Month: January 2012

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Praying with Love

I sit with God. No agenda. I sit. I listen. I pray.

I pray over the people and situations that are on His heart. He always leads me to pray for people that are on my heart too, but at times I find myself praying for someone I never thought to pray for.

The other day a man’s name came up in my heart. I’ve never met this man. I couldn’t even bring to mind what he looks like. But I sensed God wanted someone to pray him.

He is a man who wields great influence. He is a man that opposes all that I cherish. He is a man that opposes God. He is a man that many believe is playing a great role in destroying the America, One Nation Under God, that we know and love. And God wanted me to pray for him.

I googled him. I wanted to see his face. When I saw him anger tried to rise up. Hate tried to rise up. It was fear trying to rise up. He is destroying what I love. But I looked at that man’s face and said, “I refuse to hate you. If I hate you I cannot help you and God wants to help you.”

I chose in my heart to forgive him. I chose in my heart to let God love him through me, then I prayed for him.

My prayers were not motivated by what his freedom and salvation would mean to me or to this country, but for his own sake. For God’s sake. Father God loves this man.

For God so greatly loved and dearly prized the world that He [even] gave up His only begotten (unique) Son, so that whoever believes in (trusts in, clings to, relies on) Him shall not perish (come to destruction, be lost) but have eternal (everlasting) life. (John 3:16, Amplified)

For God did not send the Son into the world in order to judge (to reject, to condemn, to pass sentence on) the world, but that the world might find salvation and be made safe and sound through Him. (John 3:17, Amplified)

For such [praying] is good and right, and [it is] pleasing and acceptable to God our Savior, Who wishes all men to be saved…(1 Timothy 2:3-4, Amplified)

But I say unto you, Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you and persecute you; That ye may be the children of your Father which is in heaven: for he maketh his sun to rise on the evil and on the good, and sendeth rain on the just and on the unjust. (Matthew 5:44-45, KJV)

I desire therefore that in every place men should pray, without anger or quarreling or resentment or doubt [in their minds], lifting up holy hands. (1 Timothy 2:8, Amplified)

…You have loved back my life from the pit of corruption and nothingness, for You have cast all my sins behind Your back. (Isaiah 38:17, Amplified)

For the Son of man is come to save that which was lost. (Matthews 18:11, KJV)

Selah.

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Redeemed to Love

…You were slain, And have redeemed us to God by Your blood… (Revelation 5:9, NKJV)

…God is love. (1 John 4:8, KJV)

We were redeemed by His blood back to God Who is love. We were redeemed to love.

Jesus said… Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind. This is the first and great commandment. And the second is like unto it, Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself. On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets. (Matthew 22:37-40, KJV)

A new commandment I give unto you, That ye love one another; as I have loved you, that ye also love one another. By this shall all men know that ye are my disciples, if ye have love one to another. (John 13:34-35, KJV)

…the love of God is shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Ghost which is given unto us. (Romans 5:5, KJV)

[The Father] has delivered and drawn us to Himself out of the control and dominion of darkness and has transferred us into the kingdom of the Son of His love… (Colossians 1:13, KJV)

He drew us back to Himself and filled us with His love. Now He asks us to demonstrate His love wherever we go. We were redeemed to love others as He has loved us. We have been redeemed to love. Selah.

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We Are Family

…Our Father which art in heaven… (Luke 11:2, KJV)

I was thinking today about a time when some circumstances occurred in my family that led to strife and division. Some took one side. Others took another side. I was caught in the middle refusing to takes anyone’s side but God’s.

There seemed to be no common ground, no chance for coming back together. But this was my family and I wasn’t about to give them up so easily. I prayed for four and half years. Not to get God to do something He didn’t already want to do, but to make room for Him by continuing to agree with God and by refusing to agree with the devil.

What was the devil saying? He was flinging around accusations to try to divide and conquer. You see he knows that a house divided against itself cannot stand (Mark 3:25). And what stand is the enemy most concerned about, when a house stands in his way as he tries to steal, kill and destroy and when a house, God’s house, not just one church, not just one denomination, but God’s house, God’s family in unity takes a stand for God’s will to be done on earth as it is in heaven.

…Our Father which art in heaven… (Luke 11:2, KJV)

Those of us who have accepted Jesus as our Savior are part of God’s family now. And we have an enemy who would like to divide and conquer. Let’s not give up our family so easily. Take a stand against the seeds of division and strife the enemy would try to sow and let’s take a stand together for Our Father’s will to be done on earth as it is in heaven.

BEHOLD, HOW good and how pleasant it is for brethren to dwell together in unity!… for there the LORD commanded the blessing, even life for evermore (Psalm 133:1,3; KJV)

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Being

Being…

Being alone with Him. There are so many voices and so many distractions, but oh the beauty of getting away with God. The beauty of being alone with Him, sitting in His Presence and hearing His voice.

Arise, my love, my fair one, and come away… (Song of Solomon 2:13, Amplified)

Now Moses used to take [his own] tent and pitch it outside the camp, far off from the camp, and he called it the tent of meeting [of God with His own people]… And the Lord, spoke to Moses face to face, as a man speaks to his friend. Moses returned to the camp, but his minister Joshua son of Nun, a young man, did not depart from the [temporary prayer] tent. (Exodus 33: 7,11; Amplified)

Being His own. There are so many things in our lives, so many people, and so many needs calling for our time and attention but remembering that first and foremost we are His. We’ve been bought with a price. He gave Himself wholly for us and to us. Oh, to respond by being wholly His.

…My beloved is mine and I am his… (Song of Solomon 2:16, Amplified)

Be with Him and be His and the rest will follow. Selah.