Bill Hybels, pastor of Willow Creek Community Church, outside of Chicago, wrote a book called, “Too Busy NOT to Pray,” some twenty years ago. It is a very good book on the topic of prayer that I recommend for everyone I work with in recovery to read. The reason is for it’s simplicity and direction on how to pray, and what to pray. Bill uses a memorable formula in bringing our requests to God. A.C.T.S.

A- adoration. This is approaching God in praise of His, Omnipotence, Omniscience, and Omnipresence, as Lord God Almighty
C- confession. Asking for forgiveness for our personal sins and neglect, for selfish living, etc.
T- thanksgiving. Thanking God for all of His manifold blessings, and for answering us when we pray.
S- supplication. We then ask Him for our needs and requests.

Using this little formula does not make wishes come true. God is not a celestial Santa, a genie popping out of a bottle, or Bill Gates spreading out his wealth. No, He is our loving Father, desiring to grant us our requests as we ask in faith, and according to His will, which is His Word. I will not ask you to take my word on that, nor do I have the time to go through passages, giving Word-based prayer. (I am not being arrogant, I want to keep this readably short.)

The National Day of Prayer
Some things we should pray about as a body of believers and for our nation are:
1) Unity. We are a divided nation. Left and right, multicultural, evangelical and secularists, devout and post-modern in worship. In all of these separating titles, we have lost our way as a people. Our origins were intended to end tyranny, we have a government today that has become tyrannical, and think they know what is best for the people, which omits God and removes rights guaranteed by our constitution. Pray that God will draw our hearts as a people back to Him, loving each other regardless of our differences in belief, or in culture. We cannot expect the unbeliever to pray at all. If the believers pray for God to unite us as the body of Christ, and help us lay aside petty differences that have nothing to do with redemption, there will be unprecedented unity, and a harvest of those desiring to be in the light.

2) Repentance. We have national sins. Not only our neglecting God, but continuance of humanistic thought in the family from not teaching our children biblical truth because we’re too busy, allowing their minds to be defiled by man’s wisdom. I know we have the constant fight to end abortion, to define the family, along with many laws we consider ungodly. However, if we do not teach our young foundational truths, giving them a platform to denounce these sins, the ungodly laws will stand. We need to repent for not teaching the young, and learning about what we say we believe ourselves.

3) Being Jesus. We want to conform to the image of Christ, but hang on to personal prejudices. Pray that God helps us as followers of Jesus, to live lives of integrity and eliminate our dislikes and looking down our noses at those in darkness. Quit saying “hate the sin, love the sinner,” and start doing so. The drug addict, the prostitute, the greedy, gluttonous, atheist, the homosexual need Jesus…and so do you. We must stop looking down, look across at those  we think we are superior to.

I really tried to make this short, oops, didn’t work. There are many things we need to ask God to save us from. We are fallen. We want godly leaders, nice neighborhoods, beautiful cities. We want prosperity, good health, and plenty to eat. But we also want these things on our terms, excluding others. God forgive us. We want good jobs, but we want the foreigners removed, “they don’t belong here,” we say. We want marriage to be a man and a woman, yet we have a 50% divorce rate. We don’t know how to commit to anything, but we know what we hate, God forgive us, forgive our arrogance. Please consider these thoughts, pray today for the nation. Pray first for those you despise.

“In those days, Israel had no king, all of the people did WHAT SEEMED RIGHT IN THEIR OWN EYES.” Judges 21:25 NLT

Thanks for reading, God bless and keep you all.

Many see no end to their addictions,
     God be gracious.
Those oppressed in evil thoughts,
    God be gracious.
For the depressed and torchured soul,
     God be gracious.
All that are blind to hope,
     Father, bring The Light.

Turn night into day, revive the fallen,
restore the broken, mend our wounds.
Lord have mercy, God be gracious, Father bring The Light!

Don’t think for a minute that you are in good company by disbelief. If you find out in the end that it is not only truth, but the way you were designed to live and the path to walk on, the consequences will have an eternal impact. The question Elijah asked was:
“How long will you waver, hobbling between two opinions? If the Lord is God,follow Him, but if Baal is god, then follow him.”
Their response: “But the people were completely silent.” 1 Kings 18:21 NLT

To tell you what happened in case you do not read the whole story. He made the people a deal. We will build two altars, and place a sacrifice on both. Then we will pray, you to baal, me to God. The God that answers with sending fire down to consume their sacrifice, that is the God we will serve. The people agreed.There were 450 false prophets of baal, one man, Elijah, stood for God. He let them go first. From morning until evening they cried to their god to no avail, cutting themselves with knives to show their dedication so baal and the crowd could see. Then Elijah’s turn came, he had four pots of water poured on his sacrifice two times, until the water flowed into the trench below the altar. He said a simple prayer, the fire from God fell, ans consumed the sacrifice, the altar, even the water in the trench! Then the people fell on their faces, and said “The Lord, He is God!” Then Elijah had the false prophets seized, and he killed everyone of them.

“That’s cruel, he killed the prophets!” That is what the false prophets of our day say. They only see what scriptures say that reflectt the Lord, merciful, gracious, and kind, as an evil ogre that wreaks vengeance on mankind. They do not know the cruelty and evil done to the people by these false prophets. The evils are similar to the evils in our society removing God from the minds of the people, moving Him to the back of the bus.The men and women of our day, that have the courage to stand and say that we are judged as a nation for transgressions and social evils condoned by, even paid for by our government, are made out to be foolish, backwoodsy types. Their accusers pass themselves off as the intelligent, educated in truth, humanitarians. that refuse to pass judgment on evil, but condemn good. Laws are passed to protect the guilty, and punish the victims.

This is not a call to do what Elijah did to the prophets to be done to the humanists and secularist of the day. That is not my purpose. We should lay the challenge on the table, the questions asked back then, asked now; “how long will you, America, waver, hobbling between two opinions? Tell intelligencia, prove to us their gods exist, or remove them from our land, destroy the false teaching.

Give us absolute proof that your dating methods, namely carbon dating are 100% acurate, or declare it to be a religion that takes faith to believe. Give us absolute proof that man evolved from ape, that life began from a single cell, or call it a religion, get it out of our schools where you have said religion does not belong. Take a thousand year-old skull, and date it along side of those “neanderthal” skulls you find, and give the people proof of your truth, or admit theory, an “educated guess” is all you have. You can’t do that. But you, O intelligent ones, poison the minds of our youth decade after decade, from your bitter hatred of God. You have helped produce a spiritual famine in this land, in this world.

You and I that claim to be followers of Christ need to look around us, see the fruit of these false teachings. Immoral living, our people are consumed with self-service, loving pleasure, blind to addictions and the hopelessness of our generation. We like what we see on the modern prophets of baal’s TV talk shows, how we find their doctrines of acceptance and tolerance of evil behavior as good. They are blind guides that have lead us into a ditch. We have been set-up. You and I must make a decision to choose between the two opinions. Either God is God, or He is as they say, not the Creator and we do not have to follow biblical teachings as truth. If God is truly God, and we turn to Him in repentance for our self-seeking, sorrowful for accepting their teachings as truth, and questioning His moral law.  spiritual famine will end, the latter rain will fall and refresh us again. We can be the answer to the masses, by challenging them to prove their god’s existence.

Archaeologist continue to prove the validity of scripture, mostly those that the secular historians guaranteed didn’t happen. According to them, David’s kingdom, nor Solomon’s ever existed, now proven. Since they cannot deny Jesus was an actual person, they work very hard to disprove his resurrection by finding his true tomb, with bones and all. Save your time brilliant minds. Take it from this uneducated man, He is risen. The proof is in my heart, with the joy, peace, I did not know before I by faith, accepted Him as Savior and Lord for real. I hope every scientist and professor that have no hope but this life comes to the same reality, coming to Christ for the real answers.

Thanks for reading, God bless and keep you all.

I too, become downcast at times. God knows, and always knows how to give me that pick-me-up needed. This morning, after having a major personal disappointment over the weekend, (by the way, this was my own presumption that led to this heartbreak), God did it again, rocking my pity-party with spiritual revelation from the Word. The story from Acts 16, where Paul and Silas were spreading the gospel, and a young girl with a familiar spirit kept following them, and apparently telling all these men were from God, in a mocking manner. Paul had enough, told the demon to leave the girl, and it departed. The men that sponsored her fortune telling lost their share of income. They took the two preachers to the courts, where they were beaten and chained and thrown into prison.

“About midnight Paul and Silas were praying and singing hymns to God, and the other prisoners were listening. Suddenly, there was a massive earthquake, and the prison was shaken to its foundation. All of the doors immediately flew open, and the chains of every prisoner fell off! Acts 16: 25-26 NLT

Here is the good news
We may be in the darkness of midnight in our society. Many are chained to addictions,  wrapped up in deep hurts from their pasts, tied up in bad relationships, bound by fears, and it seems things couldn’t be darker. And our lives are imprisoned in denial and codependency. But if you and I begin to pray, and sing praises to God every day, as we rise in the morning, throughout the day, before we lie down to sleep…the chains are going to fall off, and the prison we have built will be shaken to its foundation, and the doorss will swing open to freedom. Supernatural things are going to happen, as we focus on the One who set the captives free!

The miraculous
I have seen impossible situations myself and others have been in since I entered into recovery, suddenly reversed, as prayer was offered to God, expectantly, and taking Him for what He said He would do if we asked. I remember being so blue and downcast from things going on and looking at the mountain of problems instead of the problem solver, the One who makes mountains a flat plain with a word. When I turned and focused on Him, and gave Him praise for His ablility, and strength given to me in my weaknesses, thanking Him in gratitude for His goodness and mercy, love, and kindness…my blue feelings left immediately, and joy returned. Prayer, thanksgiving, and praise to God, to Abba, Adonai, Elohim…El Shaddai, the Triune, self-existent Almighty Father Who is more than enough, the One that a single name cannot describe, roars into my situation, and the enemies seige is broken and scattered! He does not like His kids bullied by the evil one, and like you would defend your children, He defends us but with the power that know no boundary.

Look for supernatural results in times of trouble, in hopeless situations, where all seems lost. Like Paul and Silas, He hears your petitions, He listens for your praise and thanksgiving, and He reacts for you! Thanks for reading, God bless and keep and defend, and free you and yours!