10. Prayer : A Comfort, A Connection

"This is the confidence we have in approaching God: that if we ask anything according to his will, he hears us. And if we know that he hears us—whatever we ask—we know that we have what we asked of him." - 1 John 5:14-15

What is prayer? Prayer is our direct line to heaven. Prayer is a communication process that allows us to talk to God. He wants us to communicate with Him, like a person-to-person phone call. Cell phones and other devices have become a necessity to most people in today’s society. We have bluetooth, blackberries, iPhones, and etc! These are all means of communication that allow two or more people to interact, discuss, and respond to one another. To many people, prayer seems complicated, but it is simply talking to God. 

Right now, I am struggling with how to cope with all of my stress and anxiety about this new "balancing" act that I have to maintain right now in my life. I've sought comfort from many sources, finding it to be only temporary. I have been reminded through those experiences that nothing of this world can provide strength and comfort as only God can. And the only way we can ever achieve that joy in comfort is through devout, sincere prayer to God, not for the things we want, but praising Him for blessing us with the things we have. Its been very hard for me to come to that understanding, and yet I am still trying to reconcile my spiritual life with Christ. Here's an excerpt from a source I found on Gospel.com that offers an illustration that helped me understand more about how God works through prayer. - 

"I once heard an illustration about how God strengthens us during trials. It went like this: “Did you know that an eagle knows when a storm is approaching long before it breaks? The eagle will fly to high spot and wait for the winds to come. When the storm hits, it sets its wings so that the wind will pick it up and lift it above the storm. While the storm rages below, the eagle is soaring above it. The eagle does not escape the storm; it simply uses the storm to lift it higher. It rises on the winds that bring the storm. When the storms of life come upon us, we can rise above them by setting our minds and our belief toward God. The storms do not have to overcome us; we can allow God's power to lift us above them. God enables us to ride the winds of the storm that bring sickness, tragedy, failure, and disappointment into our lives. We can soar above the storm. Remember, it is not the burdens of life that weigh us down, it is how we handle them.”

That illustration really gave an important vista for me to be able to grasp how God can truly lift us up and above our "storms", while at the same time using those "storms" in the process. We simply have to dedicate our time to Christ, Let go, and Let God do His work in our lives. Once we do that we will know with confidence that God can hear us when we pray. So, let's open that line of communication! Pray, knowing that no matter how far you roam, your connection with Him can never be lost! 

9. What It Means to Trust

"Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and do not lean on your own understanding. In all your ways acknowledge him, and he will make straight your paths."  - Proverbs 3:5-6

The past few weeks have been extremely overwhelming. Not only because of school work and midterm grades, but all the stresses and worries that come with rushing too. Over these past few weeks I've leaned a great deal about what devotion is, and what it takes to persevere. There were some days that I didn't know what to do and I felt like I was drowning in stress and anxiety. But this command in Proverbs came to mind. I bet a lot of people would say that Proverbs 3:5-6 is their life verse. If not, you probably even have it memorized.

"Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and do not lean on your own understanding. In all your ways acknowledge him, and he will make straight your paths." 

This is a promise that I have learned is essential to our spiritual life with God. But I wanted to go deeper into what each part of this verse meant. So I did some research and broke the verse down into four parts. So here they are.

"Trust in the Lord with all your heart" is obviously an exhortation not to doubt. When you trust in the Lord with all your heart, you're making a tangible choice not to let unbelief "eat away" at your soul. You're confident in Jesus and jumping in with both feet.

"...Do not lean on your own understanding." You can't trust in the Lord with all your heart if you're leaning on your own understanding. I'd like to think I trust the Lord like that right now, but how can I be sure I do? I think that John Piper said it best in one of his sermons - 

"Maybe you know some things. You've been around the block, you know how things work, you know how to get it done. There's nothing wrong with that. It's good, in fact. The problem is, are you leaning on those things when you hit a crisis? Are you confident in your own ability to get out of tight spots? Do you say anything like, "I know how to fix this. I've been through this before. I'm going to get on this right now." Yeah, that's not great. Don't lean on your own understanding."

"In all your ways acknowledge Him..." In every choice, acknowledge God. We might be able to handle that situation by ourselves, but we still want to glorify God in every situation we come in contact with. So in all our ways, we should put Him first. 

"...And He will make straight your paths." If we will just lay all of our burdens, desires, and worries at His feet, He will work things out in His perfect timing. He knows what we are going through. God's grace keeps humbling me each time I think about how such a powerful and magnificent creator of the world can be so concerned and compassionate about our own microscopic worries and stresses. But He doesn't just offer compassion and grace, He challenges us to get back up and try again. "Just try Me on that one," God says. "Test Me and see if I'm not faithful." So here comes our chance to discover the amazing promise God gives to those who totally trust in Him. So let's Dive Deep.....and see what God has in store for our lives.

8. I Surrender My Will

I surrender my will. What do those words bring to mind? It's something that we don't really like to think about because those words involve the sacrifice of our own personal desires. We don't choose with our minds, although we have to understand. We don't choose with our emotions, though ultimately it helps to want to make the choices. Ultimately we choose with our will. So in order to make the choices according to God's will, we must first surrender our will. Without the surrender of our will, we can never follow God's plan for our lives. Each of these choices has presented a decision between God's will and our own way. The surrender of our will always comes down to saying, "Not my will, Lord, but Yours be done."

This week my service project was playing with children at an apartment complex. I had a good time, but came to the realization that this small apartment complex was all they knew since they had lived there apart from their school. They didn't have a sense of the world outside their apartment complex. In the same way, most of us try to stay isolated from uncomfortable situations by placing our will above God's. This can prove unhealthy for our relationship with God. Like I stated above, we must surrender our will to God, and when that happens, we can have the strength we need to make it through those uncomfortable times, and step out of our "bubble". Here's a verse and some points that can help us live our lives having surrendered our will.

"Be watchful, stand firm in the faith, act like men, be strong. Let all that you do be done in love." - 1 Corinthians 16:13

First Corinthians 16:13 breaks down into four great challenges to help us in living with a surrendered will: "Be watchful, stand firm in the faith, act like men, be strong."

1: Be watchful. Pay attention. Take a stand. Don't compromise. Engage. Participate. When he made these challenges, the apostle Paul was wrapping up his first letter to the Corinthian church with what it takes to following Jesus over your lifetime—a long obedience in the same direction.

2: Stand firm in the faith. Be determined. Certain. Resolute in your commitment. There are many ways to fall; one way to stand. Root yourself in Christ.

3: Act like men. The equivalent today might be something like, Don't whine or waver or wallow with excessive emotion. Choose your course and stick to it. Don't let your feelings rule your actions.

4: Be strong. Don't be weak or passive. Engage your will. Step up. Don't be indifferent. There's a lot on the line here. Life is short. Take a stand. Fly the flag. Live for Jesus.

7. We Must Decrease, For Him To Increase

"Jesus called the Twelve and said, 'If anyone wants to be first, he must be the very last, and the servant of all'." - Mark 9:35

Through my experiences in the past couple days I have learned a lot about what a servant is, and what it means to be a servant, not only a servant of man, but a servant of Christ. I think this verse truly describes what it means to be a servant. In thinking about this verse I decided to write down a few thoughts I had concerning how we should look at service overall. In order to become a steadfast servant through Christ, we must first devote ourselves to these ideals. We should remind ourselves of these things often, in an attempt to truly understand what service is and how God wants to instill it in us for His will. We must remind ourselves that:

My life is not going to be about myself.

I'm going to be part of the solution, not part of the problem.

I can't change the world, but I can change my own destiny.

I know what God wants. I know what God's looking for.

I'm going to be a servant.

Our Christian lives will never make sense until we learn how to serve by "rolling up our sleeves and jumping in". Until we serve, our Christian lives will always be an obligation. Godly disciplines will feel like burdens until we get off the bench and into the game. Spiritually speaking, we'll never get the "wind in our sails" until we fully and completely commit to imitating Christ in regular, humble, faithful service. As Luke 9:23-24 states, "If anyone desires to come after Me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross daily, and follow me. For whosever desires to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life, for My sake, will save it." This verse has been my theme verse for a couple years now, and it has always reminded me about how much I can strive to do better, to persevere, and through devotion, serve my brothers and my fellow man. 

We don't have to ask God if He wants us to serve, He has called every one of us into a lifetime of service. I know God wants to do something great with you—so whatever He's calling you to do, do it with your whole heart. Others may never assign greatness to your life, but in serving Christ you will have the assurance in faith, that you have lived a life fulfilled by God and no one or nothing else. Keep the faith, and serve as Christ first served us. 

6. Out of Ashes, Into Freedom

For two weeks now I have been attending the Morrison Heights College Choir called "Hesed" (pronounced "hess-said"), the Hebrew word for lovingkindness. The following is a good, working definition of hesed: "the consistent, ever-faithful, relentless, constantly-pursuing, lavish, extravagant, unrestrained, furious love of our Father God". Now that I have explained the meaning of the word, every week the choir becomes more and more of an awesome experience for me. The music minister, John Langworthy, directs, but more so inspires the choir by including everyone and applying the message of the music we sing to everyday life. Here are some lyrics to one song we sing that has impacted me: 

Out of ashes prayers are lifted

From the weary mourners call
Broken hearts are being mended
Jesus' stripes can heal them all

Out of ashes into freedom
Out of dying into life
See the joy that's set before us
In the blinding cross of Christ

Out of ashes sinners' finding 
Mercy hope and righteousness
Revel in their new found passion
Worshiping in thankfulness

Out of ashes He is risen
Seated with the heavenly hosts
Clouds of witnesses are praising
Father, Son and Holy Ghost

This song has spoken to me in ways that I could never understand. I believe that God had a plan for me when I decided one Sunday night to go and get involved in the choir. But not only that, this song showed me how as Christians we should strive to leave our "ashes" behind and focus on God's eternal plan for our lives. We all have ashes in our lives. Those things that we try to escape from, by moving away from a certain place, or trying to change an area in our lives. But God is the only one who can completely erase those ashes, all we have to do is humble

 ourselves and turn to Him. Once we can recognize our bondage in sin, Christ redeems us by taking our chains upon Himself and we are set free.

Do you recognize those chains and those ashes that keep weighing you down in your spiritual life with Christ? Accept the fact that you can't redeem yourself, that you can't go on living like this. Accept the love of Christ, "hesed", His true lovingkindness. It is this love, demonstrated through the life and death of our Savior Jesus Christ, that has the power to shape our lives and make us who we are today -- a people filled with joy and confidence who know the source of life and who are living lives that have been unchained, and redeemed.