information Age Prayer is a subscription service utilizing a computer with text-to-speech capability to incant your prayers each day. It gives you the satisfaction of knowing that your prayers will always be said even if you wake up late, or forget.

We use state of the art text to speech synthesizers to voice each prayer at a volume and speed equivalent to typical person praying. Each prayer is voiced individually, with the name of the subscriber displayed on screen.

At Information Age Prayer we think our service should be used like a prayer supplement, to extend and strengthen a subscriber's connection with God. Traditional prayer is an integral part of this connection and should never be forgone, even after signing up.

You can subscribe for yourself, or you can purchase a subscription as a gift to friends or family."

[HT: ChurchCrunch] (By the way, cool blog that actually let me guest blog)

Lasting Prayer

Yesterday I wrote about being able to engage in deeper, more meaningful prayer. Then at seminary we had a prayer chapel in anticipation of the World Evangelization Conference we are having next week. So it was a bunch of people all praying together for evangelism efforts and ministry around the world. I guess that was why it was on my heart yesterday.

It made me think that not only did I want deeper prayer, that which I called fasting prayer, but I also want longer prayer, for things that would stay on my heart and in my mind.

Lasting prayer.

I want it to be heartfelt and soulfelt. I want to it be with me through the day so it brings me back to Him on a regular basis to talk, to ask for intercession, to seek His voice and His guidance.

Deep and longlasting. A serious antedote to the pain of this world.

Fasting Prayer

A few weeks ago I did a one day fast and I found myself going to the Lord in prayer much more than I would regularly do. It was deeper than the normal prayer times as well. This bothers me now as I think back on it. Why can I not have such deep meaningful prayer more often than when I do a one and a half day fast?

For anyone who has met me, it is obvious I do not miss many meals. Is it the time I freed up from eating or the thought of not eating and how to cope with that fact that drove me into prayer? I hope that was not all it was, for that is a sorry state of affairs.

But that outcome is what I am seeking. Deep, meaningful prayer on a daily basis. What I call fasting prayer. Coming before the Lord in need and knowing He can give you the strength to do what you know would otherwise be impossible. Giving it all to Him and knowing there is no other way through for you. Prayer so important to you that you are willing to set aside doing other things in your life because you know they are not what prayer is-talking to God, and what can be more important than that.

Take the time today to engage in some meaningful, heartfelt prayer. Consider not doing something else to make time for prayer, to show our Father that there is an importance and an urgency to coming before Him, and that you recognize prayer as such activity.

I want to be lost in prayer today, even if just for a few minutes. I want to be lost without it.

Prayer Time

Some thoughts on a verse I put in my journal two years ago:

Very early in the morning, while it was still dark, Jesus got up, left the house and went off to a solitary place, where he prayed. Mark 1:35 (NASB)

Solitary prayer alone with God. Jesus got up early, obviously before anyone else was up to do this. If it was important to Him, to His spiritual life to have the type of time alone praying, His "Table for Two" with the Father, how important is it for us?

A snippet from the 1/28 The Daily Spurgeon ties in nicely with this for me:

The true Christian has a peace which is totally unknown to any
other man; yea, he hath “the peace of God which passeth all
understanding.” There are indeed two kinds of peace into the secret
satisfaction of which no unconverted person can enter — peace with God, and peace in the heart...

From a sermon entitled "The Great Privation: Or, The Great Salvation."

I pray to get nearer to God. I pray to get the peace that is not otherwise available to me. I pray when I struggle with my life (like yesterday) to get the calm, if not all the answers, to go on with things in a way that glorifies my God.

I pray because Jesus did, and how can I go wrong with His behavior to aspire to? If only I could do it more faithfully and consistently (or a little less stubbornly), for when I do I enter His rest and feel His peace.

The Upcoming

I have been sitting here this afternoon, alternating between some reading, some praying and some thinking about the upcoming days, weeks and months. Which is why I have been praying.

Have you ever felt on the cusp of some breakthrough in your life, a point of inflection where things are going to start moving forward in an ever quickening pace?

That's how I feel right now. That things are going to start accelerating, that the Lord is going to step up the tempo, and that I am going to have to push to keep up. Since He only gives us what we can handle, I may feel overwhelmed by it, but I will not drown, He will not let me.

It feels exciting. I am eager to start, anxious to begin, and I desire to serve Him as He has already foreseen.

Why do I feel this way today? I do not know why I feel like I am at the edge, ready to leap into His arms.

But I do. The hard part will be to be patient until His voice says "GO", softly but firmly, with a confidence, a surety that can only come from Him.

"Dear Lord, I want all that you have for me, but in your timing, not mine."

Wild, huh?