Sunday Scripture

God heard the boy crying, and the angel of God called to Hagar from heaven and said to her, "What is the matter Hagar?  Do not be afraid; God has heard the boy crying as he lies there.

Genesis 21:17

Forgiveness

Every now and again, someone makes an apology for something that is so humbling it makes us realize we are the ones who should be apologizing.


Has that ever happened to you?


Sunday, someone stood up and apologized for not doing something enough.


Know what that something was?


Praying.


Yep, praying.


They sincerely felt like things were not going well because they weren't praying enough.  And you know what.


I cried.  (That isn't unusual if you know me.)


Then it hit me, I was just as guilty as them.


I hadn't prayed enough about it either.


I had prayed, but not enough.


I had tried to fix it myself, but it wasn't getting better.  That's when I realized that I couldn't fix it by myself.


I needed help, not help from just anyone, but help from the Lord.


So I prayed.  Really prayed, and I have prayed every morning.


See, by myself I can't do anything, but with Jesus, I can do everything.


Sometimes God can use people we don't expect to help us put what is really important in perspective.

New Bible study

We started a new Bible study a few weeks ago on Prayer.


We were all given some questions about what we thought about prayer and what we wanted to get out of our study.


It has just been a great study so far and we are still in the beginning stages of it, but one of the things that was brought up in class was this.


If God already knows what will happen, then why pray?


We discussed this a little last night.  


Can we change God's mind?  I doubt it, but there is some merit to the way Moses pleaded for the Israelites when they were making Idols and God wanted to kill them all and start over.  But Moses begged God not to do it, and in his "praying" he must have decided that he would give them another chance because he didn't destroy them and start over like he told Moses he would.


Did Moses change his mind?


I don't know.  Maybe.


Was God just trying to see if Moses would stand up for the people that he just delivered from captivity.


Maybe.


Does God take our feelings and wishes in consideration if we earnestly, and humbly take it to him in prayer?


I hope so.  I really do, but I also know that he is all knowing and it will only happen if he allows it to.


So do we stop asking God for help when we need it?


Never.


Because if there is something we can take away from the relationship that Moses had with God then it should be that if we will continue to seek him and ask him for guidance, and strength to do his will, then there is always hope that we can get to the same kind of relationship with him that Moses had.


I am sure Moses got as frustrated with those people as I get with people in my life too, but even in his frustration and disappointment he continued to pray for them.  


So should we.

Happy New Year!!!

I know, I'm a little late with that.


But I have just been so busy with Christmas and kids, and husbands that get time off.


It threw me behind.


Any resolutions this year?  


How about a New Year's prayer.

And I pray that you and all God's holy people will have the power to understand the greatness of Christ's love-how wide and how long and how high and how deep that love is.

Ephesians 3:18

Is this really part of the plan?

Last night in bible study, we are still tackling Genesis, which is just fascinating by the way.  Anyway, as life would have it we were all presenting our prayer requests and we received some bad news about one of our members.


Just one question, why does it seem like bad stuff just keeps on happening.  Doesn't the devil take a break for heaven's sake?


So after we pray, we get started on our studying part and also as life would have it, we were at the section where Jacob is getting blessed by his father, but his father thinks he is Esau.


Confusing isn't it.


But let's not put all of the blame on Jacob, while he is sneaky, his mother pretty much tells him what to do and he does it!


So Esau is pretty upset, because since Isaac was tricked into giving his blessing to Jacob there is no blessing for him.  Back in the day, the blessing meant everything.  


This is the part where we could start talking about how "the spoken word" has so much power, but I want to save that for another day.


So since Rebekah knows how angry Esau is, she comes up with yet another plan to get Jacob to safety.  While he is on his journey he has a dream.  In it he see's a stairway to heaven with Angels going up and down the stairway.  God tells him that he is the Lord, God of Abraham and Isaac, and he tells him how he is going to bless him and be with him always.


When Jacob wakes up he is afraid, as he should be, God did just talk to him.  


Jacob anoints a rock and prays, and his prayer is somewhat of a bargaining prayer that if God will be with him on his journey, and deliver him safely back home, then he will let him be his God.


Did you get the key points there, the if and then.


The whole point of me telling the long story was to get to the prayer by the way, but I just thought it was a really good story.


I have said before that I know I pray for the wrong things, and apparently thanks to Jacob, I am not alone.  But what I was thinking about was how hard it is to really pray for the right things.  


When someone is sick, we naturally want for them to be healed, so that is what we ask for, are we wrong in asking?  


We want our kids and families to be happy and content, is it wrong to ask for those things?


I don't really think it's wrong to ask, I think God wants us to come to him with everything, but I guess where it gets hard is where we have to just completely let him be in control.  And when we say, your will be done, we need to be accepting of what his will really is.  We like to try to guide God with what we think should happen, or what we think is best, but we have to face the fact that we don't really know what is best for us.  


He does.


And when I read about how Rebekah and Jacob didn't do what was right at the time, look at how that plan came together.


He does have a plan for us all, we just don't see the big picture, we only see bits and pieces.  So  when it seems like you are trying to do the right things and pray for all the right things, but we aren't getting anywhere, we have to remember, we aren't seeing the whole story.  Maybe we are at the part where Esau feels betrayed and angry.  Or Isaac is disappointed that he has been deceived.  But when it starts coming together, and it will, we will see the big picture.

Prayer

Our first sermon this year was about Prayer. Our Pastor talked about how being in prayer can sometimes change things or at the least, change our perception of things.

His example was regarding the Constitution. He is a history lover so that's probably how he came across that little example. So, with all of that out, on to the story.

It seems when all the leaders got together to write the constitution, they couldn't all seem to agree on exactly what they should go into the Constitution, and one person made the suggestion that they pray about it. As a group.

They didn't agree on that either so they didn't do it, as a group that is. But the one who asked them to pray, (sorry, I don't remember his name) he did pray. He took his problems to the Lord, and he did see an improvement, although it may have been a small improvement. He saw it, and he knew it was because he prayed.

The whole point was to let us know how important Prayer is in our lives. We should pray for our Nation, our Government, our friends and our enemies. And more important than that is how prayer strengthens us. It's how we communicate with God.

Today our hearts ache for the people in Haiti and what they are going through. I cannot imagine what they must be going through. And while we are so far away, one thing we can do is pray.

Pray for the people of Haiti to know that there is a God who loves them.

I know someone who's father is very ill, and I pray for him and his family.

We all need to be in Prayer, and it won't cost anything except a few minutes of your time. So if there is a situation that you just seems so overwhelming you don't know what you can do, just remember that anyone can pray.