A Springboard for Your Spiritual Life

How To Pray for it All When Time is Tight

August 10, 2009 by Edwin Crozier Leave a Comment

Last week we looked at a plan for spending some in depth time with God and making it last. However, the reality is, as you grow in your prayer life, those lists you develop are going to start taking more than 5 minutes a piece. You’re going to start wondering how to get it all in. Or perhaps your schedule just doesn’t allow for an hour. Maybe you’re shooting for 30 minutes or 15 minutes per day (no matter what anyone says, that’s okay). In any event, you’re going to wonder how to get it all in.

You need to set yourself free from the idea that you have to pray for everything in every prayer. You don’t have to cover it all every time you pray. Instead, plan out your prayers for the week and assign different topics to each day.

Obviously, there will be aspects of prayer you keep up with every day. I’m sure you’ll offer some praise and thanksgiving along with confession every day. However, as you consider your intercessions and petitions, you can schedule them out each day.

Consider the following schedule as just a suggestion:

Sunday: Praise and thanksgiving

Monday: Personal requests and family issues

Tuesday: The local congregation, members, elders, deacons, evangelists, the work, special events

Wednesday: Other congregations, their elders, deacons and evangelists

Thursday: Special needs, the lost, the sick

Friday: Our nation, the world, war and peace

Saturday: Clean-up (anything that has come up over the week that you need to pray about)

Obviously, you can make up your own schedule, but you get the idea.

I know some people will say, “But, Edwin, that means I’m not praying for it all every day.” That’s true. However, to be quite honest, before I started this plan, I kept saying, “I don’t have time to pray right now.” Then I wasn’t praying for anything. With this plan, at least I’m getting it all prayed for in a timely fashion.

This is just a suggestion. Just make sure you are praying. You need the connection to God to survive.

How to Pray for An Hour

August 3, 2009 by Edwin Crozier 2 Comments

We sing the song “Sweet Hour of Prayer,” but then we start praying and wonder how on earth we can even make it through sweet 10 minutes of prayer. I want to thank my friend and fellow preacher Jeff May for showing me a great tool to organize our prayers and help us spend some real meaningful time with God.

Of course, let me first point out that you don’t have to pray for an hour for it to be legitimate. Prayer isn’t real because of the length. At the same time, many of us know there is so much more to be done in our prayer lives but when we finally hit our knees we get that deer-in-the-headlights feeling, we stammer something out and then spend the rest of the day thinking of other things we should have prayed for.

In those cases, don’t worry. When you think of them you can offer up a prayer right then. However, if you want to work on having some serious, in-depth, on your knees time try the PRAYER CLOCK approach.

An hour divides into 12 sections of 5 minutes. Think of 12 areas for which you want to pray and devote 5 minutes for each area. When you are done, you spent an hour in prayer. You don’t have to follow my list this is just for example purposes.

5 minutes of…

Praise
Thanksgiving
Confession
Family
Home congregation
Elders and Deacons (Home congregation and others)
Preachers (Home congregation and others)
Other churches
The lost and evangelism
Special needs, sick, etc.
Our nation (other nations)
Praise

You just spent an hour in prayer.

Granted, to make even 5 minutes in prayer for each topic, you probably want to start developing some lists. Make a list of special needs, elders, deacons, preachers, churches, things for which you are thankful, folks who are lost, etc. As you work on this, you’ll be surprised to find out that 5 minutes won’t be enough for some areas. You’ll have to come up with a plan for getting all these prayers in over the week.

In fact, come back next Monday to learn a plan for getting in all your prayers when you just have so much to pray for you can’t get it in all in one prayer session–even if you’re going for an hour.

Don’t Be Afraid to Fail

July 27, 2009 by Edwin Crozier Leave a Comment

In Matthew 25:14-30, the master gave talents to his three servants. One of them received only one talent and he was filled with fear. He wasn’t sure he could accomplish anything with the one talent, so he didn’t try anything. When the master returned, the slave tried to explain that really he was doing the master a favor. He could have messed up and lost the talent, but instead he had saved it for him. The master judged the slave.

Too often we have the same problem today. We are so afraid we are going to fail in serving God, do something wrong, mess up and cause more harm than good that we don’t ever do anything. We go through so many excuses about why so many things won’t work that we never work. Guess what. That doesn’t work.

Don’t be afraid to fail. At least do something. Maybe you will fail, but if you don’t ever do anything you know God will judge you for sure.

Remember, God works when His people work. Abandon your fears and get to work.

On Bibs and Aprons OR Serving and Being Served

July 20, 2009 by Edwin Crozier 2 Comments

I got to hear my good friend Max Dawson preach two lessons on leadership yesterday. He reminded me of things I’d read before. He reminded me of things we had talked about before. He increased my understanding of leadership. He asked a question as he closed his lessons that I want to pass on to you.

When you woke up and got dressed this morning, what did you put on? No, I’m not talking about your actual clothes. I don’t care if you’re wearing jeans, shorts, or a suit; a dress, a skirt, or a pantsuit. I’m wanting to know if you put on a bib or an apron.

You see many of us wake up every morning and the first thing we put on is our bib. We want to make sure we stay clean as every one else serves us and provides for us. However, others get up and put on an apron. They are getting ready to get to work and be servants.

Today in my Bible reading over at Give Attention to Reading, I read Luke 22:26 in which Jesus said, “let the greatest among you become as the youngest, and the leader as one who serves.”

Jesus came to serve and not be served. We need to follow in His footsteps. Growing in Christ doesn’t mean becoming more and more of a boss who gets to tell everyone else what to do. Growing in Christ means becoming more and more of a servant.

So, if you haven’t already done so, get out your apron. Put it on and get to serving.

Believing in the God of the Psalmists, Part 10: God is Love

July 13, 2009 by Edwin Crozier Leave a Comment

(If you are stumbling across this for the first time, you may want to start at the beginning of the series and work your way through the links at the end of each post. Or check out the index for this entire series of posts. We’ve learned so much about the psalmists and their relationship with God. I hope today’s is no exception.)

God is Love

A popular modern approach to God as revealed in the Bible is to change God between the testaments. Folks look at the God of the Old Testament as a harsh, legalistic, sometimes mean, sometimes brutal, judging God. Then they come to the New Testament and say all that has changed. Now, God is a God of love. He doesn’t judge, He is never harsh. He just wants us to know how much He loves us.

However, that doesn’t mesh with the Psalmists view of God at all. Despite the brutal judgment God sometimes administered, the Psalmists were completely sure that God was a God of love. The psalmists mention God’s love 123 times. Consider just a few of the statements.

God’s steadfast love is precious (Psalm 36:7).
We enter His house through His steadfast love (Psalm 5:7).
He delivers us for the sake of His steadfast love (Psalm 6:4).
He is merciful and forgets our sins because of His steadfast love (Psalm 25:6-7).
His steadfast love surrounds the one who trusts Him (Psalm 32:10).
His steadfast love endures all day (Psalm 52:1).
God answers our pleas because of His steadfast love (Psalm 69:16).
His steadfast love holds us up when we think we’ll slip (Psalm 94:18).
His steadfast love endures forever (Psalm 100:5).

This story of God’s love crescendoes in Psalm 136. Here the Psalmist repeats “For his steadfast love endures forever” 26 times. In fact, this was most certainly a liturgical psalm used in public assemblies and worship for the Jews. The priest or officiate would say the first line of each couplet and the congregation would shout the refrain–“For his steadfast love endures forever.” What an amazing experience that must have been, hearing the entire congregation praise God for his love as the stories of God’s love were repeated to them.

No doubt, the psalmists were sometimes happy, sometimes sad, sometimes hurt, sometimes angry, sometimes lonely, sometimes joyful, sometimes bitter. But they always knew God loved them.

How can we not pray to a God whose steadfast love for us endures forever, no matter who we are, where we come from, or what we’ve done?

Whatever you do today, don’t forget–God Loves You!

(I think we’re going to take a little break from this study of the Psalms. But keep your eyes open, in a few weeks we’ll get back to them and start learning to look at ourselves the way the Psalmists did.)

Believing in the God of the Psalmists, Part 9: God is Near

July 6, 2009 by Edwin Crozier Leave a Comment

Option Three

I just finished reading N.T. Wright’s Simply Christian: Why Christianity Makes Sense (yes, that is an affiliate link; help a guy out and buy a copy). I really liked his explanation of the three world views for those who believe in God. There was Option One: pantheism. That view says God is everywhere because God is everything. The computer on which you are reading this is as divine the dog your are petting by your side or the baby screaming upstairs in its crib or the plastic flowers decorating your dining table. God is the sum total of all things. Then there was Option Two: deism. That view says God is in some distant realm. He created the world and is now hands off.

With the first approach, prayer is nothing more than an exercise of reaching inside and meeting the divine within you. That is not prayer, that is just introspection. With the second, prayer is nothing more than…well, nothing. It is really pointless. For the deist prayer is sending some message out into the void to one who simply doesn’t listen. If he does, he doesn’t respond.

But there was also Option Three: it says God is not everything, but He is near. It says heaven and earth connect in real ways. It says we can walk with God and talk with God. He listens and responds. His response doesn’t have to be in some space crossing, super miraculous interjection of God’s power in the world. Rather, He can work through the world because He is in the world.

Option Three is the option the psalmists accept.

God is Near

I know this may seem odd because the Psalmists often spoke of how far away God was. “Why, O LORD, do you stand far away? Why do you hide yourself in times of trouble?” (Psalm 10:1). Or “How long will you hide your face from me?” (Psalm 13:1). Reading these statements, we may be tempted to think they took Option Two. However, that is not true. These statements showed how they felt because of their struggles. It doesn’t show what they really believed about God.

In fact, despite these feelings the Psalmists almost always come around in the very same psalms to show what they really believed. Psalm 10:14 says, “But you do see, for you note mischief and vexation, that you may take it into your hands; to you the helpless commits himself; you have been the helper of the fatherless.” Psalm 13:5-6 says, “But I have trusted in your steadfast love; my heart shall rejoice in your salvation. I will sing to the LORD, because he has dealt bountifully with me.”

No doubt, at times it feels like God is far away, like He is hidden behind the clouds or off in the distant reaches of space ignoring us. The psalmists felt that way. But instead of turning their back on God, they went to God about it. Why? Because despite how they felt, they knew God was near. When they felt that way, they didn’t resign themselves to believe it was that way. They knew that was wrong and went God about it.

In fact, there were other times when the psalmists just flat told us God is near.

“The LORD is near to the brokenhearted and saves the crushed in spirit.”–Psalm 34:18.

“But you are near, O LORD, and all your commandments are true.”–Psalm 119:151.

“The LORD is near to all who call on him, to all who call on him in truth.”–Psalm 145:18.

We can call on God. He is near. He listens. He responds. No doubt, there are times we won’t feel that way. In those times we can cry out to God because He is near.

(Come back next week to learn that God is love.)