James was a new believer
and a member of our church. One day he told me he had the same nightmare every
night for eight years. Eight years earlier, when he was a professional
bodyguard, he fought and killed a man who tried to attack the client he was
guarding.
After this incident,
James dreamed
about
fighting this man every
night
for eight years. Every night it took him until at least 1 a.m. before he
could fall asleep. I asked him if I could pray for God to
set him
free from his nightmares. He said yes.
As I prayed for his nightmare to leave in
Jesus’ name, he said, “I’m getting an excruciating headache.” Then he said, “I just
felt something leave me.” Immediately his head
quit hurting. He became sleepy and went home to go to bed at 4 p.m. For the
first time in eight years, he slept peacefully all night without dreaming of
killing the man—and he never again had a problem with
insomnia. This happened over a decade
ago and his nightmare has never returned!
A counselor, who
was also a member our church, heard about his recurring nightmare leaving
through prayer. He told me, “We spend years counseling people who have
recurring nightmares and can’t cure them.” Jesus
said, “The
things that are impossible with
people are possible with God”
(Luke 18:27).
Many things will not happen unless
we pray for them to happen. Otherwise,
why bother praying? What if I hadn't prayed for his nightmare to leave? He might still be having that terrible dream even to this day.
Every summer when I was a kid, our
family would travel to Florida to go to the beach for a week. One day, I climbed
on my inflatable raft and closed my eyes. The gentle waves rocked me like a
baby, and I didn’t realize the current was pulling me out to sea.
Then a wave splashed me in the face.
When I looked up, I was shocked to discover I had drifted so far away I could
barely see the shore. The current pulled me away so gradually that I didn’t notice
it was happening. I floated away because I wasn’t paying attention.
We drift away from God the same way.
We quit paying attention to Him, and little by little we move away. The writer of Hebrews
warns, “For this reason, we must pay much closer attention to what we have heard, lest we drift
away from it” (Hebrews 2:1).
When we quit talking with God and
reading His Word each day, it’s inevitable that we’ll gradually drift away from
Him. It happens so slowly it’s almost unnoticeable. Then something happens that
upsets the raft and when we look up, we see how far away we are.
When I realized how far I was from
shore, I didn’t get back to the beach by drifting there. I had to swim against the current and paddle my way back.
To return to God, you must make an effort to get close to the Lord again. Seek
His face. Talk to Him throughout the day. Meditate on His Word. Make sure you
are in Christian fellowship. Before you know it, you’ll be back at the shore.
Over 270 printable
Bible studies at www.makinglifecount.net
****************************************************************************************************
BIBLE STUDY: How
did Peter’s shadow and Paul’s handkerchiefs heal people?
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Making Life Count Ministries
P.O. Box 680174
Prattville, Alabama 36068-0174
www.makinglifecount.net Twitter: @KentCrockett
www.kentcrockett.blogspot.com
A missionary told me
this story:
A Christian man named
Kendal (not his real name), was traveling on a train with some gospel
literature to distribute in China. He couldn’t make his connections and was
concerned about getting caught with it. It’s illegal in China to have that
literature and he could go to prison.
He prayed for wisdom
and felt led to go back to the train’s bathroom, which had a hole in the floor.
He dropped the papers through the hole, which fell on the train tracks.
Kendal felt terrible about throwing away the gospel papers and wondered if he
had denied Jesus.
Two years later, he
was back in China and speaking in an underground church. He told the people how
he had smuggled in the gospel literature and dropped it down a hole in the
floor of the train. Just then a man
jumped up and said, “If it weren’t for you, I wouldn’t be a Christian! One
day I was walking and found some papers about Jesus on the railroad tracks. I
read them and accepted Jesus into my life.”
God had led him to
put those papers down the hole to accomplish His will. Isaiah 55:10-11 says, “For
as the rain and the snow come down from heaven, and do not return there without
watering the earth… so will My word be which goes forth from My mouth. It will not return to Me empty, without
accomplishing what I desire, and without succeeding in the matter for which I sent it.”
When I was in
college, I shared the gospel with another student, who didn’t seem interested
in what I said. Thirty years later, he
wrote me saying he remembered what I had said to him and that he became a
Christian! Let this be a word of encouragement whenever you share the
gospel with someone and don’t see immediate results. God’s Word will not return
void but will accomplish what God desires.
Over
270 printable Bible studies at www.makinglifecount.net
****************************************************************************************************
BIBLE
STUDY: “Do
People in Heaven Know What’s Happening on Earth?”
Receive these devotionals (free) by email: You can subscribe
in the box on the right at www.kentcrockett.blogspot.com (Your email will not be given out. You’ll receive an
email when the new devotional is posted)
Making Life Count Ministries
P.O. Box 680174
Prattville, Alabama 36068-0174
www.makinglifecount.net Twitter: @KentCrockett
www.kentcrockett.blogspot.com
