How Confession of Sin Affects Prayer

March 20th, 2012

confession-of-sin

Maybe your prayer times are boring because you don’t feel like you’re connecting to God. This might actually be the case; maybe you’re not imagining that God isn’t hearing you. He might, in fact, not be hearing you.

Confession of sin is a prerequisite for prayer to be heard by God. “If I regard iniquity in my heart, the Lord will not hear me.” (Psalm 66:18) If you have unconfessed sin in your life, you might as well not pray if you don’t want to repent, since that time will be wasted. Don’t pretend to pray if you don’t care about holiness in your life. God is holy, and the only way to have communion with Him is to get rid of sin.

So how do you do that? What if you don’t know if you’ve sinned or not? If you ask God to please show you your sin, and then you’re quiet and open your heart, God will show your sin to you. At that point you can repent, and you will be able to have communion with God. To repent is to be sorry, and to ask God to help you stop doing it. Repent means to desire to turn the opposite direction. There is no reason for you to be disconnected from the heart of God. All of us can have sweet and delirious access to God, where He is able to lead us because we are sensitive to His Spirit.

The other thing about confession of sin is that God commands us to confess our sins to one another, that we may be healed. (James 5:16) Why on earth does God command us to humiliate ourselves to other sinful humans? So that we can love each other with all humility. If I confess my sin to you today, then you pray for me and hold me accountable. Then tomorrow when you confess your sin to me, I cannot hold you in contempt. Why? Because you know my sin. Nobody is on a pedestal. Nobody is glorified but God. When I gain victory over sin, you feel happy and rejoice with me, because YOU are responsible (partially) for praying for me, so you get rewarded spiritually.

Meanwhile, if another friend stumbles, both you and I have hearts that hurt for our friend, and we help that person, and eventually that person is victorious. We rejoice with those who rejoice and weep with those who weep, because we are truly woven together as a family in the body of Christ. There is depth to our interactions with each other.

Imagine how much unity we would have in the body of Christ if we stopped trying to bring glory to ourselves, but instead confessed sin and ONLY brought glory to God? We would lift each other up before God and love each other for real. I highly recommend women do this only with women, and men with men, unless it’s your spouse, or unless you’ve invited the whole family over to dinner, so you use your spiritual gifts with each other as families.

The body of Christ would be woven together, with each person using their spiritual gift, and no one lording it over anyone else because everyone struggles with sin. All of us are trapped in the flesh and need prayer. If we let no one in, that is a recipe for disaster, a recipe for becoming entrenched in habitual sin that is much harder to get rid of, a stronghold. Strongholds wouldn’t be allowed to take hold if we were all humble enough to obey the verse to confess sin to one another. Instead, we disobey the verse because we want to look good to others, glorifying ourselves.

Let’s bring glory to God. We are not great. God is.

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Posted in Prayer | 4 Comments »

Mahogany Wings

March 19th, 2012

mahogany-wingsOne of my family’s favorite dinners is mahogany wings. They are absolutely delicious, and I serve them with homemade potato chips and raw veggies.

Get about 3 pounds of chicken wings, already cut. If you have to cut them yourself with a pair of kitchen shears, you might as well not do it because of the pain in your fingers, the extra time, and the ridiculous amount of effort. So make sure that the chicken wings are already cut into “drumettes.”

I cut the skin off the chicken wings with the shears. I do this while listening to an audio to make the time pass faster. I don’t want my family to swallow all that nasty skin, after all.

Okay, now you’re ready to marinade the de-skinned drumettes. Mix together:

  • ½ cup of soy sauce
  • ½ cup of honey
  • ¼ cup of molasses
  • 1 teaspoon chili powder
  • 2 teaspoons chopped garlic

Pour it over the chicken wings and let it marinade overnight.

Line your broiler pan with aluminum foil, and heat your oven to 375 degrees. Place the chicken wings on the broiler pan and bake uncovered in the oven for 25 minutes, occasionally brushing with marinade. Flip them over for 10 more minutes. Yum.

For the homemade potato chips, heat oil deep enough to throw in some thinly sliced potatoes. I use a wok because I don’t have a deep fryer, and even if someone gave me a deep fryer, I would get rid of it because I don’t want to store it. I don’t like clutter, you know. When the potato slices are golden brown, take them out with a slotted spoon or tongs, whichever you feel like. Set on a plate with a paper towel to absorb excess oil, and press another paper towel on top, being careful not to burn your hand. (Don’t say I didn’t warn you.) Sprinkle with a generous helping of salt and pepper. Enjoy.

Oh, and if you’re wondering what else is in the picture, I made barbequed ribs, but I cheated by buying one of those that you just had to heat up. That’s because I realized I only had half the chicken wings that I needed to feed my family. My husband probably went to the store to buy the wings, and not knowing how much to buy, bought a ridiculously small amount. Yes, I’ll blame my sweet husband for the fact that we had barbequed ribs the day I snapped this picture. (If you click on the picture, it will enlarge enough for you to see the mahogany wings, which is the whole point of this article.)

And one more thing: you might want a stool to sit on while you are flipping the potatoes. Otherwise you’re standing there for ages, and you can’t pawn the task off to your children because they’re so short (at least mine are for a couple more years) that they’ll be hit in the eye with hot oil. So be forewarned of that as well. You should be amply rewarded by their squeals of joy at dinnertime, though, which will make all the standing around flipping potatoes and brushing mahogany wings worth it.

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Posted in Cooking and Baking | 2 Comments »

Hoarding Money

March 15th, 2012

hoarding-money“I don’t give a flip about the poor. I think they are lazy frauds that beg off people just to go buy booze. Why on earth should I help them?” I declared to my husband.

After doing a Beth Moore Bible study on the book of James, I was aghast at how many Scriptures command us to help the poor. Helping the poor is something commanded by Jesus, James, and tons of other Scriptures. I was floored and horrified because I have never heard a sermon about helping the poor, and I don’t care one whit about them. What is wrong with my hardened heart?

(Here are some verses about helping the poor: Exodus 22:21-27, Leviticus 19:9-10, Leviticus 25:35-38, Deuteronomy 14:28-29, Deuteronomy 15:7-11, Deuteronomy 24:17-22, 1 Samuel 2:7, Nehemiah 5:6-13, Psalm 12:5, Psalm 112:5, Proverbs 14:21, Proverbs 14:31, Proverbs 17:5, Proverbs 19:17, Proverbs 22:16, Proverbs 28:8, Proverbs 28:27, Isaiah 3:14, Isaiah 58:5-7, Isaiah 61:1-2, Ezekiel 18:5-9, Amos 5:11, Matthew 19:21, Luke 6:34-35, 38, Luke 14:12-14, Galatians 2:10, James 2:1-7, Revelation 3:17.)

As I was reading the book of James, I was convicted that we live “in luxury and in self-indulgence” in this country, and meanwhile other believers are working hard and don’t have enough to feed their families. In the body of Christ, we ought to fill each other’s needs instead of overpampering ourselves. My husband has the gift of giving. If he sees a need, he automatically fills the need of the other person. I am not talking about professional beggars that are liars. What I’m talking about is interconnecting with other believers in the body of Christ, whether at a local church, or with other homeschoolers, or with friends. These people aren’t lazy and shouldn’t be lumped in with frauds.

I do NOT believe the poor should get help from the government (aside from not having to pay taxes), because then they feel a sense of entitlement and demand it, and the majority stop working. That’s sin. If someone doesn’t work, neither shall he eat. (II Thessalonians 3:10) If someone doesn’t provide for his family, he is worse than an unbeliever. (I Timothy 5:8) But if someone is working hard and still can’t feed his children, and you know about it and do nothing, you are guilty of sin. Read James 2:15-17: “If a brother or sister is poorly clothed and lacking in daily food, and one of you says to them, ‘Go in peace, be warmed and filled,’ without giving them the things needed for the body, what good is that? So also faith by itself, if it does not have works, is dead.” God says your faith is dead if you see someone in need (for real), and you don’t help them.

We enjoy hoarding and piling up all of our money at the bank. There is nothing wrong with being rich, since Abraham was rich, and so was Job, and they were both godly people. But both Abraham and Job gave to other people and didn’t just hoard it to amass riches.

This whole idea of hoarding money reminds me of the man in Scripture who had full granaries and worked super hard to become rich, only to have his soul required of him that very night. “But God said to him, ‘You fool! This very night your life will be demanded from you. Then who will get what you have prepared for yourself?'” (Luke 12:20)

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Posted in Church, Creative Finances | 6 Comments »

Exposing the Harm of Ultra Frugality

March 14th, 2012

ultra-frugalityI don’t understand what it is about the poverty mentality among Christians. We use fewer squares of toilet paper and squeeze toothpaste until our fingers hurt. We borrow things from people to avoid having to buy them, and we buy just about everything used.

Don’t get me wrong. I lived this way my whole life until two years ago. Then I stepped back and saw what I was doing. I also saw unethical behavior in homeschool circles. I was a part of a group of hundreds of homeschool moms online, and they were copying copyrighted material to avoid buying the products of sweet homeschool businesses who they were harming. I left the group immediately, after a fellow homeschool mom blew the whistle on them and got thrown out of the group.

What is wrong with us? Don’t we think that God can provide for our needs? Do we think that stinginess is godly? Because frugality is NEVER mentioned in Scripture. The Proverbs 31 woman dresses her family in scarlet and gorgeous clothes. She is not scrimping and ripping people off. No, she’s industrious, and God provides for her abundantly.

Even through all the years of having no money, God provided lavishly for me. Sometimes He provided the money for me to buy new curriculum. God is God. He owns the universe. Every single penny you have belongs to God. God is able to do abundantly beyond all that you could ask or think. (Ephesians 3:20) Let’s not limit God.

Yes, we need to not spend more than we earn, and we should save money so that we can pay for car repairs and other things. I’m not talking about that. I’m astounded at the amount of Christians who have an enormous amount of money at the bank, but physically suffer because they have their thermostat set to extremely cold temperatures in the winter. They are frugal because they pride themselves in being frugal, as if God is glad that they are causing their families to suffer when they have the money to make their families warm.

It reminds me of Ebenezer Scrooge from A Christmas Carol, who didn’t realize until it was almost too late, what really mattered in life. You don’t know when your life will be required of you. Why die with a huge pile of money beside you?

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Posted in Creative Finances | 12 Comments »

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