Christian parents often experience both a weight and a wait as they pray for their children. Biblical waiting is always active, calling us to continue to pray for our kids—not matter how old they are!
The Institute for Creation Research reported: “Perhaps one of the top evidences for creation are the subcellular and incredibly efficient molecular protein machines that clearly function by known engineering principles. They are hardly simple. Determining just a part of their function requires the best science has in twenty-first-century technology: ‘While belonging to the nanoscale, protein machines are so complex that tracing even a small fraction of their cycle requires weeks of calculations on supercomputers.’”
Dr. Thaddeus Williams said, “What do you think is the most repeated phrase in the entire Bible? It’s, ‘Thus says the Lord…’ which clocks in at over 400 occurrences. The God of the Bible is not the stone-cold silent god of the ancient Greeks. Nor is He the stone-cold silent god of the ancient Stoics or Epicureans, too busy enjoying the amenities of divine bliss to bother with humanity. No. The God who exists is a God who speaks.” What does this mean for us? Dr. Williams talks about what happens to people who make time to regularly hear what God has to say to them through His Word.
“Work is the outcome of effort; fruit, of life. A bad man may do good work, but a bad tree cannot bear good fruit.” —Hudson Taylor
I love studying my Bible, and I also enjoy passing along things that encourage others to begin studying their own Bibles. This is a really cool infographic from Wesley Huff, giving a great overview of the Bible.
J. Warner Wallace leads us all along “the fuse” that led up to the arrival of Jesus as the Messiah, the One to whom the Old Testament prophets predicted.
Whether you call it grit or stick-to-it-iveness, those who don’t give up easily are the ones who will become leaders by their example. Check out the conversation we had on The Craig and Greg Show.
I was thrilled to be asked to write an article for Influence Magazine about the biting sheep that every pastor has experienced. I am praying that this article will help pastors recover and thrive in their shepherding ministry.
“Knowing our lowliness and Christ’s worthiness, we neither grovel nor saunter into the presence of God. And we do not go home flippant or weeping. In Christ, we will receive what we ask or what we should have asked.” —David Mathis
In 1 Thessalonians 5:19, the apostle Paul warns us not to quench the Holy Spirit. T.M. Moore asks, “How do we quench the Spirit?” and then gives Christians seven warning signs to avoid this quenching. Check out his post Joy In His Spirit.
I really enjoy these archeological biographies of biblical people and places. The Bible Archeology Report writes, “The Neo-Babylonian king, Amēl-Marduk (biblical Evil-Merodach) is only mentioned twice in Scripture (in 2 Kings 25:27–30 and the parallel passage, Jeremiah 52:31–34), both times in connection with the restoration of Jehoiachin, king of Judah.” In a separate post, John Stonestreet shares an archeological discovery in a Roman cemetery in Frankfurt of an amulet that shows that “the Gospel spread farther and faster than historians thought.”
Listen to the podcast of this post by clicking on the player below, and you can also subscribe on Apple, Spotify, or Audible.
Charles Spurgeon said, “We too often rush into the presence of God without forethought or humility. We are like people who present themselves before a king without a petition, and what wonder is it that we often miss the end of prayer?” I hope you are starting to…
Spurgeon also asked an important question: “Do we not miss very much of the sweetness and efficacy of prayer by a want of careful meditation before it, and hopeful expectation after it?”
We talked about competing priorities, but also how Jesus made prayer the priority for His life. This means that some things we call important may have to temporarily be set aside.
Let’s look at the example of Jesus. He prioritized prayer over:
Training. In Luke 5:16 and 9:18 we see Jesus praying in private even though His disciples were right there with Him. This was so revolutionary to the disciples that it prompted them to ask Jesus how they could pray like He did (Luke 11:1-13).
Sleep. Mark 1:32-35 tells us Jesus was up after sunset ministering to the needs of people, and that He was up and praying while it was still dark. And Luke 6:12 tells us Jesus spent the whole night in prayer before making a big decision.
Strategizing. The big decision Jesus had to make was choosing the twelve men who would be His apostles—the ones He would spend the most time training and preparing. He didn’t hold strategizing sessions or interviews with the perspective candidates, but He spent the night praying for wisdom (Luke 6:12-13).
Ministering. People were looking for Jesus, but He guarded His prayer time so the Holy Spirit could guide Him into His ministry time (Mark 1:37).
Why did He treat prayer this way? Because He knew that God knows our day better than we do. He knows the people will encounter, the conversations that we need to have, the decisions that await us. So we must prayerfully entrust our days to Him (Proverbs 16:9, 3:5-6).
Remember that Spurgeon said “careful meditation” before prayer and then “hopeful expectation after it.” This is exactly what David said in Psalm 5:1-3 where he was expectant of God’s answers throughout the day.
We see this example throughout the Bible, but let me give you three quick examples:
Hagar’s eyes were opened to see the supply of water that was already there (Genesis 21:14-19)
Eliezer had success in finding a wife for Isaac by seeing a woman that was already at the well (Genesis 24:7, 12-15, 21, 27)
Nehemiah prayed for 4 months so he could pray in the moment that the king asked him what he needed to be successful (Nehemiah 1:4, 11; 2:1-4, 8)
I think this is what Paul meant when he told us to “pray continually “ (1 Thessalonians 5:17).
Jesus could announce that everything He did (John 5:19) and everything He said (John 12:49) was directed by the Father.
We can live like this too, if we will only make prayer the priority that sets the order for any other thing that we call a priority. Missionary Hudson Taylor said, “Do not have your concert first, and then tune your instrument afterwards. Begin the day with the Word of God and prayer, and get first of all into harmony with Him.”
If you have missed any of the messages in our series called Our Prayer Book, you can find them all by clicking here.
Leaders are needed for tough times. “Doing difficult creates natural separation” for your leadership, says Eric Thomas. Check out this full conversation from The Craig and Greg Show.
“Busier than a businessman, more sought out than a celebrity, wanted as a mother of many toddlers, and bearing a task as big as the world, Jesus prayed.” Check out Scott Hubbard’s post Never Too Busy To Pray.
“This is certain, that a man that studieth revenge keeps his wounds green, which otherwise would heal and do well.” —Sir Francis Bacon
“Do not have your concert first, and then tune your instrument afterwards. Begin the day with the Word of God and prayer, and get first of all into harmony with Him.” —Hudson Taylor
There are almost 12,000 species of snakes and lizards, but evolutionists still do not know where they came from. Vertebrate paleontologist Michael Benton stated, “The early history of squamates [snakes, lizards] is patchy,” and the debate of snake origin “is far from resolved.” ICR offers the most straightforward solution to this supposed evolutionary dilemma: “snakes and lizards have been created with the genetic ability to undergo “remarkably varied jaw shapes” that have led to “their extraordinary ecological success” as they move in and fill various niches.”
Seth Porch, in talking about the joy of daily reading the Bible, notes, “By itself, neither habit, shame, nor duty will lead you to open God’s word daily with a heart posture of humble expectation and joy. Such an attitude toward the Bible comes only from the astonished realization that in these pages God actually speaks.” I hope you find the joy in reading God’s Word throughout this new year. I love my YouVersion reading plans that take me through the Bible. You may also like the companion book by Dick Brogden called Missionary God, Missionary Bible. And I shared some Bible studies that may interest you here and here.
Listen to the podcast of this post by clicking on the player below, and you can also subscribe on Apple, Spotify, or Audible.
Last week I shared this thought with you from Pastor Tim Keller: “Your prayer must be firmly connected to and grounded in your reading of the Word. This wedding of Bible and prayer anchors your life down in the real God. … Without immersion in God’s words, our prayers may not be merely limited and shallow but also untethered from reality.”
“Untethered from reality” means that we determine the manner in which we come to God in prayer, the way prayer works, and the way God must respond to our prayer. But what we read in the Bible is the opposite of this (Isaiah 1:11-15).
I think there are two opposite and equal erroneous thoughts about how we approach prayer:
I’m not worthy to come into the presence of an all-holy God
I can waltz right into God’s presence whenever and however I please
Both are wrong and both are strategies the devil has used to keep us prayerless. Either we don’t go to God at all or our prayers are unheard because the Bible says that our arrogance has made our prayer ineffectual.
Our Prayer Book—the Bible—helps us find the balance. George Whitefield noted, “Reading the Bible is a good preparative for prayer, as prayer is an excellent means to render reading effectual.” So here’s what we read about those two errors.
I’m not worthy. God is unapproachable in His holiness, but Jesus has made it possible for us to enter in through His righteousness (1 Timothy 6:15-16; Isaiah 6:1-5; Hebrews 4:1, 14, 16; John 16:23-24).
I can come anyway I want to. Passages like Psalm 15:1-5 and Isaiah 58:2-4 make it clear that we cannot simply approach God in a way of our choosing.
Let’s unpack that second error a little more. We have to be clothed in righteousness in order to come into God’s presence, but we cannot be clothed in a righteousness that is apart from Jesus. When we say that we are praying in the name of Jesus, it means we are praying in the nature of Jesus and through the righteousness of Jesus. We must be wearing His righteous robe (Romans 3:22-24; Isaiah 61:10).
So I think we need to pray before we pray. Let’s try these actions which are tethered to the reality of our Prayer Book.
Worship. This is a deep pondering of who God is; it is humbly assigning Him the highest worth. In face, the Old English spelling of this word (“worthship”) gives us insight into what worship does. It is this kind of humility that God responds to (Isaiah 6:5-7; 57:15; Luke 18:9-14).
Confession. As we are worshiping, we will see our inadequacies (much like Isaiah did in Isaiah 6, or the tax collector did in Luke 18). We then need to confession these shortcomings. Dick Brogden wrote, “Confessed sin opens the portals of heaven into our darkness, and light and glory overwhelm shame. Confession is our glory for it lifts our heads and eradicates shame.” We see this so vividly lived out in the prayers of David (Psalm 139:23-24; 51:1-2; 19:12-14).
Repentance. I think we could also call this Repair. After confession where we have fallen short, we resolve now to both take a different path and repair what was damaged (Matthew 5:23-24; Mark 11:25-26; 1 Peter 3:7).
Petition. After worship, confession, and repentance / repair, our heart’s attitude is now in the place for God to heed our cries for His help (1 Peter 3:12).
Let’s learn to pray before we pray. Don’t just rush in and rush out of God’s presence. Take time to worship, confession any sins the Holy Spirit reveals, make things right, and then present your petitions.
Our hearts need to be prepared to present our petitions. This is how we know that God will hear our voice.
“If we try to display the excellence of God without joy in it, we will display a shell of hypocrisy and create scorn or legalism. But if we claim to enjoy His excellence and do not display it for others to see and admire, we deceive ourselves, because the mark of God-enthralled joy is to overflow and expand by extending itself into the hearts of others. … God calls us to pray and think and dream and plan and work not to be made much of, but to make much of Him in every part of our lives.” —John Piper
I have blogged quite a bit about the importance of getting enough quality sleep. A new study finds that the link between poor sleep and mental health problems could be related to deficits in brain regions that keep unwanted thoughts out of mind. Check out the full report.
“You may have to fight the battle more than once to win it.” —Margaret Thatcher
Listen to the podcast of this post by clicking on the player below, and you can also subscribe on Apple, Spotify, or Audible.I am sometimes amazed at how much Jesus accomplished in just a little over three years of public ministry. What I would have expected to see is a Man burning the candle at both ends—up early, working hard without any breaks each day, very little (if any) leisure time, and then burning the midnight oil.
But instead we see Jesus never seeming to be rushed or exhausted. He takes time for meals with friends, time away from the crowds, and still in just a short period of time He fulfilled hundreds of ancient prophecies and trained His followers to take the Gospel around the globe!
One of the keys is His priority. Notice that I said priority and not prioritieS. Jesus was singularly focused on His Father’s glory and He showed total dependence on Him. I think one of the most telling verses is Mark 1:35: “Very early in the morning, while it was still dark, Jesus got up, left the house and went off to a solitary place, where He prayed.”
If Jesus needed prayer to start His day, how much more do we need this!
Scottish pastor Robert Murray McCheyne wrote in his journal, “Rose early to seek God, and found Him whom my soul loveth. Who would not rise early to meet such company?”
So why don’t we treat prayer like this? I think there are three main hindrances to keep us from making prayer a priority.(1) Self-reliance. A common phrase we use is, “I need to get to work.” But this puts the emphasis on me—my plans, my abilities, my work ethic. I believe I can do more than pray, but I also believe that I shouldn’t do anything until I have prayed.
Prayer, therefore, is a reminder of my utter God-reliance.
God has a better plan than we do. God has more wisdom than we do. God has more strength than we do. So wouldn’t it be better to ask Him what we should be doing, how we should be doing it, and then ask Him for the strength to do it?
When we have this focus, our prayer time will keep us aligned with His plans and empowered with His wisdom and strength. Look at a couple of examples.
Sarah knew how to believe God because He showed how He kept His promise in His perfect timing (Genesis 21:1-2).
Mary knew how to pray and behave in alignment with God’s word (Luke 1:31-38). Her prayer shortly after this is sautéed in Scripture, showing how she relied on God to keep His Word (vv. 46-55).
Saul of Tarsus (who became Paul the apostle) had assurances of God’s direction for his life at almost every turn (Acts 9:15-16, 20:22-24, 21:10-14, 23:11, 27:21-25). Then he writes to his friends at Philippi how God received the glory throughout this whole process (Philippians 1:12-14, 25-26).
We can live and pray with the same assurance that God is completely in control (Isaiah 55:8-11; Romans 8:26-28). (2) Distractions. When Martin Luther was asked about his plans for the next day he said, “I have so much to do that I shall spend the first three hours in prayer.” That sounds unrealistic to most of us, but that is because we call too many things “priorities.” We need a singular priority: The knowledge of God’s will and the help that only God can give.
Stephen Covey has a very helpful tool that I use regularly: the urgent/important grid. Bible reading and prayer time is most decidedly a Quadrant II activity. We make time for these important activities by removing unimportant activities from Quadrant IV. The Bible frequently couples a “take off” with a “put on” (see 1 Corinthians 13:11; 2 Timothy 2:4; Ephesians 6:11-18), which should prompt us to ask, “What’s one thing I can take off of my Quadrant IV and put on that time for prayer in Quadrant II?”(3) Uncertainty. Sometimes we may wonder if our prayers are doing anything. Maybe we think we are not praying the “right way” or perhaps we wonder if we are praying for something in alignment with God’s will or only our own selfishness.
The only two things Jesus said were the “wrong ways” to pray were praying to show off, and babbling like pagans (Matthew 6:5-8). As we read in Romans 8, the Holy Spirit will help us pray, if we will let Him.One way we pray in alignment with God’s will is to pray using the Scripture. The Bible is our Prayer Book. Pastor Timothy Keller wrote, “Your prayer must be firmly connected to and grounded in your reading of the Word. This wedding of Bible and prayer anchors your life down in the real God. … Without immersion in God’s words, our prayers may not be merely limited and shallow but also untethered from reality.”
So here are three steps we need to implement to counteract those three hindrances to a consistent, meaningful prayer life:
Listen to yourself pray—replace the “I have to” with “God, I trust You to direct me and help me.”
Track your time in each quadrant and identify just one Quadrant IV activity you can replace with prayer.
“Your failures are your accomplishments because it makes you prepared for whatever it is that you are going to do next.” —Lee Daniels
One of my favorite Christmas movies is Miracle on 34th Street, where a well-timed letter to Santa Claus arrives at the courthouse to tip the scales of justice for Kris Kringle. The US Postal Service reports that they still get thousands of letters addressed to Santa each year. Have you ever wondered what happens to them. The Smithsonian has the heart-warming story.
“The more we learn from God’s Word about how creation praises and reveals Him, the better able we will be to explain His revelation to others. But we’re not content for people merely so experience some revelation of God from the things He has made. We want them to know Jesus. For that, we’ll have to lead them to the Scriptures. The better we know the Scriptures and are daily immersed in them, the more we will see Jesus there and be made like Him. The more we are made like Him, the more we will see Him in all His works, and the more our hope will grow and be visible to others, some of whom may ask a reason for the hope that is within us.” —T.M. Moore
“No priest, no theologian stood at the manger of Bethlehem. And yet all Christian theology has its origin in the wonder of all wonders: that God became human. Holy theology arises from knees bent before the mystery of the divine Child in the stable. Without the holy night, there is no theology.” —Dietrich Bonhoeffer
“Early Pentecostals generally viewed the observance of the ‘church calendar’ as remnants of liturgical traditions. Apart from Easter and Christmas, there were few days that Pentecostal churches set aside for special services. One exception was New Year’s Eve, when a ‘Watchnight Service’ would be held, typically starting around 7 p.m. and lasting until after midnight.” Check out the notable history of people “praying in the New Year.”
Scott Hubbard writes, “Spiritual health yesterday does not guarantee spiritual health today. So, at the end of a new year, on the edge of another, let’s stop to take some spiritual vitals. How healthy is your soul?” He then gives us six biblically-based questions to help us assess the healthiness of our soul.
Listen to the podcast of this post by clicking on the player below, and you can also subscribe on Apple, Spotify, or Audible.
We have the candles of hope and peace burning brightly. Romans 15:13 tells us that our hope in God’s fulfilled promises and our hope in His fulfilling of His future promises is what brings us not only peace but joy as well.
William Gurnall noted, “Joy is the highest testimony which can be given to our peace.” That means that hope bubbles up in peace and joy, but joy then sustains and fuels future hope, which allows us to experience peace all over again!
The English dictionary has the right definition for joy: the emotion of great delight caused by something exceptionally good or satisfying. Unfortunately, all of the examples the dictionary gives for joy are fleeting external things.
The Bible makes it quite clear that pleasure is not the same thing as joy, but still people try to find what they call joy in things that bring them pleasure. C.S. Lewis wrote, “Joy is never in our power and pleasure often is.”
Just ask the wisest and richest man who ever lived: King Solomon. He wrote the Book of Ecclesiastes which is all about his pursuit of pleasure, yet every attempts ends with him crying, “Vanity! Meaningless!” But notice something: every time he says this, the phrase “under the sun” is adjacent to it. In other words, nothing on earth can provide true joy.
Paul experienced the same thing in the New Testament (see Romans 7:18-20).
Just like we said about these candles that darkness is not the opposite of light, but it is the absence of light, so too, this wretched state of joylessness is the absence of things that are eternally satisfying.
That means we need something other-worldly—something higher than the sun—to truly bring light and satisfaction. The prophet Isaiah foretold the light that Jesus would bring from Heaven, and this light would be our eternal joy and salvation (Isaiah 9:1-3, 6-7; Matthew 1:21).
Notice how the angelic announcement of Christ’s birth ties together the thoughts of joy with Savior (Luke 2:8-11).
Isaiah foretold this First Advent which Jesus fulfilled (Isaiah 61:1-3; Luke 4:18-19), and which Paul come to discover as well (Romans 7:24-25).
Another biblical definition for the word joy is delighting in God’s grace in our trials because we understand that these trials enlarge our capacity for even greater joy. This is the joy we can know as we live between the two Advents of Jesus. We see this in the example of Jesus fixing His eyes on the eternal joy even as He walked toward Calvary, and how His Father then exalted Him for that (Hebrews 12:2; Philippians 2:9-11).
In a similar, Jesus prepares us for the joy following our time of grief (John 16:17-24). The writer of Hebrews agreed with this (Hebrews 12:11), as did the writer of the 126th Psalm (notice the word joy being used four times in just six verses here!).
The Second Advent of Jesus will be eternally satisfying joy beyond anything we can imagine! I love how Isaiah 35 foretells what we can read on the last pages of the Book of Revelation.
This thought from Charles Spurgeon is spot-on: “We who trust in Jesus are the happiest of people, not constitutionally, for some of us are much tried and are brought to the utter depths of poverty, but inwardly, truly, our heart’s joy is not to be excelled.”
May we all live in that hope-filled, peace-fueled joy every single day until Christ returns or calls us Home!
If you missed it, check out the lights of hope and peace in our previous messages in this series by clicking here.
The apostle Paul lists three indispensable qualities of a godly leader. Remove even one of those qualities, and you no longer have a godly leader. I dive deep on these qualities (and more) in my book Shepherd Leadership.
I have lots of new content every week, which you can check out on my YouTube channel.
T.M. Moore wrote, “We are God’s poems, as Paul says in Ephesians 2:10, where the Greek word for ‘workmanship’ is ποίημα, poiema—poem. Perhaps this is why we find it pleasurable when others take an interest in us and want to get to know us better. They’re asking us to ‘read’ our ‘poem’ to them. What fun! And God wants us to know, love, enjoy, and serve Him by all the things He has freely given to us and which He seeks to ‘read’ to us day by day.”
“Saints” is always plural in the Bible. That means we always need to be looking out for our brothers and sisters in Christ. I love the words James uses to close his letter to the saints.
✅ Gather frequently to encourage others
✅ Reach out to those who are absent
✅ Speak the truth in love
✅ Exhort and encourage
✅ Forgive and ask for forgiveness
✅ Restore quickly and gently
Anthony Kidd warns about something I address in my book When Sheep Bite. “Inherent to our calling as shepherds is the task of looking out for the flock of God and protecting it from savage wolves and false shepherds. However, Paul emphasizes here that one of the greatest threats to the church can emerge from within its own leadership ranks, making self-awareness a critical aspect of pastoral leadership.” Read this full article about the earning signs of diseased leadership.
More amazing findings that show the incredible beauty and wisdom of our Creator! The ICR reports, “Insects, such as the winged insects in the order Lepidoptera, continue to reveal incredible abilities with some facets that zoologists thought were reserved only for vertebrates.”
Christian parents often experience both a weight and a wait as they pray for their children. Biblical waiting is always active, calling us to continue to pray for our kids—not matter how old they are!
I love studying my Bible, and I also enjoy passing along things that encourage others to begin studying their own Bibles. This is a really cool infographic from Wesley Huff, giving a great overview of the Bible.
Craig T. Owens 