Posts Tagged ‘Christian Living’

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What is Prayer?

Friday, January 8th, 2016

what-is-prayer

What is prayer? We all know that prayer is talking to God, but do we listen? Do we interact? Do we understand His heart? Are we actually connecting, or are we not?

Secular sources define prayer as:

  • a solemn request addressed to God or some other object of worship.
  • an earnest hope or wish.

This description is not what prayer is. A true Christian did not write this definition!

What, then, is prayer?

Prayer is yielding to God–connecting to Him. It’s communicating with your Creator in a relationship. Prayer is dynamic and powerful. It is the birthplace of your walk with God, and it is one of the ways you draw closer to Him.

What is Prayer? (Video #1)

Beginning Prayer

For many people, the first time you cry out to God might be in an emergency. You might not know what to say. Or you are in sorrow and ask God if He’s there. These prayers, if you are truly trying to connect to God for the first time, are real prayers and God is pleased that you are attempting to connect to Him.

Until you are ready to submit your life to Christ, you will be floundering around like a fish out of water when praying. This is because until you are truly born again, you are not a child of God (John 3:3). You are an outsider trying to talk to a stranger.

Before you are a Christian, your unrepented sin blocks you from God, and that sin has not been removed. The wrath of God abides on you (Ephesians 2:3). Sin is any action that is wrong or selfish. We have to recognize that we are sinners before we are able to cry out to God to save us from our sin. If our first cry to God is because of the anguish that other people’s sins have caused us, we are now able to see why sin is so despicable. Sin causes separation, damage, and destruction.

Salvation comes to you when you cry out to God and acknowledge that Jesus died on the cross to take the penalty for your sins, so that you can be forgiven and set free from the power of sin. As a result, He becomes Lord of your life because you recognize that He as your Creator has the right to rule you. (Romans 10:9)

You cannot truly commune with the Lord if you are not saved. Many people who think they are Christians are not actually connected to God (2 Corinthians 13:5). They don’t want to be ruled by God. They want to rule their own lives. True Christians have a supernatural love for other people and a softness in their eyes because God abides in them.

When you are saved, God’s Holy Spirit then takes residence inside your body, and you are able to receive comfort from Him (2 Corinthians 1:3-4). If you are having trouble accessing God’s supernatural comfort, find a true Christian to pray over you, that you might experience His presence in your time of anguish.

Do you have a real prayer life?

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Fasting for an Enemy

Friday, September 25th, 2015

fasting-for-an-enemy

Are you willing to suffer for an enemy? One time God required me to fast for a person contorted her face with hatred every time I saw her. She was about to go on a missions trip, and a friend of mine commanded me to fast because this woman could not go on a missions trip with a demon on her. She said this kind does not come off but through prayer and fasting (Matthew 17:21). So I angrily agreed to fast, knowing that God was calling me to fast. I always obey God, even if I have to force myself.

I braced myself for a horrible day where I had to devote the entire day to praying for this woman. I was surprised to find out that it wasn’t as hard as I thought it would be. God showed me to pray through praise music. I prayed the whole day, and the woman was released from the demon that had been on her for four years.

Next time I saw her, she had a gentle, Spirit-filled expression on her face, and she said she loved me. It was so opposite to the way she had been treating me before that I knew the demon was off her.

When a believer is acting in a way that they distort the truth to stab you, where they attack you verbally at every turn and attribute wrong motives to everything you do, you know you are dealing with a demon. This is especially true if the facial expression is hateful or contorted with rage. This is not normal for a child of God. A demon is on that person. I suppose they could also be given over to their flesh, so I don’t want to rule that out, but where contention exists, it is almost always a work of the enemy. This is especially true when you are in Christian leadership, which both of us were.

Sadly, after the demon was off her, a few months later, she welcomed the demon back. The demon was so familiar with the lies that were used against me that she took them up again as if she had never reconciled with me. Maybe I should have told her that two of us had fasted for 24 hours to have her released from a demon. Because she had no idea, she invited the demon back. I knew she wouldn’t believe me if I told her a demon was on her, and I didn’t want her to attack me again, especially since the demon was off her. I now regret that I wasn’t more honest with her about her sin because it cost her being under the bondage of the demon again.

You can actually be walking by the Spirit and have a demon attached to your physical body, by the way. This happened to me when two friends prayed over me to release me from a personal issue. I was in bondage, and it was demonic, and I did not KNOW. It wasn’t until I humbled myself with two other believers to have them lay hands and pray over me that this demonic presence peeled off my face, and the shackles were gone and I was set free. See, I had absolutely no way to know that I was in bondage, and it began two years previously when I stepped up to Christian leadership. I had been in bondage for two years without knowing. I praise and magnify His name that I had the guts to humble myself to say something personal to two ladies who stormed the gates of heaven to set me free.

During those two years of bondage in one area of my life, I had mightily walked by the Spirit and accomplished wonderful things for the kingdom of God. So just because a demon is on you doesn’t mean you will always be evil. The most spiritual people on earth will have demons lurking, waiting to see where they can make an inroad to sin to slip them up so that others will also fall into sin. Christian leaders are attacked more than most Christians. But through humility and dependence on other believers in the body of Christ, you can overcome the enemy each time. If other believers are aware of your thoughts, they can correct the lies of the enemy immediately so that the enemy does not get a foothold. This is why I believe it’s so important for believers to be transparent with each other and love each other and believe the best in each other.

Even with the apostle Paul, he was given a thorn in the flesh that was “a messenger from Satan.” (II Corinthians 12:7) A messenger from God is an angel, and a messenger from Satan is a demon. So a demon was allowed to torment Paul to keep him from exalting himself. When he was given revelation from God, he could have easily become prideful. But a demon comes alongside during your times of greatest spiritual breakthrough. Because you are fully open to God, Satan uses that openness to insert his own thoughts, too. Then you go close to the brink of insanity, and you calm yourself before God. You humble yourself and are quiet.

This has happened to me more than once, during times of huge spiritual breakthrough, where I nearly went insane because of a demon. But I humbled myself to God and was calm. It causes you to not talk about how to actually have a breakthrough because you’re embarrassed that you were also influenced by a demon at the same time. This also happened to Spurgeon, one of the greatest preachers of all time. God comforted me through some of Spurgeon’s sermons that what had happened to me was normal for a true servant of God. Satan will impede our true spiritual breakthroughs. Just humble yourself and be calm. Then ask God to give you discernment in retrospect. Test the spirits to see if they are from the Lord (I John 4:1). Anything that is said in your mind, you need to test it against Scripture and against what you know about God. For example, if it’s agitation, it’s from the enemy.

If you need more help in differentiating God’s voice from the enemy’s voice or your own voice, print out the free chart and listen to the audio here.

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Freedom FROM Sin, Not Freedom TO Sin

Wednesday, September 23rd, 2015

freedom-from-sin

Christ never said that we can do whatever we want. Never. He always asked us to live a life of self-denial, a life that is selfless and where every action is born out of love for God and others. We are commanded to be yoked to Christ and only move when He moves. (Matthew 11:29) We are commanded to be slaves of Christ. (I Corinthians 7:22)

Do we have the freedom to do whatever we want and follow the lusts of our flesh to full measure? Do we have the freedom to be hedonistic in our self-indulgent desires? Is God glorified when we revel in our freedom from being yoked to Christ? Do we even WANT to be yoked to Christ?

People who do not want to be yoked to Christ quote Galatians 5:1, “It was for freedom that Christ set us free; therefore keep standing firm and do not be subject again to a yoke of slavery.” (Galatians 5:1 NASB) Paul was talking about a yoke of slavery to rule-keeping of the Jewish ceremonial law. This has nothing to do with, “I can do whatever I want and indulge my flesh to the maximum.” This causes us to place our fleshly desires above our desire to please God. When this happens, we sin against the people around us and don’t even notice. We hurt the people we love most.

“I have the right to do anything,” you say–but not everything is beneficial. “I have the right to do anything”–but not everything is constructive. I Corinthians 10:23 NIV

Paul is contradicting the people who say, “All things are lawful.” He is saying, “No.” Paul is saying that people who say all things are lawful are WRONG. Not every action is beneficial or loving. If every action is not loving, it is sin. ANY action that is self-serving is sin. Jesus never did any actions that were self-serving. He only did what He saw the Father doing.

God the Father is holy, and He has commanded us to be holy. (I Peter 1:16) Is our every action holy? Is our every thought holy? Are we using the word “freedom” to hide sin? Are we indulging in the flesh at the expense of others?

Let’s avoid the demonic doctrine that if something is not stated word-for-word in Scripture, that it is allowable and therefore not sin. Only demons believe this doctrine, and it has now infiltrated the church. The entire Scriptures cry out against every form of sin, selfishness, and depravity. Our seared consciences don’t notice that we are walking in wickedness when we say we are walking in the freedom to do whatever we want, as long as it’s not word-for-word forbidden. This is the oldest trick of the enemy to cause Christians to commit horrendous sins against others. And we never even bother to ask God if He is glorified by our every action.

“But realize this, that in the last days difficult times will come. For men will be lovers of self, lovers of money, boastful, arrogant, revilers, disobedient to parents, ungrateful, unholy, unloving, irreconcilable, malicious gossips, without self-control, brutal, haters of good, treacherous, reckless, conceited, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God, holding to a form of godliness, although they have denied its power; Avoid such men as these.” II Timothy 3:1-5 NASB

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Fasting with Others

Friday, September 18th, 2015

fasting-with-others

Fasting with others is different than fasting by yourself. When you fast by yourself, it is harder to remain focused because you are alone. If you are tempted to eat, you don’t have anyone to hold you accountable. Even if you’re alone, though, once you’ve made the decision, through an act of the will, you can always follow through. It hasn’t been a problem for me to sin by breaking my promise to God to set aside the day to fast. It was sin for Jesus to eat a piece of bread before the end of His fast, and He replied to Satan’s temptation that “Man shall not live on bread alone, but on every word that proceeds out of the mouth of God.” (Matthew 4:4 NASB)

Actually, when you are desiring food, it shows just how little you desire God. Your soul then yearns more deeply for God, to trump the pain of hunger. This is how you draw nearer to God, and why He draws nearer to you.

When I’m fasting alone, I often tell my mother or a close friend so that they can pray with me over the phone in the afternoon and help me to get through the final slump of the afternoon, when it’s the hardest to finish the fast. My energy takes a nosedive after the noon hour. When they pray with me, it suffuses me with strength and enables me to finish the fast.

If someone else fasts with me, I feel a huge difference. When I’m praying and someone else is praying at the same time, there is a power that’s similar to electricity. One time I was praying for the salvation of the husband of one of my friends, and I felt that deep spiritual electricity for three hours. I felt released at 10pm to go to bed. The next day when I got together for a prayer meeting at noon, another one of the ladies who was fasting felt prompted by God to pray intensely from 10pm to midnight. I was so shocked that at the very moment my electricity stopped, it was passed to another woman who was fasting for the same thing. When we all gathered at noon, the five women who had fasted got on the floor and wept before the Lord for this man to come back to Christ.

The Holy Spirit would have never prayed so intensely through me for three hours if He never intended that man to be saved. Because it was the Spirit praying, I knew that my will was God’s will, and that I would be getting the request. (I John 5:14) It’s just a matter of time.

The Spirit can intercede through you. This electricity is not normal. Most of the time I feel nothing. I just fast and pray and choose to put God first. Don’t be disappointed if nothing spectacular happens. When I fasted with my husband about his insomnia, I had no electricity or anything. It was just a lot of hard work of praying. But God answered miraculously by having someone from the church pay for the sleep study. So God honors your fast, even if it’s just drudgery and you don’t seem to be connecting to God. Don’t be discouraged. Continue to press in to God, and He will reveal Himself to you more and more.

This is especially true at first, when we start to pursue God wholehearteldly. There is so much sin that we don’t know about in our lives, that we can’t really connect to God until we ask God to remove it little by little. So it might take several fasts to get to the point where you can actually feel the Holy Spirit interceding so strongly inside of you. I can’t remember how many times I had to fast before I actually experienced this. Also, don’t pursue an experience; pursue God Himself. Who cares about experiences? I want God!

You can also physically get together with another believer who is fasting for the same thing, and it can be a wonderful time of communing before the Lord. What God reveals to one person is confirmed by the other person because you can both hear God because you are emptied of self with no unconfessed sin, pressing into God for an issue that God has placed on your heart.

Here is the audio that explains how fasting with others can be better than fasting alone (to download, right click, choose Desktop, and save)

Have you missed one of our posts about fasting? Follow our “Hunger for God” Fasting Series. (One will be posted each Friday):

To keep up with my prayer posts, follow my Prayer Page, where you will find exclusive prayer videos to help you hunger for God and establish a prayer life that is truly alive!

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