Author: Rick (Page 7 of 36)

“Call unto Me, and I will answer thee, and show you great and mighty things, which you know not”   Jeremiah 33:3

God encourages us to pray. Many say that prayer is a pious exercise which has no influence except upon the mind engaged in it. That it is an act of obedience that really has minimal worth.  That a sovereign God will not respond to puny requests by mere mortals.  That, as it says in Julius Caesar, “our fate lies in the stars,” and we are just puppets and God is the puppet master.  But we know better. The Word refutes this idea a hundred times over.   In the passage above, Jehovah, the living God, distinctly promises to answer the prayers of His servant. Why would we think otherwise?

In Philippians we are told, “Do not be anxious about anything, but in every situation, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God. And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus. (Philippians 4:6-7)  How can we receive peace from prayer if it is without power? How can an act of futility give us peace in the midst of difficulty?
If prayer is of no consequence, then why pray?  Is it a mere command like we use to give our faithful pet Buddy?  We told him to sit and he did, but he gets nothing out of it but the dog knowledge that he has obeyed us?  It would be the equivalent of us teaching him to bark for a treat, but he never gets a treat.  We just tell him, in our best dog language, that his reward is in obedience alone and we will just continue to have him bark and remain treatless. Of course, making any comparisons between God and us and a pooch is pretty futile, but the idea is similar.

Some people neglect prayer because they are not convinced of its authenticity.  Sadly it seems that prayer ebbs and flows in our life maybe more than any other Christian discipline.  The old saying, “Seven days without prayer makes one weak,” has more truth than not.  Early African converts to Christianity were earnest and regular in private devotions. Each one reportedly had a separate spot in the thicket where he would pour out his heart to God. Over time the paths to these places became well worn. As a result, if one of these believers began to neglect prayer, it was soon apparent to the others. They would kindly remind the negligent one, “Brother, the grass grows on your path.”  Unfortunately, too few of us have a well-worn path or a good friend to remind us if we  neglect it.

God says He will answer prayer and I believe Him.  He says He is totally sovereign and I believe Him.  He says we have free will and I believe Him.  That I can’t rectify some of this in my limited mind is not a reflection on Him, but on the vast gap between God’s thinking and my own.  Buddy understood me more than I understand God and Buddy didn’t understand me at all.  Even though Buddy didn’t understand me, he believed me.  If I touched a leash, he went  crazy knowing we were going for a walk.  How sad it would be, if I would just touch the leash and then walk away over and over.  My broken promise of a walk would finally weigh on him and he would stop believing me. Would God promise in His word that prayer is meaningful and then just walk away over and over? That does not fit the character of God

Let’s call upon God and admit no doubt that he always hears our prayers and that they are meaningful to Him.  Would He that made the ear, not hear?  Would He that gave parents a love for their children, not listen to the cries of His own children, as well!God will answer us in our anguish. He has wonders in store for us. What we have never seen, heard of, or dreamed of, He will do for us.

He will invent new blessings if need be.  He will ransack sea and land to feed us: He will send out angels from heaven to save us if our distress requires it. He will astound us with His grace and make us feel that it was never before done in this fashion. All He asks of us is that we will call upon Him. He cannot ask less of us, but he does not ask more.  We can know that we can call on Him and He will hear our cries and do great and mighty things.  Wear out your prayer path and see what He can do.

“This too, I see, is from the hand of God, for without him, who can eat or find enjoyment? To the man who pleases him, God gives wisdom, knowledge and happiness” Ecclesiastes 2:24b-26a

God, through the author of Ecclesiastes, has told us several things in these verses.  First of all, we find out that only from the hand of God can we receive sustenance. We may get our food in many ways. Some buy it, some grow it, some raise it, and some even go out and kill it. But ultimately we are just the middle man between God and our plates. When we give thanks before a meal, it should not be a generic utterance, a formality that just seems like the right thing to do, but a genuine recognition of the founder of the feast. Unfortunately, the secular recitation “Good bread, good meat, good grief, let’s eat,” or “rub-a-dub-dub, thanks for the grub, yea God,” might have more sincerity than some of our dutiful Christian utterances before meals.

Of course, God isn’t only the founder of the feast, but the provider of our peace. The writer asks us, “without Him, who can find enjoyment?” Can we enjoy things outside of God?  Undoubtedly. 

But true enjoyment comes from many of the things that God has provided us.  What good thing do we enjoy that God did not have a hand in?  There are none.  We enjoy a painting; who gifted the artist to paint it?  We are overwhelmed by the sight of a mountain; who created it?  We are exhilarated by a sport; who gave men and women the ability to play it?  But, of course, the question always arises- what about the sin that man enjoys?  Did God give us that?  No, God gives us the good and man in turn corrupts it.  Almost every good thing God gives us is distorted by man and made just a shadow of what it was meant to be. If we think the pathetic sinful perversion of some great gift God has given us can compete in ultimate joyfulness we are delusional.  How many sinful endeavors begin with delight and end in a plight. The truest joy comes from the knowing the creator of joy.

God goes on to tell us that those who seek after His kingdom will receive “the special gifts of wisdom, knowledge, and happiness.”  Knowledge is knowing and wisdom is knowing how to use our knowledge.  What is the result of that?  Happiness.  All the knowledge in the world is of no value if we don’t know how to use it.  All the wisdom in the world is useless without true knowledge.  I use to listen to a very intellectual show (I know, that is hard to believe) that every week pitted two people of totally different persuasions to politely duke it out for an hour and a half.  Awhile back I listened to an atheist scientist dialogue with a devout Christian scientist.  Both men were knowledgeable (they drove me to my dictionary several times), but as they spoke, I realized that though they both spoke in revered terms about creation, one man had the advantage of also being in awe of the creator.  There was a distinct difference in their tones.  One was amazed by the facts and the other amazed by the act that created the facts as well as the facts. I sensed that there was greater joy in getting to know the creator than just getting to know the creation.

The true message of these verses is that enjoyment is a gift of God. There is nothing  that we can possess, nothing we can do, nothing we can experience that can compete with those things given us from the hand of God. God wants to richly bless us and we can sit at His banquet table or settle for scraps.  It is wonderful to realize that God already has a seat saved for us.

In his first letter to Timothy, Paul said, “He richly provides us with everything for our enjoyment.” (1 Timothy 6:17)  It is God’s desire and intent that all the good things of life should contribute to our enjoyment.  We will only experience this world as God intended if we understand that true joy only comes from Him.  

“For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them. For his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made. So they are without excuse. For although they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking, and their foolish hearts were darkened.  Romans 1:19-21

Last night I was on the deck until almost midnight just looking at the sky. It was still really warm that late at night and I really enjoyed the peace and quiet.  It reminded me of the above verses, so I thought I would share them today.

Paul wrote  these words to the Romans in an attempt to show how many had replaced the creator with the creation as an object of worship.  Of course, like all of God’s Word, it is just as relevant today as it was in Paul’s time.  Actually, since the world is degrading with time, it is probably even more relevant today than it was in those years following Christ’s death.

When we look at the intricate detail of the smallest things in nature up to the huge and complex design of the whole universe and remain objective, our only conclusion is there must be a designer.   Unfortunately, the complexity and beauty of the creation have not pointed  people toward God, but toward worshiping the creation itself. We who live here in Oregon can easily find ourselves in that kind of a predicament.  It is so beautiful here we can lose sight of who has made things so beautiful here.

I have often hear the phrase, “I am spiritual, but not religious.  If I want to connect with God I go to the (insert favorite nature place here… river, mountain, camp, hike).”  And who can blame them?  There are so many places that are so serene and can give us such a variety of emotions- from peace to excitement.  But what we can never forget is this- although those might be places for worship, the places cannot be worshipped.  In other words, no one can object to us worshipping there, but the place cannot be the object  of our worship.

Every time we sit beneath a sky (like I did last night) it becomes a reminder, a lesson so to speak, about who God is. That reminder is what changed British Professor and Philosopher Anthony Flew in 2004.  He was regarded by many as the world’s most acclaimed atheist and when he renounced his atheism in favor of theism, it rocked the world of science as much as the church would have been rocked if Billy Graham suddenly renounced his Christian faith.  What was the basis of Flew’s conversion? The evidence around him.  He became fatigued by having to ignore the undeniable design of all we see in favor of a fortunate stroke of good luck that brought this altogether so nicely.

We should never allow ourselves not to be in awe of the world around us.  We should never take its beautiful design for granted.  But we must also remember why it is here – to point us toward God, and although it points to Him, it should not be confused with Him.  Paul says this two verses later when he writes, “Claiming to be wise, they became fools, and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man or birds or animals or reptiles (Rom 1:22-23).”  Creation represents the greatness of God, and without Him it would not exist.  Let’s never degrade God by putting His creation above Him who is the creator.  Check out the sky tonight and thank Him for the wonderful signposts He has made that emphatically, undeniably, and unquestionably point to Him.

“Oh how love I Thy law! It is my meditation all the day.” Psalm 119:97

I was out on my porch at about 11:45 last night and it was very quiet. I wasn’t even hearing traffic on the highway and that was unusual. It was really easy to think (well, as easy as it is for me to ever think).  It reminded me of a time quite  a while back when Chris, Noah, and I met at Dorena Lake.  We stopped at two campgrounds and a few other places on our trip around the lake, and at a couple of our stops it was just so quiet that Chris made a comment about it. I guess we get so used to noise that when we can’t hear anything, it almost strikes us as odd.

That is why it is important to get away from it all and spend some time with Lord on a consistent basis, eliminating all distractions and just giving Him and Him alone some of our alone time. Christianity is not a legal relationship, it is a love relationship. We should not have to be forced to spend time with Him by threat, but by our own desire. We are called to more like Christ, but we cannot do that on our own, we need to spend time with Him.

Of course, the key to all of this is determining a need, and thus a desire, to spend time with the Lord, so we need to start there. So let’s just say we see the value of spending at least a few minutes with God each day and we want to take some steps to make it happen. The very first step is to pray about it. We are not naturally inclined to do the right things. I sometimes console myself after a bad golf game by reminding myself that I am trying to get a little ball into a little hole that has the whole world around it. Well, when we want to put ourselves in a special spot with the lord, we are surrounded by the whole world that opposes us. So we must enlist the only one who can help us, the maker of the whole world. Once we decide to create a quiet time and pray for God’s guidance, it is time to begin the process.

One of my favorite Pastors, Adrian Rodgers, lists five things to keep in mind when trying to develop a good quiet time with the Lord. The proper period, preparation, place, provision, and preparation are all essential to creating a special time with God.  Of course, like I said, this all follows prayer, so what we have here are the six p’s of creating a peaceful time with God. Wait a minute, peaceful, that’s now seven p’s!

First we must find a proper period of time. We should strive for at least half an hour, but some time is better than no time, so if we can’t start at thirty minutes, we should begin with ten. It should be a time when we are alert. We all know when our alert times are. Morning is good if it is possible. Psalm 5:3 says, “… in the morning will I direct my prayer unto Thee, and will look up.” But whenever is the best time, it is best if it is the same time, all the time. It’s funny because many spend countless hours in endeavors that will help their physical bodies, but struggle to give ten minutes to their spiritual ones.

It is important that we properly prepare for this time by clearing our heads of distractions. If we have something in our hearts that needs to be taken care of, we need to take care of it. We need think upon the Lord, not on our shortcomings. Like readying ourselves for any other endeavor, we must separate ourselves from anything that will steal our focus.

Once we have decided on a time and have prepared ourselves mentally, we must find a proper place where we can focus. Jesus said enter into your closet and pray (see Matthew 6:6) but that simply means to find a place of isolation where we can shut the door on the world and open the windows to heaven. Jesus sought out places where He could be alone, and so should we.

When getting ready for the camping trip, I make a list of provisions. If I don’t make a list, I will be without what is necessary, when it is necessary. There is nothing worse than trying to clean a fish with a spoon. There are several proper provisions that can be helpful to us in our quiet time. A good Bible (readable, accurate, and familiar) is essential and a prayer journal and/or notepad for writing is advisable. There are all kinds of other things that can be added later, but for starters, this is really all we need.

So what would be the proper procedures for an effective quiet time? First of all, we need to quiet our spirits. The Bible says in Psalm 46:10, “Be still, and know that I am God.” After we quiet ourselves, it is good to read the Word. We like to jump right in and talk to God, but He already knows us pretty well. It might be best to get to know Him better. We tend to focus on self, but we want to focus on God, instead. When reading, how much we read is not nearly as important as how we read. Reading goals (reading through the Bible in a year) and devotionals should probably remain separate from our quiet time. A quiet time should just be us and God.  We can read other authors at other times.

After we have read and maybe looked at how the passages apply to us and maybe even jotted down a few notes, we are ready to pray. Our prayer time should be honest and open. I like praying aloud (when I am not in a public place!) for two reasons. One, I think it focuses us better. It is harder for our minds to wander when we are hearing what we are saying. Secondly, the dark principalities and powers of this world can’t read our thoughts, but they can hear our words and nothing clears them out of an area faster than prayer!

Each day we should take what we learn during our quiet time and apply it to our day. I have heard it said that our spiritual train runs on two rails, knowledge and obedience. If either rail stops, so does the train. Remember, pray that God will help us to begin. When it comes to good things we should do, it’s always best to start at the beginning. Any time is better than no time and more time is better than little time. Developing a good quiet time can be a little like my golf game.  It might take a while to get there, lagging our way up to the green, and we may get off in the woods at times, but we need to just keep shooting for the goal and eventually we will get there!  We just can’t stop trying!

”The thief cometh not, but for to steal, and to kill, and to destroy: I am come that they might have life, and that they might have it more abundantly.” John 10:10

“For if by the one man’s offense death reigned through the one, much more those who receive abundance of grace and of the gift of righteousness will reign in life through the One, Jesus Christ. Therefore, as through one man’s offense judgment came to all men, resulting in condemnation, even so through one Man’s righteous act the free gift came to all men, resulting in justification of life. For as by one man’s disobedience many were made sinners, so also by one Man’s obedience many will be made righteous.” Romans 5:17-19

When we are truly a believers in the Christ, we receive His gift of righteousness! Righteousness is not something we earn, but rather it’s a gift we receive when we accept Christ’s sacrifice on our behalf! We have received the gift of righteousness through Him, not because we have kept the “law” or lived a holy life. The righteousness of Christ can’t be bought with money, or earned through self-effort, or by doing “religious” works. It’s a gift! When we receive righteousness, we should live as though we possess righteousness, but unfortunately, we often get caught up in the same unrighteous behavior that traps those who do not know Christ.

Though salvation cannot be earned, we certainly can earn our falling away from the Lord by slowly accepting more and more compromising behavior into our lives. As we slowly accept more sin in our lives, it holds us back in our Christian walk. It doesn’t happen all at once, but slowly, until we find our lives very much like our lives before we met Christ.

I have often said that the Christian life is a bit like rowing upstream. If we don’t keep paddling, we will start to drift back and eventually see the same scenery we saw before our conversion. The more we see it, the more we accept it, and the more we accept it, the less apt we are to paddle at all. We remain on the waters of salvation, but we are no longer experience the newness of the Christian walk, but aimlessly drift through the same things unbelievers experience.

And all this happens slowly at first. Satan doesn’t like to see us jump into sin because that is too obvious. He likes to see us work into it, subtly. I heard a story once about how eskimos kill wolves. The eskimo covers his knife with blood, freezing it in new layers one on top of the other until it is thick with frozen blood. Then he puts fresh blood on top of the frozen layers and leaves the knife. When a wolf finds the knife, he starts licking. Eventually the sharp blade of the knife is exposed. By the time the wolf reaches the blade he does not stop licking because he is caught up in satisfying his lust for blood and does not notice that his ravenous craving is now being satisfied by his very own blood! The Eskimo will return to find the wolf lying dead in the snow.

Sin entices and seduces us in precisely the same way. We get caught up in some sort of destructive fleshly pleasure — gossip, rage, laziness, etc. Once we give in to its pleasure, our craving for it increases. As we continue to allow ourselves to indulge, it grips us all the more. And before we know it — it completely consumes us. Friendships are damaged. Marriages hurt. Testimonies spoiled. It all happens right under our noses with our own participation. Like cows that wander from the field nibbling a tuft of grass and then nibbling the next tuft of grass and then the next until they are hopelessly lost, we nibble ourselves into sin and away from the protection of God.

When we took the grandkids to the museum years ago, they watched a rattlesnake eat a mouse. First, he bit it and the mouse slowly died and then the snake swallowed it up. It was quite a lesson in the workings of nature! I heard the story of mouse which was put into the cage of a sleeping snake and it actually started covering up the snake with the wood shavings in the bottom of the cage. When the snake was all covered, the mouse probably felt relieved. The danger was gone! Guess what. It did not work. The danger was still there, it was just not noticeable. We can try to hide our actions from ourselves, but the danger is still there and will eventually get us!

We cannot blindly sin and not have it affect us. It will eventually catch up with us. There is a fable about a pig which ate all the acorns under a tree and then tried to root around for more.

A crow remarked, “You should not do this. If you lay bare the roots, the tree will wither and die.” “Let it die,” said the pig. “Who cares as long as there are acorns?” We cannot expose the roots of our righteousness to the sin of this world and expect to receive the rewards of righteousness in our life. We need to keep paddling and if we start seeing familiar scenery, we better stop and check to see if we are really paddling as we should.