What to do when we don’t know what to do... (Lockdown days)

1. Thank God that you are alive and able to breathe the air. Ask God why he has spared you?

2. Don’t be gripped by fear and anxiety as many leave this world. God is in complete control and our lives are in His hands.

3.Don’t be greedy to hoard more things. Spare for others and lend a helping hand to someone who is in need.

4. Skip a meal in a day (if you can) and feed the hungry and the needy ones (Isa 58).

5. Learn to be quiet in the presence of God and be silent before God.

6. Spend ample time in reading God’s word and meditate during these stormy times and record your notes as God speaks.

7. Keep yourselves industrious at home, cultivate a new habit, and share those fun experience with others.

8. Learn and master a new skill during this difficult time, that which can help you in the days to come.

9. Make a call to a friend who is in need of help, someone who is lonely and depressed that you can be a source of encouragement.

10. Set aside your mobile phone /gadgets for some time and spend quality time with your loved ones.

11. Create a blog and personally journal your thoughts about God, people whom you love, things that you cherish most.

12. Be wise and take all precautions in protecting yourselves (wear a mask, sanitize) and your family.  

13. As you wash your hands repeatedly, be reminded that the blood of Jesus alone can remove the dirt of your hearts (1 Jn 1:9).

14. Please do not forward immediately any fake news that you receive without verifying it. Let’s stop the lies.

15. Stay away from negative people and be positive in your thinking.

16. Learn to smile at others, it is contagious. You will not lose anything.  

17. Trust God, and do not fret (Psl 37).

18. Serve God in whatever ways he open doors for you (Rev 3:8).

19. Be always thankful!

20. Keep the faith and keep going through all your storms.

Why our prayers go unanswered?

At times we don’t see answers to our prayers. We even feel sometimes lets not pray. At the end we try to conclude that our faith is so small and God is ignoring our prayers.

Below are the seven reasons as a reminder to check why our prayers are unanswered.

1. When we cherish sin in our hearts

Psl 66:18 “If I had cherished iniquity in my heart, the Lord would not have listened”.

Jer 4:14 “O Jerusalem, wash your heart from evil, that you may be saved. How long shall your wicked thoughts lodge within you?

“Praying and sinning will never live together in the same heart. Prayer will consume sin, or sin will choke prayer” - JC Ryle

We battle with sin every day in our words, thoughts, and in deeds. Can there be a day in our lives without sin? As rightly said by Bishop JC Ryle sin chokes prayer. Sin and prayer are like oil and water and they cannot go together.  

Let us determine not only to confess our sins to God but also to renounce them to find God’s mercy (Prov 28:13).

2. When we turn a deaf ear to Gods word

Prov 28:9 “If one turns away his ear from hearing the law, even his prayer is an abomination”.

When was the last time we implicitly obeyed the word of God in our lives? Today, we have lot of opportunities to hear Gods word through various ways. What is our response to Gods word? We read most of the time for sake of others, showing how much knowledge of the bible we can display. God demands obedience on our part, not mere knowledge. James 1:22 exhorts us to be doers of God’s word rather than mere hearers of His word.

3.When we pray with wrong Motives

Jas 4:3 “You ask and do not receive, because you ask wrongly, to spend it on your passions”.

Our Motives could be sinful or self-centered. I know it’s quite difficult to analyze our motives every time we pray. Let us be conscious in the presence of the Lord not very careless with our words when praying. We often pray lengthy prayers for God to listen to us and our prayers seems to be unanswered. Let us pause for a while and give careful consideration towards our motives. May God heal our sinful and self-centered motives. 

4. When we are self-righteous and not humble before God.

Lk 18:9-14 “He also told this parable to some who trusted in themselves that they were righteous, and treated others with contempt: ¹⁰ “Two men went up into the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector. ¹¹ The Pharisee, standing by himself, prayed thus: ‘God, I thank you that I am not like other men, extortioners, unjust, adulterers, or even like this tax collector. ¹² I fast twice a week; I give tithes of all that I get.’ ¹³ But the tax collector, standing far off, would not even lift up his eyes to heaven, but beat his breast, saying, ‘God, be merciful to me, a sinner!’ ¹⁴ I tell you, this man went down to his house justified, rather than the other. For everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, but the one who humbles himself will be exalted.”

The parable explains it all. Humility is prerequisite in our prayer life. Sometimes we are too proud to be humble and boast about ourselves like the Pharisee in this parable. God hates self-righteous attitude in our lives. Rather let us be clothed with Christ’s righteousness and Christ’s humility in our lives.

Let us learn to pray with humble hearts and set aside all our self-righteous attitude.

5. When we pray without Faith

Mk 11:22-24 “And Jesus answered them, “Have faith in God. ²³ Truly, I say to you, whoever says to this mountain, ‘Be taken up and thrown into the sea,’ and does not doubt in his heart, but believes that what he says will come to pass, it will be done for him. ²⁴ Therefore I tell you, whatever you ask in prayer, believe that you have received it, and it will be yours”.

One thing God admires in us when we pray, is our level of faith and not our fluency. Max Lucado says ‘It is not the quantity of words rather the quality of words’ that matters most in prayer.

God’s word reminds us “Without faith it is impossible to please God” (Heb 11:6).

Faith has become a rare commodity today. In Luke 18:8b the Lord tells when the Son of Man comes will he find faith on earth?

(You can read my earlier blog article on prayer – ‘Try these ‘add ons’ to your prayer life’) posted on 16^th Feb 2010.

6. When we have unforgiving spirit towards others

Mk 11:25-26 “And whenever you stand praying, forgive, if you have anything against anyone, so that your Father also who is in heaven may forgive you your trespasses”.

We can offer lengthy prayers. We could be sound in our theology of prayer. But if we don’t have forgiving spirit towards others, it is not easy to get answers for our prayers. 

As we received forgiveness from God let us demonstrate our gratitude towards Him by forgiving others (Eph 4:32b).

7. When we rely on our own strength and not on God

2 chron 20:12b, 15b, 18a

Observe the following words of King Jehoshaphat:

“We do not know what to do, but our eyes are on you.” (2 chron 20:12b)

King Jehoshaphat sets an awesome example to all of Gods people by completely depending on God and to trust firmly that the battle belongs to God (v.15b).

In v 18 – “Jehoshaphat bowed down with his face to the ground, and all the people of Judah and Jerusalem fell down in worship before the Lord”.

Is our life going without prayers? I would encourage you to make prayer your daily spiritual exercise. It is not just praying only during the time of crisis. Everyday let us come before God and have an appointment with Him. God loves to hear our prayers. What really hinders us to go to God in prayer? Is it our unanswered prayers? If then consider these reasons. 

Thank you. God Bless!

O' what a Day to Remember!

I recollect this day in the year 2001 how Christ made a difference in my life. I accepted Him as my personal Lord and savior (7.4.2001) through a simple way but it has changed my life’s direction and goal. As I look back from now, I don’t have any regrets in making that decision. He has always been faithful to me (1 Cor 1:9).  On this day I contemplate the joy I had that very night I received Him in my life. All I had was a simple childlike faith to go to Him and confess my sins and by faith received Him as my Lord and Savior.

In this brief post I like to share how I led to that decision on that day and how significant it is. So that if you have not received Him in your life, you can confess your sins and receive Him by faith as your Lord and Savior. Will you? Trust me you will never regret for making this costly decision.

As I was young and energetic youth I was so active in attending church meetings regularly and had many Christian friends, also went to lot of Christian camps but still my heart was far from God. I still haven’t surrendered my life to God. I attended a youth meeting in our church at Coimbatore on 7th of April. That very afternoon I have come to know how John Stott, a good Christian evangelical writer, received the Lord in his life during his school days.

I dropped the preacher after the meeting in my bike to the nearby stop. While driving the preacher asked me have you received Jesus in your life? I just nodded my head but deep within I know who I am. That very evening I started to search my book shelf and found a book named ‘Truth about Jesus’ by John Stott. I started reading this book because I heard about this man that afternoon. Coming to a particular chapter –chapter 10 – ‘Reaching a decision’, Stott expounds the verse Rev 3:20 poignantly. It meant a lot to me that evening. I believe I was convicted by the Spirit of God and I confessed my sins to Him and with tears received Him through faith. Truly it was joy filled night to me. I ran to share to one of my friend next day morning about my new spiritual experience. He too was excited and prayed with me. O’ what a Day to Remember!

I beseech every reader of this article to think about your own life. Have you received Lord Jesus as your personal Lord and Savior?

Delay not for making this decision. Your life will be safe in His hands. God has a good plan for your future (Jer 29:11).  

Don’t try Him, rather Trust Him in simple faith!

Our response to Covid19 - Fear or Faith?

Life in this trouble some days are fearful and uncertain. We are living in difficult times. Faith will be tested and proved and for some it could be shaken. On the outset life seems living on the edge crippled with fear. Where we are heading towards and what are we going to achieve in this world? “No one knows”. Till now we were all chasing after the wind. Now, Life seems to be still and meaningless.

We have faced uncertainties every time and it is filled with sorrow and questions.

Covid19 has taken the Center stage in the world arena. Everyone’s focus are now set on the statistics that corona brings into human history. The death toll is alarmingly increasing, and the hope of people were set on finding a way out from this menace. Living life amidst all these challenges makes us feel so weak and sick.

Eat, fun, celebrate are all have tossed up and have become not so attractive words to us. Fear has robbed our fun. Trust in God has lost its grip and self-reliance has taken its hold. Can God be trusted in difficult times like this? We trust the man-made hand sanitizers that can kill the germs. But truly do we trust in the everlasting, mighty, and faithful God and his promises? How can we beat the odds and trust God completely? Isa 26:3 says – “You will keep in perfect peace, those whose minds are steadfast, because they trust in you”. There is imperfect peace because of imperfect trust in God. Can faith be truly our antidote? There is a constant battle between faith and fear. It’s a critical choice that we need to make.

Jesus helps us to overcome fear. Do we allow him to take control of our lives? Do we know Him personally as our Lord and savior? He is the only hope to this dying world. It is high time for us to come to him and confess our sins and repent from our wicked ways. To receive his pardon and his mercies are we too far off? He is truly a prayer away from us, call unto Him and He will answer you. And let us find solace and rest for our troubled souls.

Let God who is Sovereign answer our cries in this crisis. Our lives are in His hands. He determines the number of days we live (Ps 90:9-12). Let us not be gripped by the fear of death. He can heal the Nations, as He is the God of the Nations. He can heal the people who are afflicted and restore peace and health in this world. The greatest of all healing is salvation of our souls. Amen!

Are you BUSY in life?

Someone expanded the acronym BUSY as “Being under Satan’s yoke”. Hope we are not caught up in that rut race of being busy all the time in life. Being busy for the Lord is one thing, but often we are busy for some thing else. E.Stanley Jones said like this about Paul in Phil 3:13.For Paul it is one thing but for the modern day Christians it is forty things to dabble in. Are we focused in spite of all our busy schedules? If not lets pause for a while and ask Gods strength to slow down our lives and to be focused in what we do.Isaiah30:15b says “… In quietness and trust is your strength”. Let God alone provide the tranquility that’s needed in our lives.

Thinking of Missions lets dwell on Gods word in the following lines... Let’s ask ourselves, Am I called to do the things which I cannot do? Am I so weak to face the giants in life? (Read Judges 6)
Are we truly living for what God has called us to do? Heb10:23b …For he who promised is faithful. So let’s not give up professing our hope in him.
The thing we need to ask every time is that am I faithful to my God and to his word. Do I understand the call of God in my life? The one who called us to have fellowship with his son Jesus Christ is faithful 1 Cor1:9

Isaiah the prophet says in Isaiah 42:6

"I, the LORD, have called you in righteousness; I will take hold of your hand.
I will keep you and will make you to be a covenant for the people and a light for the Gentiles”

Firstly,
 Mission is saying to God – Take my life and use it for your Glory.
It is not giving a part of our life to God, but surrendering our whole being as an acceptable offering. Let God sanctify us and use us for his Glory. For some one said like this” God cannot use unholy instruments for his holy purposes”.

Secondly,
 Mission is being conscious of our life span in this world.
There is urgency in preaching the Good news.C.T.Studd very truly said the following lines. “Only one life it will be soon be passed away. Only what is done for Christ will last forever” Considering our short span in this world, let’s pull up our socks and do some thing for him who gave himself for us Eph 5:2

Thirdly,
 Mission is leading a content and fulfilled life.
Thomas Merton for 1 Tim 6:6 said like this “Gain is Godliness” is a demonic inversion of the spiritual maxim “Godliness is Gain”
Am I leading a fulfilled life? If not lets consider our lifestyle and alter it in the altar of God.

Lastly,
It’s not our duration in this world that matters, but it’s our donation that counts. In other words it’s not how long we live but how we live.
“For no matter how many promises God has made, they are "Yes" in Christ. And so through him the "Amen" is spoken by us to the glory of God” – 2 Cor 1:20

If you’re really challenged by the above lines please don't forget to put in your comments here.

for his Glory,
Clement.praveen [at] gmail.com