God's Will

   It stands to reason that when we pray according to the will of God, our prayers will be effective and empowered by God.
  Do you want guaranteed prayer results? Whenever we pray from God's prayer list (which can be found in the Bible), we can be assured that He will grant our request: "This is the confidence which we have before Him,that, if we ask anything according to His will, he hears us. And if we know that He hears us in whatever we ask, we know that we have the requests which we have asked from Him" (1 John5:14-15). Praying from God's prayer list is a guarantee for effective, empowered prayer.
    Although we are to seek God's provisions, Jesus emphasized that we should seek God above all. There is a difference between loving the gift and loving the giver. Remember, God is not a vending machine; He is the one who Loves us, and desires to meet our needs.

                                    PaulP 

Life is but a Vapor...

Sometimes the Holy Spirit whispers soft words of wisdom from time to time through a particular verse that I read. I recall one particular verse that I could never seem to forget. It was one of those sayings that you weighed everything against. It is found in the book of Ecclesiastes.


“It is better to spend more time at funerals than at parties. For you are going to die and you should think about it while there is still time.” (Ecclesiastes 7:2)

You may be thinking “man what a depressing statement” a real bubble buster. But for me it is quite the contrary. That gloomy statement causes me to continually reprioritize my life.

The Holy Spirit makes sure that particular scripture is stored in a “refer to often” file within my mind. He is faithful to lead me to that mental index whenever I develop a self-centered notion that my life is my own and I can live it anyway I please.

As James often remind us, “For what is your life? It is even a vapor that appeareth for a little, and then vanishes away.”

This verse is certainly not one of those “claim it” verses that we put on the fridge with a cute little magnet. But then again, why don’t we? Are we so in love with our lives or so deeply immersed in our pleasures that we cannot bare to be reminded that one day it will all disappear like a passing mist?

I saw on a church sign the other day these words “Soon this life as we know it shall pass—Only what’s done for Jesus will last.”

So what is our duty? The wisest King that ever lived summed it up in one sentence.

“Fear God and keep His commandments.” (Ecclesiastes 12:13)

So in closing I will leave you with this thought. “It’s only a minute, but eternity is in it.” Make your vapor count!
                                                           PaulP

Prayer is Commanded

We are not merely counselled and recommended to pray but are commanded to pray. God's own people need-- or else they would have not been given it-- a command to pray, because we are very subject to periods of worldliness, if indeed that is not our usual state.We do not forget to eat or go to work or go to our beds to rest, but we often do forget to wrestle with God in prayer and spend long periods in consecrated fellowship withour Father and our God. Prayer gets the leftovers , while the world has the best.

What meanest thou, O sleeper?arise,call upon the Lord." (Jonah1:6) We need this as well as Jonah did in the storm.
PaulP

Absolute Surrender

God frequently requires adjustments in areas of our lives that we have never considered or been open to in the past. You may have heard someone say something like this: "Don't ever tell God something you don't want to do ...That is what He will ask you to do." God's not looking for ways to make our lives difficult. However, He intends to be the Lord of your life. When we identify a place where we refuse to allow His Lordship, that is where He will go to work. He is seeking absolute surrender. God may or may not require us to do the thing we identified, but He will keep working until we are willing for Him to be Lord of all. Remember, because God loves us, His will is always best! Any adjustment God expects us to make is for our good. As we follow Him, the time may come when our life and future may depend on our adjusting quickly to God's directives.

We shouldn't adjust our life to a concept. We should align our life to God. We should alter our viewpoints to resemble His. Change our ways to be like His ways. After we make the necessary adjustments, He will tell us what to do next in order to obey Him. When we follow Him, we will experience Him doing through us something only He can do.

PaulP

Without God at work in you, you can do nothing to produce Kingdom fruit. When God purposes to do something, He gurantees it will come to pass. He is the One who will accomplish what He intends to do. If you depend on anything other than God, you are asking for failure in Kingdom terms. He seeks for us to give absolute surrender to Him.

The assault on our desires

The battle of desire is not something that just takes place within us or even between us. It is also taking place against us, all the time. Our desire is under constant attack.
Desire is good, it is what takes us to God. But our desire is not hard-wired to God. We look to others to teach us what to desire. We are imitative creatures. It is how we learn language, it is how we master just about anything in life. It is how we come to seize the objects of our desire. We all know this, though we don't like to admit it.
Advertiser's play on this constantly, urging us to desire this and that by creating the image that" everyone who is anyone" has the object, and we are surely a loser if we don't have it also, sadly the ploy works.
The constant effort to arouse our desire and capture it can be described only as an assault. From the time we get up to the time we go to bed, we are bombarded with one underlying message: it can be done. The life you are longing for can be achieved. Only buy this product, see this movie, drive this car, take this vacation, join this gym, what have you.
The evil one basically has two ploys. If he cannot get us to kill our hearts and bury our desire, then he is delighted to seduce our desire into a trap. Once we give over our desire for life to any object other than God, we become ensnared...
Like the rich young ruler, we find we cannot give up our treasured possessions, whatever they may be, even though God Himself is standing before us with a better offer. If you think this sad story is not also your own, you are out of touch with yourself. We wind up serving our desire or resenting it, or a little of both.

PaulP

www.abattle2fight.blogspot.com