Posts from February 2020

Matthew 6:13 (KJVS)  …For thine is the kingdom… God’s Kingdom is both future and present  (Luke 12:32).  The fullest expression is coming;  but the Spirit is at work today as we submit to God’s rule in our lives.  Do you live for Him on Sunday alone or does He rule in your heart every day of the week?  Begin and end your day by praying:  “Jesus be the Lord of every Kingdom of my heart.”

I Peter 5:6 (NLT)  So humble yourselves under the mighty power of God,  and at the right time He will lift you up in honor.  When we have prayed in faith we can rest firm in our confidence that God has heard us.  He will attend to all the issues;  and even when we don’t see our preferred timing in the answer,  keep in mind that His purposes are not being lost.  Human nature rests in the power of the…

II Peter 2:9  (NLT)  The Lord knows how to rescue godly people from their trials…  “A clear translation of Matthew 6:13 shows that Jesus actually directed us to pray:  Father,  should we at any point be led into any temptation,  test or trial,  we want to come out delivered and victorious.”  Any circumstances designed to lead us astray obviously do not come from the Lord  (James 1:13-14).  But the reality of everyday life confronts us with challenges and trials,  which…

Mark 11:25 (NIV)  And when you stand praying,  if you hold anything against anyone,  forgive him,  so that your Father in heaven may forgive you your sins.  Those who have received forgiveness need to be forgiving toward others.  Christ asks us to go the extra mile and take on the role of reconciler—just as He did for us when He reconciled us to the Father.  “The effects of sin and Satan’s discord in our lives makes us all terribly vulnerable…

I John 1:9 (NLT)  But if we confess our sins to Him,  He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all wickedness.  Not one of us is flawless.  Selfishness and pride grow all too easily in our hearts.  “Sin is an inherited inclination in us all,  and it needs to be forgiven.”  Jesus taught us to pray for forgiveness—not to remind us of our sinful nature as much as to  “keep us from…

Matthew 6:12 (NLT)  …and forgive us our sins,  as we have forgiven those who sin against us.   Jesus teaches us that if we do not live in  “God’s dimension of release and forgiveness toward others,  we will inevitably become an obstruction to our own life,  growth and fruitfulness.”  Forgiving faith works both ways.  We must confess our own violations against God,  and we must forgive others who we believe have violated us.  Forgiveness is a primary,  essential truth to…

Deuteronomy 33:25 (NIV)  As your days,  so shall your strength be.  When we pray,  “Give us this day our daily bread,”  we find in the Lord a strength proportionate to each day’s needs.  “Whatever challenges a day holds—confrontations,  difficulties,  even tragedies—we will receive the strength to face them.  Just as we derive physical strength and nourishment from eating daily bread,  so we will gain spiritual strength and nourishment when we learn the wisdom of acknowledging our dependency upon the Father—and…

Matthew 6:11(NIV)  Give us today our daily bread.  This supplication shows our need to learn an accountability for each day’s hours and events.  Jesus is teaching us to ask for the Father’s direction and provision in every event and during each hour of our day.  “Committing each day’s details to God in prayer—requesting today’s bread—can deliver us from pointless pursuits and wasted time.”  Such prayer paves the way to victorious days.  “Daily bread”  prayer is  “daily victory”  and  “daily overcoming” …

Psalm 90:12  (NLT)  Teach us to realize the brevity of life,  so that we may grow in wisdom.   This is a  “sound-minded request for wisdom to recognize how few days we have and how much we need to employ them wisely.  The psalmist also says,  My times are in Your hand;  deliver me from the hand of my enemies  (Ps. 31:15).  What wisdom!  When we put our day in God’s hands,  any enemy we face can be conquered.  Whether…

Matthew 4:4 (NIV)  Jesus answered,  “It is written:  ‘Man does not live on bread alone,  but on every word that comes from the mouth of God.’ ” When Jesus prayed,  “Give us this day our daily bread,”  He was talking about more than having enough food or having our physical needs met.  He was inviting us to come to the Father daily for refreshing,  renewal and nourishment for both soul and body.  We must recognize our dependency on the Lord…

Luke 19:13 (KJV)  And he called his ten servants,  and delivered them ten pounds,  and said unto them,  “Occupy till I come.”  The promise of Christ’s future Kingdom  “must not keep us from possessing the dimensions of victory that God has for us now.”  We must not neglect our prayer responsibilities but  “occupy”  by drawing on the resources of God’s Kingdom and power and reach into the realm of the invisible through prayer and change one circumstance after another.  It…

Genesis 1:28 (MSG)  God blessed them  (Adam and Eve):  “Prosper!  Reproduce!  Fill the earth!  Take charge  (KJV:  have dominion).  Jesus prayed,  “Your will be done.”  And He teaches us to pray for the reinstatement of God’s will on earth as in heaven.  “Most of the confusion,  agony and distress in our world today exists as a direct result of our having betrayed God’s initial entrusting of earth to us.”  We violated our God-given responsibility at the fall of man and…

Matthew 6:10 (NIV)  Your kingdom come,  your will be done…   Prayer is not getting God to do what we want.  Rather,  people  “need to invite God’s rule and power into the affairs of their lives through prayer.  For if humans will not pray,  God’s rule in their circumstances is forfeited.  This thought runs counter to the common supposition that if God wants to do something,  He will do it.  This sorry strain of fatalism infests most minds.  But the…

II Corinthians 3:18 (NASB)  But we all,  with unveiled face,  beholding as in a mirror the glory of the Lord,  are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory,  just as by the Spirit of the Lord.  Encounters with God on a regular basis bring transformation—the conforming of our wills to God’s and the shaping of our lives into His likeness.  We must respond to the Word of God,  obey the Holy Spirit and walk in daily obedience; …

Psalm 22:3  (NASB)  Yet You are holy,  O You who are enthroned upon the praises of Israel. This verse helps explain  “why worship is so important and so potentially transforming of our lives and circumstances.  It teaches that through worship,  God’s people may literally make an earthly place for Him to be enthroned in the midst of them.  We see that the dynamic objective of worship is not simply an exercise in religious forms;  instead,  worship is God’s assigned way…

I Peter 1:15-16 (MSG)  As obedient children,  let yourselves be pulled into a way of life shaped by God’s life,  a life energetic and blazing with holiness.  God said,  “I am holy;  you be holy.”   Jesus taught his disciples to pray:  Hallowed by Your name.  In these words we are invited to experience the transforming power of prayer.  The throne of God is an actual place—not some mysterious place  “up there somewhere.”  John describes it  (Rev. 4:8)  and tells…

I Thessalonians 5:5 (NLT)  For you are all children of the light and of the day;  we don’t belong to darkness and night.  “Nothing is more crippling to effective prayer than not having confidence in our relationship with God.”  When Jesus taught His disciples how to pray,  He began with the words:  Our Father… “We are given grounds for confidence in prayer on the strength of a Father-child relationship,  which the Bible says is established and secured through Christ  (I…

I Thessalonians 5:17 (MSG)  Pray all the time.   To pray all the time is to live in constant contact with the life flow of God,  to live in continual communion with Him.  Prayer is the one discipline over and under every other spiritual practice.  Few thinking people,  (even those who deny the existence of God)  deny that there is something to this practice of prayer.  The materialist and the Eastern mystic describe prayer as quiet creative reasoning or transcendent…

Psalm 139:23-24 (MSG)  Search me,  O God,  and know my heart;  test me and know my anxious thoughts.  Point out anything in me that offends you,  and lead me along the path of everlasting life.   The prayer for self-examination evokes a sense of dread.  We are inviting God to help US know ourselves better  (He already knows us best and loves us most).  Only under God’s steady gaze of love are we able to find the healing and restoration…

I Kings 19:7 (NLT)  Then the angel of the Lord came again and touched  (Elijah)  and said,  “Get up and eat some more,  or the journey ahead will be too much for you.”  The angel helped Elijah pay attention to the condition of his body as the vehicle that would enable him to take the journey that lay ahead.  If he did not care for his body,  the journey into the presence of God would be too much for him. …

I Thessalonians 5:17 (NLT)  Never stop praying.  All of life can be prayer because there are so many ways for us to connect with God.  Solitude and silence help us experience the more contemplative elements of prayer.  Lectio-divina is a way to pray the scriptures.  The prayer of examine is our expression to God to search us and reveal to us the things we need to understand about ourselves.  “Discernment is the listening part of prayer:  sitting with a question…

Romans 8:26b (MSG)  …God’s Spirit is right alongside helping us along.  If we don’t know how or what to pray,  it doesn’t matter.  He does our praying in and for us,  making prayer out of our wordless sighs,  our aching groans.  The Holy Spirit is the One who really knows how to pray.  Be alert for the  “breath prayers”  that emerge deep within you.  They are  “words that find their way to the surface from the depths of your soul…

Matthew 5:3  Blessed are the poor in spirit  (NIV).  With less of you there is more of God and His rule  (MSG).   Have you discovered wordless prayer?  It is when we come to God with no agenda.  “Half the time we don’t even know what we need;  we just come with a sense of our own spiritual poverty.”  Emptiness is the prerequisite for receiving.  “Rather than working so hard to put everything into words,  we rest from the noise…

Song of Solomon 2:10  (MSG)  My lover has arrived and he’s speaking to me!  “Get up,  my dear friend,  fair and beautiful lover—come to me!   Prayer at its best  “requires letting go into that relational free-fall that we call intimacy,  giving ourselves fully and openly and vulnerably to God.”  We cry out for Him,  yet resist at the same time because we sense risk.  “As long as we continue to reduce prayer to occasional piety we keep running away…