Crazy thoughts....at 11:48pm

Over the past few weeks of studying, preparing for messages for students and learning more and more as I go, I find myself tonight wondering....wondering about the precious words of the Bible. You are probably wondering where I am going with this. As a Christ-follower, my source of strength and purpose comes from knowing Christ but also I get that strength from a powerful book called the Bible. Tonight, let's just say I laid everything down that I thought I knew about the Bible and started over. No preconceived ideas about this or that but I could open and read the love letters how they were intended to be read. You are probably going, you are weird and yes, I have been called that a time or two...but the point I am getting at is I think that myself, along with many others, we have become calloused in our thinking of how the words of the Bible can truly impact our lives if we could just hold true to them. We become quick to overlook and say "eh, I know the outcome" and so therefore we have lost the true, live changing message that Bible offers. This whole series of prayer that I have been studying has really opened my eyes to look for the amazing details that are embedded within the words of Scripture. No, there is no secret Da Vinci code if you read John 3:16 and 1 John 3:16 together standing on your head in a corner. Sorry. But the beauty of the words and poetry that makes the pages come alive I feel at times I have passed them by. I will be the first to say that I have overlooked Scripture many times to say "yep, got it covered"....oh you Pharisee! So I ask a few questions to whomever reads this: would we be willing to start over? Could we take everyday as if we were starting from the very first time we opened the Word of God? To come with a passion and eagerness to allow the Spirit to speak to our hearts in that moment? I know it might be a stretch for some of us, but I think that if we can come with a passion to understand the truth of what the Bible has to say to us, then we might, just might, fall deeper in love with Christ!

Philippians 3:12

The Lord's Prayer

So, I started speaking on the topic of prayer to our students and it amazes me how much they know! Kudos to our parents! But every now and then we need to be reminded about prayer and how important it is to us. So as we go along in studying the Lord's prayer, I just want to let you know what God is speaking to me as we learn about an area of Christ's life that so important. Have you ever unpacked what the prayer is all about? We started actually two weeks ago and started off understanding what prayer is not supposed to be: (1) don't be like a hypocrite when you pray (2) don't let anything distract you when you approach your alone time (3) and don't speak meaningless repetitious words just to say something. To be honest I think that many of us have forgotten what prayer is about and the form of it has been lost. So as we opened up the prayer, we had to understand these things and also that the disciples wanted to know how to pray (Luke Ch. 11) They saw Jesus all the time go away from the distractions of he world to pray and the disciples saw this as important and asked Jesus "will you teach us how to pray?" I am sure Jesus was like "oh, snap, Yes I will teach you!" So then He gives us a perfect model of who we are to pray to and how we are to pray and what we are to pray for! So last night the phrase that I wanted our students to leave with was "God is real and God is Holy." We have to understand that these two things are non-negotiable when it comes to Our Heavenly Father. Jesus acknowledged the Father first, this is where I feel that many Christ-followers have got it backwards. We come to God with our needs first without acknowledging Him first. We need to remember that it is God's Glory first, our needs last. God must be the foundation of our prayers and everything else builds off of this. But what is really cool is that when we come to God in faith and believe that He is who He is, God wants to reward us (Heb. 11:6) God wants His children to experience answered prayer and He wants to give us help because let's be honest we all need help in this life. We don't have all the answers. But the cool thing that I had totally overlooked in the process is that when we come to God in obedience because our relationship with Him is important, that we bring honor and glory to His name. How so? Well, hallowed means to "revere, honor, glory, and obey." When we acknowledge that God is real, God is holy and we come in faith believing that God is who He says He is, that He wants to answer our prayers, according to His plans, that we have the amazing opportunity to honor and glorify His name by obeying and trusting in His name! That was a mouthful. But it all boils down to this when we approach God in prayer: God is real and God is holy. "So whatever you eat or drink, do it ALL to glory of GOD." (1 Cor. 10:31) As I challenged our students to change one aspect of their own prayer life, what is it that you can change to make your QuietTime more effective? You never saw Jesus have His prayer time in the middle of a crowded street but on the hillside or as Jesus says, "go get into a closet and close the door!" Let's press on, not just so God will answer our prayers but that we passionately want to spend time with Our Creator and Heavenly Father who loves us!

Press on!

Triscuit's and Prayer

Thought the title would get your attention. During my devotion this week, I've been looking at the aspect of prayer. So what better place to have the perfect model than the Lord's prayer given via the disciple's request. As I shared with our students tonight, we have some misconceptions on how we approach prayer: hypocrisy, babbling, and distractions. You are probably wondering "where in the world does this fit in to prayer?" Isn't prayer about God meeting our needs? Well, kinda. If you read in Matthew 6 starting in verse 5, Jesus gives them wise advice when it comes to prayer. Things that prayer shouldn't be. I personally fall into all three, you probably do to. Isn't it funny that we say we are gonna pray for something or for someone and we fail to do so. I feel like the biggest hypocrite. I say I care and your need is important to me but I fail in offering it to the Father. I really do care but not enough I guess when compared to this passage. But it doesn't stop there....I only wish it did...when or where did we get the idea that we have to eloquently pray some recited prayer to touch the heart of God? I find it sad that we can't even be honest in our prayers. We think that we have to say this and that in hopes that God will hear us. Not true. God always listens. But this last area falls into a category that I am working on and it is finding time to devote to my Father. Communication is easily blocked by distractions. No matter what is on the agenda for the day, Satan will do everything possible to detour your thoughts from the most important issue at hand. Finding that quiet place with no distractions is key for me. It is really hard to have a quiet moment when I am being the distraction. So prayer is not about being something you are not, and it's not about praying eloquent, deep, theological prayers and it is not effective if we are a distraction to God in the moment we want Him to hear our prayers. I hope this makes sense to someone. It sounds good coming out of my fingertips...so about the Triscuit's...I was hungry at 12:34 am and thought it would get your attention...did it work?

Pressing on.