A Forgetful Heart is an Ungrateful Heart

Things weren't going my way. Driving alone in the car I desperately began to pray, "God, what are you doing? What am I doing wrong?" It was more of a frustrated plea to God as I questioned His timing and motive.

You're probably thinking Laurie, you talked to God that way? Yes, but God already knew my frustration and the thoughts that were running through my head. By expressing it to Him I was directing my "out of tune" heart back to the Master Musician who could then tune me back to Truth.

Then Sings my Soul!

Prayer and praise are to very important parts of a Christian’s devotional life.  Have you even been so burdened or overwhelmed by your circumstances that you didn’t know how to pray or what to ask for?  On the other hand, have you ever been so excited and thankful for answered prayer that it was hard to sit still and pray?  Singing is a way to express each of these emotions in a way that is worshipful to God. God loves to hear the praise of His people, and when you pray back His Word to him, it is a sweet-smelling sacrifice of praise to Him.   Psalm 92:1 says, “It is a good thing to give thanks unto the Lord and to sing praises unto thy name, O most high.”

God-Centered Prayer

How many of us would love to have confidence when we pray that God hears us, and not only that He hears us, but that we know that we are going to have the things that we have asked? God says that we can have this unwavering faith in His Word:

“This is the confidence which we have before Him, that, if we ask anything according to His will, He hears us. And if we know that he hears us in whatever we ask, we know that we have the request that we have of Him” (1 John 5:14-15)

The key to this faith is God-centered prayer. If prayer is not God-centered then we have no business trying to muster up faith, positive thinking, and expectation that God will give what we have asked. This attitude will only produce disillusionment and discouragement because we don't see God doing what we want. Prayer must be built on the solid foundation of the will of God. How may I know the will of God? God's revealed Word contains his complete and perfect will for us and has everything that we need to live a life of godliness. (2 Tim.3:16, 2 Pet.1:3)  This is God-centered prayer.  God's Word is the authority of our prayers: not us.

What is the opposite of God-centered prayer? Man-centered prayer. We live in a society where even Christians live and pray in a very self-centered way. We have a desire or a motive, so we pray expecting God to grant our request when we have not even the first clue what God has to say about our request in his Word. Then, we go about boasting and blaspheming the name of God when we say that we feel like God is leading us to do or ask for something without any clear basis for our request in His Word. We make ourselves out to be God and expect Him to act like our puppet.  We blaspheme the name of God to the people who are watching by making Him to be a liar because he does not do the things we ask. We ask with wrong self made motives to consume it on our lust. (James 4:2-3)

    

If we pray on the basis of His Word and His authority then we can pray with absolute confidence that we are going to have the things that we ask of him. The result is that God is glorified because he has answered our prayers and His Word has come alive!!!

 When I was single and unmarried I was urged to pray, expecting with confidence, for a husband.  I liked the idea very much and tried to think positively and pray this way and talk to others about my faith in God giving me a husband.  But deep inside I lacked confidence because this was just a desire of mine and I had nothing concrete in Scripture to base my request on, or to suppose that God was going to answer it. God showed me through His Word that His ultimate desire for my life is for me to know Him. The request for me to know Christ was definitely something I knew He wanted for my life. So I prayed in surrender, “Lord God, if I can know you better by being single, then I want to be single and if I can know you better being married then I want to be married.” In just a few weeks after praying that prayer God led me to my husband Michael.  Then the process began of knowing Christ even better through marriage.  God did not give me a husband because I claimed a promise that He would.  As much as I wanted to find one in Scripture, I could not.  But He gave me the desire of my heart because I delighted in Him.  I was willing to know Him better, no matter what that looked like.

-Christina (Jalbert) Priest

 Christina (Jalbert) Priest is 28-years-old, the wife of a wonderful man of God, Michael, and the mother of two adorable boys, Josiah and Noah. Chrissie inspired A Passion for Jesus ministries into existence and has continued to encouraged Christians of all ages to love God with all their heart. 

Impacting Friends for Eternity

Praying for Friends

I would love to say that I always loved praying for my friends. But I can’t. In fact, I can say just the opposite. There was a time I dreaded praying for people - especially in a group setting. I was so afraid of what my friends would think if I said the wrong thing. I mean, really, it would be embarrassing!

For such a long time I thought that prayer was something that I did because that’s what my family did before we ate, when we had family devotions and before we went to bed. Nothing really important, we were just thanking God for the day, our lives, what He had given us, etc. I really didn’t understand why we prayed. But when I finally understood I began to pray in earnest for those I loved. My family. I had friends, but never really thought to pray for them. After all, they were just friends, what would they need prayer for? They seemed fine to me.

When Your World Falls Apart

Praying for your family...

Praying for others can be a very exciting and passionate experience. When we pray for persecuted Christians, the President, a nation’s government, drug dealers and murderers, Hollywood, or revival in your city, we often feel like we are tackling head-on what really matters, chinking away at the big problems in our world, prayer by prayer.

But how often do we pray for those people in our lives that we see every day? The people who we live with day in and day out, who know our ugliest flaws as we know theirs, and who are often times the hardest  to love, and the hardest to forgive? How frequently to do we spend long, sacrificial hours, or even a dedicated number of MINUTES every single day praying for our family?

Praying for the Persecuted Church

Persecution? Like what happened to Peter and Paul? Yep. We don’t think of “Christian persecution” as something that takes place today, but in actuality, it is happening almost every hour! -things just as bad as what happened to Peter and Paul, actually, probably worse, due to the technology that we have now.
According to Mark Moore, founder of Province Community Church, “163,000 Christians die every year for their faith. Half of all the Christians who have ever died for their faith did so in this century alone, some 35 million!” (see http://markmoore.org/resources/essays/acts/persecution.pdf)

Persecution is a worldwide normality…

LAOS: On February 25 of last year, sixty-five Laotian Christians were driven away from their village after refusing to reject the Lord Jesus. Governmental Officials then destroyed the Christians crops. And local sources claim that the government plans to starve these Christians to death until they renounce Jesus Christ. http://www.asianews.it/news-en/Food-denied-to-65-Laotian-farmers-to-force-them-to-renounce-Christianity-20878.html

Egypt: Our news and media dubs the upheaval as “sectarian violence”, but in actuality, is persecution against God’s children.  On October 9, 2011, Egyptian Christians felt they had to do something against the outrageous violence against themselves. From 6-9 o’clock in the evening, the Christians held a peaceful protest. They sang hymns and were armed only with  candles and pictures of Jesus. The Muslim military responded by plowing tanks into the crowds of people. Twenty-four protesters and bystanders were killed. The Muslims followed those who were injured to the hospital, and even threatened to kill the hospital employees. http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/10/10/us-egypt-copts-clashes-idUSTRE7981Q220111010

Uganda: December of last year, Pastor Umar was having an evangelical outreach. After everything was over, a group of men asked the Pastor if they could talk with him. Umar brought them in to the church when they suddenly poured acid on his face and back.  Umar lived through this attack, but his face is extremely disfigured and he has lost sight in one eye. Doctors are still struggling now to save the other. http://www.persecution.net/ug-2012-03-08.htm

Persecution is worldwide. Persecution is real. 

Persecution is happening right now!

What are we supposed to do about it? Many Christians do not know that Jesus Christ gave the responsibility to help the persecuted to us. Yes, us, Christians. The Church has the responsibility to help the persecuted. “And above all things have fervent love for one another, for “love will cover a multitude of sins.”  (1 Peter 4:8 NKJV.) This verse says that our love for our brothers and sisters in Christ must be above all things…above all things! That is our responsibility.

Hebrews 13:1-2 says, “Keep on loving one another as brothers and sisters. Do not forget to show hospitality to strangers, for by so doing some people have shown hospitality to angels without knowing it.” (Hebrews 13:1-2 NIV)

The context of those verses was that of extreme persecution. Christians had been forced to flee their homes and could only hope to find refuge somewhere else. The author was instructing the Hebrews to be hospitable to even though they didn’t know them. Why? - Simply because they were a part of the body of Christ. Check out what Paul said about the Macedonian churches in (2 Corinthians 8:3-4. I really like the way the NLT says it!) … they really understood that we are one body…the body of Christ.

For example, If your hand is on a stove burner, you probably wouldn’t reach the newspaper and flip through for a little bit, and then maybe eat some chips, and then perhaps try to remove your hand from the hot stove. No! Your hand is a part of you. Rather you would remove it right away! In the same way, the Christian church is to, “… above all things have fervent love for one another…” 

For many years, I never knew of the plight of Christians around the globe. But now I know. Do not let ignorance be an excuse to ignore the silent murders, rapes, kidnappings, and imprisonments that many Christians have suffered in this very decade. Do not be unaware that our hands are on the burner.

Ok, now don’t get discourages. We CAN HELP THE PERSECUTED! This brings me back to prayer. Of course, there are many ways to help the persecuted, but one way is to pray for them. Visit http://www.compassdirect.org/. Compassdirect has been known to have accurate news reports about the persecuted…reports that our media will not give us. Check them regularly and pray for those Christians. Take the information that you read about to your family, friends and church. Have them to pray to! God’s Word does say that, “…the… prayer of righteous man availeth much.” (James 5:16 KJV)

In Foxes book of Martyrs, it was said, “Christ founded the church with a call to love one another, but those who claim His name have not always lived out that calling.” But I pray that those words would not characterize you and me. Let us put this call to “love one another” “above all things”. And may we never forget that our hands are still on the stove burner. 

-Elisha Sputo