The Purpose of Prayer

Many people aren’t motivated to pray because they don’t understand why they need to do it. Suppose your friend says, “I’d like for you to go in my backyard and dig some holes four feet deep.” You don’t want to do it but because he’s your friend, you agree to do it.  

Ten minutes into digging you start complaining about the heat. Twenty minutes later your back begins to hurt. You keep looking at your watch, wondering how much longer he wants you to dig. After an hour you’re mad at him because you have no idea why you’re doing useless work.

But suppose your friend gives you more information. “My grandfather buried bags of gold coins in my backyard four feet deep. If you will dig them up, I’ll share the treasure with you.” You get excited and start shoveling dirt as fast as you can. You’re not even thinking about sweating, blisters, or backaches. Now you have one thing on your mind—finding the gold.

What changed? Your motivation increased once you understood the reason for your digging and that you would benefit from it. In the same way, your motivation to pray will increase once you understand the purpose of prayer and how you will benefit by doing it.  

Did you know that some things will not happen unless you pray? Otherwise, prayer would serve no purpose. “You do not have because you do not ask” (James 4:2). Prayer is like having a passkey that will unlock doors.  It won’t open every door, but it will unlock the doors that are in God’s will.  However, if you don’t use the passkey many doors will remain closed.  

Through your prayers God can change your circumstances and open doors of opportunity for you. The Lord wants you to participate in bringing His will to pass on earth through your prayers. The key is in your hand. It’s up to you to use it. www.kentcrockett.blogspot.com

*************************************************************
Are you worried about an economic collapse or some other tragedy?  Read The Sure Cure for Worry

Do you want to conquer anger, unforgiveness, and rejection?  Read Slaying Your Giants

Am I Supposed to Love Myself?

(The following is an excerpt from Slaying Your Giants.)

To love self or not to love self. That is the question. Jesus said, "You shall love your neighbor as yourself" (Matt. 22:39). He also said, "If anyone comes to Me, and does not hate his own father and mother and wife and children and brothers and sisters, yes, and even his own life, he cannot be my disciple" (Luke 14:26).

These two apparently contradicting verses, both spoken by Jesus, make me wonder, "Should I love me, or love me not? If God loves me, shouldn't I love me?" And here's a bonus question. If Jesus commanded me to love everyone, why does He now tell me to hate?

No, Jesus wasn’t commanding us to despise mom and dad. The biblical word “hate” doesn't always mean to “cease loving.” When Jesus says you must hate your relatives and yourself, He means that you must favor Him above everyone else. Christ wants to lead you, rather than letting anyone else control your life. However, some people wrongly believe they must hate themselves—the very souls Jesus created and died for. If that were true, you should want to go to hell, which would be the ultimate hatred of self. Obviously, that can’t be right. You would be fulfilling Satan’s will, not God’s.

A prison chaplain once told me, “Do you know why those prisoners committed their crimes? It’s because they hate themselves. And if they hate themselves, how can they love others? If they don’t have respect for themselves, why would they respect anyone else and their property? So it doesn’t bother them to steal or kill. They don’t love their neighbors because they don’t love themselves.”

Attaining a healthy self-image requires that you see yourself as God sees you—as a valuable person He created and loves. It’s important to understand that “self” can mean a couple of things. It can mean “the person God created you to be” which is good, or it can mean “having a selfish attitude” which is bad. When Jesus said to hate your own life, He meant to hate selfishness, not the person God created you to be. The Lord wants you to love yourself as His creation and child, but to hate your selfish attitudes.

www.kentcrockett.blogspot.com

******************************************************************

 

Don't Stop Praying (The Unjust Judge)

After we’ve been praying for something for a long time and the answer hasn’t come, we might conclude that God isn’t listening. Sometimes He will not answer because we are asking for something that will not be good for us. But at other times we quit praying too soon, which forfeits what we are praying for. Jesus told a parable explaining why we must continue to pray.

Luke 18:1 “Now He was telling them a parable to show that at all times they ought to pray and not to lose heart.” 

Jesus is the one who answers our prayers—and He is teaching us about how to pray and about how prayer works.  First He says to pray at all times.  Do you realize that some things will not happen unless you pray? Otherwise, prayer would serve no purpose.  The problem is we only pray when we need something and not “at all times.”

Second, it’s easy to get discouraged and lose heart. He knows that when we don’t see the answer to our prayers that we can be tempted to quit praying.  Notice that Jesus is the one who told us to keep praying, even when it looks like nothing is happening. 

Luke 18:2-3 "In a certain city there was a judge who did not fear God and did not respect man. There was a widow in that city, and she kept coming to him, saying, 'Give me legal protection from my opponent.'” 

There are three reasons why you help people. One is because you fear God, and another reason is you respect others.  Jesus sets up this parable by eliminating the two primary reasons to help her.  That only leaves one reason left.

Luke 18:4-5 "For a while he was unwilling; but afterward he said to himself, 'Even though I do not fear God nor respect man, yet because this widow bothers me, I will give her legal protection, otherwise by continually coming she will wear me out.'"  

The reason the ungodly judge gave in to her was because she wouldn’t stop bringing her request to him!  Do you understand what He’s trying to tell us?  That’s the kind of persistence we should have when we bring our requests before God.  Persistence is a necessary ingredient in faith and gives us the determination to keep praying until the answer comes. 

Don’t give up praying for your loved ones or for something else that’s on your heart. Jesus said that your prayers are making a difference in bringing it to pass.

www.kentcrockett.blogspot.com

To READ SAMPLE CHAPTERS of Slaying Your Giants click here: www.kentcrockett.com

(The book includes a free 20-Lesson Discussion Guide for Small Group Studies)

You can purchase Slaying Your Giants at your local Christian bookstore.

You can purchase it for $9.99 by clicking here: Christian Book Distributors
You can purchase it from Amazon.com by clicking here: Amazon

The "Future Time Zone" in Your Mind

In the devotional below I talked about the “time zones” in your mind and how your thoughts can drift to the past.  Your mind can also travel in the other direction to the future.  Worry sends your mind ahead so you’ll agonize about the horrible things that might happen. Maybe you’re thinking, “The future scares me.  What if there’s a world war?  What if the economy collapses?”

Worry is the belief that the worst will happen to you.  Hope is the belief that the best will happen to you.  Which one do you think God wants you to do—worry or hope? Jesus specifically told His followers to not worry.  He said, “Do not keep worrying.” (Luke 12:29)

Studies show that 92% of things we worry about will never happen.  I know what you’re thinking.  “What about the other 8%?”  The other 8% will either not be as bad as you think, or God will give you the grace to get through them.  That takes care of everything you’re worried about.

If you are worried, it’s because you’re not trusting God to be in control of your circumstances and take care of you.  You cannot worry about the future and trust God at the same time.  Here are 3 things reasons why you can look forward to the future.

1. God exists in the future.  God is “I AM” the eternally existent one (Ex. 3:14), which means He is not bound by time and He exists in the future.  Tomorrow when you get there, God will be waiting there to welcome you.  It doesn’t matter what the world is like tomorrow.  If God is there, you don’t need to worry.

2. God has good plans for your future.  The prophet Jeremiah said, “‘For I know the plans that I have for you,’ declares the Lord, ‘plans for welfare and not for calamity to give you a future and a hope’” (Jeremiah 29:11).  He has plans for His followers, too.  We don’t know what they may be, but we do know they are good plans to give us hope.  Hope for tomorrow displaces worry.

3. God promises to take care of those who put Him first. Jesus made this promise: “But seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things shall be added to you” (Matthew 6:33).  If you will seek Him as your highest priority, He promises to provide all your needs. 

My book The Sure Cure for Worry will be published in August 2013, which will explain why people worry and will give solid evidence that God is in control and can be trusted completely.

www.kentcrockett.blogspot.com

Coming in April 2013: Slaying Your Giants by Kent Crockett (Hendrickson Publishers)

Selling Cracked Pots

The apostle Paul wrote, “But the goal of our instruction is love from a pure heart and a good conscience and a sincere faith.” (1 Tim. 1:5). A sincere faith is a faith that's genuine.  It’s not fake.

The word sincere comes from two Latin terms sine and cere meaning “without wax.”  In those days, sometimes potters would accidentally crack their vessels they were making. If they were crooked, they would try to deceive the buyer by patching the crack with wax, painting over it, and then selling it.  After the people took the jar home and set it in the hot sun, the wax would melt and it would start leaking.

When honest potters cracked a jar they would throw it away.  When they made a pot in perfect condition they would stamp it "Sine Cere" —without wax.  They guaranteed that their jars didn’t have cracks in them and that they weren't patched with wax. What the seller made was genuine. It wasn’t a fake.  

When Paul says he wants your faith to be sincere, he means having a faith without any cover-ups. What you see is what you get.  It's not a patched-up fake.  Do people see a sincere faith in you? 

Follow me on Twitter: @KentCrockett  www.kentcrockett.blogspot.com 

It's How You Look at It

While Timmy was playing in the yard a bee stung him on the hand. He ran to his mother, crying, "I hate bees! I wish God had never made them." His mom put some ointment on the sting and said, "Do you want some toast and honey to cheer you up?"

Timmy perked up. "Yeah, I love honey!"

“Did you know that it takes bees to make honey?" she asked.

He looked at the honey and said, "I never realized there was a good side to bees!"

Nearly everything in life has a good side and a bad side, and everyone gets to choose what they will focus on. It’s easy for us to always look for what’s wrong. It takes more effort to look for what’s good and positive in every situation.

Paul said, “Whatever is true…honorable…right…pure…good…anything worthy of praise let your mind dwell on these things” (Phil. 4:8). If you will discipline yourself to control your thoughts (and it will take discipline), you discover the secret of happiness. I challenge you to spend today finding the positive side of every situation and thanking God for each thing you see. Doing this every day will change your life.

Follow me on Twitter for the Thought for the Week www.kentcrockett.blogspot.com

Putting Your Child in God's Hands

Pharaoh ordered all the male Hebrew babies to be killed, so Jochebed made a bold decision. She put baby Moses in a tar-covered wicker basket and placed it in the reeds by the Nile River. (See Ex. 2:3-9). Moses could have easily been eaten by a crocodile or swept downstream. Jochebed made a decision to let go of her child and place him in God's hands.

When the daughter of Pharaoh came down to the river to bathe, she discovered the baby and had pity on him. Moses' sister Miriam saw her pick up the baby, so she went to her and asked, "Shall I go and call a nurse for you from the Hebrew women, that she may nurse the child for you?" (v.7)  Miriam ran and got Jochebed, the mother of Moses. Pharaoh's daughter paid her wages to nurse her own baby! God had a plan for Moses, who grew up to be the man who delivered Israel from Egyptian bondage.

Looking back on the story, we can clearly see God's hand at work. But God's hand isn't so obvious when you're doing something risky, like letting go of your child. That's why we must trust God's heart when we can't see His hand.

Have you placed your children in God's hands? Just as Jochebed "let go" of Moses and put him in God's hands, you must do the same with your children. Perhaps you have a wayward child that you are worried about. Maybe your child is in a dangerous situation and needs God's protection. Can you trust God to take care of your child even as Moses' mother placed her trust in God? You must turn your child over to the Lord and let Him take care of the situation. If he or she is rebellious, the change in your child's behavior might not happen instantly, but will happen ultimately. So put your child in the basket, give him or her to God, and quit fretting.

Prayer: "Lord, I let go and place my child in your hands.  I trust you for protection.  I'm going to stop worrying about him (her) because I trust you to do what I can't do. Thank you for what you are going to do in my child. Amen."

http://www.kentcrockett.blogspot.com/