Skip to main content

PRAY

Psalm 18:6 “But in my distress I cried out to the lord; yes, I prayed to my God for help. He heard me from His sanctuary; my cry to Him reached His ears.”

1 John 5:14-15 “And we are confident that He hears us whenever we ask for anything that pleases Him. And since we know He hears us when we make our requests, we also know that He will give us what we ask for.”

We can know assuredly from the Word of God that the transformation of our lives is the will of God. It is written, “This is the will of God: your sanctification.” (1 Thessalonians 4:3) The Psalmist was crying out to the Lord because he knew that he was not able to save his own life to any degree. The Gospel makes it clear that salvation is of the Lord and is found nowhere else.

We are encouraged and exhorted to know the will of God and to live into that will by the power of the Holy Spirit. God’s Word written, the Bible, gives clear revelation about the things God calls good, the things He wants us to walk in as a matter of course. Thus, there are things we do not have to pray about wondering if it is “OK” by the Lord.

In the early church people cried out, “What must we do to be saved!?” Sadly, and all too often people now ask, “What can I do and still be saved?” Salvation is demonstrated in a radical transformation by the Holy Spirit’s power working in the life of a Christian. His Life within us results in a changed way of living, a radical departure in what one does now that they used to do then.

When we pray with understanding coming from God’s Word, we can know the Lord hears us. When we are struggling against sin, be it envy or sexual immorality, greed or unforgiveness, when we cry out to the Lord for help, we can rest assured that He hears us and will help us to say “Yes!” to righteousness and “No!” to sin.

Asking the Lord to strengthen your faith, to anoint you for ministry, to guide you by the Holy Spirit, to heal the wounds on your soul and to continue His work of rescue and restoration in you, He will always answer those prayers. God wants to be whole, holy, free, ethical, and moral in the way we live and interact with others. Because we belong to Him in Christ Jesus, we know, based on His promises, that He will complete in us the good work of salvation and life-transformation He began when by His grace He saved us through faith in Jesus Christ.

God never leaves a saint where He found them. A sinner saved by God’s grace becomes a one of His sons or daughters; they are made saints by God. Because God has made us His people, His saints, we can now grow up into and become that which He has created us to be as His new creations. The Apostles, in their writings, the Epistles, never address the early believers as “sinners saved by grace” for they are always called saints, God’s own people. Your Heavenly Father cares more for you than you could ever know, and it is His great joy to answer the cry of His sons and daughters in need as they pray. Always pray.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

WHAT DO YOU BLESS? It would be an act of utter folly and disaster were I to choose to "bless" what God will not bless. God's wrath is set against anything and anyone that would try and hinder you becoming all He created you to be and to grow in by being united to Him through the sacrifice and resurrection of Jesus Christ. There is nothing arbitrary about the Word of God. He is very specific on what will make for life and what will not. Human life only becomes human life when the Holy Spirit becomes Life withing a believer. Being united to the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, the follower of Jesus becomes a new creation and begins to live Life as God intended. God begins the good work, and He is the One who will bring it to competition. Somethings will NEVER make for life. What God calls sin, missing the mark of what will make for life, is always sin regardless of what culture anywhere and anytime say to the contrary. Sin cannot save, heal, redeem, restore or remake...
Post a Comment
Read more
BEWARE DECEPTION   Deuteronomy 18:9 “When you enter the land the Lord your God is giving you, be very careful not to imitate the detestable customs of the nations living there. Deuteronomy 12:29-30 “When the Lord your God goes ahead of you and destroys the nations and you drive them out and live in their land, do not fall into the trap of following their customs and worshiping their gods. Do not inquire about their gods, saying, ‘How do these nations worship their gods? I want to follow their example.’ Pragmatics was the downfall of Israel when they took possession of the Promised Land. To the unredeemed eye, it seemed that the fertility gods and agricultural gods of the pagan nations actually were helping the indigenous peoples. Just because something works does not make it right or good.  God promised to prosper His people if they would trust Him to the point of obeying His Word. God's Word is not empty. When He directs and commands, it is always for...
Post a Comment
Read more
 THE FOLLY OF IDOLATRY Martin Luther said that the human heart is an idol factory. The truth is that we were created to know and live by the gracious rule of and in the Presence of God who created us. Our peace, our understanding of meaning and purpose can only be truly grounded in God who created us for that meaning and purpose. The rebellion of Adam and Eve, their decision to do the opposite of what God said would make for life, resulted in spiritual and ultimately physical death. They chose to believe they needed something more than what God had provided. Their doomed attempt to try and live life without reference to God as the ground of meaning and purpose did not make life fuller, but emptied it. They wanted to decide what was good and what was evil without God and the disintegration of human life was the consequence. Rather than living in the Presence of God and by the gracious rule of God all around them, they turned from wholeness to brokenness, from fulfilment to scarc...
Post a Comment
Read more