Effective prayer is not only about believing God is listening to every prayer, but believing that He will answer our prayers in the way in knows is best for us. God knows better than any of us, what is best for us, because He knows us better than we even know ourselves.
And we are confident that he hears us whenever we ask for anything that pleases him. And since we know he hears us when we make our requests, we also know that he will give us what we ask for.
Therefore pray in the knowledge that God is listening. Pray in the knowledge that He knows what is best for us, and therefore whatever He gives us in response to our prayers, will enable us to find the greatest joy in all we do.
Now this is the confidence that we have in Him, that if we ask anything according to His will, He hears us.
Yesterday in Effective Prayer #1 I touched on the fact that God hears our every prayer. Today, I want to remind you that in order to pray effectively, we must fully believe and understand that God has the power to do what we are not capable of doing for ourselves. i.e. He alone can answer our prayers.
Mark 11:24 (NKJV)
Therefore I say to you, whatever things you ask when you pray, believe that you receive them, and you will have them.
Sometimes it can be hard to tell the difference between those who are friends and those who are true friends.
A true friend reaches for your hand and touches your heart ~ Heather Pryor
There are a lot of people in our lives who I guess we’d call friends if we were describing our relationship with them, to someone else, but think about this…how many of those people would actually reach out and help you in your time of need?
It’s when life it tough and you’re in need of someone to support and comfort you, that you find out who your true friends are. As the above quote says, true friends are the ones who reach out to you and touch your heart.
God commanded us to love one another, therefore our true friendships are from God, so give thanks to Him for every true friend you have.
Jesus told her, “I am the resurrection and the life.[a] Anyone who believes in me will live, even after dying.
Maybe I’ve read it somewhere, or someone has told me, but I seem to think I’ve heard that the resurrection of Jesus has been investigated and examined more times that many other events in history.
To me that tells me that people are either more desperate to prove Christ’s resurrection actually happened, or conversely, there are more skeptics who are willing to try to prove it all a huge hoax.
Either way, it gives the events of that first Easter more air-time and surely as Christians we should be happy for the opportunity to discuss and convince others who do not believe in Christ, that He did die at Calvary just so we could be forgiven.
Jesus told him, “I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one can come to the Father except through me. If you had really known me, you would know who my Father is. From now on, you do know him and have seen him!”
God will set you free if you come before Him having accepted Jesus as His Son.
In the last few days I’ve spoken about how we all need family, how good it is to be part of God‘s family, and the gift of making a child part of your family. So what are my thoughts for today?
Well following a conversation with colleagues recently, I’ve been thinking about families where there are divisions, or long-standing feuds…I should hasten to add, I’m not referring to my own family!
Through conversation it became apparent that we all know of families where one sibling does not get on with another sibling, either to a level they tolerate one another and some where they can be very unkind towards one another without any prompting. Does this sound familiar to any of you?
I must admit that I always find it very sad when I hear of families where there are these divisions, sometimes, long-standing division that no-one can really remembers why there were disagreements in the first place. We only ever have one family, and therefore we should cherish one another, not argue and disagree about things past or present.
We often hear the phrase
We can choose our friends but we can’t choose our family
So what!
My command is this: Love each other as I have loved you. (John 15:12 NIV)
God expects us, and needs us, to love everyone in our life, regardless of whether they are a friend, a family member or a stranger. Go on, don’t just tolerate your family, love them, just as God loves them.
For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. For God did notsend his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him.
Love knows no greater gift than a babe in a stable – a babe sent so He could die for our sins – so we can share His eternal life.
I get fed up at times when people I try to be pleasant and nice to, just ignore and/or hurt me. This world can be tough at times, and the people in this world can be even tougher and sometimes even hateful.
If the world hates you, keep in mind that it hated me first.
If you belonged to the world, it would love you as its own. As it is, you do not belong to the world, but I have chosen you out of the world. That is why the world hates you.
In the above verses from John, Jesus reminds us that it’s because we are different from the rest of the world, because we follow Him, that the world does not accept. However this should not worry or upset us, because God has called us, and chosen us to be His disciples, to be His witnesses in this world full of hatred.
So don’t yearn to be accepted by the world, because ultimately to be God’s witnesses we must be different, we must be Christlike in all we do.
As I think I mentioned in yesterday’s blog post What Are You…? I mentioned that this last weekend was our Harvest weekend at BellshillSalvation Army. For the weekend we had visitors from DHQ, Carole and Elwyn Harries, leading our meetings.
I must admit that having been at many harvest weekends over the years, I wasn’t particularly looking forward to this one, as what was I going to hear this harvest that I haven’t heard plenty of times before? I couldn’t have got it more wrong!
I thoroughly enjoyed our three harvest meetings. The corps sections (senior band, songsters, young peoples’ band and singing company) were all fabulous, but best of all were our leaders for the weekend - their enthusiasm and love for God was clear for all to see throughout the weekend.
Added to all this I found the message from our leaders very challenging and has certainly got be thinking about the person I am, and the Christ-like person I want to be.
But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. Against such things there is no law.
Words I’m sure most of us have heard many times before, however I was made to think again about them on Sunday – I’d never really noticed before that it says “the fruit of the spirit” rather than “the fruits of the spirit”.
Yes, there is only one fruit of the spirit and that is love…Jesus commands us to
Love each other as I have loved you. (John 15:12 NIV)
He doesn’t command us to be joyful, live in peace, have patience, be kind etc. He simply commands us to love one another just as He loves us.
So why is Galatians are these other things mentioned, well in order to love, we must possess the other qualities mentioned. i.e. joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control.
I am far from being Christ-like as I lack many of the qualities required, but recognising my failings is a step in the right direction. Now I must, with God’s help and guidance, become the kind of person God needs and wants me to be…I must learn to love everyone, even those I might presently feel are unloveable.
I pray God will help each of us to learn to love one another as Christ would.
“A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another. 35 By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.”
There are a lot of people in our lives who I guess we’d call friends if we were describing our relationship with them, to someone else, but think about this…
Maybe I’ve read it somewhere, or someone has told me, but I seem to think I’ve heard that the resurrection of 
I must admit that having been at many 
