2021-04-18
Psalm 55:22 AMPC
After the preacher G. Campbell Morgan had given a talk about taking our worries to God in prayer, a lady came over to him and said, ‘I don’t bother God with little things; I only take the big ones to Him.’ Morgan replied, ‘My dear lady, everything we take to God is little.’ And it’s true – from God’s perspective, all our problems are small because His power can overcome all of them.
The Bible says, ‘Cast your burden on the Lord [releasing the weight of it] and He will sustain you.’ God knows we’re not built to carry the weight of worry, so He invites us to give it to Him today. Anything that’s big enough to be a source of anxiety should be turned into a prayer.
Peter wrote: ‘Casting the whole of your care [all your anxieties, all your worries, all your concerns, once and for all] on Him, for He cares for you affectionately and cares about you watchfully’ (1 Peter 5:7 AMPC). ‘Casting is the opposite of ‘carrying’. The moment we recognise that a worry is beginning to weigh us down, we need to ‘cast’ it on God, knowing ‘He cares for you affectionately and cares about you watchfully.’
If He was a distant God who didn’t care about us, we’d have a reason to worry. Or if He was a weak God who couldn’t do anything about it, we’d have a reason to worry. The truth is, it’s when we give our worries to God that we discover how big He really is. The songwriter Joseph Scriven put it this way: ‘Oh, what peace we often forfeit, oh, what needless pain we bear, all because we do not carry everything to God in prayer.’
2 Ki 6:8-23; Matt 5:43-48; Luke 6:27-36
2021-03-08
Matthew 21:22 NKJV
You say, “If God loves me and knows what I need, why should I have to ask Him for it?” Because prayer means talking to God and listening to God, which leads to building a relationship with Him. Jesus said, “Seek ye first the kingdom of God, and his righteousness; and all these things shall be added unto you” (Matthew 6:33 KJV).
When your prayers are based on your relationship with God, your needs get met. When you love God and spend time with Him, His Word says: “No eye has seen, no ear has heard, and no mind has imagined what God has prepared for those who love him. But it was to us that God revealed these things by his Spirit” (1 Corinthians 2:9-10 NLT). Did you get that?
God has a level of blessing in mind for you that your natural eye can’t see nor your natural mind can comprehend. And when you pray, He reveals things to you by His Spirit. When that happens, your faith grows and you’re able to receive what God wants you to have. So develop a lifestyle of prayer – praying all the time, everywhere you go, in the midst of your daily routine. “Casting all your care upon Him, for He cares for you” (1 Peter 5:7 NKJV).
God cares about every detail of your life. So when you become anxious about something, talk to Him about it. And don’t forget to read His Word. That way when a problem comes up you can say, “Father, you said in Your Word You would do this for me,” then quote the promise and stand on it.
Soul food: Gen 44-46; Matt 21:18-32; Ps 106:24-48; Prov 7:3-5
Matthew 21:22 NCV
In Matthew 6:8 we read: ‘your Father knows what you need before you ask him’ (NIV). So if God already loves us and knows what we need, why do we have to pray and ask Him for things? It’s because prayer is so much more than just getting what we need. It’s about talking to God and listening to Him. It’s about getting His perspective and wisdom. It’s about building a relationship with Him. Jesus said, ‘Seek first God’s kingdom and what God wants. Then all your other needs will be met as well’ (Matthew 6:33 NCV).
When our prayers are based on our relationship with God, our needs are met. When we love God and spend time with Him, His Word says: ‘No eye has seen, no ear has heard, and no mind has imagined what God has prepared for those who love him. But it was to us that God revealed these things by his Spirit’ (1 Corinthians 2:9-10 NLT). God has a level of blessing in mind for us that we haven’t yet seen or imagined, but when we pray, He reveals things to us by His Spirit. When that happens, our faith grows and we’re able to receive what God wants us to have.
We need to develop a lifestyle of prayer – praying all the time, everywhere we go, in the middle of our daily routine. 1 Peter 5:7 says: ‘Give all your worries to him, because he cares about you’ (NCV). God cares about every detail of our lives, so when we get anxious about something, we should talk to Him about it. Nothing is too small for Him to care about, and nothing is too big for Him to handle.
Gen 44-46; Matt 21:18-32; Ps 106:24-48; Prov 7:3-5
2021-02-20
2 Corinthians 4:18 NLT
God hasn’t made prayer difficult or complicated. Prayer is actually really simple. The truth is, we probably pray more often than we realise. The trouble is, we don’t always recognise when we’re praying, because we can get the wrong idea about it. We might have been taught that prayer needs a specific place or environment like a church, or a certain posture like kneeling with head bowed and eyes closed, or a particular form of words like ‘Thee’ and ‘Thou’, or that we must stick to certain religious rituals when we pray. These things aren’t necessarily wrong, but we don’t need to do them for God to listen to us.
Prayer is simply talking to Him, in a way that feels comfortable and natural to us, then being still and allowing Him to talk to us. We can pray anytime, anywhere, about anything, silently or aloud, just by directing our thoughts towards Him.
Paul wrote, ‘We fix our gaze on things that cannot be seen. For the things we see now will soon be gone, but the things we cannot see will last forever.’ Imagine that all of God’s blessings and benefits are stored in a giant warehouse in the invisible realm; things like forgiveness, strength, wisdom, guidance, favour, and resources. Through prayer we enter God’s warehouse of blessings, and by faith we receive them and bring them back into our lives. Jesus said, ‘If you remain in me and my words remain in you, you may ask for anything you want, and it will be granted’ (John 15:7 NLT).
So whatever you need today, pray and ask God for it, believing that He will give it to you.
Gen 10-12; Matt 16:13-28; Ps 36; Prov 5:21-23
2021-02-06
Luke 19:8 NIV
If you’ve defrauded someone, God expects you to make restitution. Don’t sweep it under the rug and try to save face. Zacchaeus was a first-century con artist who worked for the Romans collecting taxes from his own people, the Jews. He fleeced everything that walked. The Bible says he was rich (v. 2 NKJV). Filthy rich! But after spending a night with Jesus, he was radically changed. How do we know this? Because he said: “Look, Lord! Here and now I give half of my possessions to the poor, and if I have cheated anybody out of anything, I will pay back four times the amount.” Jesus taught, “Produce fruit in keeping with repentance” (Matthew 3:8 NIV).
But sometimes it’s not possible to make amends to the person you’ve hurt. What if they’re dead? What if you had an affair with someone else’s spouse? Should you go back and tell their husband or wife about it so you can feel less guilty? No, you’d break their heart and maybe destroy their home. So what should you do? Pray and receive God’s forgiveness (See 1 John 1:7-9). And if you still feel troubled about it, talk to your pastor, or a Christian counselor, or a mature friend who can handle it. James writes, “Therefore confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you may be healed” (James 5:16 NIV).
The point is, you must be willing to make amends when it’s possible, and willing to incur the cost to make things right. If you do that, God will bless you and you can live with a clear conscience concerning it.
Soul food: Rom 1:1-3:20; Matt 13:1-9; Ps 67; Prov 4:1-2
