Stand With God: Day 3
(1 John 5:14, Matthew 26:39)
Today’s devotional was about praying God’s will for your life. I love prayer. I’ve had a fascination with prayer and the amazing stories of the miraculous results surrounding prayer for decades. But, I struggle with prayer more than most other parts of my Christian journey. I’d like to say that I believe in the supernatural power of prayer but there’s the quote that I keep in my head to remind myself that I should prayer more: “If Christians truly believed in the power of prayer they would pray a whole lot more.” It’s such a convicting statement. If I TRULY believed that prayer could accomplish the miraculous, wouldn’t I pray the impossible? I feel like Fox Mulder, “I want to believe.”
We should also, constantly, seek God’s will for a situation. As we pray, we need to ask the Father what His will actually is, but this shouldn’t scare us off of asking in belief that what we’re asking for is going to happen. It’s a tricky one. Don’t throw that little “if it’s Your will” in there just so you have an excuse for an unanswered prayer. Ask in full faith, but also ask to be shown the will of God. In the end, every prayer of a true follower of Jesus will be for the Father’s will do be done, as long as our hearts our turning to His (even if this process is happening more slowly than we might like it to be happening.) Too often we add in the “if it’s Your will” as a just-in-case measure. Make sure your heart is in the right place when you’re saying it.
And this is the confidence that we have before Him: That if we ask anything according to His will, He hears us.
-1 John 5:14
Stand With God: Day 4
(Matthew 25:31-40, Psalms 89:14, Matthew 28:18-20)
Ok, so I said I struggled with yesterday’s devotional application, but today we’ve gone even deeper into the parts of my Christian walk that I struggle with: Sharing Jesus with those around me. It’s a scary thing because you don’t want society to think your “one of those people”. But, I guess, so what if I am one of those people. Why am I so scared of sharing Jesus? Honestly, I think it must be because once you take that stand, people are going to expect you to live up to their standards of what a Christian is. Maybe we don’t want to be forced to live up to those standards. Maybe we want to be able to “cut loose” from time to time. Maybe we don’t truly want to change who we are. Maybe we are even scared that we’ll let Jesus down when the world sees us stumble. But that doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t be out there trying to be Jesus to everyone we meet. And if we’re representing Jesus to the world, the world will want us to tell them about Him. You don’t have to be out preaching on the street corner (although there’s certainly a place for that.) If it scares you, ask God to help you show the love of Christ to the world, and ask Him to put someone in your life that you can help lead to the Lord. Or just someone that you can show the love of Jesus to.
And the king will answer and say to them, “Truly I say to you, in as much as you did it to one of the least of these brothers of mine you did it to me.”
-Matthew 25:40
Therefore, go and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe everything that I have commanded you, and behold, I am with you all the days until the end of the age.
-Matthew 28:19-20
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