Plan for Prayer

“If you abide in me, and my words abide in you, ask whatever you wish, and it will be done for you. By this my Father is glorified, that you bear much fruit and so prove to be my disciples. . . . These things I have spoken to you, that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be full.” (John 15:7–8, 11)

Prayer pursues joy in fruitful fellowship with Jesus, knowing that God is glorified when we bear fruit in answer to prayer. Why do God’s children so often fail to have consistent habits of happy, fruitful prayer?

Unless I’m badly mistaken, one of the reasons is not so much that we don’t want to, but that we don’t plan to.

If you want to take a four-week vacation, you don’t just get up one summer morning and say, “Hey, let’s go today!” You won’t have anything ready. You won’t know where to go. Nothing has been planned.

But that is how many of us treat prayer. We get up day after day and realize that significant times of prayer should be a part of our life, but nothing is ready.

We don’t know where to go. Nothing has been planned. No time. No place. No procedure. And we all know that the opposite of planning is not a wonderful flow of deep, spontaneous experiences in prayer. The opposite of planning is the same old rut.

If you don’t plan a vacation, you will probably stay home and watch TV. The natural, unplanned flow of spiritual life sinks to the lowest ebb of vitality. There is a race to be run and a fight to be fought. If you want renewal in your life of prayer, you must plan to see it.

Therefore, my simple exhortation is this: Let us take time this very day to rethink our priorities and how prayer fits in. Make some new resolve. Try some new venture with God. Set a time. Set a place. Choose a portion of Scripture to guide you.

Don’t be tyrannized by the press of busy days. We all need mid course corrections. Make this a day of turning to prayer — for the glory of God and for the fullness of your joy.

John Piper 

The victory He won was for you

BIBLE MEDITATION:

But of Him are ye in Christ Jesus, who of God is made unto us wisdom, and righteousness, and sanctification, and redemption.

1 Corinthians 1:30

DEVOTIONAL THOUGHT:

The church is not an organization with Jesus Christ as its president. The church is an organism with Jesus Christ as its head. We are in Him and He is in us. The victory He won on the cross was for us.

When Jesus went to the cross, He wasn’t fighting the battle for Himself. He didn’t need to overcome Satan. He fought it on your behalf. He made the transaction, often called “the divine exchange”:

Jesus became the Son of man that you might become a son of God.

He took your sins that you might take His innocence.

He became guilty that you might become acquitted.

He was filled with despair that you might be filled with joy.

He took your shame that you might take His glory.

He suffered the pains of hell, that you might know the joys of heaven.

ACTION POINT:

“What language shall I borrow to thank Thee, dearest Friend,

For this Thy dying sorrow, Thy pity without end?

O make me Thine forever, and should I fainting be,

Lord, let me never, never outlive my love for Thee.”

LWF Dr. Adrian Rogers 

God Heals by Humbling

“I have seen his ways, but I will heal him; I will lead him and restore comfort to him and his mourners, creating the fruit of the lips. Peace, peace, to the far and to the near,” says the Lord, “and I will heal him.” (Isaiah 57:18–19)

In spite of the severity of man’s disease of rebellion and willfulness, God will heal. How will he heal? Isaiah 57:15 says that God dwells with the crushed and humble. Yet the people of Isaiah 57:17 are not humble. They are brazenly pursuing their own proud way. So, what will a healing be?

It can only be one thing. God will heal them by humbling them. He will cure the patient by crushing his pride. If only the crushed and humble enjoy God’s fellowship (Isaiah 57:15), and if Israel’s sickness is a proud and willful rebellion (Isaiah 57:17), and if God promises to heal them (Isaiah 57:18), then his healing must be humbling and his cure must be a crushed spirit.

Isn’t this Isaiah’s way of prophesying what Jeremiah called the new covenant and the gift of a new heart? He said, “Behold, the days are coming, declares the Lord, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel. . . . I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts. And I will be their God, and they shall be my people” (Jeremiah 31:31, 33).

Isaiah and Jeremiah both see a time coming when a sick, disobedient, hard-hearted people will be supernaturally changed. Isaiah speaks of healing. Jeremiah speaks of writing the law on their hearts. And Ezekiel puts it like this: “I will give you a new heart, and a new spirit I will put within you. And I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh” (Ezekiel 36:26)

So the healing of Isaiah 57:18 is a major heart transplant — the old hardened, proud, willful heart of stone is taken out, and a new soft, tender heart is put in, which is easily humbled and crushed by the memory of sin and the sin that remains.

This is a heart that the lofty One whose name is Holy will dwell with forever.

John Piper 

Do you need a recipe for a miracle?

BIBLE MEDITATION:

I love the Lord, because He hath heard my voice and my supplications. Because He hath inclined His ear unto me, therefore will I call upon Him as long as I live.

Psalm 116:1-2

DEVOTIONAL THOUGHT:

Here’s the recipe for a miracle:

Take a problem

Transfer it to Christ

It will be transformed by Christ.

The ingredient most of us keep missing is transferring the problem to Christ.

ACTION POINT:

Have you given your all to Jesus Christ? This is not just rhetoric. Trying to get as serious and honest as we can within the confines of your daily calendar, the question is: Have you literally given everything to Jesus Christ? If not, do so today and you will begin to see God’s miracle-moving power transform your life.

LWF Dr. Adrian Rogers 

Divine Blueprint: God's Design For You

The Bible is God's holy word of instruction for you.

1. God builds the home.

His creation.

By His power.

By His instruction.

God is the head, the center of all things.

Unless the LORD builds the house, those who build it labor in vain. - Psalm 127:1a

10 According to the grace of God given to me, like a skilled master builder I laid a foundation, and someone else is building upon it. Let each one take care how he builds upon it.

11 For no one can lay a foundation other than that which is laid, which is Jesus Christ. - 1 Corinthians 3:10-11

2. God maintains the home.

Unless the LORD watches over the city, the watchman stays awake in vain.  - Psalm 127:1b

He watches over all.

He protects.

He guards all.

The enemy causes chaos.

He thrives during conflict.

The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy. I came that they may have life and have it abundantly. - John 10:10

3. God supplies the home.

It is in vain that you rise up early and go late to rest, eating the bread of anxious toil; for he gives to his beloved sleep.  - Psalm 127:2

We are striving, constant in toil.

Tired, irritated not peaceful.

Only the Lord gives peace.

Be kind not grouchy.

There is peace and contentment that comes from God through a true relationship with Him.

You need rest for your soul.

Not one thing satisfies like Almighty God!

1 Ahab told Jezebel all that Elijah had done, and how he had killed all the prophets with the sword.

2 Then Jezebel sent a messenger to Elijah, saying, "So may the gods do to me and more also, if I do not make your life as the life of one of them by this time tomorrow."

3 Then he was afraid, and he arose and ran for his life and came to Beersheba, which belongs to Judah, and left his servant there.

4 But he himself went a day's journey into the wilderness and came and sat down under a broom tree. And he asked that he might die, saying, "It is enough; now, O LORD, take away my life, for I am no better than my fathers."

5 And he lay down and slept under a broom tree. And behold, an angel touched him and said to him, "Arise and eat."

6 And he looked, and behold, there was at his head a cake baked on hot stones and a jar of water. And he ate and drank and lay down again.

7 And the angel of the LORD came again a second time and touched him and said, "Arise and eat, for the journey is too great for you."

8 And he arose and ate and drank, and went in the strength of that food forty days and forty nights to Horeb, the mount of God. - 1 Kings 19:1-8

4. God blesses the home.

Children are a blessing, a reward from God.

Behold, children are a heritage from the LORD, the fruit of the womb a reward.  - Psalm 127:3

Children are an arrow.

They are our responsibility to teach, to nurture.

We polish, we carve, we sharpen them with God's guidance to make them worthy warriors in the battle against Satan.

God shoots them at the enemy.

4 Like arrows in the hand of a warrior are the children of one's youth. 

5 Blessed is the man who fills his quiver with them! He shall not be put to shame when he speaks with his enemies in the gate.  - Psalm 127:4-5

Thank you Pastor Kevin!

The Master Servant

. . . so that in the coming ages he might show the immeasurable riches of his grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus. (Ephesians 2:7)

To me, the Bible’s most astonishing image of Christ’s second coming is in Luke 12:35–37, which pictures the return of a master from a marriage feast like this:

“Stay dressed for action and keep your lamps burning, and be like men who are waiting for their master to come home from the wedding feast, so that they may open the door to him at once when he comes and knocks. Blessed are those servants whom the master finds awake when he comes. Truly, I say to you, he will dress himself for service and have them recline at table, and he will come and serve them.”

To be sure, we are called servants — and that no doubt means we are to do exactly as we are told. But the wonder of this picture is that the “master” insists on serving. We may have expected this during Jesus’s ministry on earth, since he said, “The Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many” (Mark 10:45). But Luke 12:35–37 is a picture of the second coming, when the Son of Man comes in the blinding glory of his Father “with his mighty angels in flaming fire” as 2 Thessalonians 1:7–8 says. Why would Jesus be portrayed as a table waiter at the second coming?

Because the very heart of his glory is the fullness of grace that overflows in kindness to needy people. This is why Ephesians 2:7 says he aims “in the coming ages [to] show the immeasurable riches of his grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus.”

What is the greatness of our God? What is his uniqueness in the world? Isaiah answers: “From of old no one has heard or perceived by the ear, no eye has seen a God besides thee, who works for those who wait for him” (Isaiah 64:4 RSV). There is no other god like this. He never relinquishes the role of inexhaustible benefactor of his ever-dependent, happy people.

John Piper 

Problems are opportunities for God’s power

BIBLE MEDITATION:

I sought the Lord, and He heard me, and delivered me from all my fears.

Psalm 34:4

DEVOTIONAL THOUGHT:

The times that will most strengthen and enrich your life are those when you go barehanded, armed with only the Spirit of God, against the red lion of hell—and prevail. Remember Samson, who killed a lion with his bare hands, then ate honey out of its carcass (see Judges 14:6-9).

Whatever is hounding and threatening your life right now, you must hold fast to the Word of God that promises deliverance and hope, power and strength, wisdom and guidance.

ACTION POINT:

Look beyond the physical evidence to the spiritual promise of God. Problems are opportunities for God’s power to be manifested in your life.

LWF Dr. Adrian Rogers