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Prayer – The Basics

September 20, 2010 by memullin

I grew up with faith in God.  It was not always a saving faith, but I believed in God and knew that when you had a problem (or a complaint), it was to God one should turn.  My father died when I was 3 years old, and some of the adults in my life told me that my prayers were essential to my father getting to heaven.  As a three-year-old, I was motivated to pray.  After all,  if my father wasn’t going to be with me and my family, he needed to be with God.   I knew, instinctively, what to ask for,  I knew who to ask, and I knew why I could expect answers.

I needed my dad to be with God, I believed that God was able to meet my need, and I knew He had the power because He was God.

I agree it wasn’t a sophisticated theology, but it got me on my knees.  I remember praying at night and sometimes in the back of a church and asking God to make sure my dad made it to heaven.  I didn’t doubt.   I didn’t try to contact a back up provider.  I asked, believing and knowing the nature and authority of Him in whom I believed.  These are the essentials of prayer:

Ask believing that the one who is God (and therefore completely able) will answer.

It specifically excludes:

  • Prayers of those who don’t believe in God
  • Prayers of those who doubt God’s willingness to answer
  • Prayers of those who don’t trust in God
  • Rote prayers which lack a revelation of the individual heart and need required for relationship with God

I am a little older now, and I am committed to serving God and allowing Him to be the authority in my life.  I still pray to God believing that He will answer because I know that He is all-suffcicent and all powerful, and He alone is God and there is no other.  I know from my experience in prayer that I may not always like His answer initially, but I know He hears and answers my prayers according to what is best for me.

Posted in Prayer, Relationship with God | Tagged , , |

What things hinder the prayer of the believer?

September 18, 2010 by memullin

The Bible teaches that a believer is guaranteed access to the Father in prayer.

  • Luke 11:13 “If you then, being evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask Him!”
  • John 16:23  “Most assuredly, I say to you, whatever you ask the Father in My name He will give you.”

So what are the things that interfere with or hinder the prayer of a believer?

  • Iniquity – “If I regard iniquity in my heart, the Lord will not hear.”    Psalm 66:18
  • Carnality (asking for selfing desires) – “You ask and do not receive, because you ask amiss, that you may spend it on your pleasures.”  James 4:3
  • Violence/bloodshed – “When you spread out your hands, I will hide My eyes from you; Even though you make many prayers, I will not hear. Your hands are full of blood.”  Isaiah 1:15
  • Rejection of God’s Counsel/advice –  “Then they will call on me, but I will not answer; They will seek me diligently, but they will not find me. Because they hated knowledge And did not choose the fear of the LORD, They would have none of my counsel And despised my every rebuke.”  Prov. 1:28-30
  • Arrogance/Lack of humility – “Two men went up to the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector.  The Pharisee stood and prayed thus with himself, ‘God, I thank You that I am not like other men–extortioners, unjust, adulterers, or even as this tax collector.  ‘I fast twice a week; I give tithes of all that I possess.’  And the tax collector, standing afar off, would not so much as raise his eyes to heaven, but beat his breast, saying, ‘God, be merciful to me a sinner!’  I tell you, this man went down to his house justified rather than the other; for everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, and he who humbles himself will be exalted.”   Luke 18:10-14

Examine yourself to see if one of these is an issue for you.  Don’t let another day go by that your prayers are hindered.  As we will see in some of the upcoming posts, prayer is essential in the life of a believer.  It is both a great responsibility and a great privilege.

Posted in Hindrances to prayer, Prayer, Relationship with God | Tagged , , , , |

INDEPENDENT NO MORE (Part 3)

September 2, 2010 by memullin

LIFE COMES FROM DEPENDENCE, NOT INDEPENDENCE

You probably hear the same things I hear.  The young woman says of her marriage, “I want to work.  I don’t want to be dependent on my husband.”   The grandmother confides in her friends, “I don’t want to ever be dependent on my children.”  The newlyweds concur, “We don’t want to be dependent on our parents.”   The non-believer says, “I’ll never be a Christian; I don’t want to have a crutch or have to rely on someone else.”  My question for all of them is, “Why not?”

How is it that we have gotten so isolationist in our thinking that we want to disentangle ourselves from the very web of support God places around us to care for, support and nurture us?  It is clearly a lie from the pit of hell.

God is a God of relationship.  Relationship is always about dependence, not independence.  For example, if you are dating someone and his or her greatest desire is to be independent of you and receive nothing from you, I put it to you that the relationship will not be very fulfilling and is not likely to last very long.

Independence is a euphemism for isolation.  If one is independent of everyone, he or she is alone and thus isolated – an island unto him or herself.  Islands are nice places to visit, but an island has difficulty sustaining abundant life for very long.  So too spiritually.  In my own example, my independence from God brought gradual creeping death to my soul.  I appeared on the outside to have apparent worldly success, an education, a career, my own business, financial stability, a house, a baby . . .   Inside, I was lost, confused, empty and longing for something – I didn’t know what.

Even after I came back to the Lord and began to build my fellowship with God by going to church and attaching some outward signs of faith to my life, I still felt times of great death in my soul.  Darkness could easily creep in and spread.  Without the callouses and vices of the world to medicate against the pain, it was worse than before.  It was one such episode of darkness and depression which hit me so hard and so unexpectedly I was unable to pull myself up by my boot straps.  I turned to blame the only one I knew . . . God.

“God,” I cried.  “Why are you allowing this? (At least my theology was good – God is sovereign over all things.)  I’m going to church.  I’m reading in my Bible.  I’m singing songs to you and crying with true love and emotion to you, so why did you let this darkness descend on me again?”  I knew not long after asking the question God’s answer.  He gently showed me, with no condemnation or anger, that I had allowed the darkness.  I had invited it in, and while he had held it at bay for a time, it was now time for me to deal with the darkness.  Time to fish or cut bait.  The darkness, He showed me, was able to reach me because I had a divided heart.  I still had parts of my life which I had not given over to His lordship.  I still had great areas of independence from Him.  His desire was for my entire life to come under His lordship.  I needed to surrender all.  He promised me that if I surrendered all, this darkness, caused by separation from God by my own sin, would never come back in the same way.  And so it was.

I said, “No” to the sin that I was engaged in.  I threw myself at His feet and begged Him not to ever allow me to get separated from Him again.  I didn’t have all the doctrine and theology to point to at the time.  I wasn’t very well schooled in my Bible, but I knew God had pointed to the compromise in my life and said, “Choose.”  It was an easy choice.  The walking out of the choice was more difficult.  Saying “no” to sin in your own life is often much easier than telling your partner or partners in sin of your choice.  They are not always at the same point your are spiritually and may resist putting aside the sin.  However, God is able to bring to completion the work in you and the work in me.

Each day since that time, I have grown in my dependence on God.  I have gradually changed my mind about independence.  I no longer view it as a positive attribute for anyone. I have learned that in marriage, there is no room for independence.  In the family of God, there is no room for independence.  In my walk with Jesus, there is no room or desire for independence.  I want to wholly rely on Jesus.  I want no glimmer of my own righteousness to show through (it is as filthy rags).  I only want God to view me in the righteousness of Christ.  That requires my total dependence on Christ.  In total dependence on Christ, I am able to be restored to that relationship with God that Adam and Eve had before the fall, a relationship based on close fellowship where all decisions are made based on the fellowship and dependence on a loving and nurturing Father who is almighty, all-knowing and all powerful.

May the God of all mercy show you how to be totally dependent on Him.  May you rejoice daily in the wonder of an all-sufficient God who loves you.

Posted in Dependence on God, Devotional, God, Relationship with God | Tagged , | 1 Comment »

INDEPENDENT NO MORE (Part 2)

August 31, 2010 by memullin

THE LIE OF INDEPENDENCE AND SELF-SUFFICIENCY

Independence from God is never equivalent to freedom.  It is in total dependence on God that we have freedom – freedom from sin, freedom from fear, freedom from worry and anxiety and most-importantly, freedom from judgment – the judgment of a holy God due sinful man.  All men are sinful.  The Bible teaches that none are righteous and that the wages of sin is death.  The only true freedom is that which comes from God.  Only He can promise a genuine and lasting freedom.

When I was sixteen, I obtained the first key to my “independence” from my parents.  I started working at the Jacksonville Pharmacy in Jacksonville, Maryland.  You might have a hard time understanding what a coup that really was.  Practically everyone in our loosely-defined town went into that Pharmacy at least once a week.  Some came in every day or evening on their way home from work.  It was a hub of activity and community news.

It was that $3.35 per hour that gave me my first real “independence” (so called).  From that point forward, I purchased my car, my gas, my insurance, my incidentals, etc.  I thought of myself as independent even though I was only 16 and still living at home.  I thought I was independent, but looking back now, I can see I really wasn’t totally free of dependence on my parents for the roof over my head, health insurance, food and other expenses of everyday life.

I can draw a parallel to my spiritual life.  During my college years, I turned from my relationship with God to assert my independence from His restrictions.  (I now see them as cords of love.)  I took on sin and tried to be its master.  I think you can guess how that ended.  It mastered me.  I sinned well and with frequency and depravity and thought little of God.  I had become “independent”, a place I would never recommend.  It was a place filled with emptiness and despair and darkness so heavy it can push all the air out of your lungs.  Independence from God was a place of slow death of my soul – a death that would have gone on for eternity, a death that would have separated me from God forever.  It is a law of nature that independence brings death.  What happens to the flower cut from the stem?  The branch cut from the tree?    Death.  Life is found and sustained only with connection to the vine.

John 15:5 “I am the vine, you are the branches. He who abides in Me, and I in him, bears much fruit; for without Me you can do nothing.” (Jesus speaking)

Posted in Bible, Dependence on God, Devotional, God, Gospels, John, New Testament, Walking with God | Tagged , , , , |

INDEPENDENT NO MORE (Part 1)

August 27, 2010 by memullin

Putting aside self-sufficiency for good

According to C. Hummel in Tyranny of the Urgent, “The root of all sin is self-sufficiency,  independence from the rule of God.  When we fail to wait prayerfully for God’s guidance and strength, we are saying with our actions, if not with our words, that we do not need Him.”

DEPENDENCE

According to 2 Corinthians 12:9, the Lord told Paul, “My grace is sufficient for you, for My strength is made perfect in weakness.”  The message is clearly, “Be as weak as possible, and I will make known my strength through you.”

We (mankind), were designed to depend.  If you go back to the garden, God’s design was that mankind should live his life forever (remember they were not prohibited from the Tree of Life) in fellowship with God.  He desired not that man rely on his own wisdom or knowledge of good and evil, but that man would make his decisions based on his close fellowship with God.  Several possible explanations for God’s design come to mind:

  • It could be that God knew that a moral standard of good and evil, right and wrong, would not be sufficient for us.  We, apart from fellowship with God, would choose evil over good.  It could be that God, for His sheer delight, desired to impart His wisdom and guidance to us, one by one and day by day.  The picture is one of a loving and involved father teaching and guiding a beloved son or daughter.
  • It could also be that God knew that we cannot keep very many rules or guidelines on our own without encouragement and reminder.
  • It could be He knew that our greatest need is the constant unconditional love of our Father.  It is the fuel for our human souls.  It is what keeps us healthy and able to move forward.
  • It could be that these reasons and purposes are only known to the Almighty.  In any event, a life of unbroken fellowship with the Father was God’s first choice for us.
It was a grasp at self-dependence that severed that fellowship in the garden of Eden more than 6,000 years ago.  You know the story.  Eve was deceived by the serpent.  She fell prey to two of his well-worn strategies:
  1. First, she was not clear on what God had said, so she was easily deceived by the serpent’s misrepresentation of God’s word.
  2. Second, she was lured into believing the lies of the serpent because of her desire to be independent of God (to be like a god herself).

    3. THE BAD NEWS . . . The root of all independence is that same desire in each of us. The consequence of Eve’s grab for independence was separation from God for herself and her family.

    THE GOOD NEWS . . . The cross is the provision for restored fellowship and dependence on God.  God has made a way to restore what was lost in the garden.  Hallelujah!

Posted in Dependence on God, Devotional, God, Relationship with God | Tagged , , , , , | 2 Comments »

Lessons from the Book of Job (Part 2)

August 16, 2010 by memullin

As I read the book of Job each year, Job reminds me about my God, why He is worthy, oh so worthy to be served.

  • Everything under heaven is His.  He even sets limits for Satan.
  • He controls all of nature – that which is above and that which is below.
  • None came before Him, and He has no end, so it is not possible that any will come after Him.
  • Whatever He wills – that shall be done.  None can resist or successfully oppose Him.  None of His purposes can be thwarted.
  • In His presence, I see the wretch that I am, hopelessly self-focused and self-seeking, lacking in power and sufficiency, totally dependent on my God.

Although He might despise me for my inadequacies, my frailties, my pathetic efforts to be independent, He doesn’t. Instead He extends His loving arms to hold and comfort me.  He washes me in His blood, and I am clean.

Posted in Bible, Bible Study, Books of the Bible, God, Job, Old Testament | Tagged , , , |

Lessons from the Book of Job

August 13, 2010 by memullin

The benefit of reading through the Bible each year from cover to cover is that every year, you must read the book of Job.  It is 37 chapters of men’s wisdom followed by 5 chapters of God’s.

When I read Job, I learn things about myself:

  • I am like Job’s friends, spending too much time trying to figure why another person faces severe or repeated suffering and trials.  I look for hidden sin in their lives.  I usually fail to consider the universal truth that God’s ways are far past my finding out or understanding.  How can finite man understand infinite God?
  • I am like Job.  I tend to think God is dealing unjustly with me.  I accuse God of being far from me, not remembering me, or forsaking me.  I am prone to think of God as a mere man, like me, capable of error, neglect, thoughtlessness.  I imagine He might need my insight, my vision, or my plans.
  • I am so relieved to hear from God.  After 37 chapters of the ramblings of those not much brighter than me, when I read the words, “Then the LORD answered Job out of the whirlwind,” it makes my heart quicken.  His truth washes over me, verse after verse confronting me with my impotency and my insignificance in stark contrast to His omnipotence, omniscience and omnipresence.

Like Job, my only response to the awesome power and knowledge of God is to mumble with my face in dirt, “I am vile . . . I have nothing to say.”

More on Job tomorrow . . .

Posted in Bible, Bible Basics, Bible Study, Books of the Bible, Devotional, God, Job, Old Testament | Tagged , , , , |

Names of God

August 7, 2010 by memullin

I found a cool site that has some great information about the names of God.  Check out the link below:

Names of God

Posted in Bible, Bible Basics, God, Names of God | Tagged , | 1 Comment »

As the Deer Panteth

August 2, 2010 by memullin

Have you sung that song “As the Deer Panteth for the waters so my soul longeth after thee . . ?”   I was thinking about that line today, about the thirsty deer.  Does the deer drink and then go away for a week before returning to drink again?  Does the deer drink because it thinks the other deer are watching it?   Does the deer fill its cantine and walk away from the stream for a time in the desert only returning when it is near death from thirst?  No.  The deer comes daily and throughout the day and drinks when it experiences genuine thirst.  It stays near the stream and doesn’t wander so far as to not be able to get back when it experiences thirst.  It does not try to take care of future thirst or worry from where the next drink will come.  The deer relies on its heavenly Father to tell it when it thirsts and to provide a means to satisfy that thirst.

So what spiritual lessons is the Psalmist teaching me in describing this thirst like the deer?

  • It is a thirst that longs for and can be satisfied by the water. I should thirst for the living water, the Word of God, the Holy Spirit and seek to be satisfied by the Word and the Holy Spirit.  It is a natural law that appetite is developed by eating.  Thirst, too can be developed by drinking.  I should drink of the living water and thereby develop a thirst which it alone can quench.
  • It is a thirst that seeks quenching daily, hourly and as the need arises. I should seek to slake (ally or reduce by satisfying) my thirst daily and hourly, if need be, by coming to the font of living water, to Jesus who promises to satisfy my thirst.  I should stay close to the source of living water.
  • It is a thirst that has no other motive than to satisfy the basic need. When I come to the water to drink, my motive should be to quench my thirst, not to fulfill some man-made obligation or ritual or the expectations of others.
  • It is a thirst that trusts in the creator to provide a means of satisfying it. I must come to quench my thirst to the one who created it.  I must trust God to provide the means for satisfying my thirst and not seek to have that need filled somewhere else.

May you be like the deer who pants for the water brooks.  May your genuine thirst for God be quenched by the living water of the Word and fellowship with the One who promises to bring forth rivers of living water from the lives of those who believe in Him.

Posted in Bible, Devotional, Exhortation, Psalms | Tagged , , , , , | 2 Comments »

Stop and Smell the Roses

July 30, 2010 by memullin

It may seem a little odd for me to wax poetic given my usual steady fare of Bible studies and such, but I have found myself of late just thinking about my God and how sweet He is to me.

My God has delivered me from the battle and set me in a quiet meadow with sweet-smelling flowers (actually it is a 1/2 vegetable/ 1/2 flower garden in Southern California, but stay with me here).

He has led me beside clear waters that allow me to reflect on who I was, who I have become through my recent trials and who He would have me be and how He would shape me into that person (This, of course, means more trials).

He has given me to a godly husband and a child that desires to do well with the LORD.

He has set me in the company of quality women of faith to encourage and sharpen me.

He has given me the desires of my heart as best I have been able to figure them.

He has never left me or forsook me (not that I didn’t give Him plenty of reason), and His mercies are new every morning.  I get to wake up a daughter of the King and go to sleep in the shadow of the wings of the Most High God.

This is living!

Posted in God, Relationship with God, worship | Tagged , , , | 2 Comments »

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