You can read all the manuals on prayer and listen to other people pray, but until you begin to pray yourself you will never understand prayer.  It's like riding a bicycle or swimming: You learn by doing.  

-- Luis Palau


#3226

WE NEED A GUIDE

God makes a promise, then tells Abraham to leave home and go where God will guide him.

Ben Patterson tells of a common experience of westerners, particularly missionaries, traveling through jungle sections of the Amazon. They will ask members of a village to give them directions to where they want to go. "I have a compass, a map, and some coordinates."

The villager knows precisely the directions to get them there, but he offers to take them himself.

"No, that's okay. I don't want a guide. I just want directions."

"That's no good. I must take you there."

"But I have a map right here. And I have a compass. And the coordinates."

"It does not work that way. I can get you there, but I must take you myself. You must follow me."

We prefer directions, principles, steps, keys. We prefer these things because they leave us in control. If I'm holding the map, I'm still in charge of the trip. I can go where I want to go. If I have a guide, I must trust. I must follow. I must relinquish control.

God is not much on maps and compasses and coordinates. Life just doesn't work that way. We don't need directions. We need a Guide.

-- John Ortberg in Faith & Doubt


#3225

TWIN TRUTHS IN THE MIDST OF TRAGEDY

A psychologist friend recently told me about a client he described as "a believer after God's own heart."  Cliff had a singular motivation to please God and serve Him.  He worked at his job to serve the Lord first and earn a living second.  He dedicated himself to the needs of others and genuinely enjoyed meeting those needs. "Healthy" is almost too feeble a word to describe such a robust faith.

After many years of service to Christ, Cliff's wife developed a quickly spreading cancer.  Although many people joined Cliff in fervent prayer for his wife, she failed rapidly and soon died. Through it all, however, Cliff did not break his determined gaze on Christ.  Instead of allowing the tragedy to shake his faith, he allowed his deep experience of pain and suffering --  and even depression and confusion -- to push him even deeper into the arms of the living God.

This grieving servant of God knew only two things to hold on to, and he held on to both with all his might.  The first was his unshakable conviction that God was a good God.  And while he didn't understand this particular circumstance or why his wife had to suffer and die, he did know that God was good and that there had to be a reason he would come to understand one day.  And second, he knew beyond all doubt that God loved him.  In spite of everything.  No matter what.  Through it all.

Cliff clung to those twin truths, refusing to take his eyes off the Lord even when he was wracked with grief. 

-- Stephen Arterburn and Jack Felton in More Jesus, Less Religion


#3224

A PERSONAL GOD

Out of their tortured history, the Jews demonstrate the most surprising lesson of all:  you cannot go wrong personalizing God.  God is not a blurry power living somewhere in the sky, not an abstraction like the Greeks proposed, not a sensual super-human like the Romans worshipped, and definitely not the absentee watchmaker of the Deists.  God is personal.  He enters into people's lives, messes with families, shows up in unexpected places, chooses unlikely leaders, calls people to account.  Most of all, God loves. 

-- Philip Yancey in The Bible Jesus Read


#3223

THE IMPULSE OF THE SPIRIT

"Jesus came and told His disciples, 'I have been given complete authority in heaven and on earth. Therefore, go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Teach these new disciples to obey all the commandments I have given you. And be sure of this: I am with you always, even to the end of the age.'" (Matthew 28: 18-20 NLT)

Christ had given the apostles a world-wide commission, embracing all the nations; but intellectually they did not understand what He meant.  They found that out as they followed the impulse of the Spirit. 

-- Roland Allen in Pentecost and the World


#3222