Mark 11:24 - Pray and Believe

In Mark 11:24 Jesus says this

Therefore I tell you, whatever you ask for in prayer, believe that you have received it, and it will be yours.

When I read this a few days back, it was not the first time I’ve encountered it or read it but strangely this time I read it, Holy Spirit has helped me to understand what it means throughout the past 3 days. 

This past Sunday I caught a cold. Something many of us hate getting but something so common that we just let it run its course until it’s gone. For some reason though, this time I remembered this passage and knew that Jesus was the ultimate healer.

Keeping this Scripture in my heart, during my time with the LORD, I asked Him to take away this sickness and believed that it was gone. Unlike I expected, day after day my cold was still there but my faith remained. It’s not about Jesus answering my prayer to heal my immediately, but it’s about aligning my heart with His. As long as my cold isn’t with me until the day I die, Jesus healed me didn’t he? Right now, what remains of my cold is a cough here and there and surely by the end of this week I will be as good as new. I believed that I was healed of my cold and He is revealing to me day by day that the healing from this cold is indeed mine. On top of that, it was a process of building my faith in Jesus. 

Many of us, when we pray for something and we don’t receive it immediately or at the time we ask for it to happen, we believe He hasn’t answered our prayers. We never stop to think that maybe His answer for our prayers were not a “yes” or it just wasn’t the right timing. His timing is impeccable and Ecclesiastes 3:11 says that He makes all things beautiful in His time. When prayers aren’t answered our way, don’t give up praying, but give up expecting things to turn out your way and have faith in God and His perfect timing. Align your heart with God’s, then He will reveal to you things that you didn’t even ask for just like how He developed my faith in Him though I wasn’t healed of my cold the next day. I still believe that there is no Healer like Him and I believe it even stronger than before I was sick. 

Are You Spiritually Exhausted?

I have just posted this on facebook but I wanted to encourage all the saints with more than just a facebook status update.

Serving our God is something every Christian is called to do. My pastor once told me a Christian who does not serve is a contradiction because it just doesn’t make sense. Are you serving? If not, it is time for you to serve in any way possible even if it means behind the scenes in intercession where nobody is looking.

Are you already serving? That’s great! But how many of you honestly feel burnt out at times or like you are doing too much at once? Serving is awesome but God never wanted you to serve without being burnt out. It says in today’s ‘utmost.org’ post that when Jesus told Peter to feed His sheep, He didn’t give Peter any food to feed His sheep with. Peter had to get the food from Jesus. Without it, he would not be able to feed the sheep. 

Another example is in 1 Corinthians 9:14. “In the same way, the Lord has commanded that those who preach the gospel should receive their living from the gospel.” If you are a follower of Christ, preaching the gospel should be a part of you wherever you go, whether it is through your actions or words. However if the source in which you proclaim the gospel is not from the gospel or Jesus himself then you have lost all purpose. If you are serving at church without a relationship with Jesus then that is why you are being burnt out. The more that is entrusted to you, the more you must be responsible and seeking after God. More things on your plate doesn’t mean less time with Jesus, it means more time with Jesus because without him you would not be able to carry the load. 

So if this is you, love serving but spiritually exhausted and burnt out, it is not necessarily a call for you to stop serving and take time off to ‘power-up’. Instead, in the time that you desire rest, rest in the presence of God because He WILL restore you, I promise! He will restore you so that you can continue to serve Him without the feeling of exhaustion but rather a spirit of Joy to keep you moving along!

Trust in the LORD. Lean not on your own understanding. In all your ways, acknowledge Him and Him alone. I guarantee you will be far from exhaustion!

Sleep. God meant it for good.

For those of you who pull all-nighters very often, sometimes, occasionally or even rarely, sleep. God didn’t create us to be human beings that can go days without rest. The reason your body is tired when you don’t sleep is because that’s not how your body should be functioning, it’s unnatural. We are made to rest every night.

Yes, sometimes we are sinful and procrastinate on the work God has given us and have to stay up all night finishing up some assignment/work because we chose to wait until the last minute and was not faithful to the time God has given us to do it earlier.

God has made us to rest.
“It is vain to rise up early and go late to rest, eating the bread of anxious toil; for he gives to his beloved sleep” -Psalm 127:2

You’re right. The Bible doesn’t really say anything specifically about physical sleep as a command. But God doesn’t just work when we are up and about. Even when we are sleeping God sustains us. “I lie down and sleep; I wake again, because the LORD sustains me” -Psalm 3:5. It is when we are sleeping, we dream, see visions and encounter the beauty of his presence as we rest. When we choose to go against that and stay awake until the sun rises the next day, we are choosing to go against His intended purpose.

So before you reach the point of realizing you can’t finish an assignment without staying up all night. Get to work early with the time He has already given you. We are created to be humans that need rest. God longs to encounter us even as we sleep. So the next time you are contemplating on pulling an all-nighter. Don’t.

Thinking About Courtship?

Courtship is a topic that is discussed heavily within the atmosphere of believers. (I say courtship because I, personally am strongly against relationships that have no vision of marriage. It is just playing games with His own daughters and sons). There are still so many people within the church that have so many questions about it. What type of woman or man to date/marry. We, the world including the church, taint true love. The only true love is illustrated by Jesus so your example should come from Christ alone.

Both men and women look for in the opposite gender: good/sufficient height, body type, personality, character, etc… or maybe some have managed to overcome worldly standards and look for qualities of a godly man/woman. Loves scripture, walks with the Lord daily, serves at church, is a worshiper, etc… sound like you? maybe, maybe not. But desiring such things is not any ‘better’ than having worldly standards (not that such qualities of a godly person is bad). 

Paul Washer says this:

how can you learn unconditional love, if you’re married to a woman/man who meets all your conditions?
how can you learn to practice grace to a woman/man who does everything right?

The list is endless. How do you expect to grow in courtship that meets all your needs? It’s not about your needs. 

You may have already heart this a million times but think about it. True love is not loving when everything is desirable in the other person. It is loving them for all their flaws and faults. Seeing them as God sees them. Jesus Christ died for you and me on the cross…and we were the dirtiest, filthiest, worst of sinners. But he found joy on the cross. That is true love. So it’s not about being holier and desiring holier characteristics within the other person rather than worldly standards. Nobody is perfect. “No one is good except God alone”. Think about such things before entering into courtship and making a commitment to take His daughter/son as your future spouse/husband.

Don’t get ahead of Jesus

Sometimes our passion for the LORD gets us so excited!
And that’s awesome! This isn’t a bad thing at all, but sometimes this passion that drives us makes us lose patience and we just want to get things done.

However, when God burns up in us a fire that cannot be quenched, it is not for us to rush ahead and get ahead of Him.
God has His timing for everything (Ecc. 3) and we can’t control His timing.

So what do we do? 
Don’t get ahead of Jesus and His plans to do things His way.
Get behind Jesus and follow His footsteps through the storm and through the fire, through the calm and through the desert. We may not know where He is going or what He is going to do next, but when we follow behind Him, we will never lose sight of Him.
If we are ahead of Him, we can’t see Him behind us.

This is focus. This is obedience. This is faith.
Follow Jesus, for He leads us in the paths of righteousness for His name’s sake.
(Psalm 23)
Don’t take my word for it, take His.

Deuteronomy 31:8
“The LORD himself will go before you and will be with you; he will never leave you nor forsake you. Do not be afraid; do not be discouraged”

Hebrews 10:24-25