The Problem of a Powerless Prayer Life

The Pharisee, standing by himself, prayed thus: ‘God, I thank you that I am not like other men, extortioners, unjust, adulterers, or even like this tax collector. I fast twice a week; I give tithes of all that I get.’ – Luke 18:11-12 (ESV)

Prayer provides us with the possibility of purging ourselves.  We can simply empty our spiritual cup and pour out our deepest worries and fears.  We can hang on with the hope that God provides us through prayer.

Prayer is about making the powerless more powerful.  Prayer is about trust.  Prayer is about telling on ourselves and spilling it all to God, hoping that He will hear us and help us.  Prayerful people are powerful people.

But there is a problem when one’s prayer life becomes powerless.

Prayer becomes powerless based upon a few factors such as:

• Attitude: I fast twice a week; I give tithes of all that I get (v. 12)
  • Boasting is considered prideful.  Don’t get beside yourself and lose sight of your true focus during prayer.
  • You do not have to say a lot about you since the Lord knows your innermost intentions and desires, especially your sins and trespasses.
  • Act like you know that God knows you intimately and wants your submission.
• Approach: God, I thank you that I am not like other men, extortioners, unjust, adulterers, or even like this tax collector (v.11)
  • You can become powerless by placing the focus on the wrong thing.
  • Your focus needs to be on the Savior, not yourself
  • Approach Him and His throne of grace with humble submission
  • Approach the Lord with your own issues, not comparisons to others
• Actions: For everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, but the one who humbles himself will be exalted. (v. 14)
  • Your actions within prayer lead to how God handles your situation and supplication.
  • Do you truly believe that God heard this man’s prayer as humble and honorable?
  • Allow your actions to show your readiness to receive from God, whether it be rebuke or reward.

Prayer has the power to help us hold on for a little longer and endure our current circumstances.  It has the ability to power us and keep us going throughout the day to day.  Prayer can help us continue to have an everlasting hope of the eternal.

We will continue to look at the power of prayer over the next few weeks.  Look at some Prayer pointers offered through our other posts.

Seeing Success Differently

“The dream starts us on the success journey.” – John C. Maxwell

The success journey, as Maxwell calls it, is a daily thing to do.  Place it on your daily agenda.  Jot it down in your daily journal.  Put it your weekly planner.  Write it on your whiteboard in your office or cubicle.  Add success steps to your to-do list.  Scribble it out on a post-it that you place on your dashboard.  Make each and every single day count by seeking out success, endeavoring to make dreams turn into reality.

“Know where you are going.” – Norman Vincent Peale

If you are starting out on the journey, you need to have some idea of where you are heading on it.  Unless you have been endowed with a divine conversation like Father Abraham while he was still Abram of Ur, you cannot just simply take a walk of faith without any direction or destination.  You need to know where you are going and remain certain of that continually along the way.

“An idiot with a plan can beat a genius without a plan.” – Warren Buffet

The road to success is paved with execution of a well-designed plan.  Whether it is losing weight or dropping the burden and baggage of addiction for recovery, you need to have a plan.  Success requires a plan.

“Ministry is a marathon.” – Rick Warren

Coupon Code SAVE20 saves 20% On Any Order!

To become successful, you need to develop your plan and stick to your plan.  What I want you to truly understand is that all of your planning will require some adaptation along the way, but you will need to remain dedicated to your destination.  Your success will depend on your stamina and stability for staying the course. If you cannot endure the hardship and heartaches that come along with making moves to make your life better or the lives of others better, then you will not have enough fuel to finish the race to the end.

Find Flights under $49 !!!!

We cannot finish the journey and reach success unless we get started.  We get started by thinking through the opportunities and the obstacles, weighing out the pros and the cons.

Who is My Neighbor

27 And answering, he said, You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your strength, and with all your mind, and your neighbor as yourself.  28 And He said to him, You have answered right; do this and you shall live.  29 But he, willing to justify himself, said to Jesus, And who is my neighbor

Luke 10:27-29

 But he, willing to justify himself… (v.29)

What is the point of questioning the Lord’s answer? What do we expect to get out of it? It seems irrational to rationalize with God.  We cannot change an unchanging God, particularly if His ways and thoughts are not like ours.

The response of this man was to justify himself.  In other words, he sought to make himself look good among others.  By challenging the Master, he sought to bring His authority into question while making himself look good.  Such an attitude leads to pride and problems; pride because we think more highly of ourselves than we should and problems because we are not looking to the Lord for our answers.

And who is my neighbor? (v.29)

A good Samaritan? Not just a Samaritan, I’d say, but a good Samaritan. With all of what Samaritans were to the Jews, Jesus used a Samaritan as an example of being a good neighbor.  He shared from an unlikely source an example of what God expects of His people.

The truth is that this man had stepped out and did not appear to be ready to step away, back or even down.  Thus, Jesus takes this man and his attitude into account and begins a parable of loving your neighbor.

“To love anyone is nothing else than to wish that person good.”
-St. Thomas Aquinas

---

I Love My Neighbor!! Button
by Lifepath08

 

Love Your Neighbor 2019

A Christian crusade for community change through connection and compassion.

Life Path Mobile Ministries & Faith Impact Training (F.I.T.) work in conjunction with Life Path Multimedia to present a week-long campaign of Love Your Neighbor.   Explore and experience showing the love and spreading the love throughout Passion Week and Good Friday, all the way through Easter Sunday worship.  Let love provide the fuel for you this week and beyond as we evangelize and reach out with compassion and seek to make deeper connections with others through our love for Him towards others.

Jeremiah Journey Wk 8

Jeremiah is a challenge to the status quo.

Jeremiah is a challenge to our comfort zone.

I want us to get real about this before we drift and wander into other areas of biblical study.

I want us to get comfortable with the reality of what Jeremiah bith represents and presents throughout this journey.

7 Weeks into the Jeremiah Journey 

After 7 weeks, I wonder about this journey together.

Jeremiah is 52 books.  An entire year is 52 weeks.

By simple calculation, we should complete our journey by the end of 2018.

However, Jeremiah is more than a book of the Bible.  Jeremiah is more than a biblical character.  Jeremiah is beyond a prophetic figure preached and taught Sunday by Sunday in churches around the world.

Jeremiah is a Challenge to the Status Quo

For many of us, we tend to favor the contemporaries of Jeremiah more than the prophet himself.  We rest on the laurels of our good works and the good vibes of how good things are going with God’s grace and His countenance shining upon us.

We need a wake up call.

We are too aligned with the status quo.  We are too attached to traditionalism.  We are far too conservative in our approach to ministry.  We are way too complacent with our attack on social issues.

We have to see the challenge for us in Jeremiah’s calling to call out things as they truly are in God’s eyes.  The prophetic voice is oftentimes called upon to stand up to authority, to speak out against watered-down spirituality disguised as religion rather than routine, and to simply say “Thus sayeth the Lord” with boldness before the people.

We need to face the challenge to the status quo.

Jeremiah is a Challenge to Our Comfort Zone

We need to see Jeremiah, “the weeping prophet,” as a scriptural mirror held up before our very souls.   We need to see how much of ourselves can be seen in Jeremiah.  We need to see how much of our spirits reflect a similar spirit to that of Jeremiah.

• Jeremiah Speaks Truth to Power: He dealt with fellow ministers of the Lord who wanted him to shut up and shut down the prophetic calling out of Israel and its leadership.  It got him bound in chains.  It got him on the wrong side of society, even his own kin.
• Jeremiah Struggled with His Message: Any preacher, missionary, minister, evangelist or other type of servant of the Lord understands this.  Some of what we are called to say and do in the name of the Lord takes us to a place where we find more struggle and strife than we find comfort.  We are forced to seek the Lord repeatedly, especially when we realize what we have as our obligation to the Lord.  We struggle with it because we understand cause and effect.  We struggle with it because we can see the end result of how our sermons, Bible lessons and messages will be received by the people.
• Jeremiah Submitted to the Lord: Despite what his calling took him through, Jeremiah faced the challenge.  He struggled but he submitted.  He struggled with his own qualifications to even be a prophet but he submitted to the Lord.  He said he would not share the Word of the Lord any longer but he came around in the same breath and submitted to the Lord.  He submitted to the Lord and faced the prophetic challenge.

Jeremiah represents a challenge for us to get out of comfort zone and to get more comfortable with what God is truly calling for us to do with our lives, our voices, our purpose.

Our Journey Continues. . .

⁵ “For if you truly amend your ways and your deeds, if you truly execute justice one with another, ⁶ if you do not oppress the sojourner, the fatherless, or the widow, or shed innocent blood in this place, and if you do not go after other gods to your own harm, ⁷ then I will let you dwell in this place, in the land that I gave of old to your fathers forever. – Jeremiah 7:5-7 (ESV)

Chapter 7 gave Israel a challenge to once again to repent.  It addressed the nation’s idolatry, its wickedness, its injustice and its depth of transgressions.  It offered Israel an out.

As we move into chapter 8, keep Jeremiah’s predicament in mind.  He was not an outsider.  He was from among this same nation of people.  These were his countrymen.  These were his kin.  These were his own people.  Look at the depth of emotion that arises from Jeremiah in chapter 8.  See how he is personally touched by his challenge to preach prophecy to his people.

Jeremiah Journey Wk 7

Hear this, people of the earth:

I am going to bring disaster to the people of Judah!

It will happen because o the evil they plan.

They have not listened to my messages. They have rejected my teachings.

Jeremiah 6:19 (NCV)

The Lord shared His displeasure with Israel, particularly Judah, multiple times and multiple ways.  He stated it over and over again.  He pointed out the idolatry and refusal of the people to repent and restore their relationship with the Lord.

Multiple Times

The Book of Jeremiah is ripe with God expressing both is displeasure with and His desire for Israel.  It starts as early as the first chapter of the book.  It evolves into a flurry of frustration filled with the fiery wrath of God’s prophecy against the people.

Multiple Ways

The Book of Jeremiah uses metaphors, object lessons and just plain old prophetic talk.  The message was released but it was not received.  The message was revealing but it was rejected by the people.

Read Jeremiah chapter 7 this week.

Jeremiah, you will tell these things to the people of Judah.  But they will not listen to you! You will cll to them, but they will not answer you.

Jeremiah 7:27 (NCV)

As we continue our reading of the Book of Jeremiah, let us keep in mind that God is offering a message to the people through His chosen vessel- the prophet Jeremiah.  Sadly, as the Lord stated: They have not listened to my messages. They have rejected my teachings (Jeremiah 6:19, NCV).

Jeremiah Journey Wk 6

This week we begin to make a shift in our journey.  As you turn the pages and explore chapter 6 of Jeremiah, look at where we have been so far.  The Jeremiah Journey continues. . .

Jeremiah Journey Wk 5

“For this the earth shall mourn,
    and the heavens above be dark;
for I have spoken; I have purposed;
    I have not relented, nor will I turn back.”

-Jeremiah 4:28 (ESV)

Last week, we looked at chapter 4 in Jeremiah and saw God’s frustration with Israel’s idolatry.  At the end of the day, we learn how God’s wrath is on its way.  It is presented as inevitable as well as eventual with an invasion from the North.

How can I pardon you?
    Your children have forsaken me
    and have sworn by those who are no gods.
When I fed them to the full,
    they committed adultery
    and trooped to the houses of whores.

-Jeremiah 5:7 (ESV)

God refuses to hold back as He stated in Jeremiah 4:28.  Yet, the rebellious children of Israel refused to repent.  God calls out for them to repent.  God calls them on their mess, expecting them to turn their hearts again towards God, but they continued to rebel and not repent.

As you read through chapter 5 this week, answer the following questions:

1. What is God’s desire for Israel as He presented in the first 4 chapters of Jeremiah?
2. How does God describe Israel’s rebellion?
3. Write down some key terms from chapter 5 that let you know what has become of the relationship between God and Israel.
4. Summarize your thoughts and ideas regarding chapter 5 in one phrase or sentence.

Feel free to answer these questions via comments directly to the blog post, i.e. Question #1: God wanted loyalty and fidelity from Israel, especially the House of Israel.  Keep your eyes out for a special activity this weekend as we move on to chapter 6.