Praying? Don't Be Shy!

Nehemiah 1:3-7 They said to me, "Things are not going well for those who returned to the province of Judah. They are in great trouble and disgrace. The wall of Jerusalem has been torn down, and the gates have been destroyed by fire."

4 When I heard this, I sat down and wept. In fact, for days I mourned, fasted, and prayed to the God of heaven. 5 Then I said, "O LORD, God of heaven, the great and awesome God who keeps His covenant of unfailing love with those who love Him and obey His commands, 6 listen to my prayer!

Look down and see me praying night and day for Your people Israel. I confess that we have sinned against You. Yes, even my own family and I have sinned! 7 We have sinned terribly by not obeying the commands, decrees, and regulations that You gave us through Your servant Moses.

I have been in church all of my life and I have never seen anyone pray the way God's people did in the Bible. In the Bible there is a forceful passion without any messing around these people pray what they feel. It makes me wonder how we can see their prayers and the results that they achieved and yet we don't follow their example?

"Hey God, it's me again, I know you are busy and you have other more important things. I know you already know this but let me just ask this one thing if it's your will... Sorry to bother you."

That's not the kind of prayer that Nehemiah prayed! Nehemiah spoke to God with passion, he wasn't afraid to say "Listen to my prayer!" God wants to hear the emotion, he wants to hear how we really feel, he can handle it! Nehemiah wasn't being disrespectful, he showed that he revered God. He began by saying "O LORD, God of heaven, the great and awesome God."

We don't dare pray with an exclamation mark! It seems too demanding and rude we come to God all shy and timid, afraid to make a request. We know that God knows everything and he has a plan and a purpose for everything so we think that maybe we shouldn't bother God with our little problem.

God's children should be able to talk to their heavenly Father boldly! I pray that you will speak to him freely and with passion.

The Gospel

A restless generation We're turning over every stone Hoping to find salvation In a world that's left us cold

Can we get back to the altar? Back to the arms of our first love There's only one way to the Father And He's calling out to us

To the captive, it looks like freedom To the orphan, it feels like home To the skeptic, it might sound crazy To believe in a God who loves

In a world, where our hearts are breaking And we're lost in the mess we've made Like a blinding light, in the dead of night It's the Gospel The Gospel that makes a way It's the Gospel that makes a way

It's the cure for our condition It's the good news for us all It's greater than religion It's the power of the Cross

The amazing news of the Gospel Is not that we can receive Jesus into our lives But that He's already received us Int His

In my own life, it means forgiveness When I know I deserved the fall It called me out of my darkness And carried me to the Cross

In a moment, my eyes were opened In that moment, my heart was changed Like a blinding light, in the dead of night It's the Gospel

1 Corinthians 15:21-23 So you see, just as death came into the world through a man, now the resurrection from the dead has begun through another man. 22  Just as everyone dies because we all belong to Adam, everyone who belongs to Christ will be given new life. 23 But there is an order to this resurrection: Christ was raised as the first of the harvest; then all who belong to Christ will be raised when he comes back.

God Is Love

1 John 4:7-12, 16-21 Dear friends, let us continue to love one another, for love comes from God. Anyone who loves is a child of God and knows God. 8 But anyone who does not love does not know God, for God is love. 9 God showed how much He loved us by sending His one and only Son into the world so that we might have eternal life through Him.

10 This is real love--not that we loved God, but that He loved us and sent His Son as a sacrifice to take away our sins. 11 Dear friends, since God loved us that much, we surely ought to love each other. 12 No one has ever seen God. But if we love each other, God lives in us, and His love is brought to full expression in us.

16 We know how much God loves us, and we have put our trust in His love. God is love, and all who live in love live in God, and God lives in them. 17 And as we live in God, our love grows more perfect. So we will not be afraid on the day of judgment, but we can face Him with confidence because we live like Jesus here in this world. 18 Such love has no fear, because perfect love expels all fear. If we are afraid, it is for fear of punishment, and this shows that we have not fully experienced His perfect love.

19 We love each other because He loved us first. 20 If someone says, "I love God," but hates a Christian brother or sister, that person is a liar; for if we don't love people we can see, how can we love God, whom we cannot see? 21 And He has given us this command: Those who love God must also love their Christian brothers and sisters.

You have probably heard the short phrase "God is love," it was a very popular saying when I was a kid yet we didn't realize how true that phrase is. In fact God's character and everything about him is defined by love, God is love, it is God's nature to love and love is the essence of His entire being. God is the limitless source of all love and he is the perfect model of what genuine love looks like.

Every child of God should understand that God's way of showing love is pretty extreme but the Bible teaches us to love like He loves. Just as God is a limitless source of love we need to grow more and more loving as we become more like Him. As we experience God and his love and allow his nature to have control of our life we will have to love him and everybody else more and more. We are not allowed to grow old and crabby!

Another popular phrase when I was young was "you are the only Bible that some people will ever read." Think about it, does your life look like what you say you believe? Does the world know more about love from looking at you as one of God's children?

Ephesians 5:2 Live a life filled with love, following the example of Christ.

Jesus love is brought to full expression for the world to see when they observe the effect it has on your lifestyle and on your character. If I do not live a lifestyle of love then God's love has failed to do what it set out to accomplish in my life. Hatred, envy, wrath, gossip and anything else that shows a lack of love, all have their source in something else other than God.

God's Children Are Loving

John 13:34-35 So now I am giving you a new commandment: Love each other. Just as I have loved you, you should love each other. 35 Your love for one another will prove to the world that you are My disciples."

Just as we can say "God is love," this next phrase should be just as famous and just as true, "Christ disciples are love." Too bad that isn't really true so much of the time. They started out being known for their love but sometime after the New Testament the church got off of the love thing and started up with the power thing.

The early church went from persecution to power very quickly in the Roman Empire, when this happened the church lost it's first love and it lost a lot of it's effectiveness, instead of being known for love it became known for wars and for building huge cathedrals.

Can you imagine how attractive the church would be if it was known for loving the way Jesus calls us to love?

I need to remember that: God is the source of all love (1 John 4:7-8) he models what genuine love is (1 John 4:9-10) and he commands me to love the same way that he did. (1 John 4:11-12)

Is It The Truth?

1 John 4:1-6 Dear friends, do not believe everyone who claims to speak by the Spirit. You must test them to see if the spirit they have comes from God. For there are many false prophets in the world.

2 This is how we know if they have the Spirit of God: If a person claiming to be a prophet acknowledges that Jesus Christ came in a real body, that person has the Spirit of God. 3 But if someone claims to be a prophet and does not acknowledge the truth about Jesus, that person is not from God. Such a person has the spirit of the Antichrist, which you heard is coming into the world and indeed is already here.

4 But you belong to God, my dear children. You have already won a victory over those people, because the Spirit who lives in you is greater than the spirit who lives in the world.

5 Those people belong to this world, so they speak from the world's viewpoint, and the world listens to them. 6 But we belong to God, and those who know God listen to us. If they do not belong to God, they do not listen to us. That is how we know if someone has the Spirit of truth or the spirit of deception.

You see all kinds of scams reported in the news and you wonder how some of these people could think they were being told the truth. We all should know that you cannot believe everything that you hear, people will lie to you just as fast as the devil does, maybe we are a lot more vulnerable to scams than we want to admit. It seems like the most outrageous lie will still have somebody that is willing to believe it.

Jesus warned us that Satan is the father of lies and he has a lot of children that act just like their father. They may be the nicest people that you could ever meet but they are liars. There are people lying to you about the everyday stuff of the physical world as well as people that are false teachers that are lying about spiritual things. You need wisdom to help you test their motives so that you can know the truth.

John 8:44 For you are the children of your father the devil, and you love to do the evil things he does. He was a murderer from the beginning. He has always hated the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he lies, it is consistent with his character; for he is a liar and the father of lies.

Every teacher needs to be put to the test to determine where their teaching is coming from. The most important teaching that must be checked is what they teach about Jesus:

• Do they believe that Jesus is God?
• Do they believe that God's Son came to earth to pay the penalty that we owed for sin?
• Do they believe that Jesus covered our sins without any help from us based on our good works?

Just about all of the New Testament books have teaching about the dangers of bad doctrine and the people who try to teach it. The devil is okay with you knowing about Jesus but he doesn't want you to have the correct beliefs about Jesus.

Jesus wasn't gone for very long before incorrect teaching about Him showed up. Satan was ready with subtle variations of the truth.

The InterVarsity New Testament Commentary explains the problems that false teachers cause:

• They distract Christians from obeying the truth of the gospel (v. 7)
• They replace the call of God with their own deceptive persuasiveness (v. 8)
• They gain control over the whole church (v. 9)
• They cause confusion and discouragement (v. 10)
• They spread false reports about spiritual leaders (v.11)
• They emphasize sensational rituals (v.12)

We need to be concerned about the danger and keep our guard up, we should be motivated to dig into the Word daily so that we will know what we believe and why we believe it.

Living As Jesus Did

1 John 2:3-6 And we can be sure that we know Him if we obey His commandments. If someone claims, "I know God," but doesn't obey God's commandments, that person is a liar and is not living in the truth.

But those who obey God's word truly show how completely they love Him. That is how we know we are living in Him. Those who say they live in God should live their lives as Jesus did.

Most of us remember being separated from our parents in a large store when we were young. They told you not to wonder away from them but you disobeyed and now you are standing there all alone in a panic.

All of a sudden you realize that you cannot do life without them. This brief encounter makes it obvious to you that you are helpless without them and you swear that for now on you will stick to them like glue. How long does that last before you start to drift apart from them again?

We treat God the same way, He tells us how to live and that we should stick by His side but then we decide to wonder off and before too long we find ourselves in a panic. Living life our way seems like fun for a while but then something happens.

The Bible makes it clear that we cannot do anything to earn a ticket to heaven but it also makes it clear that getting a ticket to heaven isn't the end of the story. We don't get to behave the way that we want just because of grace.

Psalms 119:4-8 You have charged us to keep Your commandments carefully. Oh, that my actions would consistently reflect Your decrees! Then I will not be ashamed when I compare my life with Your commands. As I learn Your righteous regulations, I will thank You by living as I should! I will obey Your decrees. Please don't give up on me!

It is disturbing to see so many people die that didn't have any signs in their lifestyle that they knew Him, their life didn't show any signs of a relationship with God, they were not obedient to God's commands yet their family suddenly gets all spiritual about them after they are gone. Do we have any reason to believe that they really knew Him and that their eternal destiny is heaven?

Human nature wants to live life to satisfy our own desires until life throws something difficult at us but for those who really know God, their love for Him will bring about obedience and they will begin to grow closer to Christ and stay by His side instead of wondering away.

The best thing for us to do is to obey God but first we have to get to know God and know what He expects from us. If we really understand who God is and get to know Him and realize how much He did for us then it must have an impact on the way we live.

Help me Lord to fully comprehend how much you did for me that I could never do for myself. Only then will I desire to obey you completely.