Prayer Pointer
“Make prayer the time to give yourself this day as a gift to God.” —The Praying Church Sourcebook
Good Morning Worshipers! Are you ready to worship in Spirit and Truth this morning? Prepare yourselves and offer yourself as a gift to God and as an act of worship. Sometimes offering praise is a sacrifice but we are called to offer a sacrifice of praise. God inhabits our praise. Shift your focus from the chaos, noise and your circumstances to God as you count your many blessings and offer that sacrifice of praise that is a sweet aroma to Him. Empty yourself. Humble yourself. Bow before our King, Creator, Author of Life, and Prince of Peace. Abide in His love this morning. Allow Him to speak His love over you and rest in it. Come, Let us worship as we enter His gates with thanksgiving and His courts with praise. Amen!
Hallelujah! Praise be the Lord! Check out Our Daily Bread below. Join the chorus of praises being lifted worldwide and heaven-wide to our awesome God. He is always worthy of all praise, all glory, and all honor. Amen! Hallelujah! Then contemplate the Connection prayer thoughts from Harvest Prayer. Are you good soil? Are you plowing and sowing in prayer and actions? Might your soil need a little fertilizer of His Word? Are you fertilizing, watering, weeding, preparing soil and sowing lavishly? Good Fruit awaits us and our earnest efforts. Talk to God about you and your soil and how to tweak the PH levels of your faith. Ask how to prepare the soil in prayer and praise. Ask who needs some watering and fertilizing. Ask Him to raise up our fellowship to be one of lavish sowers and plowing pray-ers. Amen! I can taste the good fruit already budding. He does have great plans awaiting us and much good fruit awaiting our earnest efforts.
The rest of our devos flow and speak into the hard thoughts of the struggles of many of us from yesterday's blog. God is speaking. Listen. receive and process with some friends. Worship too for God is at work and always working to bring about His good plans for you and us. Amen! Hallelujah! The Upper Room asks, "WHY?" They remind us that we can always trust God even when we can't see Him or feel His loving presence. Some of you need to understand and embrace this and the rest of us need to ingest this as we prepare for hard times to come. God is Love. And is always redeeming and working to bring about His best for us and knows what has to occur for that to transpire. Sarah Young reminds us to expect adversity. Jesus told us to expect it too. That is why we need to prepare our hearts and minds to stay connected to God no matter what and to persevere in faith always. Charles Stanley reminds us to walk with Jesus. That's the only way to endure and persevere. And I end with a page from my Season 4 of the Chosen study about unanswered questions. God's ways are not ours and that's hard to accept sometimes. Jesus is the answer to everything...remember Sunday school when every time you could answer a question with Jesus and be right? It's true. Jesus! Jesus! Jesus! proclaim His name. Praise His name. Cry out His name in prayer. Trust in the name that is above all names. Jesus! Hallelujah! Amen!
ODB:
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Joy was apparent in their voices as the high school choir sang the Argentinian song “El Cielo Canta Alegría.” I was enjoying the performance but couldn’t understand the lyrics because I don’t know Spanish. But it wasn’t long until I recognized a familiar word as the choir began to jubilantly declare, “Aleluya!” Repeatedly, I heard “Aleluya,” a declaration of praise to God that sounds similar in most languages around the world. Eager to know the background of the song, I went online after the concert and discovered the title translates “Heaven Is Singing for Joy.”
In a celebratory passage in Revelation 19, we’re given a glimpse of the reality expressed in that choral song—all of heaven rejoicing! In the apostle John’s vision of the future in the last book of the New Testament, he saw an enormous gathering of people and angelic creatures in heaven declaring gratitude to God. John wrote that the chorus of voices celebrated God’s power that overcame evil and injustice, His reign over the whole earth, and eternal life with Him forever. Over and over again, all the inhabitants of heaven declare “Hallelujah!” (vv. 1, 3, 4, 6), or “Praise God!”
One day people “from every tribe and language and people and nation” (5:9) will declare God’s glory. And with joy all our voices in every different language will shout together, “Hallelujah!”
By Lisa M. Samra
REFLECT & PRAY
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What is a reason you can say “Hallelujah” today? Why is it vital to regularly praise God?
Hallelujah! I’m so grateful for the joy I know because I’m loved by You, my God.
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SCRIPTURE INSIGHT
“Hallelujah!” (Revelation 19:6), from the Hebrew halal (“to praise”) and yah, the first syllable of Yahweh, means “to praise God.” One reason for praise in Revelation 19 is God’s victory over “the great prostitute” (v. 2), which is identified elsewhere as “the great city that rules over the kings of the earth” (17:18). This woman or city is associated with “Babylon” (v. 5), which most interpreters believe symbolizes a corrupt empire(s) that rules in opposition to God (interpretations vary over the empire’s identity). But in chapter 19, she’s been defeated, and another woman becomes the focus—the “bride” of Christ—“God’s holy people” (vv. 7-8). She’s wearing “fine linen, bright and clean” which “stands for [her] righteous acts” (v. 8). Instead of the corrupt empire symbolized by Babylon, Jesus will usher in the new Jerusalem (21:2, 10), a city filled with the light of the “glory of God” (vv. 11, 23).
Monica La Rose |
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Harvest Blog:
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Jesus told power packed stories, the parables. Through these stories, He explained the Kingdom of God versus the kingdom of darkness. Jesus emphasized the effects of dwelling within proximity to each kingdom. To illustrate his point, He told them the parable of the sower.
Luke 8:5-15, 18 “A sower went out to sow his seed. And as he sowed, some fell along the path and was trampled on, and the wild birds devoured it. Other seed fell on rock, and when it came up, it withered because it had no moisture. Other seed fell among the thorns, and they grew up with it and choked it. But other seed fell on good soil and grew, and it produced a hundred times as much grain.” As he said this, he called out, “The one who has ears to hear had better listen!” … “You have been given the opportunity to know the secrets of the kingdom of God, but for others they are in parables, so that although they see they may not see, and although they hear they may not understand. … “Now the parable means this: The seed is the word of God. Those along the path are the ones who have heard; then the devil comes and takes away the word from their hearts, so that they may not believe and be saved. Those on the rock are the ones who receive the word with joy when they hear it, but they have no root. They believe for a while, but in a time of testing fall away. As for the seed that fell among thorns, these are the ones who hear, but as they go on their way they are choked by the worries and riches and pleasures of life, and their fruit does not mature. But as for the seed that landed on good soil, these are the ones who, after hearing the word, cling to it with an honest and good heart, and bear fruit with steadfast endurance.” … “So listen carefully, for whoever has will be given more, but whoever does not have, even what he thinks he has will be taken from him.”
Jesus wants to share the secrets of His Kingdom with us and there are ways we can prepare ourselves for what He shares. We want to be good soil: people who hear the word about the Kingdom of God, understand it, and bear fruit from it.
Lord, You amaze me with Your desire to share secrets of the Kingdom with me. I want to hear them. I repent for any time I’ve disregarded or treated a “Kingdom seed” with disdain. I repent for when I’ve lacked understanding and didn’t search out a matter. I repent for allowing trouble or persecution to destabilize me and my relationship with You. I repent for not adamantly pursuing You. I repent for any lack in my character.
I repent for allowing worldly cares and the seductiveness of wealth to distract, deter, and degrade the truth.
I desire to be good soil. I declare I will listen to Your words. I declare when I hear the Word, I will seek to understand it. I declare I will bear fruit from what gets sown into my life.
Lord, thank You for sowing words of the kingdom into my life. Thank You for sharing the secrets of the kingdom with me. Thank You for helping me be someone You can trust. I praise You that when You speak, I listen. I praise You that You desire to share intimate details with me. I praise You that You want me to bear fruit and influence others. You’re holy and worthy, and I adore You.
--Adapted from Praying What Jesus Says by Natasha Miller. This book is available at prayershop.org. Use the code CONPSP3 at checkout to receive an additional 10% discount.
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UR:
When it was evening, the disciples came to him and said, “This is a deserted place, and the hour is now late; send the crowds away so that they may go into the villages and buy food for themselves.” - Matthew 14:15 (NRSVUE)
When my daughter became blind, I prayed and believed that God could heal her. Thousands of prayers later, God had not restored her sight. The question haunted me: Why doesn’t God heal her?
In Matthew 14:15, after a long day of ministry, the crowd that had gathered was hungry. The disciples asked Jesus to solve the problem by getting rid of it. But Jesus had something else in mind. Instead of dismissing the crowd, Jesus redeemed the situation by feeding them all. Imagine if Jesus had acquiesced to the disciples’ request — we might not have one of the most memorable miracles in all of scripture.
Does that mean it’s wrong to ask God to remove difficult circumstances? No. Scripture is full of praying prophets, priests, and kings. Even Jesus asked God to “take this cup from me, yet not my will, but yours be done” (Lk. 22:42).
It’s hard to let go of our desires, but I learned that when I surrender my situation to God, miracles happen every day. Now, a decade later, my daughter is still blind, and she has found her calling in Christian ministry. Instead of worrying about what we don’t understand, we can praise God for what we do know: God loves us.
Today's Prayer
Dear God, help us to remember that we can always trust you, even when things are not going our way. Remind us of your faithfulness and presence. Amen.SY:
CS:
Chosen 4 study
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