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by Katie Erickson

As our political climate in America continues to be rather volatile, this is a good time for us as individuals to stop and ponder this question: who or what is your hope, trust, and faith in?

We all have someone or something in our life that our hope, trust, and faith is in. To start, we should define those words so we’re all on the same page with this. The word ‘hope’ has lots of definitions, including wanting something to happen, a feeling of expectation or desire, or a feeling of trust. Trust is defined as a firm belief in the reliability, truth, ability, or strength of someone or something. Faith is a complete trust or confidence in someone or something, which may or may not be religious in nature. We all have things that we hope for in life; we all have people or systems or things that we put our faith and trust in.

So what do you hope for? Who or what is your trust and faith in? We all need to answer this question for ourselves, and that answer is a glimpse into our worldview, how we see and interpret life.

For me as a follower of Jesus Christ, my goal is for my hope, trust, and faith to be fully on God. I am not perfect at this, and at times I find myself hoping for things that may not be of God, and trusting in other people or circumstances rather than God. When I fail at this, I find encouragement in God’s Word.

Psalm 42:5 says, “Why, my soul, are you downcast? Why so disturbed within me? Put your hope in God, for I will yet praise him, my Savior and my God.” This is a perfect example of what happens when our hope is on anything other than God: our soul becomes downcast and disturbed. Perhaps we’re unsettled about life, or even get depressed. But when our hope is in God, we praise Him for everything, for He is the one that saves us.

1 Peter 1:13 says, “Therefore, with minds that are alert and fully sober, set your hope on the grace to be brought to you when Jesus Christ is revealed at his coming.” We know that Jesus gives us grace, or undeserved favor. We can fully put our hope in that, that when we mess up we know God will still love and forgive us when our hope is in Him.

Why should we put our faith and trust in God? God shares the reason way back in Numbers 23:19: “God is not human, that he should lie, not a human being, that he should change his mind. Does he speak and then not act? Does he promise and not fulfill?” God is fully trustworthy because He will always accomplish what He says and always fulfills His promises. God is always faithful and God never changes.

All of the things in this world will change or fail us in some way. Look back even to what has changed in this world in your lifetime, or go back farther in history. Everything changes and fails at some point in some way, except God. He is the only one worthy of our hope, trust, and faith. How are you doing at fully trusting God and only hoping for what He has in store for you?

This forum is meant to foster discussion and allow for differing viewpoints to be explored with equal and respectful consideration.  All comments are moderated and any foul language or threatening/abusive comments will not be approved.  Users who engage in threatening or abusive comments which are physically harmful in nature will be reported to the authorities.

by Ami Samuels

Have you ever had an unsettled spirit, like you just don’t have peace but you’re not sure why? One time as I prayed and asked God why I felt so unsettled I felt Him respond with, “What don’t you trust me with? What are you trying to take control of?”

That was the exact source of my unsettled, uncertain spirit. I wasn’t trusting God with my circumstance. I was searching the internet, thinking, and trying to figure it out on my own. I decided to place my situation in God’s hands and trust, abide, and rest in Him, knowing that He has it under control.

Is there something you are wrestling with? Is there a situation that you, like me, are struggling with, trying to figure it out on your own?

For years my prayer journals have been filled with this request: “God, please show me where I need to be working and when I should be waiting for you.”

You see, in my faith walk, and maybe you have found this in your journey as well, I have had people say, “You just need to get busy and get to work on what God has called you to do.” And then someone else that I am sharing with would say, “You need to wait patiently on the Lord.”

I was so confused that as I look back over my prayer journals I have often seen this plea: “God, show me where I need to be working or when I should be waiting for you.” I will have to say that more often than not, the answer was wait, and I have done that to the best of my ability.

If you are uncertain or feeling unsettled about something, go to the Lord in prayer, ask him if you need to be working or waiting on Him. Join me as we rest in Psalm 46:10, “Be still and know that I am God,” and trust in His timing.

This forum is meant to foster discussion and allow for differing viewpoints to be explored with equal and respectful consideration.  All comments are moderated and any foul language or threatening/abusive comments will not be approved.  Users who engage in threatening or abusive comments which are physically harmful in nature will be reported to the authorities.

by Nathan Buck

Think of a movie where the bad guy gets what he deserves at the end. You can probably recall 3 or 4 of them right off the top of your head. It is a gratifying and relief filled moment when the villain goes down (or gets captured and tried).

Read the last segment in Judges 9. We finally see what happens to the blood thirsty tyrant Abimelech.

Feeling like he has all the power, Abimelech marches against the city of Thebez. And we see what happens when overconfidence and maniacal war mongering come together. Not a soldier, not a warrior, not even a leader as far as we know, but a common person (a woman from the city) drops a rock and crushes Abimelech's head. In his continued concern for his power and image, he asks his armor bearer to quickly kill him so that no one could say a woman killed Abimelech.

We see the end result of this kind of image, in the reaction of his soldiers - they all stop fighting and just go home. There is no lasting devotion, no loyalty, and no fierce battle in his memory. Just stopping and going home.

This is a "YES!" moment in the history of Israel, and it reminds us to trust God on several levels. We should remember to trust that He has a plan, and will keep His promises. Jotham's curse against Abimelech described the kind of leaders God chooses versus the kind of leader Abimelech was. Those who know the character of a Godly leader can see clearly when someone has the makings of a tyrant. It is best to steer clear of being in the camp with the tyrant, because they will destroy those who help them, and they often come to a swift and bloody end themselves.

We should also remember that God may use power hungry Abimelech-like leaders to expose problems and clean out power struggles that will not accomplish any good. We should not blame God for causing us to hurt or be uncomfortable when He lets us experience the consequences of our generation's choices. And we should trust that He will reveal the evil behind even the most well-dressed campaigns for power.

Once more, as we approach our elections here in America, I encourage you to remember that God is NOT absent or distant from the outcome. He will orchestrate the outcome toward His plans, even if that is by exposing all of us to socialism, world government, tyrannical loss of liberty, or whatever else comes through these candidates.

We need to also remember that He will bring about the natural end of their ambition on them and those who support them. But we must also remember to pray, in LOVE and RESPECT, for whomever is elected. We need to pray that they will hear and respond to God, so that His great good will come, instead of a legacy like Abimelech’s.

And personally, we need to take courage that whatever circumstance or whatever power seems to be over us, it is not greater than God and will come to its own end. The only way we, or any person or leadership, have any lasting influence or life or health is through Jesus Christ. Trust Him to lead you in how to vote and to orchestrate what is best afterward - no matter how difficult or dark the future may seem. There is one place to put our hope, and it is NOT in human leadership; it is always in His leadership.

This forum is meant to foster discussion and allow for differing viewpoints to be explored with equal and respectful consideration.  All comments are moderated and any foul language or threatening/abusive comments will not be approved.  Users who engage in threatening or abusive comments which are physically harmful in nature will be reported to the authorities.

by Charlie Wolcott

[This blog post is part of a series. The previous post is here, and the next post is here.]

This post was inspired by a sermon by David Wilkerson called “A Call to Anguish.” It is also something God has been teaching me beyond that sermon. When we pray, do we pray with such gusto and desire that it actually hurts? More down to earth, when we pray, do we actually care about those we are praying for? And what I mean by ‘actually care’ is: do we care enough to actually get up and do something about it?

When a natural disaster strikes, we care to a degree. We grieve, we mourn, but unless it directly affects us, do we do something about it? Or do we just say a quick prayer, hoping God will use someone else to deal with the problem? Let me be open and honest about myself. I have greatly struggled in this area. Part of it is that I do not feel emotions the way most people do. I am a very analytical, fact-based, and intellectual-based person. I am not swayed by emotion easily. I get happy and excited and I get sad and depressed, so I’m not completely emotionless, however, do I truly care enough to weep over it in prayer, or to get up and do something about it?

Let me illustrate this further. As Christians, we all want to see people go to heaven. We do not want to see anyone go to hell. I have spent a good part of the last 13+ years studying and learning about Biblical worldviews, namely on the Creation/Evolution debate. This is great head knowledge. I can honestly outdebate many atheists, but do I care for their souls? Or do I just care about winning the argument? Do I care enough to show the love of Christ? During my prayer training the last few months, I realized how little I have been praying for souls. A few weeks ago, I had the opportunity to speak for the chapel service at Jesus Chapel School about the reliability of the Bible. As I prayed about this event, God pressed on my heart to pray for the souls of the students. This quote from Leonard Ravenhill got my attention:
“I am increasingly convinced that tears are an integral part of revival preaching. Preacher brethren, this is the time to blush that we have no shame, the time to weep for our lack of tears, the time to bend low that we have lost the humble touch of servants, the time to groan that we have no burden, the time to be angry over the devil's monopoly in this ‘end time’ hour, the time to chastise ourselves that the world can so easily get along with us and not attempt to chastise us.” ~Leonard Ravenhill: Why Revival Tarries pg 67

George Whitefield was a man who would weep for his audiences even when they did not know to weep over their sin. Paris Reidhead describes Whitefield as one who wept not because the people were going to hell, but because they were lost in sin and did not even know it. John “Praying Hyde” Hyde groaned with such agony and passion that it literally moved his heart from one side of his chest to another. Elijah groaned in prayer that it might rain, seven times. Jesus prayed in such agony at Gethsemane that he sweated blood. Do we care enough that it hurts, that we do something about it?

Nehemiah is the standard example of praying in anguish. In Nehemiah 1, he hears about the ruins of Jerusalem as he attended the King of Persia in Susa as a cup-bearer. He wept, fasted, and prayed, and it grieved him so much that he could not hide it from the king. To be sad before the king could cost you your life. The status of Jerusalem so grieved Nehemiah that even preserving his life could not help him mask it.

David Wilkerson describes this as a baptism of anguish: when you ask God to have him share his heart with you. Nehemiah felt the pain God was feeling about the ruin of the city of his people. Jesus felt the agony of God repeatedly when he saw the crowds and had compassion on the people. The great preachers and missionaries were baptized with anguish over the lost. Just look at Paul’s life. He had one driving passion: to see souls set free even to the point where he told God that if he could take the place of another in hell so that person could go to heaven, he would do it.

Do we care? Do we truly care? Or do we just sit back, say a quick, “May God bless this person or this situation,” and then never think about it again? Wilkerson really gets in your face about it: “Don’t tell me you’re concerned if you are spending hours in front the internet or television.” “You can sit and watch television and your family will go to hell… Let me ask you. Did what I just said convict you at all?”

Wilkerson actually cared. He heard of the violence and the poverty in New York City when he was a small town preacher from Pennsylvania. He actually cared. When visiting with a homeless man, the man said: “What do you care? You can go home to your nice fancy home and shine those nice shoes.” Wilkerson looked down at the man who had no shoes. He took his shoes off and gave them to the man. He actually cared and did something about it. But take notice that he did not get to that point unless God covered him with anguish over the situation where it hurt too much to not do anything.

A local youth minister here in El Paso, Texas heard about the kidnapping and disappearances of Johnny Gosch and Jacob Wetterling back in the 80s and it grieved him so much that he took action to deal with those cases. He became a private investigator in dealing with child kidnappings, sex trafficking, and occult crimes for a number of years. He actually cared, but his action would not have started had God not first baptized him with anguish.

A final comment about anguish that Wilkerson makes clear is that this anguish, this pain, is temporary. He described it as birthing pains. When God wants you to do something, he will burden you and it will be painful to birth, but when birth takes place, the joy surpasses the great pain. I have not had the experience of directly leading someone to the Lord. I know that is a shocker for some. I am sure some have come to Christ because of my witness, but it has been planting or watering. I have not been present being the one harvesting yet. I am asking the Lord for that as I write this post. I am asking the Lord to burden me for lost souls, so that I pray for their salvation. I am asking for him to share his heart, his anguish over the lost, with me. I am asking him to teach me how to care for the person I talk with in apologetics. It is not an overnight process, but it is coming. The more I pray, the more I am experiencing that burden. It is a good burden because it is God’s burden he wants me to help carry, and it is one I won’t be able to carry without him helping me. A call to anguish is not a pleasant thing, but very often it is the only thing that gets us off our feet. When our flesh is put on that cross and we depend more on Christ, then we will find the life and joy so abundantly above and beyond what we could ask or think.

Next week, I will start a mini-series on prayer about spiritual warfare and intercession.

This forum is meant to foster discussion and allow for differing viewpoints to be explored with equal and respectful consideration.  All comments are moderated and any foul language or threatening/abusive comments will not be approved.  Users who engage in threatening or abusive comments which are physically harmful in nature will be reported to the authorities.

by Katie Erickson

“I pray that out of his glorious riches he may strengthen you with power through his Spirit in your inner being, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith. And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have power, together with all the Lord’s holy people, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge—that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God.” (Ephesians 3:16-19)

Today, I’m going to take a look into four key phrases from Ephesians 3:17-18 that should guide your life as a follower of Jesus Christ. This passage is part of a letter that the apostle Paul wrote to the church in Ephesus to encourage them in standing strong and following Jesus.

“Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith”
Faith in Jesus Christ is essential to following Him. After all, we can’t (and wouldn’t) follow someone who we do not believe in. This statement is not a conditional one, where if we have faith then Christ will dwell in our hearts; rather, it’s one of constant experience. As we continue to trust in Christ through the faith that we have, He will continue to dwell in us. As He is dwelling in our hearts, His teachings will guide our thoughts, words, and deeds.

“Be rooted and established in love”
As we trust in Christ and have His presence in us, the result is love. This love isn’t the kind of love like saying I love chocolate or I love sunny days, but this is the ultimate, unconditional, self-sacrificing love that only God can truly demonstrate for us all of the time. There is absolutely zero selfish motivation in this love. Paul uses two metaphors here. One word picture of biological, that of a tree with deep roots in the soil of love. This imagery is also reflected in Psalm 1 and Colossians 2:6-7. The other word picture is architectural - a building with a strong foundation, established on the rock of love. We see this reflected in Colossians 1:23 and 1 Peter 5:10.

“Have power, together with all the Lord’s holy people”
While this passage was written directly from Paul to the church at Ephesus, it’s not limited to them. Even back in the days of the early church, there were believers in multiple locations. All of them would have this power together. This applies not only to all people across the geographic distance of the church back then, but across all time as well. This power is for all believers, everywhere, and in all times. We receive this power through our faith in Christ, Him dwelling in our hearts, and having our spiritual roots deep into His love.

“Grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ”
This idea of grasping the fullness of the love of Christ means to perceive it, comprehend it, and hold it as our own. Christ’s love is way too large to be explained by any geometric measurements! We cannot fully grasp it with our feeble human minds, but we are commanded to try and grasp it anyway. This love is the self-sacrificing and completely unconditional love that Christ has for His Church, for everyone who trusts in Him. This is available to anyone and everyone who wants to have that relationship with Jesus Christ.

Dig your roots deeper into His love. Establish your firm foundation on Christ alone.

This forum is meant to foster discussion and allow for differing viewpoints to be explored with equal and respectful consideration.  All comments are moderated and any foul language or threatening/abusive comments will not be approved.  Users who engage in threatening or abusive comments which are physically harmful in nature will be reported to the authorities.

by Nathan Buck

Have you ever found yourself shouting at the screen during a movie, especially at home, when the bad guy seems to be ruthlessly getting away with everything? We especially feel the tension when the good people and the heroes are injured or killed. We feel the sense of horror and outrage, and a part of us cannot help but speak up. We especially feel our anger grow when the villain makes his 'final' move to power.

When the bad guy turns on the evil henchmen he used to gain power, we see him securing his position as the strongest, the most powerful, and the only one left with enough power to control the people, the nation, the world. It's in that moment we see the full narcissism and depravity of evil. Turning on those who were friends, or at least cohorts, in achieving their position, the truly evil character reveals the corruption of ambition and the total selfishness of tyranny.

Read Judges 9:42-49 and look at Abimelech. After he kills Gaal and everyone who turned Gaal in, he hears that Shechem's leaders have gathered. It doesn't take much to interpret Abimelech's motives. This is the moment where he believes he could rise to power, even above those who helped him get power, and he moves to destroy them. Not only is he successful, but now he has the confidence to move against anyone who will not bow to his power.

The saddest part of situations like this is that they are very true - and happen in our world VERY often. The hunger for control and power has, at its core, a disregard for others. The disregard is so strong that it sees others as merely tools to accomplish our own goals. This desire is in all of us to some degree, depending on the situation or goal. And if our desire is strong enough, we will even eliminate anyone who gets in our way.

I invite you to do a heart check on your own motives as you interact with other people. Do you see them and their story? Do you see what you can do to help them reach their goals? Or do you only see where they can help you reach yours?

When it comes to our election this year, we must do our best to discern if this is a season for an 'Abimelech' to run his/her course through our nation, or if we are to stop them from coming to power. And if God does bring them to power, will we have the trust that He will make sure things turn out the way they should?

Next week's blog post may help in reminding us to trust Him. Stay tuned.

This forum is meant to foster discussion and allow for differing viewpoints to be explored with equal and respectful consideration.  All comments are moderated and any foul language or threatening/abusive comments will not be approved.  Users who engage in threatening or abusive comments which are physically harmful in nature will be reported to the authorities.

by Charlie Wolcott

[This blog post is part of a series. The previous post is here, and the next post is here.]

“Confess your trespasses to one another, and pray for one another, that you may be healed. The effective, fervent prayer of a righteous man avails much.” ~James 5:16

What makes our prayers effective? What makes them work? First let us look at this verse. “Confess our sins to one another.” Let us be careful about what this means. I heard one person share during a sermon how he and his wife were at a conference and repenting of their sins, but this man kept on going. His wife asked him this: “Are you confessing sin, or re-living fond memories?” Confessing sins to each other is important because it releases guilt, and it restores relationships that can hinder our prayer. But do not use that to bring back sins you want to “re-experience.”

Pray for one another. How often do we support each other in prayer? How often are our prayers just about our needs, or rather our desires? I have yet to address Intercession in the context of prayer, but that is what this is about and that is necessary of a separate post.

Our prayers need to be fervent. What does that mean? According to Strong’s Concordance, the Greek word is “energeho,” which is the same root as “energy,” meaning to be active and mighty. Too many of my prayers have been very weak. I have not wrestled and done “battle” with God to get my prayers answered. When I wrote about hindered prayer, one of the things I addressed was when we quit praying. We do not see results as quickly as we’d like so we stop and say, “We’ll try again later.” We aren’t being active in our prayers. We tend to be couch-potatoes watching the athletes do their sport with great energy and endurance and we wish we could do that… without getting up off the couch and starting to work out. We won’t be instant athletes in the field of prayer, but let us start moving so we could be one day. Start with five minutes, move on to ten, to one hour. When I hear of Rees Howells praying for 11 hours in intercession for acquiring a building or for praying for the outcome of a battle in World War II, I know I have nowhere near that capacity. I do not sense having a calling like Howells had, but I do know every one of us has a calling to pray. And the saints praised for their prayer life throughout the Bible were prayer-ers who had an active, fervent prayer life.

The kind of person we are also make prayer effective, but only for one kind of person: a righteous person. We cannot expect our prayers to be very effective if we are living in sin, if we are living for ourselves. We spend 1-2 hours in church on Sunday morning, maybe one hour Wednesday evening, and say a few minutes of prayer for our meals and expect God to answer our prayers when we spend hours and hours on TV, internet, and games? I’m guilty here. Not that TV, internet, or games are evil by themselves. What we put on them is more the issue. When I was preparing this series, God told me to put the video games away, so I did. I had several times where I really wanted to play, but I chose not to. Don’t think I was being all holy and spending all that time in prayer instead. I ended up vegging on the computer a lot, even when listening to sermons. I was praying more than I had, but not like I could have been. God later said if I wanted to play again, I could. For several weeks, I still did not, because part of what I was to learn in this process is more dependence upon him. So now, I am able to turn off the Denver Broncos when God wants me to pray (that was a tough one when the game was on) and I am able to turn off the games when God wants me to pray. God is still not done with me on these issues.

If our prayers are to be effective, prayer needs to be our priority. Not that we cannot do anything else, but it needs to be our priority. That means we need to schedule our day around prayer, not schedule prayer around our day. If we make our prayer time an extra thought, and not something we schedule our life around, do not be surprised when God treats your needs as “if I get around to it.” You can tell who makes God priority in how they handle church. I reserve my schedule so I can make it to church early. When my church has activities, I make it my priority that I be there for them. Look at the prayer meeting. The only reason I stopped going to my church’s Wednesday prayer sessions (which is what sparked this whole series and study) is because God told me to get involved with the youth group, which is at the same time.

Read this quote from E.M Bounds:
"His [Paul] teaching is that praying is the most important of all things on earth. All else must be restrained, retired, to give it primacy. Put it first, and keep its primacy. The conflict is about the primacy of prayer. Defeat and victory lie in this one thing. To make prayer secondary is to discrown it. It is to fetter and destroy prayer. If prayer is put first, then God is put first, and victory is assured. Prayer must either reign in the life or must abdicate. Which shall it be?" (The Complete Works of E.M. Bounds, page 99)

This is one of many quotes by Bounds that my pastor addresses so simply: “You spend half your time reading, half your time repenting.” Is praying priority in your life? Is spending time with God your top motive, your top task that must be done? It does not matter if you spend your prayer time in the morning, noon, or night, but do you schedule your time with God first over everything else you do? What if you were to schedule your prayer time first, then your job schedule? So if God told you to pray at a certain time, then you would purpose to arrange your work schedule around it? You may need to stay up later than you normally would or get up earlier than you normally would. John Wesley was invited for dinner with one of the elite of London. At a given time, he suddenly got up and left his host. The host asked, “Where are you going? It’s not even 9:00.” Wesley said something like, “I have an appointment with the Lord, and I need not be late.”

Do we have that kind of conviction about our prayers? Are we willing to cut off our appointments, our social meetings, even if we were to appear to insult our hosts, so we make our appointments with God? You don’t dare show up late for work. Why do many of seem to think it is okay to be late for God? And then we wonder why are prayers have so little effect. Let us make God our priority. When we do that, we’ll start seeing God making our requests, as they align to his will, become priority as well.

Next week, I am going to address a very difficult aspect of prayer for me: praying in anguish. Inspired by a sermon by David Wilkerson, I will address praying to the point where it hurts.

This forum is meant to foster discussion and allow for differing viewpoints to be explored with equal and respectful consideration.  All comments are moderated and any foul language or threatening/abusive comments will not be approved.  Users who engage in threatening or abusive comments which are physically harmful in nature will be reported to the authorities.