Get Your Protein Powder!

My sons love their protein powder!  They can’t get enough of it and it is all about building some serious muscle strength.  It’s great to see them work out together and just pound the weights.  They have incredible determination and focus and the results are definitely showing up!    When I think of being in God’s presence and gaining strength spiritually, I believe taking time to be in His Word and listening to His still small voice is the protein that will build our spiritual strength and it all starts with appetite!  We need to take a long look in our “spiritual mirror” and recognize that it is high time to shape up and get fit.  Now, if we are still struggling with motivation, we can even pray for that appetite as well as Jesus taught us that those who hunger and thirst after righteousness shall be filled!

I really believe that God’s Word can come alive every day for us and it starts with confession.

Amos 8:11 refers to a time in the life of the nation of Israel where there was a famine of hearing the voice of the LORD. 

“The days are coming,” declares the Sovereign LORD, “when I will send a famine through the land—not a famine of food or a thirst for water, but a famine of hearing the words of the LORD.

In our North American culture, there is no lack of opportunity or access to the Bible.  As followers of Jesus, we have it readily available on our smart phones with great apps and there are Bibles literally at our fingertips, but why is there such a lack of even reading the Bible?  My own sense is that we have so many competing affections, but they lack the real protein of filling us up spiritually and nurturing our souls.

Here’s a few thoughts on where I believe we need to start or reset so to speak!

1.        Allow the Holy Spirit to open your eyes to the reading of God’s Word

It really is impossible for the Word of God to come alive and speak to your spirit without the Holy Spirit’s presence.

And we impart this in words not taught by human wisdom but taught by the Spirit, interpreting spiritual truths to those who are spiritual.The natural person does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, for they are folly to him, and he is not able to understand them because they are spiritually discerned.1 Corinthians 2:13-14

So, we really need to practice the presence of God and by this we have to slow down, be still and allow yourself to be in a posture to receive from God. If you come to a difficult part of Scripture, the first thing to do is ask God for wisdom, discernment, allow Him to give you His understanding and revelation.  Another place to go is www.bible.org  Take time to prayerfully read through the Word of God.

2.       God’s Word can make dead people come alive!   Hebrews 4:!2

In this context, recognize that the Word of God refers to all of God’s revelation and that certainly includes the Bible.  However, revelation also comes through the person of Jesus Christ and when we really listen to what God is saying to us, it will keep us from just going through the motions.  The author here is really expressing the incredible value of God’s Word in all of it’s ways to bring us into a personal, active and very living relationship with God.  Even the OT prophets knew that it had to go from our head to our heart, it had to go from being on paper to becoming alive in us.

Ezekiel 36:26  I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit in you; I will remove from you your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh. 27And I will put my Spirit in you and move you to follow my decrees and be careful to keep my laws.

Joshua 1:8,9

God’s truth exposes our sin

Isaiah 40:8 proclaims, “The grass withers, the flower fades, but the word of our God stands forever.” Since God is the author of life, His living Word imparts life in two ways.

God’s Truth also renews our mindset

Romans 12:1,2

God’s Truth is active

We get our word ‘energy’ from the Greek word ‘active’.   It means that God’s Word is so effective in accomplishing it’s purpose. 

 Isaiah 55:10-11 states, “For as the rain and the snow come down from heaven, and do not return there without watering the earth and making it bear and sprout, and furnishing seed to the sower and bread to the eater; so will My word be which goes forth out of 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.”

2 Timothy 3:16.17

If you need more proof, let’s look at Psalm 119  It captures every letter of the Hebrew alphabet with 22 letters of 8 verses each. It glorifies God and the revelation  of His Word.

Psalm 119:9,11 Staying on the path of purity… Your Word have I hid in my heart

Psalm 119:98-100 The Word gives us superior wisdom

Psalm 119:101,102 spiritual discernment

Psalm 119:103 lasting joy

Psalm 119:104 a holy discontent for what pollutes my soul

Psalm 119:105 The Word gives us direction.  Proverbs 19:2 do not make the decision in haste and lose the way.

REAL PRACTICAL

Here are some great apps for your phone

Read Scripture

YouVersion 

Use the audio – listening to the Word of God being read to you is a valuable exercise

John Piper on the very practical

Identify what is clear from the passage. Start with what you can figure out from the passage as a whole, and then return to the unclear parts.

Use a blank journal

Use highlighters!

Find the main point. Often the confusing parts do not contain the main point of the passage. Identifying the main point can give us clues for discovering the meaning of the difficult passage.

Look for clues within the book and surrounding context. Search the book for key words and phrases found in the tough passage.

Cross-reference. Utilizing cross-references, especially when a New Testament verse cites the Old, helps us to have a fuller understanding of what the authors were trying to communicate.

Ask specific questions of the text. Addressing a challenging text as a whole can seem insurmountable. But breaking a passage down by asking specific questions about it can unravel the meaning, question by question and answer by answer.

Use a trusted commentary. Be careful with commentaries. This caution includes trusting bad commentaries and relying too much on good ones. But commentaries can be used well, and great biblical scholars give helpful insights.

“You search the Scriptures because you think you’ll find in them eternal life, but they speak of Me.”  The Word is always meant to lead us to Jesus  John 5:39  Reading the Bible was never meant to be an end in and of itself... Be a DOER of the Word  James 1:22

Praying the way Jesus taught us to Pray!

I will never forget the memories of seeing my dad praying by his bedside as I walked down the hallway to my own room.  I knew he prayed for me not only with me but for me and he was an incredible example to me of faithfulness and commitment in every way.  I recognize also that I had more of a dad in the 21 years that I knew him than some have in a lifetime and I have always cherished that.  

Prayer is a universal thing.  Jesus was quoted as saying “When you pray”  It was just understood that people would recognize that there is something and Someone who is so much more infinite and eternal beyond us.

Prayer is a form of communication.  All of our relationships are based on communication and prayer moves us in to that place where God becomes so real to us.

Christian prayer is simple in that a child can pray the way Jesus taught us; however we also recognize that prayer can be demanding in the moment of difficult decisions or dark moments as we see from the life of Jesus when He prayed in Gethsemane and when the Psalmist often cried out to God.

Let's look at the Lord's Prayer in Matthew 6

Remember there are rewards for prayer -  listen to this.  Matthew 6 “And when you pray, do not be like the hypocrites, for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and on the street corners to be seen by others. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward in full. 6 But when you pray, go into your room, close the door and pray to your Father, who is unseen. Then your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you.

Also…

Prayer isn’t meant to be hard.  Circumstances are hard, situation are difficult, family members are tough; however remember the Father is looking for honesty and simplicity.

7 And when you pray, do not keep on babbling like pagans, for they think they will be heard because of their many words. 8 Do not be like them, for your Father knows what you need before you ask him.

The Lord’s Prayer is about going to the very heart of God’s honor and glory.  It’s about the real experience of God’s kingdom in heaven being made real here on earth.  It is about fulfilling our Father’s heart by being a tangible expression of heaven’s values and mindset in a world filled with chaos and lack of meaning.

This prayer is so Jesus-specific, it is not a generalized prayer about an unknown deity although it became that for so many who recited it.  It was meant to be so much more.

When it comes to prayer, Jesus told us to pray in this way, not 3 times a day using these exact words.

Our Father

We start with Abba Father.  It is a very intimate word, the most intimate word between a Father and his or her child, daddy.

Hallowed be Your name”   We are saying God we want Your name lifted high in all the world around us.  You are so worthy to be exalted and Your Name is set apart from all other names!  There is no one like You.   We are called to honor His name and seek that His presence would be made holy in our lives.

Your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven

This prayer is saying I want to be part of Your kingdom movement Lord.  Jesus was a living embodiment of this very prayer.  He was the one going around feeding people, He was the one who was forgiving people their sins.  Jesus was the one who inaugurated God’s kingdom.

We are called to live in this very tension, in that place of overlap between heaven and earth. 

Give us this day our daily bread

He is the One who ultimately meets our every need, not our jobs, not our spouses, not our investments, not our retirement plans.  He is our confidence.

And forgive us our debts,  as we also have forgiven our debtors.

Forgiveness is huge and so important in our lives.

When we choose not to forgive we allow a root of bitterness to grow in us and develop some very nasty roots and  bitterness to eat away at our very well being  as Hebrews 12:15 states.

Have you ever reached for the potatoes in your pantry or wherever you store them and they are covered in sprouts, even worse if they have got soft and started to leak their ugliness!!  Wow, do they ever stink… well that is what unforgiveness is like, it sprouts up with ugliness in our lives and we start to carry that around in our lives.

Forgiveness is a gift we give to ourselves as well.  We remind ourselves that we are not going to be controlled by the situation and we are going to give it over to the LORD.

And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one.

He is the one who is capable of handling our ultimate enemy and our most difficult situations.

Using Scripture In Prayer

Praying Scripture over those we know can be a powerful experience when we place their name in the prayer.  Example – Philippians 1:3-11

Using the  Psalms for the cry of our own heart.  Psalm 95

It can be a way to enable us to enter in to the place of prayer, but if it becomes ritualistic, it can turn into “deadwood” and just become a rote exercise for us.

Reading a passage over and over as a way of focusing in and really meditating on His Word.  Psalm 23; John 15

N.T. Wright in Simply Christian writes,

For some, praying in tongues is a way of lifting things and people up to God when we don’t know what their particular needs are, or perhaps when the need is all too blindingly obvious and we are so overwhelmed with it that we don’t know what to say.  For some, silence- difficult to attain for many, can, like the best sort of darkness, become the soil in which seeds of faith, hope, and love can germinate unseen.

We are also thankful that when we don’t have the words to pray, it is God’s very Spirit who intercedes for us.  Romans 8:26,27  The Spirit of God meets us in that place of pain.

Through Jesus we have access into God’s presence by faith and we are welcomed by the grace we stand on. Romans 5:2

If you, then, though you are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give good gifts to those who ask him! Matthew 7:11

The Lord bless you and keep you; the Lord make his face shine on you and be gracious to you;
the Lord turn his face toward you and give you peace.  Numbers 6:24-26