Let us praise the Lord! Come let’s praise the Lord. He is good and His mercy endureth forever. Blessed Redeemer, we thank You, we honour Your Name both and forever. In Your favour is life; thank You Jesus. For all that concerns us will be perfected by You. Glory be to God Almighty.
How pleasant it for us to dwell in the presence of God. For in His presence are fullness of joy, gladness, peace. Therefore I will rejoice and be glad at all time for my Lord is good and His mercies endureth forever.
Thank God Wednesday is here and will be praying by help of Holy Spirit. For a prayerless Christian is a powerless Christian. Therefore, we will labour in prayer as if everything depends on it and we will also work as all depends on it. For it will not be said of us, that their hands are lazy. God forbid.
Beloved, the topic before us is encouraging us not just to pray but also to pray for one another. In other word, it is a call to intercede for others during our prayer time. We are not expected to be selfish in our prayer life. It was a common practice during the time of the early Christians, the saints prayed for one another but this type of communion is fast becoming obsolete in this present generation. Why? Someone wants to know.
It is possible because we always wants only our self to be blessed of the Lord, so that we can show others how blessed we are. It could be our quest of being the first among equals in this present time. It could also be possible because we are so occupied with self that we careless of what is happening in the lives of others. And even when a brethren ask for our prayers, it will turn to a gossip time instead of praying out the evils that is among them.
Do you know that the only time some people mentions names in their prayers is when they are seeking for vengeance from God? Let us change from such orientation. Our prayer is that at the end of today, we will find reasons to mention names in our prayers for blessings and breakthroughs in their lives. Praise the Lord.
We also agonize in prayer for the Lord to intervene in our situations and make the challenges before us lighter. For as we pray, we will receive answers, breakthroughs, solutions, word of wisdom, insights and strength as did our Lord Jesus when He interceded for us at the Gethsemane. More from the message below:
Being in anguish, He prayed more fervently, and His sweat became like drops of blood falling to the ground.—Luke 22:44
Prayer is not difficult to understand. It is difficult to do. When was the last time your heart so grieved for those you were interceding for that your entire body agonized along with your mind and heart? (Heb. 5:7).
We are a generation that avoids pain at all costs. This is why there are so few intercessors. Most Christians operate on the shallowest levels of prayer, but God wants to take us into the deep levels of intercessory prayer that only a few ever experience. Deep, prolonged intercession is painful. It involves staying before God when everyone else has gone away or sleeps (Luke 22:45). It involves experiencing brokenness with the Father over those who continually rebel against Him. How many of us will experience this kind of fervent intercession?
We long for Pentecost in our lives and in our churches, but there is no Pentecost without Gethsemane and a cross. How do we become mature in our prayer life? By praying. When we do not feel like praying is precisely the time we ought to pray. There are no shortcuts to prayer. There are no books to read, seminars to attend, or inspirational mottoes to memorize that will transform us into intercessors. This comes only by committing ourselves to pray and then doing so.
Why not accept God’s invitation to become an intercessor? Don’t allow yourself to become satisfied with shallow, self-centered praying. Stay with God in prayer until He leads you to pray at the level He wants.
Beloved, the only motivating power that will make us to be effective in the place of prayer is love. Having Christ kind of love. He chose to go to the cross because that is only price that will adequately pay for the reconciliation desired by God. He wasn’t selfish even as a son. He wanted to see that fellowship that once existed between His Father and our first parents restored. Even those that accuse Him and nailed Him on the cross, He forgave while hanging on the cross. He was not bitter at all about the whole event, as he was still doing the work evangelism while hanging on the cross, still trying to make sure that He save this two that the devil has already won to his side from the pains of hell. Did He succeed? O yes! Except the one that have chosen the way of destruction.
Beloved, is only when you chose to love as Christ did that you will go the way to win souls for the kingdom, you will not comfortable when things are not going the right way before you. So let us rise and take steps to love as Christ loves and pray as He prayed and is still praying for us:
“He that loveth not knoweth not God.” 1John 4:8
The distinguishing mark of a Christian is his confidence in the love of Christ, and the yielding of his affections to Christ in return. First, faith sets her seal upon the man by enabling the soul to say with the apostle, “Christ loved me and gave Himself for me.” Then love gives the countersign, and stamps upon the heart gratitude and love to Jesus in return. “We love Him because He first loved us.”
In those grand old ages, which are the heroic period of the Christian religion, this double mark was clearly to be seen in all believers in Jesus; they were men who knew the love of Christ, and rested upon it as a man leaneth upon a staff whose trustiness he has tried. The love which they felt towards the Lord was not a quiet emotion which they hid within themselves in the secret chamber of their souls, and which they only spake of in their private assemblies when they met on the first day of the week, and sang hymns in honour of Christ Jesus the crucified, but it was a passion with them of such a vehement and all-consuming energy, that it was visible in all their actions, spoke in their common talk, and looked out of their eyes even in their commonest glances.
Love to Jesus was a flame which fed upon the core and heart of their being; and, therefore, from its own force burned its way into the outer man, and shone there. Zeal for the glory of King Jesus was the seal and mark of all genuine Christians. Because of their dependence upon Christ’s love they dared much, and because of their love to Christ they did much, and it is the same now.
The children of God are ruled in their inmost powers by love—the love of Christ constraineth them; they rejoice that divine love is set upon them, they feel it shed abroad in their hearts by the Holy Ghost, which is given unto them, and then by force of gratitude they love the Saviour with a pure heart, fervently.
My reader, do you love Him? Ere you sleep give an honest answer to a weighty question! If indeed you do love Him. Show it by the way of your prayer today. Show it by the way of your evangelism today and onward, show it by the way of giving to those you are better than today. Mark my word “today” for you do not know tomorrow.
Your help or work of charity might later turn to benefit you tomorrow, you never can tell. Remember Joseph and his brother. The evil they intended for him later saved them from being extinct. God turned it around because He has special interest in Jacob.
Beloved, pray and also do the good work of charity. And the Lord will bless you and honour u.
Remain blessed in the Lord.
