God Wants to do More

^{Dear Saints.  I would like to share scriptures from Ephesians 3:14-19:} 

For this cause I bow my knees unto the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, ¹⁵from whom the whole family in Heaven and earth is named, ¹⁶that He would grant you, according to the riches of His glory, to be strengthened with might by His Spirit in the inner man; ¹⁷that Christ may dwell in your hearts by faith; that ye, being rooted and grounded in love, ¹⁸may be able to comprehend with all saints what is the breadth and length and depth and height, ¹⁹and to know the love of Christ, which surpasseth knowledge, that ye might be filled with all the fullness of God.

     ^{Here Paul tells the Church in Ephesus about praying that their inner man would be strengthened (vs 16).  The Apostle Paul realizes that praying for healing, finances or other answers to minor or major issues that concern us is not the answer without first dealing with the HEART of the matter in the first place which is, our HEART.  In other words, his prayer for this particular Church was that their inner man would be strengthened first.  As an example, there is a lady I know who is often fearful about many issues in her life.  When a prayer goes up to receive healing, receive financial help or receive a specific answer to prayer for her, she does not seem to get over being fearful about one thing or another, even though many of her prayers have been answered in the past.  We need to first pray that this person deals with the real issues that are causing herself to continue to be fearful and have anxieties when it should not be the case for any Christian.  What good does it do when we do have answers to prayer, but remain weak in our faith in Him?  What good would it do when someone is sick and gets physically healed, but still has issues with bitterness and unforgiveness towards others?  What I want to encourage you is when we go to prayer, we need to ask the Lord to examine ourselves to see if their is any "heart issues" with us that we need to deal with. Just like David prayed to see if there was any wicked way in me and lead me in to the way of everlasting (Ps 139:24).  Nothing else mattered without first examining his heart.  When God encourages us to pray for our inner man to be strengthened, this would include our love for the Lord by first acknowledging His love for you and I. Another issue about the inner man would be to strengthen in our faith in Him by trusting in His total divine goodness and care for us. Because without having faith in Him, it is impossible to please God (Heb 11:6).  To know that an awesome God who created the entire universe beyond mans immagination wants us to know His love and care for each of us, who promises that He Himself never will leave us or forsakes us.  Also, our inner man would be strengthened in love, unity and peace one for another, because the measure of our relationship with one another is the measure of our relationship with the Lord.} 

     When you read verses 18 and 19 along with that text, it would appear that in order for our "inner man" to be strengthened, we first need to know the greatness of the Love of God for each one of ourselves personally before we can be strengthen within.  Therefore, if we pray all sorts of prayer, but still deal with fears and anxieties, we as Christians should never be dominated by fear when we should know the awesome magnitude of how much God loves us.  When we see ourselves having fears, doubts, this is what we need to deal with before we should go to prayer for anything in general.  Being fearful is not believing or receiving the truth about His love and care for us.  By dealing with issues that deal with our soul or any of our negative emotions, I believe it is vitally important to deal with our heart by humbling ourselves before God, confessing any area of weakness we may have (James 5:16) and ask Him to reveal these things to us and believe that He has His outstretched arms out to help and care for us in our time of need.  When God invites us to go to prayer, He wants to do so much more for each of us.  When we pray for healing of a physical or emotional wound, He wants to go further and deal with deeper issues by restoring our inner man, building our hope and faith in Him by being bold and courageous because we have the confidence of His divine love and care for each of us.  It is like Christ who tells His Disciples not to forsake the weightier matters that are the real issue (Matt 23:23).

     The Lord gave me an illustration of an electric socket that had burnt edges around the perimeter where you insert your plug reseptable.  Many of our prayers are compared to removing the cover and only replacing it while forsaking the real issue which is hidden inside the wall itself that has a frayed and faulty wiring which continued to be a hazard.  When we pray superficial prayers, God always wants to go further and remove the faulty wires from behind the doors of our heart and help us deal with the real issues that really matter.  Sometimes, it is going to be hard, but always brings the peaceable fruit of righteousness in the end (Heb 12:11). So when you feel that God is breaking through the walls around your heart, He wants to replace that "faulty wire" of harbouring possible bitterness, resentment, surrendering our past hurts to Him to deal with and/or many other possible issues that may often hinder our growth in Him.  God not only wants to heal, but He wants to deliver, restore, rebuild and make us strong in Him because of the strengthening of our inner man (our renewed love relationship with Him, our renewed confidence in Him and our love relationship with each other as Christians are called to have). 

    

     Not dealing with the inner man and not dealing with the real issues we need to face up to will do us no good in the long run. Just like an unsaved man who wants to be healed, we know that it is much more important to pray for his salvation before any healing takes place, because healing without salvation will mean nothing in the long run.  Therefore, it is vitally important that we first deal with the inner man before we start asking God to answer any prayers we may personally have.  I hope you are encouraged to work with the Lord to allow Him to go deeper in the recesses of your heart and restore you fully so that in the end, the fullness of Christ may be evident through you (Eph 3:19).

Be blessed to browse my updated blog and both websites.  God bless.

In the Matchless Name of Jesus
Richard
Associate Director
Answers2Prayerhttp://sites.google.com/site/greatestbuilderforourlife  
http://www.answers2prayer.org/

Now thanks be unto God, who always causeth us to triumph in Christ and who maketh manifest through us the savor of His knowledge in every place. 
(2 Cor 2:14) NKJV

Developing God Confidence

Dearest Saints,

 

          When we fail to believe that His awesome power can work mightily through us individually, it is because we are still relying on our own strength and power to accomplish any task or mission we may be called to do, rather than relying on Him.  When we know how awesome He is and when we know how He can and is most willing to use the weaker vessels of the world (such as I), we should always have that confidence to do great things as His Children because it is His power working through us in the first place.  We need to realize the truth that He wants so much to use His power within us to be used to do the greatest mandate as His useful representatives or what I like to compare it as His Ambassadors.   We have to stop seeing what we can accomplish by our own strength and ability (which is by far very limited) and see how awesome He is able to empower us when we do the things out of love for God and for one another.  I find that we develop confidence in God when we reflect the words of David when He says how fearfully and wonderfully we are made in His image (Ps: 139:14).  To stop and consider the complexity of our anatomy in order to function the way we are capable of doing gives us a real appreciation of how we truly are fearfully and wonderfully made.  David didn't have all the facts like we do today with all the research man has revealed about the complexity of a human body.  Yet, He still attests to this many centuries ago about how wonderfully God had created him when we should do so that much more when we have much more evidence of how wonderfully a human body functions the way it does in its entirety.  I don't believe that anyone can ever know everything about a human body, mind, soul and spirit in their entire lifetime.  And yet, God created a human being with every cell, chromosome, muscles, sinews, bones, flesh having mind, soul and spirit in place perfectly within one day.  When we see how everything in the universe is set in place and know that all things are held by the power of His Word (Heb 1:3), we see how He is able to set and keep everything in its proper place who is a God of order.  It's amazing when I realize I have a hard time doing two or three things at once at the best of times! 

 

          When we factor human life, scientists explain that 41 factors are required to take place for a human life to be able to exist.  That is like comparing 1 to several trillions upon trillions (of which one trillion alone is counting 1 million, a million times).  It is an astronomical number which is the chance of any of us could ever exist just by chance or a cosmic explosion or other means other than an awesome creator which many people can foolishly consider!  Some of the factors include the perfect size of the earth that we inhabit, which allows us to weigh a reasonable amount.  Had we lived on a planet like Jupiter, with its large gravitational pull, a 100 pound person would weigh around 236 pounds.  So a normal 200 lb man would double that weight on Jupiter.

Life on Earth is possible because of a coincidental combination of factors:

• The habitable zone: Earth is at the right distance from the Sun to have liquid water on its surface, and for the atmosphere to be at a reasonable temperature for life to occur. It also doesn't stray too far from the optimal distance, making the temperature stable.
• Stable planet: we aren't inundated with lava every day. This gives life the chance to happen without being destroyed instantaneously.
• Water: we have it. necessary for life, with the right amount of water that covers 70% of the globe.
• Atmospheric composition: began with plenty of carbon oxides and simple organic compounds with very little free oxygen; an important atmosphere for biogenesis.

Here is a few to add:

• Axial tilt. Our planet has a reasonable and more importantly quite stable tilt to it (around 23-24 degrees off axis). This lets the weather be relatively stable and thus becomes a candidate for life.
• Composition of the planet and its atmosphere. We need water, carbon, hydrogen, oxides (like oxygen gas and ozone), carbon oxides, and nitrogen gas and more.
• An iron core; our planet would be harmed by the suns radioactive rays without an iron core to protect us (mostly).
• The planet continues to allow life to exist - while most planets would not follow this.
• We need a moon that is about 1/3 the size of Earth to regulate our orbit.
• Earth's path has to be a good ellipse around the sun.  As the earth is approx 93 million miles from the sun, we would not be able to inhabit the earth if we were a million miles closer or a million miles further away.
• The earth remains perfectly in its orbital path every day and throughout every year, year after year,
• Earth has to be the right size and not moving too fast and the remaining factors continue to create equal days/nights and seasons throughout the year, etc...etc

 

These are just a fraction of the 41 factors that allow life to exist in its many variations, from humans, to animals, insects, birds, marine life and all matters that are both visible and invisible to the eye in order to sustain life.

 

          When we think of these attributes, we need to see how awesome our God is, who is the same One who lives within us when we receive His dearly beloved Son to be our Lord.  For those who have not received Him, He desires to inhabit our lives with His Goodness and awesomeness and reveal His glory through His Children.  When we consider these factors and many others, how can we not have that reverential awe of Him.  No wonder God has a right to be angry with nations who do not have that reverential fear or awe of Him (Jer 2:19).  Therefore, I find it important just to meditate on these attributes.  To just stop and see the starry skies some night on a clear sky and know that the Heavens do declare His glory (Ps 19:1).  Meditating on how awesome He is to sustain and preserve life in its entirety should give us confidence in what He is able and willing to do when we see the reverential fear and awe we should have of Him.  When we learn to be still before Him, we can know that He is in fact an awesome God (Job 37:14; Psalm 46:10) which is a start of developing that strong God confidence we should have.

Be blessed to browse below websites.  God bless.
In the Matchless Name of Jesus
Richard
Associate Director
Answers2Prayer
http://sites.google.com/site/greatestbuilderforourlife  http://www.answers2prayer.org/