Tag: pray

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Bible Insights

What Will We Promise God When We’re in a Crisis?

What Will We Promise God When We’re in a Crisis

Will We Follow Through When the Pressure’s Off?

God’s chosen people toil as slaves in Egypt. He tasks Moses with getting them out. So far things aren’t going so well. God has sent seven plagues to get the Pharaoh’s attention, without achieving the people’s release. Plague number eight is on its way: Locusts.

An army of locusts. They strip the foliage and fruit off everything in sight.

Panicked, Pharaoh summons Moses. He confesses his sin for having reneged on his last promise to let the people go. He begs for forgiveness and asks Moses to pray that God will take away the plague of locusts.

Moses prays. God answers. He whips up a wind that carries the locusts out to sea. Not one remains in Egypt. Problem solved for Pharaoh, at least for now.

Guess what happens next? With the threat of locusts over, and the pressure for relief gone, Pharaoh changes his mind—again. He refuses to let the Israelites leave.

It will take two more plagues, with the tenth being the deadliest of them all, before Pharaoh lets the people go. If only he had followed through on his promise to let them leave sooner, he would have avoided countless needless deaths—including that of his firstborn son.

What Promises Do We Make to God When We’re in a Jam?

It’s easy to criticize Pharaoh for making a promise during a crisis and going back on his word when life returns to normal. But we do the same thing. It’s human nature.

How many times, when in a moment of crisis, have we made a rash promise to God? It goes something like this, “Get me out of this mess, and I’ll never do it again.”

Or we pledge to do something that we should have been doing all along. Or we vow to stop doing something that we shouldn’t be doing anyway.

Then God hears our plea and often rescues us. But do we follow through on what we promise God? Not likely. Or if we do follow through, our pledge lasts only a short time, and we soon return to living life as we’ve always lived.

Making a bargain with God is never a good idea, because if we don’t follow through, we may find ourselves in an even worse situation. We may be better off to confess our shortcomings and ask for his grace and mercy.

Else we could end up like Pharaoh who paid a huge price for his broken promises.

[Read through the Bible with us this year. Today’s reading is Exodus 8-10, and today’s post is on Exodus 10:12-20.]

Peter DeHaan writes about biblical Christianity to confront status quo religion and live a life that matters. He seeks a fresh approach to following Jesus through the lens of Scripture, without the baggage of made-up traditions and meaningless practices.

Read more in his books, blog, and weekly email updates.

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Bible Insights

Pray When it Doesn’t Make Sense

Pray When it Doesn’t Make Sense

After Job’s so-called friends fail so miserably to comfort him in his time of need, after they criticize and malign him, God steps in. God puts them in their place for what they said and affirms that Job has spoken truth.

Then God tells the friends to prepare a sacrifice and to ask Job to pray for them.

Picture the situation. Job’s life is in shambles. He is destitute and in pain, despising life itself. The only people who will even talk to him, attack him and his character, pulling him down even further. Then they have the audacity to ask him to pray for them!

If you were Job, how would you respond?

Praying for them would be a hard thing to do; it would be far easier to give them the payback they deserve, but not Job. In the midst of his torment, he prays for his misguided friends even though they seem to be in a much better state than he is.

God accepts Job’s prayers—and then restores his fortunes twofold.

What if Job had refused to pray for his friends, might God’s response have been different?

[Read through the Bible with us this year. Today’s reading is Job 40-42, and today’s post is on Job 42:7-10.]

Discover more about Job in Peter’s book I Hope in Him: 40 Insights about Moving from Despair to Deliverance through the Life of Job. In it, we compare the text of Job to a modern screenplay.

Peter DeHaan writes about biblical Christianity to confront status quo religion and live a life that matters. He seeks a fresh approach to following Jesus through the lens of Scripture, without the baggage of made-up traditions and meaningless practices.

Read more in his books, blog, and weekly email updates.

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Christian Living

May This Year Be Your Best Year Yet

A Church on Every Corner

Celebrating the New Year

Just as I often make a post for Christmas, I do the same for New Year’s Day. These posts usually address making New Year’s resolutions. But instead of resolutions, why not work to make this year your best year yet. With God’s help, you can.

Here are some of my past posts about New Year’s Day. Note the recurring theme on making resolutions—a practice I don’t follow and don’t encourage.

Check out these posts to see why:

Let’s not resolve to make this coming year better. Though we could strive on our own power to make it happen, we can’t ensure the outcome. The future is outside our control.

Yes, we can take steps to best position ourselves to make the most of whatever happens, but that doesn’t guarantee success.

What should we do then, give up and accept fate? Of course not.

We should do what we can now to establish the best possible foundation for our future—and trust God with the rest.

We can ask him to bless us—not because we deserve it or have earned it, but because he loves us. We can pray that he will guide us into making good decisions. We can seek him for strength to replace unhealthy habits with good practices.

When we do that, we’re poised to make this our best year yet. That’s what I’m going to do. It’s my approach every year.

 As we move into the days, weeks, and months ahead, may God bless us, guide us, and keep us safe. May it be our best year ever.

From me to you, I’ll end with this blessing: May you have a happy new year, and may this year be your best year yet.

Amen!

Do you like this post? Want to read more? Check out Peter’s book, Bridging the Sacred-Secular Divide: Discovering the Spirituality of Every Day Life, available wherever books are sold.

Peter DeHaan writes about biblical Christianity to confront status quo religion and live a life that matters. He seeks a fresh approach to following Jesus through the lens of Scripture, without the baggage of made-up traditions and meaningless practices.

Read more in his books, blog, and weekly email updates.

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Christian Living

Hold on to Every Thought

every thought

Make Our Thoughts Obedient to Jesus

Paul tells the church in Corinth to capture every thought and make it obedient to Jesus. Likewise, Proverbs advises us to guard our thoughts (Proverbs 4:23). (Some translations say to guard our hearts, putting a different twist on the same concept).

This is often hard to do—but not impossible.

Though I’m still working on it, my solution is to distract myself from wayward thoughts. When I remember to do this, they usually dissipate quickly. My distractions take two forms:

Quote the Bible

The first verse that comes to mind is in James: “Resist the devil and he will flee from you” (James 4:7). This is good advice to follow, but when I cite it, I end up focusing on what I’m trying to escape. It doesn’t help me control my every thought.

Instead, my go to verse is from Revelation: “Holy, holy, holy is the Lord God Almighty, who was, and is, and is to come” (Revelation 4:8). This passage places my focus on God, praising him, worshiping him, and acknowledging his eternal existence.” The enemy doesn’t like that.

I end up reciting this verse just about every day, often multiple times.

Pray

Another way I distract myself from wrong thinking is to pray. The enemy doesn’t like that either. However, I don’t pray that I’ll stop thinking wrong thoughts or for strength to hold them captive; that also focuses my attention on what I’m trying to escape. Instead I pray for someone else.

Just as I have one predetermined verse, I have one predetermined person who I will automatically pray for when wrong thoughts beckon. This keeps me from wasting time, trying to determine who I should pray for and gets me to the praying part quickly.

Capturing every thought and subjecting it to Jesus is usually quite easy when I remember to cite scripture or pray. The key is remembering to do so.

[Read through the Bible with us this year. Today’s reading is 2 Corinthians 10-13, and today’s post is on 2 Corinthians 10:5.]

Read more in Peter’s book, Love is Patient (book 7 in the Dear Theophilus series).

Peter DeHaan writes about biblical Christianity to confront status quo religion and live a life that matters. He seeks a fresh approach to following Jesus through the lens of Scripture, without the baggage of made-up traditions and meaningless practices.

Read more in his books, blog, and weekly email updates.

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Christian Living

Help One Another

help others

We Must Be Willing to Share Our Concerns If We Hope to Receive Help

One of my newsletter subscribers emailed me with a question. He wants to do what the Bible says about loving one another (such as in 1 John 3:11).

He’s willing to sacrifice to meet the needs of his brothers and sisters in Jesus, but how can he do that when he doesn’t know what their needs are? How can he hope to help one another?

Even praying for them—something everyone can do—is hard when they won’t share what their needs are.

When his church takes prayer requests, “the tendency is to request prayer for someone else who is sick” he says, and not themselves. “It seems that the lack of openness and transparency prevents Christians from fulfilling the command to love one another.”

I get this. I’ve experienced it.

I too often hear people complain about their spiritual community for not being there to help one another—of helping them during their time of crisis.

Yet they guard their struggle as if it’s a huge secret and won’t let anyone know what they’re dealing with. How can Jesus’s church love one another, help one another, and pray for one another, when we keep them in the dark?

A Friend in Need

Once God brought to my mind a friend who had moved away. The Holy Spirit prompted me to reach out to him because he was struggling. Beyond that I had no clarification.

Did God want me to pray for him? Was I to encourage him? Perhaps I was supposed to visit him to help with something or just to be present. Or was the need financial?

It had been a couple of years since we had any direct contact, but through others I knew the general trajectory his life had taken. So, I wasn’t surprised when the Holy Spirit told me to reach out to him.

I emailed him and told him that God brought him to my mind that morning. “How are things going for you and your family? Do you need anything? How can I pray for you?”

He responded later that day, giving me a glowing report of his life, his work, and God’s provisions.

I felt a failure for thinking his life was in crisis. According to his report, he was doing better than me. I assumed I hadn’t heard correctly from God. It sometimes happens. But I wondered how I’d gotten things so wrong when the instruction seemed so clear.

Discouraged, I pushed aside my desire to help one another and my failure to correctly hear the Holy Spirit’s nudging.

A year later he and his family were in town. He invited me and some other long-ago friends to visit them at a vacation condo someone had gifted them with for two weeks.

We had a marvelous time catching up and renewing our friendship. During a quieter moment in their visit, it was just my friend and me.

He gulped hard and told me about the struggle he had the year before, how he lost about everything and the difficulty he and his family went through. I asked him when, and he told me August. That was when he was at his lowest. It was in August when I had emailed him.

I wanted to scream. “I would have helped you! I was ready to do whatever I could. But you didn’t give me a chance.”

Yet I kept my frustration to myself, because letting him know now of my readiness to help then would do nothing to alleviate the pain he went through.

I’d heard right from the Holy Spirit after all. Should I have pressed into my friend’s assurance that everything was okay? Should I have tried harder to help him even though he said everything was fine?

Basically, he lied to me. As a result, he missed the blessings God was preparing to give him through me—and perhaps others.

If we are to help one another, our community must be appropriately transparent and honest.

We Must Seek Balance

We all know people in a perpetual crisis. Their life seems to bounce from one disaster to another, and they’re always pulling everyone around them into it. It’s a quick way to lose friends and alienate others, especially when their own bad decisions are the continual cause of their problems.

Yet to avoid being that person, we often overreact to this concern, shielding others from our struggles. When we do this, we miss God’s blessings through them, and they miss the opportunity to serve us in Jesus’s name.

We must learn how to properly share the difficulties of our lives with others and avoid being stoic when we should be honest.

This is the only way we can hope to help one another.

Two Questions to Help One Another

If we are to truly help one another, we must ask ourselves two questions:

1. Who should I share my concerns with?

2. Who needs my help, even if they insist that they don’t?

And if we don’t know the answer to the second question, we can pray for them (James 5:16). Though I did pray for my friend, despite his insistence that everything was fine, I could have been more diligent about it.

In the future, when the Holy Spirit’s direction doesn’t align with what people tell me, I’m going to defer to God.

Peter DeHaan writes about biblical Christianity to confront status quo religion and live a life that matters. He seeks a fresh approach to following Jesus through the lens of Scripture, without the baggage of made-up traditions and meaningless practices.

Read more in his books, blog, and weekly email updates.

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Christian Living

Start Each Day with God

start each day with God

Make Spending Time with the Almighty a Priority

God deserves our best, not whatever’s left over at the end of the day—if anything. This may be why he told the Israelites to give to him their first fruits, the first of their harvest (Exodus 23:16). That’s why we should start each day with God, with a focus on our Lord.

Here are some ideas to start each day with God.

Seek Him Before You Get Up

Before I leave my bed each morning, I turn my focus to God. I thank him for what happened yesterday, for the sleep that rejuvenated me, and the potential of the day ahead. I begin my day with a focus on him, which sets the foundation for what happens next.

Give Him Your Day and Invite Him into It

Before I arise, I thrust my arms into the air in a physical display of worship, giving the Almighty my day and inviting him into it. And the days when this feels the most difficult to do are the days when I need it the most.

Thoughts of trying to navigate the day without my Lord’s help are foolish.

Morning Prayers

At this point I’ve thanked God and prayed for my day. I’m up and have used the mindless task of shaving to shake the slumber from my soul. I’ve done some basic exercises and am (mostly) alert.

I now ask for God’s blessings on my family, for future generations of my family, and those closest to me. This prepares me for what follows.

Read and Study His Word

Next, I spent time reading and studying his Word. Sometimes this is part of a regular reading plan. I often make notes about key insights the Holy Spirit reveals to me from that passage.

Though most people do this in a journal, I do it on my computer, organizing my observations by book, chapter, and verse. This way I can merge my thoughts for the day with observations from prior readings.

Other times my Bible reading and studying is in preparation for the book I’ll be working on that day. If I intend to write about a certain passage, I want to first fix my thoughts on it and meditate on it.

I’ve been doing morning Bible reading the longest and it’s ingrained into my day. It’s a lifelong habit that I formed. Only rarely do events distract me from it. I invest about fifteen minutes—though sometimes more—each morning focusing on Scripture.

This action is essential for me to best start my day with God.

Then Take Him Throughout Your Day

With these prerequisites complete, I feel ready to move into my plans for the day. But when I skimp on them, it’s not the best way to start each day with God.

End Your Day with Reflection and Thanksgiving

Though the focus of this post is about how we start each day with God, in some respects this effort begins the night before on how we end each day.

As I snuggle into bed my goal is to thank God for the day and what he enabled me to do. I pray for his blessing on my sleep and that even in my dreams I will hold every thought captive (2 Corinthians 10:5).

This is what I struggle with the most. This isn’t because of a lack of will, but because some nights I fall asleep before I can take this step, or I slip into slumber halfway through.

In case I missed doing this or fell short, that’s why I try to begin the next day by thanking God for the prior one.

Start Each Day with God

We should start each day with God and give him our best. He deserves nothing less and there’s nothing we need more. Though I don’t always do this as fully as I’d like to, this is how I try to start each day with God.

I pray that you have a regular rhythm for your day that begins with and focuses on our Lord. And if not, use these ideas to encourage you to move forward and place your focus on the Almighty as you begin each day.

Do you like this post? Want to read more? Check out Peter’s book, Bridging the Sacred-Secular Divide: Discovering the Spirituality of Every Day Life, available wherever books are sold.

Peter DeHaan writes about biblical Christianity to confront status quo religion and live a life that matters. He seeks a fresh approach to following Jesus through the lens of Scripture, without the baggage of made-up traditions and meaningless practices.

Read more in his books, blog, and weekly email updates.

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Bible Insights

Blessed to be a Blessing

be a blessing to others

God Blesses Us So That We Can Be a Blessing to Others

God wants to bless us. He loves us and wants to give us his best. This idea of blessing occurs throughout the Bible. In the Old Testament, God often ties his blessings to the people’s obedience and to the attitudes of their hearts.

Yet, the first time we encounter this word in the Bible, it’s God’s unconditional promise to bless Abraham. He does this prior to Abraham doing anything to demonstrate his obedience to God’s commands or his faith.

God blessed Abraham for Abraham’s sake, but there’s more. Through Abraham, God promised to bless all the people on the earth through him (Genesis 12:2-3). In short, God blessed Abraham to be a blessing to others.

But this doesn’t just apply to Abraham. The word bless occurs hundreds of times in the Old and New Testaments. It’s a reoccurring theme. More specifically, the phrase bless you occurs fifty times. Furthermore, the idea of blessing other people shows up four dozen times, and blessing nations shows up another fifteen.

God expects us to be a blessing to others. We should view God’s provisions to us from this perspective. He blesses us—he prospers us—so that we can be a blessing to others. Here are some ways we can do this:

Donate Money

For many people, when they consider the idea of blessing others, they think of money. Providing financially for others is an ideal way to be a blessing to them.

We can use the money God has blessed us with to give to organizations whose mission aligns with our passions. We can also give money directly to people in need.

In both cases, however, we must be good stewards of God’s financial blessings to us so that they will have the best kingdom impact.

Share Possessions

We can also be a blessing to others when we share our possessions. When we have things we don’t need, we shouldn’t throw them away. Instead, we should give them away.

We can give directly to individuals in need or to organizations, who will in turn give them away or sell them to raise money for their cause.

Yet let’s move our thinking beyond our castoffs. We can also give possessions that we still use, that still have value to us, to others. If someone has more need of it than we do, then maybe we need to give it to them.

In these ways, we can be a blessing to others.

Give Time

Aside from material items, consider our time. We can give our time to help others. This can occur by volunteering for various organizations focused on helping others. It can also occur directly by helping a neighbor who could use some assistance.

And lest anyone complains that “I don’t have enough time,” let me remind you that we all have 24 hours in each day. We choose how to use that time. Why not choose to give some of it away?

Mentor Others

A specific way to be a blessing to others with our time is to do one-on-one mentoring. In this way we invest ourselves in them, helping them to have a better life, be it physically, spiritually, emotionally, or all three.

Pray for Others

A final option—the most important one—is something that everyone can do. We can all pray for others. And we can start today, right now.

Blessed to Be a Blessing

In both large and small ways, God has blessed each of us. Seek ways to use his blessings to us to be a blessing to others.

Peter DeHaan writes about biblical Christianity to confront status quo religion and live a life that matters. He seeks a fresh approach to following Jesus through the lens of Scripture, without the baggage of made-up traditions and meaningless practices.

Read more in his books, blog, and weekly email updates.

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Christian Living

Pursue a God-Honoring Contentment

contenment

Discern When to Be Satisfied with What You Have and When to Yearn for More

Though some of our world live in an environment of true need, most people have their daily needs met. Yet they aren’t satisfied with having their basic requirements covered. They want more. And the more that most people have, the more they want.

These people live with a materialistic outlook. They’re never satisfied with what they have. They always crave for more. This is the reality today in developed countries around the world. Regardless of what these people have, they’re not satisfied. Whatever they have isn’t enough; they’re always yearning for more, grasping for what they don’t have.

Material Contentment

Instead of always seeking for more, we should strive to be content with what we have. God has blessed us with material provisions. We should thank him for his gifts and not seek more. We must learn to be content with what we have.

In fact, an unrestrained drive to accumulate more money and more possessions emerges as a disrespect for God. It’s a slap in his face, effectively saying that what he’s given isn’t enough.

We must stop this. We must learn to enjoy what we have and be thankful for it. All we need is to have the basics of life covered. Everything else is a bonus.

With God’s help, we can learn to be content with what we have: the size of our bank account, our home, our car, our clothes, our possessions, the money in our pocket, and on and on.

Most people today live beyond their means. They’re one paycheck away from disaster. And a few people live at their means. This is a better perspective. My goal, however, is to live beneath my means, which gives me more opportunity to bless others.

This doesn’t mean we shouldn’t set goals to make our life better. But it does mean we need to keep our ambitions in check. In the Bible, James gives us some commonsense advice to do this, crouching our plans with a caveat “If it’s the Lord’s will . . . ” (James 4:15).

Spiritual Contentment

There’s another element of commitment however, that we must address. It’s not our physical comforts, but our spiritual situation. We must never be content with that.

Yet most people are satisfied with their spiritual condition and their standing with God. Too many people are coasting their way toward heaven. And it’s sad for what they’re missing.

As for me, this is one area where I want more. When it comes to my relationship with God, what I have is not enough. I crave a deeper connection, greater supernatural insight, and a spiritual reality that I’ve so far just read about.

Conclusion

Each time I asked God for contentment with his tangible blessings—to protect me from a materialistic mindset—I’m quick to add a clarification. I also request from the Almighty that I’ll always desire more on a spiritual level. And that he will provide it.

May we be materially content and spiritually hungry.

Take a moment now, and thank God for what he’s given you.

Peter DeHaan writes about biblical Christianity to confront status quo religion and live a life that matters. He seeks a fresh approach to following Jesus through the lens of Scripture, without the baggage of made-up traditions and meaningless practices.

Read more in his books, blog, and weekly email updates.

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Bible Insights

How to Respond to Pain

pain

The Birth of Jabez

The obscure Old Testament character Jabez is only mentioned in two verses in the Bible. A reoccurring theme (if two verses can have a reoccurring theme) is pain.

The birth of Jabez is marked by pain and his mom gives him a name to let everyone know that. What a terrible legacy to give a boy, a name that serves as a constant reminder—to him and everyone else —that he caused extreme discomfort to his mom and is likely destined to continue to cause pain.

Jabez could have opted to live up to those expectations, allowing his name to be a self-fulfilling prophecy or he could attempt to overcome it. He chose the latter, asking God to keep him from causing pain.

And God answered his prayer!

Regardless of our past or the hand that life has dealt us, we don’t need to let that define us. We can overcome it and become something else, something better.

God helped Jabez do just that and he can help us to; we only need to ask.

[Read through the Bible with us this year. Today’s reading is 1 Chronicles 1-4, and today’s post is on 1 Chronicles 4:9-10.]

Peter DeHaan writes about biblical Christianity to confront status quo religion and live a life that matters. He seeks a fresh approach to following Jesus through the lens of Scripture, without the baggage of made-up traditions and meaningless practices.

Read more in his books, blog, and weekly email updates.

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Bible Insights

Is Our Relationship With God More Important Than Obedience?

Relationship With God

The Old Testament Law talks a lot about offering sacrifices to God, but what if he really wants something more?

King Solomon writes in the book of Ecclesiastes that we need to be careful when approaching God. “Guard your steps,” he says. This is wise advice.

Then he adds something more: “Go near to listen.” He even places listening over offering God the prescribed sacrifices. Though the Old Testament Law gives many commands about offering God our sacrifices, I don’t recall one that tells us to listen.

Yet Solomon, the wisest man to ever live, places listening to God over offering sacrifices to him.

Listening is about connecting. Solomon realizes God wants a relationship with us. He talks to us, and when we listen, we hear his voice, his words.

Communication with God isn’t a one-way street, with us just asking him (praying) for things. God can communicate to us, too, through the Bible and through his Holy Spirit, “a gentle whisper” (1 Kings 19:12, NIV) or his “still small voice” (1 Kings 19:12, KJV).

In Psalms we read we need to “be still and know that I am God,” (Psalm 46:10). That is the best way to listen to God. That’s what he wants from us: our ears, our attention, a relationship.

Our relationship with God starts when we listen to him.

Ask yourself: How do you listen to God? How does God speak to you?

[Read through the Bible with us this year. Today’s reading is Ecclesiastes 4-6, today’s post is on Ecclesiastes 5:1.]

Peter DeHaan writes about biblical Christianity to confront status quo religion and live a life that matters. He seeks a fresh approach to following Jesus through the lens of Scripture, without the baggage of made-up traditions and meaningless practices.

Read more in his books, blog, and weekly email updates.