Poem: With Our God

With our God are all provisions

And the courage to make decisions;

To fulfill our purposes in life

And understanding to handle strife.

May we never cling to a victim’s view,

But being over-comers just as You.

Seeing the flower and not the thorn.

Having Christ’s glory us adorn.

We lay our inadequacies at Your feet.

Putting on Your armor we can defeat

Ghosts of the past, demons of the future

With love and compassion our world to nurture.

by Christina Morley

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Prayer is Powerful – Part 5 of 5

In my previous post, I asked how often do we pray for those who are following Christ? We might think that since they are already saved by God’s grace, we should place the focus of our prayers on non-believers. Let’s take a look at the Apostle Paul’s prayer life.

In Paul’s letters to the churches, we see that he prayed night and day for his fellow brothers and sisters in Christ. Likewise, he asked them to pray for him. He knew that they were together in a spiritual battle and that prayer would help them stand firm in the faith.

There are lots of believers that we can pray for. Usually, it helps to pray for those we know personally. We should especially remember to pray for married couples and their children. Satan targets the family unit, making married life and parenting even harder than it already is. He knows that if he can get at the families, he can reach the societies and destroy the nations. The nations, however, are our inheritance in Christ. So, when we pray for our nation or other nations, we should remember that any healthy nation is built on healthy families.

We should also be praying for pastors, missionaries, evangelists, and teachers even if we don’t know them personally. We can also pray for Christians in government, courts of law, politics, the arts, and sportsmen and women.

We are also instructed in the Word of God to pray for our leaders, the godly and the ungodly alike (1Tim. 2:1&2). God is the one who puts people in authority. Even if we don’t like our leaders, we should still pray for them and show them honor. Even when freedom of speech is regarded as one of our basic rights, that doesn’t mean that God gives us the freedom to say whatever we like. We need to check our attitudes and keep our hearts and minds pure from wanting to see the demise of those with whom we disagree.

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Prayer is Powerful – Part 1 of 5

Prayer is an integral part of a vibrant Christian life. Fortunately, God does not grant us everything that we pray for, especially when those prayers are misguided. Usually, we start out praying the best we know how without properly tapping into the Holy Spirit’s leading. These self-led prayers are not all bad. God will listen to anyone who reaches out to Him; He’d rather we try than not pray at all. He also desires that we grow in our ability to pray as His Spirit leads. The more we pray God’s way, the greater the results will be.

God had to deal with me regarding my prayer life. There was a time when my prayers mostly revolved around me and what seemed missing in my life. My prayers were the kind that flowed from a discontented heart. The discontentment stemmed from the many sacrifices I was making to try to create a happy family, and it culminated in self-pity.

This self-pity became the driving force behind my prayers, which seemed to be going nowhere. Finally, I realized that I had to make a shift from selfish prayers to outward-focused prayers. The more I took the focus off myself and tapped into what was on God’s heart, the more my prayers took a positive outlook. No longer were they weak, directionless, and powerless. They were now taking a turn toward being dynamic, effective, and power-filled.

It’s difficult to look outside of yourself when you don’t know who or what to pray for. You might even need to ask God to give you a compassionate heart. Next, become aware of those around you. Once you notice the need around you, recognize that God has blessed you so that you can be a blessing. Then, ask God to lead you so that you can pray pinpointed prayers. Specific prayers bring about definite results. Pray that God will lead you according to His desires and have faith that God will answer. It’s all about “God’s will be done” and not “my will be done.”

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Thankful in Times of Sacrifice – Part 4 of 5

If we want the love of God to be real in our lives, then we can’t love material things and comforts more than we love God. Just as He did with the Israelites, God uses the tough things in our lives to test us. He wants to see how much we truly love Him, and He wants to strengthen our spiritual muscles. Therefore, we must be willing to obey and follow God at any cost. Obedience in the littlest of things guarantees a victorious life.

Many Israelites missed out on entering the Promised Land because they weren’t willing to make strategic sacrifices. They wanted good returns without depositing anything. They were on the winning team, but because of their unbelief they did not partner with God, their coach. They did not commit to His ways, nor did they maintain a good attitude.

This is not how a Christian on the winning team should behave. If we sacrifice the right things at the right time, the outcome will benefit us instead of harm us. We actually gain more in the long term when we choose to be obedient instead of giving in to short-term desires.

I took the above photo in 2001 of my husband, Rob, with our baby, Samantha, and Jeremiah and Jessica while on a missions trip to Zambia. It was one of my toughest experiences as a mother, but it was also one of my best. I would like to take this opportunity to invite you to check out both my photography blog and my parenting blog. God bless!

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Discovering Your Potential - Part 5 of 5

Most people will not champion you beyond their idea of what is possible. Therefore, you have to be willing to go where others refuse to follow. Many people are trapped in boxes of their own making. They feel either threatened by or jealous of anyone who ventures beyond their limited understanding. They take comfort in surrounding themselves with others who are doing the same.

Christians are not exempt from this kind of thinking. We are all tempted to hold on to what is familiar and to build our walls around that. When we ask the Holy Spirit into our lives, we aren’t immediately set free from the temptation to think like this. We still need to renew our minds by studying the Word of God, and we must develop our spiritual eyes, which are eyes of faith.

Sadly, sometimes it’s the Christians that will fight the hardest to prevent us from being who God intended us to be. However, our fight is not with people, but with evil forces (Eph. 6:12). We must look past our hurts and forgive those who try to stand in the way.

The right path to take is sometimes less visible and less traveled, but the trials we face along the way can only make us stronger. At the right time, God will open doors for each of us as we remain on course and in step with Him.

That doesn’t mean that life is always going to be exciting. The task, whether great or small, should be done with excellence. When we have the right attitude even toward the mundane we’ll experience more release in our lives. If we are faithful in the smallest things, God will bless us with bigger things (Luke 19:17).

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