January 31, 2011
Inspiration in Times of Trouble
As I sit down to write today’s article, I am reminded by a quote from Saint Nicholas of Flue who says that
Each stage of life has its special duties; by accomplishing them, one may find happiness.
Indeed there are many duties we are called to attend to, be it in our daily jobs, parenting roles, relationships and interactions. Try to find time to discover the fulfillment of each of our busy, daily tasks and relish the happiness that they bring to your life.
In times of trouble, we are often faced with the question… why? The answer is not always apparent, but with prayer and faith we learn to be at peace with the outcomes because these outcomes are always a product of God’s glory in this world.
To the question: Why is God testing me?
Rick Warren writes that “Character is both developed and revealed by tests, and all of life is a test.” Life is a test for the next world beyond. Character is something that you carry with you every day – it is shaped and formed by the Lord. It is a measure of the thing that God sees without fail. As the Bible writes: “Man looks at the outward appearance, but God sees the heart.” What you should be concerned about is this measure that God sees in us… not in the outward nature that man looks at first.
At the “heart” of the matter, “Your true character is something that no one can injure but yourself.” -C.H. Spurgeon; We are constantly tested and molded in our character… a part of us that is of high importance in matters of faith.
To the question: Why do bad things happen to good people?
“God doesn’t always change the circumstances, but He can change us to meet the circumstances. That’s what it means to live by faith.” – Warren Wiersbe
“Sometimes your medicine bottle says, ‘Shake well before using.’ That is what God has to do with some of His people. He has to shake them well before they are usable.” – Vance Havner
“After all, a crisis doesn’t make a person; it reveals what a person is made of.” – Warren Wiersbe
A crisis isn’t meant to be a punishment or a product of God’s wrath. Faith reminds us that the Lord is a loving God, watchful of our needs and constantly guiding us in matters of the heart. The circumstances we are under aren’t meant to bring us down – they should be treated as opportunities to “shake ourselves up” so that we are useful to the Lord and His purpose. God doesn’t abolish “bad” things or negative outcomes. These are circumstances intended to change us instead – they are opportunities to elevate ourselves to a stronger moral fiber and character.
To the question: How do I survive this difficult time?
To this, C.H. Spurgeon writes: “If you seek to know the path of your duty, use God as your compass.” Steer your way with faith. Pray for guidance and look carefully for the messages and the hints left behind for you to follow.
To the problems we encounter, Victor Hugo reminds us to
“Have courage for the great sorrows of life and patience for the small ones; and when you have laboriously accomplished your daily task, go to sleep in peace. God is awake.”
Go in peace knowing that God is preparing you for the challenge and testing those changes so that you too will notice and give praise to Him for his greatness. Have courage because God is at the helm, steering your journey through life. Your role is to take heed and notice all the contributions He has made towards your character and your survival in this life.
Go in peace. God Bless.
January 21, 2011
In This Place
Dear Lord,
In this place where I am, this situation I am living, I find peace. I know you have led me here, through time and troubles; through good times and bad. There is much work to be done, but I have faith that you will stick by me and see it all through. I have no fear because I don’t have to do this all alone. I have my family. I have my friends. Most of all, I have you.
Let those who sling their arrows, or spit in my face find peace in their own lives. It is not out of intentional hatred or angst that they seek to harm me; they have simply mistaken that something I do or something I have done stands in their way. With you nothing stands in the way. With the faith of a mustard seed, as you once inspired the gospel writers to pen, one can move mountains.
Let others who find their way to this place find peace and contentment in their lives. The Lord is my shepherd. there is nothing I shall want. There is nothing I shall want. I must focus on that because until I do, I am enslaved to something that has no meaning outside of this world. I will remember the Lord.
For those of you reading this, give thanks. Give a thought. Give a prayer. Remember that you have all this… and Jesus too. Greater victories have been won in the name of the Lord… and salvation is here now and forever because of that one single victory on a cross, on a hill, in a distant land that may as well be the soil under your feet. Meditate and bring yourself to this place – this place where I am – and find peace.
God Bless and have a wonderful, blessed day.
January 13, 2011
Groggy at 5 AM
So here I am, up since 4 AM because I must have mistakenly set my clock an hour ahead. As my family sleeps, I am quietly contemplating what to write about in my 10 minutes this morning. For me, this 10 minutes is more than a prayer, it’s a commitment to God that I will share something meaningful to me with respect to faith and inspiration.
For me, hunger is the first thing on my mind when I wake up in the wee hours of the morning. Finding something to eat drives me to wake up and to start my day. Before I settle down to eat, I usually also mutter a quick prayer of thanks. That’s how my day begins… a modest meal and a word of thanks.
How does your day begin? What are the first things that enter your mind as you stir through the morning grogginess? Where does God fit into the picture of your most deliberate actions? What I love about the early morning hours is a feeling of strength and resolve. Here I am, up before the rest of the world, preparing for the day ahead. I am ahead of schedule and it makes me feel like I can afford to take some time out and reflect on the Lord and his daily plan for me.
I read an archived blog post from passionatespirituality.com, which had a quick prayer that I think is appropriate for my start today: “God, show me what you are doing today, and how I can be a part of it.” I think it’s a perfect sentiment to ask for a moment of clarity and inspiration… and to be guided by it into the context of God’s plan for us and the world around us. God bless and have a wonderful day!
January 12, 2011
It’s Good to Ask God
Verse for the Day: 1 Samuel 15:22
What Items would you like to pray about each day? How might you create a time to pray regularly?
Daily prayer, is all about preparing our needs and routinely asking for our intentions and guidance. When fitted into a daily schedule it may seem like just a routine, like brushing teeth, preparing breakfast or shaving, but programmed into this practice is a sense of duty. It is that sense of duty that brings us closer to God because within it is obedience… as in today’s verse, “to obey is better than sacrifice” when it comes to our choice in how to serve the Lord.
November 17, 2008
What is Prayer For?
Read a great post that challenges readers to examine themselves and consider:
Do we pray to change God’s mind, or is it for some other reason?
We should indeed pray instead for what we need… and the wisdom to understand what was given before us instead. What God gives us in response to our prayers is not always what we expect. Nor should it ever be…
A simple example is once I prayed very hard to God for deliverance from a challenging emotional condition. Instead of directly granting me a cure, he sent me a response through my parish pastor. When on a visit, I confided my plea for help and instead of addressing the issue altogether, he simply suggested to pursue a parish ministry to quell the ache inside.
At the time I thought he was being callous and insensitive for not listening to my story or my complaints, but now I realize that it wasn’t my pastor’s response that needed correction… it was my attitude that needed broadening. God was calling me to a mission – to find healing in the ministry to other parishioners in the form of teaching. And that was what I did for a year after that initial meeting. I adopted the role as a catechism teacher for junior high students at our church.
Sharing my faith and answering the calling to witness Christ before an audience of teenagers brought me strength, resolve and healing that I could only recognize in hindsight several years later. I can say with confidence now that I have experienced the healing I had prayed so hard for – but only when I was finally able to open my eyes to what God had unfolded before my life’s journey.
November 13, 2008
The Prayer of Jabez – Revisited
Read a review and a new perspective on the book “The Prayer of Jabez”. I too feel uneasy with the unbalanced nature of the book’s suggestions. It (the book and its testimonials) seems to indicate that faith is fueled by constant challenges to God to fulfill one’s prayers based on rote prayer and formula. It also inflates expectations that these prayers will always be positively answered… In truth we cannot even begin to assume an understanding of God’s wisdom nor can we expect Him to respond to prayers in the same way that a “genie” in a bottle grants wishes to passerby.
“Wilkinson (the author of The Prayer of Jabez) asserts that praying Jabez’s prayer leads to a life of incredible blessing and ever-increasing ministry opportunities-a life that sounds almost like a fairy-tale. However, little reference is ever made to the reality of genuine difficulties in life, and the necessity of sincere prayer to face those difficulties in a God-honoring way.” I think the review article raises a good point in that ministry for God is rarely a 123-formula approach to success… there are hardships and also setbacks because it is not the will or the might of the person that answers prayers… but the will and grace of God Himself.
I appreciated the commentary that: Scripture, however, points to the importance of learning to live a life fixed on pleasing God in all the little details in life-attitudes, thoughts, words, and behavior. In the “mundane” aspects of life, God is also there.
There are basic tenets of the Prayer of Jabez that I do see as useful: the demonstration of humility, dependence and expectation of blessing are all good things to model in one’s prayer and pursuit of worship. Overall, good lessons are to be learned from Jabez’s shortly documented, but meaningful life story. Continue to pray for God’s blessings. May all of you find balance in things that you do and the life that you have chosen to pursue.
Good Morning Lord
Woke up inspired today. I have this feeling to pray and read the Word like nothing before. It’s like I’m on fire to reconnect with the Lord this morning.
Good Morning, Lord. I am here again today. But I feel an energy like never before and I wanted to start pouring it first in praise and love for you. I know I have been absent for a little while – my prayers seemingly get shorter and shorter each day until they became merely a rushed word or two before I fell asleep or a mumbled phrase of thanks while I scarfed down my meals in a hurried rush. Even my moments of prayer in mass seemed hurried and distracted as I stumbled through my daily list of tasks as I sit through my Sunday day of worship. I see now, by letting those other distractions into my life, it is easy to come up with excuses not to pray or not to focus on your Word.
Dear Jesus, you chastised the hypocrites of your times as they stumbled through life under the mantle of goodness but yet failed to do the works that would exemplify their true devotion to you and your teachings. Forgive me for putting you on “hold” when in fact, every day should begin -and- end with you. Help me to build a stronger relationship with you and through you may I learn compassion, charity, patience and love. Help me to let go of the material things and their pursuit so that I may bring myself back… centered on God and readily listening for His will for me. I ask this in Jesus’s holy name. Amen.
May 14, 2008
The Prayer of Jabez
I recently picked up a Christian devotional entitled “The Prayer of Jabez” and I was overwhelmed with the sheer enthusiasm of its message. This devotional sparked a whole series of books, devotionals and publications all centered around a little-known man from the Bible. He wasn’t anyone as famous or well known as David or Noah; in fact, this man: Jabez is only mentioned once in the Bible and then only for two sentences. But what he has to say in prayer has phoenomenal impact and meaning on our life as God-fearing (revering) individuals. In fact, Jabez’s prayer has inspired me to write a series of articles on exactly what he has to say and how it can help you build your relationship with God.
From the first book of Chronicles:
Jabez was more honorable than his brothers. His mother had named him Jabez, saying, “I gave birth to him in pain.” Jabez cried out to the God of Israel, “Oh, that you would bless me and enlarge my territory! Let your hand be with me, and keep me from harm so that I will be free from pain.” And God granted his request. (1 Chronicles 4:9-10, NIV)
The prayer goes so quickly, you almost miss it. Truly, this is one gem that anyone can fit into their schedule in just 10 minutes. As a recap, Jabez did something remarkable in prayer that changed his life compared to the rest of the people referenced and mentioned in the same chapter. Jabez’s four requests:
- “Please bless me indeed!”
- “Please enlarge my territory!”
- “Please put Your hand on me!”
- “Please keep me from evil!”
And God granted his requests to him… The book, “The Prayer of Jabez” by Bruce Wilkinson tells of testimonials and anecdotes of answered prayers and requests just by changing one’s mindset to think and act along the lines of this four part prayer. Without giving away too much about the book itself, I’d like to share a series of blog articles just about Jabez’s prayer and ways to interpret its meaningfulness in our lives as Christians.
As a little background, back in the times of the ancient Hebrews (about 1200 B.C.) Jabez was born to the tribe of Judah… the same tribe that David and Jesus came from later… in Bible times, a person’s name defined his future. For example, Solomon means “peace,” and sure enough, he became the first king of Israel to reign without going to war. As history would have it, Jabez’s entry into the world was not the most auspicious one. Jabez bore a heavy burden with his name, meaning “pain” – what kind of future would be in store for him with an awful name like that?
Jabez was desperate. He was already predestined by his culture to have a miserable, poor, simple life… perhaps his family and tribe even treated him as such. In his desperation, instead of lamenting his situation or cursing his mother’s cruelty, he began to pray to God in earnest and he starts by asking for His blessing.
The devotional made a good point that the Biblical sense of “blessing” isn’t the watered down, every day expression we use when people sneeze… we ask God to bless everything: our parents, our day at work, the food we eat; however in the Biblical meaning, to request a “blessing” is to ask for a “supernatural” favor.
When we ask for God’s blessing, we’re not asking for more of what we could get for ourselves. We’re sincerely asking for the kind of good things only God has the power to know about or give. That’s why the Bible says, “The Lord’s blessing is our greatest wealth. All our work adds nothing to it!” (Proverbs 10:22, TLB)
The Lord has many blessings to bear upon each of us as well. But the catch is, we have to ask. If you’ve never prayed and asked God for His blessings, you’ve missed out on a gift that keeps giving, and giving, and gving. Don’t miss out on this opportunity of your lifetime! As the Bible says:
You do not have because you do not ask. The Bible also says (James 4:2) Ask, promised Jesus, and it will be given to you… What man is there among you who, if his son asks for bead, will give him a stone? If you then, being evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father who is in heaven give good things to those who ask him!” (Matthew 7:7,9,11)
And that’s the catch. there is no limit to God’s blessings in our lives. They are only limited by us and our forgetfulness or ignorance to ask, not by His resources, his power or willingness to give.
May 9, 2008
A Show of Enthusiasm
In one of my recent article readings, I stumbled across a challenging comment: “How can we come to know the Lord and his saving power and NOT be overwhelmed with enthusiasm and passion?”
Of course, for those who feel lukewarm or less than “overwelmed” it isn’t a mandate to contrive such a level of passion but instead it is a challenge to consider if we have truly listened to God’s message through Christ. The Bible speaks of “…harden not your hearts…” so that we may receive God’s word openly. There was also the parable of the farmer sowing seeds into the ground… the hardened soil received the seed, but the seeds could not penetrate and grow into the toughened soil. Have you become jaded, cynical and hardened to receive the message of Christ?
Sometimes we hear, but really do not “hear” what is being shared with us. The same goes with God’s word.
In a blog post about spiritual desire, the writer quotes E.M. Bounds, an early 20th century Methodist minister and devotional writer who says: “There can be no true praying without desire…” There must be some motivation or desire to send up our words and intentions to God… in addition to the gesture of prayer. Through completely devoting yourself to whatever period of time you’ve given to prayer, you can develop a very powerful and meaningful focus in your life. Make yourself fully mindful of your senses, mindset, thoughts, intentions, and true passion (desire) for the practice of prayer.
Keep It Real
Found a quotation from author C.S. Lewis in a blog entry on prayer:
“The prayer preceding all prayers is ‘May it be the real I who speaks. May it be the real Thou that I speak to.”
A very appropriate statement to preface our prayer efforts. May we always strive to examine ourselves to make sure that we approach God as our TRUE selves… may we always approach the true God (and not an image of idolatry) in our prayers.
I also think it appropriate in current context of myself. This quotation comes as an answer of sorts to some recent, personal concerns regarding prayer. I sometimes worry that I have not prepared myself for the mindset or the right attitude for prayer during my daily 10 minutes. Again, the answer to this wordly concern is in the form of a little prayer and intention.
