Your best life now depends more on the angle of your view rather than on your circumstances. Although anyone dealing with difficult circumstances, chronic disease, economic hardship, persecution, or difficult people agrees that it would be better if these circumstances would change, having your best life now is more about your inner life than your outward life. Perhaps Jesus wanted to …
Pray and Fast for Syrian Christians
Pray and fast for Syrian Christians. According to The Voice of the Martyrs, “Christians in Syria are fleeing en masse from threats, kidnappings, rapes and murders. …hundreds are crossing the border into Turkey and Lebanon daily. Sadly, these panic-stricken refugees have faced horrific circumstances and ongoing threats. A Government that Failed to Protect Them Some point to a government that …
Pride Wars
If intend to become what God intends for me, I must win the pride wars. Like most of us, God assigned my present circumstance as my mission field. Here and now, I can effectively serve him if I will only trust him and obey. Too often I think my mission is someplace else or some other time. If I listen …
Christian Meditation and Fulfillment vs. Eastern Meditation and Nonexistence
Christian meditation for most is rolled under the subject of prayer. The reason I haven’t finished the first section on prayer for the Prayer and Fasting Guide is twofold. First, I’ve become convicted that I did a very poor job of teaching my teenage daughters how to pray, so the remedy for that takes precedence over finishing the guide. When …
Limited Time to Read, Read the Bible First
Limited time to read? Read what sustains and transforms you. In order to make disciples, we must be disciples. And disciples must have a direct relationship with God. We cannot expect to be disciples if we don’t regularly talk with and listen to God. We must understand that he is not only Savior but is also Lord. He speaks to …
Prayer, Chronic vs. Acute and the Desperate Choice
The Solution for Desperate Choice Desperate choice calls for desperate prayer. With prayer, I always mix chronic and acute needs. Ongoing issues, circumstances, obstacles, and constraints list the chronic needs that I face where prayer provides daily sustenance until my deliverance. Acute needs are those immediate needs, things happening right now where I need help, right now. God knows what I …
Forgetting to Breathe and Preventing Spiritual Anorexia
Preventing Spiritual Anorexia: Believing Differently Preventing spiritual anorexia as I have written before, requires seeing differently, we must believe differently. Changing what I believe is usually difficult. Fasting used as a focal lens for prayer and as a tool to help me understand my true dependency upon God can aid me in shifting and changing my framework of beliefs. Getting …
The Heart of Plan B
The heart of plan B? In Prayer II, Believing is Seeing, I wrote: ‘Those of us who are intensely analytical, like me, need to practice patience and persistence in prayer and avoid going to plan B before God has given us an answer. We need to wait for God’s answer. We need to make sure beliefs, thoughts, and actions align. …