Good Morning, Meetpastordan Readers…Have you ever experienced those times when you want to take it to the Lord in prayer, but for some reason your prayers seem to be bouncing off the ceiling right back to the floor? I’ve spent the last few days in that rut! After tossing and turning for most of last night, about 3:30 am I decided to move to the great room, turn on the fireplace and do some reading. I began by asking the Holy Spirit to guide my endeavor. I was looking for answers to why I was feeling frazzled and out-of-sorts. Pam and I had read and discussed together Ephesians 1,2, and 3 this past weekend, so I already had a bookmark at chapter 4. When I looked down, Apostle Paul had written these words, seemingly just for me.
“I beg you to live a life worthy of your calling, for you have been called by God. Be humble and gentle. Be patient with each other, making allowance for each other’s faults because of your love. Always keep yourselves united in the Holy Spirit, and bind yourselves together with peace. We are all one body; we have the same Spirit, and we have all been called to the same glorious future. There is only one Lord, one faith, and one baptism and there is only one God and Father, who is over us all, in us all, and living through us all.” (Ephesians 4: 1-6)
I had two encounters with an individual this past week that caused me to backslide into some of my old behaviors. Rather than responding to the situation, which I try to do today, my buttons were pushed and I immediately reacted with a pretty ugly demeanor. The next day I made a feeble attempt at an apology, but that truce was almost immediately broken as another confrontation reared its ugly head. The truth is, there was a time in my life when I derived some sort of insidious pleasure out of confrontation, but today…no way! Today I pay a huge penalty when that door is opened for satan and his minions to have a field-day with my conscience.
As I read the Scripture above, these words jumped out at me: live a life worthy of your calling, humble, gentle, patient, making allowance for each other’s faults. The problem with reacting as I did, none of these attributes were part of my presentation. Instead, I portrayed arrogance, aggression, and a mean-spirited demeanor. In other words, I became a real jerk. No doubt that defined my previous character, but it certainly is not who I am today.
As a follower of Jesus Christ, I am called to stand on the truth of God’s Word. But I’ve come to realize how easy it is for truth to become entangled with feelings and emotions. As a matter of fact, satan becomes my biggest cheer-leader when that happens. Once I have opened the door for him and his minions to run roughshod with my feelings and emotions, he then becomes my accuser. “Look at you! You call yourself a Christian? You’re an embarrassment to the name Christian. You’ll never be good enough to measure up to His standard; you might as well give up and have some fun!”
But here is the undisputable truth of God’s Word. I am in Christ. I am unconditionally loved by God. In fact, Romans 8:38 tells me, “Nothing can separate me from God’s love. Death can’t and life can’t. The angels can’t, and the demons can’t. My fears for today, my worries about tomorrow, and even the powers of Hell can’t keep God’s love away!” My sins are forgiven. I have inherited eternal life. (This seals my eternal life.) I have the indwelling Holy Spirit, given to me as a gift from God so I can rise to His calling right here and now, even when facing a formidable enemy who is hell-bent on shipwrecking my best effort to become more Christ-like.
And there’s more! I’m grafted into God’s family; I am His child. I am no longer a sinner in His eyes, but a “Saint” (a follower of Jesus Christ) who sometimes falls short of His glorious standard. I’m now worthy and acceptable in His eyes, not because of anything I did or didn’t do, but because of what Christ did for me on the cross. I’m heir to every Spiritual blessing in the heavenly realms (including Spiritual healing and revelation of The Truth), and I’m heir to every promise in the Bible.
All of that is mine because I am in Christ! That is the truth, and it never changes, even though our feelings and emotions do change. Satan knows he is no match for God’s truth, but if he can keep us focused on feelings and emotions, it’s easier for him to pummel us with his lies, deceptions, distortions and accusations. His whole purpose is to keep us in a state of fear, doubt, guilt, shame, remorse, anger or depression. When we let any of the afore mentioned emotions define us, His sordid lies and schemes seem more real to us than God’s truth.
A mixture of those emotions accurately describes my feelings as the volume and the verbiage of my confrontation continued to ramp-up. No doubt I was angry, but it didn’t take long for guilt and shame to enter the fray. But once this deplorable display finally wound down, I was too ashamed to even think of myself as a Christian. I remember the thought of turning to prayer passed through my mind, but I felt totally unworthy of His attention At that moment I could relate to Apostle Paul’s cry in Romans 7, “Oh what a wretched man I am!”
But let us return once again to the truth of God’s Word! Regardless of how we feel about ourselves, even on our worst day when we think God is ready to boot us out of the Kingdom, He loves us with an unending, unfailing love that can never be snuffed out. As it said in Romans 8:38 above, nothing, absolutely nothing, can separate us from His love. Remember, we are grafted into His family; we are His children. Even when we can’t believe we’ll see a glimpse of Paradise, remember that in His eyes we are now a Saints…not sinners. Instead of praying, “God forgive me”, that would be called a dead work because He has already done that! All He wants from us now is to call on the Holy Spirit to empower us with His wisdom, courage, strength, patience, whatever we need to keep marching down that path of becoming more Christ-like.
Our prayers, regardless of how feeble, move God. Every prayer means we are reaching out to our Creator; we are contributing to, and growing in the relationship for which God created us. Prayer moves Him into action. In the first paragraph I used the term, “prayers hitting the ceiling and falling to the floor”. It feels that way to us because there is flaw in our thinking or our behavior that makes us feel separated from Him. But He is true to His word, and He said, “I will never leave you nor forsake you.” (Hebrews 13:5) Never means NEVER!
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May God Bless Ya…
Dan Presgrave (a.k.a. Pastor Dan)
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