Category: Thoughts and Meditations

“Then Isaiah the son of Amoz sent to Hezekiah, saying, ‘Thus says the Lord, the God of Israel: Because you have prayed to me concerning Sennacherib king of Assyria’” – Isaiah 37:21

We humans like to overthink things. That can include overthinking prayer. We ponder what and how prayer works. Why should we tell our needs to an all-knowing God? Why should we have to articulate our requests to a God Who is always for us? If God is all-good, can our prayers even make a difference? Does prayer change God’s mind or plan? The list goes on…

Don’t overthink prayer! The Bible invites us to pray, encourages us to pray, and commands us to pray. Jesus, the Son of God, prayed often and modeled a life of prayer for us. We’re told that prayer has great power (James 5:16). We see the power of prayer throughout the Bible. In this passage, King Hezekiah is told that because he prayed about the Assyrian invasion of Judah, God would dramatically and miraculously rescue them from Sennacherib.

Not all prayer is answered with a visible “Yes”. Not all prayer is answered as quickly or dramatically as Hezekiah’s prayer. However, all prayer is heard by God. One of the greatest privileges of Christian life is being able to approach God on His throne and make every request, concern, fear, anxiety, and burden of our heart known to Him. Through our ongoing life of prayer, we come to know God better, our heart is aligned to His heart, our fellowship with Him ripens and matures, and we absolutely do see many prayers answered.

Jesus was clear: ask and keep asking, seek and keep seeking, knock and keep knocking, pray persistently and never give up!

“Then the eyes of the blind shall be opened,
and the ears of the deaf unstopped;
then shall the lame man leap like a deer,
and the tongue of the mute sing for joy.
For waters break forth in the wilderness,
and streams in the desert;”
– Isaiah 35:5-6

In Isaiah 35, God promises a wonderful time of renewal and restoration from all the devastation Israel would experience. The reversal of human suffering described in these verses is the heart of this wonderful promise and a picture of God’s Kingdom. This promise would be fulfilled some seven centuries later in the ministry of Jesus of Nazareth.

Jesus opened the eyes of the blind. Jesus unstopped the ears of the deaf. Jesus healed those whose disabilities kept them from leaping. Jesus released the tongue of people who were mute. Jesus knew He was the fulfillment of these verses and pointed those who doubted Him to these very words. Jesus alone offers the Living Water that flows from deep within every one His followers so that we never run dry spiritually!

All God’s promises are yes and amen in Jesus (2 Corinthians 1:20)! He is the revelation of God, the fulfillment of Scripture, and God in the flesh. Jesus suffered, died on a cross, and rose from the dead for you, so that your sins would be forgiven when you believe in Him. In Him, we not only find spiritual healing and eternal life, we enjoy the certainty of a glorious eternal future in God’s presence with full sight and hearing, perfected bodies, and tongues that will praise God forever. Have you embraced Jesus as your Lord and Savior?

“For we cannot do anything against the truth, but only for the truth.” – 2 Corinthians 13:8

Truth must matter to the people of God! This is even more true in our post-truth culture in which many let their politics and preferred news sources define truth. We’ve entered an era in which our political loyalties (in any direction) and non-stop news/social media consumption (which is directly tied to our political loyalties) not only spoon feed us our truth, but we don’t care at all about the possibility of any truth coming from a different source. This is unacceptable for followers of Jesus!

We serve the God of truth and are commanded not to bear false witness (including passing along false information). God’s Word is our ultimate source of truth and its content must take priority over any earthly news source. That must be the absolute, rock-solid first commitment for every Christian.

Then when it comes to earthly news sources, we must branch out beyond just those that repeatedly echo whatever it is we like to hear or happen to believe about the news of the day. God sends rain on the just and on the unjust, so there is no single human party, channel, or twitter feed with a monopoly on the truth (though some may be entirely false). Christians should engage with a variety of sources and kinds of information.

We should be people who are curious, who use the faculties God has given us to be actively learning our whole lives. We must become people who discern and sift the mixture of truth and falsehood flows out of any human speaker, party, channel, or feed. We should be people who are quick to listen, slow to speak, slow to get angry, and slow to like and share. We must be for the truth. Not “our” truth. Not “their” truth. “The” truth. Truth must matter!

“It will be said on that day,
‘Behold, this is our God; we have waited for him, that he might save us.
This is the Lord; we have waited for him;
let us be glad and rejoice in his salvation.’”
– Isaiah 25:9

We live in a culture that fools us into thinking we shouldn’t ever have to wait. Indeed, we’ve come to believe that something is wrong if we’re ever made to wait! Items large and small get delivered to our homes day and night. Meals get delivered within minutes of ordering. Groceries likewise show up without delay. Countless other things can be pre-ordered so they’ll be ready for pickup when we arrive, without waiting. In all this, we’ve lost our ability to wait patiently for anything.

Nonetheless, God tells us we must wait for the most important things. God moves on His time table and His transcendent understanding of time is dramatically different from our own. So we wait for the glorious day of salvation and restoration described in Isaiah 25: the Messianic banquet we’ll enjoy in God’s presence. Our hearts yearn for the restoration of creation as we survey the darkness and evil of this fallen world. We must wait patiently!

God will fulfill all His promises. When that day comes, it will be glorious, but we must wait for it, however long it takes. In the meantime, there is much that is good and wonderful for followers of Christ: we enjoy fellowship with God through faith in Christ, we enjoy forgiveness and eternal life in Christ, we have purpose and significance in our lives as we do the work prepared for us in Christ. Nonetheless, there are things we must still wait patiently for, including the glorious day when the Kingdom is consummated. Be patient!!!

“But I am afraid that as the serpent deceived Eve by his cunning, your thoughts will be led astray from a sincere and pure devotion to Christ.” – 2 Corinthians 11:3

Paul is right to be concerned! Satan is deceptive and determined. He’ll often look pleasant enough and sound both reasonable and fairly similar to the truth. Satan usually works from a position of near-truth. Nonetheless, he is the Father of Lies! The devil loves to draw Christians off course into following not-Jesus while they remain firmly convinced they love and follow Jesus!

As followers of Jesus, we must be constantly on guard against deceptions that divert us from true devotion to our Living Savior. For centuries, we’ve seen people attempt to redefine Jesus to suit their preexisting philosophies, politics, preferences, proclivities, or patriotism. Don’t let that to happen to you!

Jesus must never be redefined to fit human categories and labels. We must redefine every category of our mind to fit Jesus! Our devotion to Him must be total and it must be true. To stay true to Jesus in a world full of lies, we must each know Him and His Word as well as we possibly can. Every Christian should be a student of the Bible. Every Christian should know what the Bible says so they can wisely discern true teachers and preachers from false. The devil is cunning – you must be wise and knowledgeable to resist him!