Tag Archives: hope

When You’ve Prayed All You KnowTo Pray

01 Thursday Dec 2016

Posted by in prayer

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I wrote this almost six years ago on what to do when we have prayed everything we know to pray. I post it again today for a friend who is feeling that way.

JESUS

Jesus.  Jesus.  Jesus.
Sometimes that is the only prayer I have – and it is enough.
When I’m waiting for an answer that doesn’t come and I know no more prayers to pray, I utter His name — Jesus.
When the night is long and I can’t sleep, I whisper — Jesus.
When I’ve lost my way, I cry out to the One who has not lost me.  I pray — Jesus.
When I’m tired and I can’t see rest ahead, when all strength is gone, I breathe His name — Jesus.
When I am in pain, I remember the One who can heal, and I plead — Jesus.
If I’m afraid, I bear in mind that I have a Shield whose name is — Jesus.
He is my Savior and my Lord, my Shelter and my Comforter.
He gives me sanctuary under His wing and supplies me with restoration and peace.
He is the Holy Lamb of God, the One who comes with compassion and new hope.
He is my Faithful Friend and the Radiant Light on this earth’s journey.
He is the Way of all righteous, the ever-abiding Truth, and the Life of love and joy.
He is the Mighty and Eternal God

A Nation Under God

21 Monday Nov 2016

Posted by in Nation under God

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This past Election Day, many evangelicals believed that God’s man for this hour in our nation was elected. The numbers keepers tell us 81% of the evangelical vote went for Donald Trump. I am one of those evangelicals.

Conservatives believe that a school day opened with prayer and the pledge to allegiance is a good thing. We see it as putting God first, where He deserves to be. We believe our flag is to be honored and lifted high in respect and gratitude for those who have bravely fought for our freedom. We believe that our nation must come first as we work cooperatively with other nations.

george-washington-kneeling-in-prayer2President George Washington said “It is impossible to rightly govern a nation without God and the Bible.” That belief was still held when Abraham Lincoln said “Unless the great God who assisted (Washington) shall be with me and aid me, I must fail; but if the same Omniscient Mind and Mighty Arm that directed and protected him shall guide and support me, I shall not fail . . . Let us all pray that the God of our fathers may not forsake us now.” No one said it more clearly than President Ronald Reagan when he said “If we ever forget that we are One Nation Under God, then we will be a nation gone under.”

A friend called the day after the election and said she imagined I was very happy at the election’s outcome. I replied that what I felt most was relieved; relieved that God was giving us another chance to come back to Him. This mission of many to put God completely out of every public venue is misguided. Every faith is honored and given room today but the faith of Christianity. This is wrong and God will not be mocked. Want some proof of that? Read the stories in the Old Testament of those who did it their way rather than God’s way and see what they went through.

Why would God pick Donald Trump to use? Someone who sometimes speaks crudely and bombastically? I can’t answer that any more than I can explain why God used a drunk (Noah) to build an ark to save humanity. Nor why He used a murderer (Moses) to lead the people of Israel out of bondage. God turned Saul of Tarsus from a man who strongly supported the execution of Christians into Paul, a great missionary and builder of New Testament churches. Maybe God chooses the unlikely to show His great power over all, to demonstrate that the impossible with man is opportunity with God. I can’t explain God’s choices but I can line up and respect them. If I cast my vote incorrectly, time will soon tell. And if I made the right choice, it will be an exciting time for America as we watch God shape and use President-Elect Donald Trump.

“The counsel of the Lord stands forever, the plans of His heart from generation to generation. Blessed is the nation whose God is the LORD, the people whom He has chosen for His own inheritance.” Psalm 33:11-12 (NAS).

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A Prediction for the 2016 Election from Pastor Tom Lindberg

24 Monday Oct 2016

Posted by in Christian hope, Election 2016

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My pastor, Dr. Tom Lindberg of First Assembly Memphis, is a very positive and encouraging pastor, always. Yesterday in morning worship, he told us he wanted to make predictions we could count on about the November election. What he then declared was so uplifting I asked for permission to share it further. May you be blessed by my pastor’s wisdom.

Dr. Tom and Sandi Lindberg Lead Pastor, First Assembly Memphis, TN

Dr. Tom and Sandi Lindberg
Lead Pastor, First Assembly Memphis, TN

A Prediction for the 2016 Election

          On November 8, millions of people will go to the polls to vote in our national election.  I have a prediction to make about the election.  I predict that on November 9,

  • The Lord God Almighty will still be King of Kings and Lord of Lords.
  • Jesus Christ will still be our Savior, Healer, and Baptizer.
  • The Holy Spirit will continue to fill His people with wisdom and power, and greater will be the One in us than he that is in the world.
  • On November 9 I predict the Bible will still be God’s eternal Word. Heaven and earth will fade away, but not God’s Word.
  • I predict God’s church will continue to march ahead in might and power, for the gates of hell cannot stop God’s church.
  • And I predict on November 9 that God’s plan for this world will not change. His plan still concludes with “the Lord Himself descending from heaven with a shout and the voice of the archangel.  The dead in Christ shall rise first, then we that are alive and remain shall be caught up with them to meet the Lord Jesus in the air.  So shall we ever and eternally be with the Lord.”

That’s my prediction for November 9 and election 2016.  Take courage!!

You can learn more about our church famemphis.net and reach Dr. Lindberg at tlindberg@famemphis.net.

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The Weight of Our Prayers

05 Saturday Sep 2015

Posted by in prayer

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When you pass through the waters, I will be with you; and through the rivers, they shall not overwhelm you; when you walk through fire you shall not be burned, and the flame shall not consume you.           —Isaiah 43:2 (ESV)

Yesterday, I leafed though a Bible I had not used in a while. I have a habit of writing prayers on small pieces of paper and tucking them in between the pages of whatever Bible I’m using and this Bible had quite a few of those prayer notes.

When I write out my requests, I add a scripture for praying about the concern, then date it. I noticed as I sorted through my prayer notes, some had dates with a few words indicating progress. Still others the date when my prayer was answered, along with expressions of joy and gratitude.

file00074226366What caught my interest was when I realized how the weight attached to those prayers had changed over time. Some of the prayers have yet to be answered and when initially written, the weight seemed overwhelming. Yet today, though the needs are still there and important to me, the heaviness has lessened. Somewhere along the way, frantic fear was replaced with peaceful acceptance of whatever was the end result. Along the journey of praying and trusting, God brought me to places of sweet release.

Many of those prayer notes had been written when much in my life seemed out of order and definitely out of my control. I was afraid for many things, and as a result, fear framed my prayers. I clearly remembered the level of my anxiety with many of them and how hard it was to keep pushing through.

“Pushing through” faith is what keeps us hopeful. It can also keep us safe from making bad decisions. Our years of walking with the Lord make us stronger and serves as reference points when we need them. We lean into the memories of other hard times we’ve had and how God’s grace got us through.

In reflecting on those prayer notes written several years ago, I know that no matter how grim something may seem at the time, help will come. The prayer may be answered just as I pray and even better than I pray. Or, I may still be praying for an answer years later. But this I know for sure: if I don’t get the answer I hope for, God will give me the strength and courage to manage what is. I know this because He has proven it to me over and over. file000551198693

There is only one secure foundation: a genuine, deep relationship with Jesus Christ, which will carry you through any and all turmoil. No matter what storms are raging all around, you’ll stand firm if you stand on His love.                                              –Dr. Charles Stanley, “In Touch Ministries”            

(Pictures courtesy of morgueFile, under “prayer”)

The Steadfast Love of God

07 Tuesday Jul 2015

Posted by in Bible study, comfort, God's faithfulness, God's love for us, hope, how God sees us, insight, love, Love for God, never alone, observation, study scripture, trust, understanding

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In the English Standard Version of the Bible, “steadfast love” is mentioned 196 times in the Old Testament, 127 times in the Psalms alone. One of my favorite verses using steadfast love is Psalms 6:4: “Turn, O Lord, deliver my life; save me for the sake of your steadfast love.”

These words of the psalmist David can be turned into a prayer of petition for healing by personalizing it with the individual’s name. It is also an appropriate prayer for our nation: “Turn, O Lord, deliver (our nation); save (us) for the sake of your steadfast love.”

“Steadfast love” is a translation from the Hebrew word chesed, found approximately 250 times in the Hebrew Bible according to many research sites, Ken Emilio of RemnantReport.com being one. Norman H. Snaith in A Theological Word Book of the Bible says that in English versions of the Bible, chesed has also been translated as loving-kindness, mercy, and loyalty. I think it is very safe to say God wants us to know we can rely on His love. That His is a faithful and committed love. Why else would He tell us so many times?

Just as His love for us is steadfast, He asks that our love be the same. In the New Testament, scripture turns it around from how God loves us and uses chesed as how we are to love God and others. Christ came to demonstrate the Father’s steadfast love by showing us how to take what we have been given and give it to others. Chesed is found six times in the New Testament: 1 Thessalonians 1:3, 2 Thessalonians 3:5, 1 Timothy 6:11, 2 Timothy 3:10, Titus 2:2, and James 1:12. One of those references, 2 Thessalonians 3:5, says it like this: “May the Lord direct your hearts to the love of God and to the steadfastness of Christ.”

Beautiful songs of praise continue to be written about God’s steadfast love. Don Moen sings praise to God with his song “Your Steadfast Love” at https://youtu.be/ibky__ABoLs  and Hillsong sings “The Steadfast Love of the Lord Never Ceases” at https://youtu.be/0W3mspwIKgk .

As we sing our own praises to God, may we thank Him for a love that is steadfast and faithful. Man’s love may fail us, but God’s love never will. He has told us that emphatically.

Photo Courtesy of Morgue File

Photo Courtesy of Morgue File

Handling Nighttime Fear

14 Thursday May 2015

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Nighttime fear is a common plague with many. Everything seems worse in the dark. Darkness gives the sense that we are more alone than when the light of day gathers ‘round us. When others are sleeping and there is no one to talk to or distract us, our imagination can run wild. Personally, there is only one practice that delivers me from nighttime fear and that is prayer on my knees. I can lie in bed and pray, but it won’t be the same. There is a different solace altogether when I bow before God. When I am willing to leave the comfort of a warm bed, I am saying to Him I am serious about my need for His help. It is an act of humility, a demonstration that I know we are not equal and I am to be in submission to Him. And here is the good news: I cannot remember a single time when praying on my knees failed to bring peace. Mama and me 001I had a grandmother who taught me to pray on my knees. She never told me I should—just showed me. Praying on her knees beside her bed at night and praying on her knees for me when I was sick are deeply etched memories. She had no confusion about who God was or how to relate to Him. Jesus was her best friend. She talked to Him aloud throughout the day and as far as I could tell, never once doubted that He would take her through anything. Her faith was rock solid and uncomplicated. When her husband, my grandfather, died, she made this simple notation in a book: Jim went to be with Jesus today.  As I write this, I know there are some who can’t get on their knees for one very real reason or another. Not an act of defiance or laziness, but due to physical disability. Toward the end, my grandmother couldn’t do it either. But for all those years it was possible, she made it her practice. If you awake because worries are gnawing away at you, why not give praying on your knees a try? And if you are physically unable to bow before the King of Kings, spend a little time bringing yourself into a mental bowing before you begin to pray. I believe you will see the difference.

Come, let us bow down in worship, let us kneel before the Lord our Maker; for  he is our God and we are the people of His pasture, the flock under his care. —Psalm 95:6-7 (NIV)

[Jesus] withdrew about a stone’s throw beyond them, knelt down and prayed. –Luke 22:41 (NIV)

Hitting Bottom

07 Saturday Feb 2015

Posted by in Prodigal

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When I worked in a hospital, we sometimes had meetings over lunch for educational purposes. I have often thought of one speaker in particular, a counselor from our Behavioral Health facility, an off-campus care center for treating drug and alcohol addictions. The counselor, who had once been addicted to drugs, explained what it was like to be bound by obsessive cravings that served only to destroy one’s life. She said the addicted person had to hit bottom before he or she would turn their life around.

The story of the Prodigal Son in Luke 15 is a story about hitting bottom. Perhaps the rebellious son was addicted to greed and pleasure. At his pleading, his father gave him his share of inheritance that rightfully would not have been his until after his father’s death. Immediately, the son went away and quickly squandered a fortune. He all too soon found himself with nothing, not even necessary food for living. He had hit bottom!

The parable of the Prodigal Son is a picture of our Father God and how he responds to His children—us—no matter what self-orchestrated bottom we hit. He never stops loving us and He is always on watch for His confused, wayward child to return to Him.

Addiction of any kind is a demanding and jealous master; I don’t know that any addiction can be broken outside the power of God’s love.  It is His love that gives strength when we have none.  It is His love that puts the right people in our path to help us find our way out of an all-consuming habit. It is His love that never gives up on us—and that steadfastness gives us hope that we can be restored and the courage to begin.

When the Prodigal Son set off from home, he was dizzy with high expectations for a life of sheer pleasure. However, it didn’t turn out that way. His frivolity became his downfall and he was soon unable to take care of even his basic needs. When he returned to his father in abject poverty, his greatest hope was to be treated as a servant so that he might have food to live. But the Father met with delight and compassion this wayward son (Luke 15:20), certainly not what the Son who had hit bottom expected.

The account of the Prodigal Son is the story of anyone who willfully chooses to worship anything but God. Finding oneself in a pit of shame and guilt, we may ask “Will God take me back?” And the answer is a resounding yes! When we take the first step toward God, the step of repentance, our Father comes quickly to meet us. Not to condemn, but to welcome us home. He will reward our decision to trust Him with compassion and healing.

Turn, O LORD, deliver my life; save me for the sake of your steadfast love.  

Psalm 6:4 (ESV)

God Is Always Faithful

15 Saturday Feb 2014

Posted by in God's faithfulness

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And Israel said to Joseph, I never expected to see your face; and behold, God has let me see your offspring also. Gen 48:11 RSV

I cannot help but think of how the years without Joseph must have been for Israel (first called Jacob). Joseph was the son of his beloved Rachel, the woman he loved from first sight. Joseph brought Israel more joy than any of his other children, and at a very young age this favored son was taken. How Israel must have grieved! How he must have said like many who have lost a child, if I could only see him one more time.

The ending to the story is a happy one for Israel for something he never dreamed of happens. His son Joseph is restored to him, along with Joseph’s children. What an inconceivable blessing for an old man who thought his son was dead.

Over my lifetime, I’ve come to see how like God this is. When God hears the longings of our hearts and responds, it seems to me the blessings are always greater than imagined. In the harshest of trials, I have learned to be confident. The end will come in God’s timing and with the end will be more blessing than I could ever know to ask.

In the toughest trial of my life, there were moments when I wondered if it would ever be over. But as tough as it was, I never stopped loving God or believing in Him. That trial kept me seeking God in every possible way and place, and that alone added good things to my life. When the trial was finally over, I could look back and see the rich and abundant blessings poured out on this unworthy person. I saw the crooks and turns, the hills and valleys, that brought me to a deeper faith. All that I had gone through brought me to a surer confidence in God. Blessings of abundance were poured out. Not because I deserved them, but because it is how God is, how He loves His children and rewards us when we diligently seek Him (Hebrews 11:6).

When we reflect on life experiences and see how involved God is in our lives, how can we not see His faithfulness and His love? He will never desert us; His word gives us that promise over and over.

And those who know Your name will put their trust in You, For You, O LORD, have not forsaken those who seek You. (Psalm 9:10 NIV)

No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am sure that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord. (Romans 8:37-39 ESV) 

How God Our Father Sees Us

26 Tuesday Nov 2013

Posted by in how God sees us

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“This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased” (Matthew 3:17, NAS). This is what each one of us as God’s children will hear. As “heirs to the promise” (Galatians 3:29), we share in the blessings of Jesus.

This is a lot to digest, the part of God being well pleased with me. I look at my life and see miserable failure in living the God-life. But if I take another view, I see it isn’t about the me I know, but the one God knows.

Since God has forgotten our sins and removed them “as far as the east from the east” (Psalm 103:12), we stand only in the holiness of Jesus, the One we call Savior. God the Father sees us with clothes of salvation and righteousness (Isaiah 61:10) and we are beautiful in His sight. Though a lot to get our minds around, we look like Jesus. Standing in the Savior’s garment we radiate only good things, for He is only good. And that is all the Father sees. Imagine. All that grieves us about ourselves will not be a part of our final being. We will at last be revealed as the Father sees us. We will not be confused by the ploys of Satan. We will not walk with a rock of sin in our shoe. There will be no more guilt, no more shame and all because we did one thing: we chose to believe in Jesus (John 3:16).

Perhaps the amount of detail to our garment will be reflective of all we have done in Christ’s name. It won’t be a garment of fine fabric, buttons and trim, but a different kind altogether. Our new garment will be of the little one we loved, the old person aided, the sick we attended. It will be the orphanage we helped build, the missionary we supported, the joyful surprise we prepared for a weary sojourner. The meal we cooked, the child we taught about God, the witness we gave in darkness. The stranger we made welcome, the lonely one we sat with, the one in need we walked with.  The time we spent in worship, the songs of praise to God we lifted, the words of encouragement we spoke. The times we sought and followed wisdom, the moments we forgave, the unconditional love we extended.

Those acts in the Lord’s name will be the garment that cover us, for that is the righteousness of Jesus and that is what the Father has chosen to see when He looks on us in Spirit and not in flesh (Romans 8:27).

Praises be to the One who forgives and loves us. Praises be to the One who made a way possible for us. Glory to God, for Redeemer is His name!

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Faith versus Fear

02 Wednesday Oct 2013

Posted by in faith

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It is in fear that faith is lost, confusion reigns and miracles are denied.

When we close the door on God’s abilities because our own are inadequate, we hamper not just His love but the fullness of it.  He would provide so much, but we keep refusing Him in our little faith.

David, the psalmist, declared the intention for those who revere God:  that He allows friendship “and reveals the secrets of His promises.”

We long to be included in such a friendship, but while it is available, we refuse the secrets, crying out instead that there is no logic – and so we deny the whispers of the One who would befriend us.

In self-induced pain, we toss and turn, we weep pitifully.  We say, “How could a loving God allow me to be so deceived?”  In fact, we should be thanking Him for the revelation and watching eagerly for its fulfillment.

Oswald Chambers writes, “We have to live in the gray day according to what we saw on the mount.”  When God reveals a certain matter to us, we should live in faith until it happens.  We should trust His whispers in friendship.  Surely we stop a lot of miracles with our reluctance to trust wonderfully in our God.

How carefully we tiptoe about, demonstrating more fear than faith, forgetting the power of our God.  His joy is in giving; His word declares that He is able.  “My purpose will be established . . . .  I have planned it; surely I will do it.”

But we must hold onto the knowledge that without faith it is impossible to please God.  When we refuse Him our faith, we fail to activate all that our Lord would do for us.  J. Oswald Sanders said that “when sight brings no helpful vision and comfortable emotions are largely absent, the prayer of faith finds its greatest opportunity.”

The words of Martin Luther enhanced such a statement when he wrote, “not the merits of my prayer but the certainty of Thy truth.”

Just how many miracles do we deny when we stare dead center into the face of our problems and not into the face of the Problem Solver instead?  If we would but lift our chins upward and rest them in the palm of His waiting hand, we would unleash all the glory and truth of heaven.