One of my strong beliefs is that the amount of time that I give to God in prayer will determine how much power I have with God when I do pray. Not everyone who prays is heard by God, in fact probably not very many are heard. An interesting verse is in Hebrews 5:7 and it says;

“In the days of His flesh, He offered up both prayers and supplications with loud crying and tears to the One able to save Him from death, and He was heard because of His piety.”

“He was heard because of His piety.” You might have thought that He was heard because He was God’s son. His influence with the Father was based on how He lived His life, not based on who He was. Jesus was not heard by God the Father based on position or relationship, and we are not heard because we are children of God or Christians.

So for yourself fill in the blank, “I am heard by God because_________. There are about a dozen factors mentioned in Bible that determine how much God listens to us. I also believe that there is in our inner person, our heart, a sense that we are being heard or not. As that sense of being a person that God is paying attention to grows, our desire to pray will grow as well because our praying will be making a difference, and we will know it.

An example of one of the 12 factors determining our prayer power is in 1 Peter 3:7 “You husbands in the same way, live with your wives in an understanding way, as with someone weaker, since she is a woman; and show her honor as a fellow heir of the grace of life, so that your prayers will not be hindered.”

“Our prayers will be hindered” This passage is saying that if we are poor husbands God doesn’t hear our prayers. If that is me being rude to my wife, when the “Five days of prayer” rolls around I am going to find a dozen other things to do instead of pray.

So, if you find yourself being one of those people who struggles to make it to prayer, make that the motive that you use to motivate yourself to come. When you go to prayer and give God some time you will begin to see and understand what is your problem, what are the barriers that are keeping you home instead of in the prayer room,

I want to be a person of influence, a person of power. When I gather with the Body of Christ to pray I will begin to see my own flaws, blind spots, and character deficiencies, and I will be motivated to do something about it.

A strong person is a person who manages life well despite trials and difficulties. They bear up under the pressures and responsibilities of life and are a great source of comfort, counsel, encouragement, and strength for others going through trials. Strong people weren’t born strong, they became strong because they applied certain principles to their life whenever they felt weak and ready to quit on life.

1. Strong people pray a lot about whatever they are going through, asking for God’s strength. They ask a lot because they have learned this principle, “The more we ask the more we will receive.” God wants our time and He is willing to bless us for our time. Much prayer – much blessing, little prayer – little blessing, no prayer – no blessing.

2. Strong people have learned that grumbling or complaining about life and difficulties drains away strength, and joy from our soul very quickly, and then we will be wimps.

3. Strong people have learned that the most important area of our life to be strong in is our thought life. Don’t allow your mind to dwell on negative thinking patterns. Thinking negative thoughts makes you a negative person who is too busy feeling sorry for yourself to accomplish much that matters to God. Strong people have discovered that memorizing and meditating on scripture is a powerful way to control our thoughts.

4. Strong people rejoice always. They tell God thank you for everything. They worship well corporately and privately.

5. Strong people know that by themselves they will give up and won’t run the race to the finish line, so they fellowship with others and they encourage others knowing that the more they give the more they will receive.

All Christians will stand before Jesus and give an account of their life and be rewarded for what they have done with their life while on this earth. Very few Christians think about this future judgment much, because it isn’t taught much in the church. There is such an emphasis on grace, forgiveness, imputed righteousness, God’s unmerited love, and mercy that God’s judgment of Christians gets lost in all the nice, positive stuff.

Bible truths that convict us or make us nervous usually get left off of our list of things to investigate or study about. We tend to do the head in the sand thing. We secretly hope that if we stay ignorant that our ignorance will bring about God’s mercy into our life.

Certain activities in this life will get extra attention in the judgment room of Christ. One of those actives is prayer. Prayer is not hard, God the Father does all the work we just ask, but the results of prayer are as significant as anything else we do. Most of the activities that keep us to busy to pray much will get very little if any attention at the judgment seat of Christ. Sad that we tend to have such a poor sense of value.

There will be a huge difference in Christians in eternity because of the great rewards some will have and the lack of rewards others will have.

My greatest blessings from God in this life apart from Himself was my parents. I had an amazing Dad and Mom. They both taught me many things but the main thing from my Dad was diligence, a strong work ethic, and a general toughness in dealing with life. My Mom was the source of all of my spiritual upbringing and the charactder trait of faithfulness. My mom was the most faithful person I have ever known. One of of the things that she would say all the time to us kids was, “you can do anything that you set your mind to.” She had quite a few different “sayings” that she would repeat often in appropriate places. You could almost predict what she was going to say by the surroundings and circumstances, and if you ever said something was too hard then you got a full lecture. I won’t say my life has been easy, but it sure has been easier than many different people that I meet. It is a huge advantage in life to be well parented. Here are a few pictures of her, beginning with when she was married at the age of 15, an early family picture, of her with great-grandkids, one taken a few days before she died, and concluding with me putting some dirt on her casket. My Mom was a great lady, servant of the Lord, Mom, wife, and grandmother. She lived such a full life it is hard to feel sad that she is gone now with the Lord.

The cool thing about taking pictures now is you don’t have to wait to get them developed and the date is on the top so you always know when it was taken. It is so fun to go back and look at pictures of my kids and grandkids of things we did together. As I look through them, some of them I identify as in the favorite category. This picture is one of my favorites because of what it represents. My boys Sam and Seth had been doing Triathlons together for some time so I decided to do one with them in Sunriver near Bend. It was an Olympic distance tri and consisted of a one-mile swim in Cultus lake, a 25-mile bicycle ride with some big hills, and a 10K, 6.2-mile run. I had been riding my bicycle a lot and I had run a lot in years past, but I didn’t swim much and wasn’t even sure that I could swim a mile. I started swimming three days a week at the pool in Albany with Seth and I was really slow, but I kept swimming and once a week I would swim a mile. It would take me an hour to swim it, but I was pretty sure that as I kept swimming I would get faster, but that didn’t happen.

I had to swim with a wet suit on because of the temperature of the water so I found a place that rented wet suits in Portland and rented one. The cool thing about wet suits is that you float in them. I practiced swimming in it at Foster Reservoir and discovered that it was easy to roll over on my back and take a rest whenever I needed one because I floated like a cork. In the race, there were 500-plus participants and I came in second to last on the swim. I beat an old lady. I couldn’t get the wet suit off after I got out of the water and I was rolling around in the parking lot where my biclycle was waiting for me trying to get it off. Patty said I looked like a big walrus rolling around. I finally got it off and took off on my bicycle. I actually moved up about a hundred places on the bike ride and then held my own on the running portion. My boys finished the race and then ran back and met me and finished with me. I felt very honored as their father when they did that.

I have as a guideline on my goal setting each year to do something really, really hard, and also to do something that I have never done before. That was the hardest thing I have ever done and I had never done it before. This year I am going to row my drift boat out one mile in Cook Inlet up in Alaska, catch a limit of halibut and row back. I don’t know how hard it will be but it will be scary for sure.

A number of years ago when we were camping I was attempting to tie up a tarp over us because it was raining. I was standing on a round log turned on its end that was about two feet off of the ground, trying to get the tarp as high over our head as possible. As I was stretching to reach a branch to tie the tarp to, the log I was standing on tipped over and I fell into our campfire landing in it with my hand. I burned it severely and was driven to the emergency room of the closest hospital. Now, years later, my hand works fine but the area that was burned most severely has no feeling in it, it is totally numb, like a piece of wood. The Bible ays that some people have seared their own conscience with a branding iron, meaning that they can do wrong and not even know it is wrong. And then the Bible talks about those who have effectively made their conscience sensitive so they are aware of even small inconsistencies in living.

Our conscience is part of our soul and is a very important part of our inner person, the real us that is going to heaven someday. As we grow in our character and become more Christlike in our behavior our conscience is what guides us as we make choices and decisions. The more tender our conscience the more closely we will walk with Christ in life. Our conscience gets calloused when we deliberately choose to do wrong because of the pull of the world and the temptation of the devil. As our conscience gets more and more calloused sinning gets easier and easier to do.

People often get to a point where the Bible calls them spiritually blind. They are totally incapable of understanding the gospel, and the only way they can get saved is by God doing a miracle in their heart and restoring their spiritual eyesight. He does that on the basis of the prayers of a saint or saints who are interceding for them.

1 Timothy 4:2
by means of the hypocrisy of liars seared in their own conscience as with a branding iron,

I have been reading about the current revivals taking place in Kentucky and in other places, and also historical revivals which were quite a bit bigger than the current ones judging from the things written about them. But the common denominator in all of them is prayer, much prayer, desperate prayer, seeking prayer. I have been devoted to prayer for 35 years but I am going to ramp up the amount of praying that I do, and I am going to do more encouraging of others to pray more, to pray sacrificially, I am also going to teach about prayer more, and write about it more. Things change when we pray and the more we pray the more change happens. We have a “ Five Days of Prayer” coming up soon so I am going to write a bunch about how important it is for all of you to come, and participate.

I know you are all as frustrated over our culture, government, and media as I am. I hate feeling like I am a victim. A victim is someone who has no control, no voice, and no influence on his world. I have the power available to me to have great influence. I can stir up a huge amount of change, but it will take some time. It will take a lot of time praying. Some think they can pray like saying grace over a meal and have some effect, I don’t think so. We need to pray like Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane.

I intend to do that, to pray as if God is listening, believing that He wants to work in our world around us, but will not until we want it, want it so much that we are willing to pray for it with passion and time.

The command to be submissive is given numerous times in the Bible. We are supposed to be submissive to authorities in our life, children to parents, wives to husbands, and mutual submission within a family or in a church family. We tend to interpret the word submission to mean that we have to obey when we are ordered to do something by another person. We can call that definition reactive. A much better kind of submission would be proactive which is described in Philippians 2:3-4,
“Do nothing from selfishness or empty conceit, but with humility of mind regard one another as more important than yourselves; do not merely look out for your own personal interests, but also for the interests of others.”

A character requirement to practice proactive submission is initiative. “Look out for the interest of others.” On the farm growing up my Dad would say regularly, “don’t wait for me to tell you what to do, look around and see what needs to be done, and then do it.” That is initiative. When you look around and see what you can do for someone else, that is being a servant to that person, and you are being submissive to them in putting their needs ahead of your own and you are practicing initiative. Such activity is very pleasing to God and He promises to reward and bless the person who practices such submission.

When we become a submissive servant to our spouse we are expressing a high form of love which is very powerful in causing relationships to get close and strong. Also when we take initiative and meet a need in someone else’s life we earn the right from God to influence that person in their character growth and closeness to Jesus.

Jesus is the ultimate example of this form of submission. He saw that we had a need, our sins needed to be taken care of. The Father, Son, and Holy Spirit took initiative, and while we were yet sinners Christ died for us. In the Garden of Gethsemane, He expressed a strong desire not to go through with dying for us, but it was the only way we could be forgiven so He submitted to our needs over His desire. “ Have this attitude in yourselves that was in Christ Jesus.”

Over the years of working with people with various sin habits and addictions and seeing some overcome the bondage they were in and others struggle for year’s sometimes gaining some ground and then back they fell where they were. I would give counsel and advice that some seemed able to follow and do but others struggled big time trying to consistently follow the disciplines. As I worked with various people over the years it was a complicated thing trying to find keys to success. Every person was different and seemed to have various issues that were contributing factors to their struggle. With some there were events in their past that seemed to cement them into a place of no growth or change. Getting past those often took a lot of time.

But with all the differences and variables in people’s journey toward holiness, there seemed to be several common characteristics. One was a deep and genuine grieving over their failures in life and the longing to conquer them.

Psalms 51:3 For I know my transgressions, And my sin is ever before me.

Psalms 51:17 The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit;
A broken and a contrite heart, O God, You will not despise.

A second was a total and complete admission that they couldn’t win this war without God’s help and strength, the cry to God for help was loud and clear.

Psalms 18:6 In my distress I called upon the Lord,
And cried to my God for help;
He heard my voice out of His temple,
And my cry for help before Him came into His ears.

And the third was a lot of help from others that was sought after humbly. The help from others was mostly in the form of encouragement and prayer, lots of prayer.

Hebrews 3:13 But encourage one another day after day, as long as it is still called “Today,” so that none of you will be hardened by the deceitfulness of sin.

James 5:16 Therefore, confess your sins to one another, and pray for one another so that you may be healed. The effective prayer of a righteous man can accomplish much.

Matthew 16:18 “I also say to you that you are Peter, and upon this rock I will build My church; and the gates of Hades will not overpower it.”

The book of Nehemiah is all about rebuilding the wall of Jerusalem that had been torn down by the armies of Nebacanezar. It was a major miracle of achievement as a bunch of peasants rebuilt the wall in 52 days while being harassed by neighboring tribes of people.

Exodus 25 through 40, 15 chapters was all about building the tabernacle. Much of 1 and 2 Kings, and 1 and 2 Chronicles is all about Solomon building the First Temple. The book of Haggai is all about rebuilding the 2nd Temple after it had been torn down by the army of Nebacanezer, and half of Ezekiel is about building the third temple.

When Jesus said that He would build His church, He obviously wasn’t talking about a building made out of rocks and wood, but a spiritual house made with people. Today the temple of the Holy Spirit is each believer’s body and the church gathered is a spiritual house and each believer is a living stone, and each local church is a temple of God.

1 Corinthians 3:16 Do you not know that you are a temple of God and that the Spirit of God dwells in you?

The church is the temple of God, the church is the body of Christ, the Church is the Bride of Christ, the church is the champion of the gospel, and the church is the hope of the world.

Jesus is building His church today in spite of all the critical statements made about the church. He is building His church using willing, committed people. Flawed people, but people who love Jesus, and people who love His church like He does. I have spent my entire adult life building on His church, and it has been a very rewarding life. Every Christian ought to be plugged into a local church using their gifts, time, energy, and money to build their church and make her beautiful for the bridegroom, Jesus. At the “Judgment Seat of Christ” the rewards that we receive will be mostly based on what we have done for His Bride, the church, our church.