Sunday Praise and a Prayer for a Spirit-Filled Life
Tag: Repentance
The Call of the Shofar
For whatever reason, God put on my heart to look up and post the blowing of the shofar. I did a little research to find out some of the reasons it was sounded, and this is what I found:
“beginning on the second day of Rosh Chodesh Elul (and continuing until Erev Rosh Hashanah) the custom is to blow the shofar every day (except on Shabbat).” The Hebrew month of Elul is a time of repentance in preparation for the High Holidays of Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur.
“It is a wake-up call to sleepers, designed to rouse us from our complacency.”
Do you know what day is the 2nd day of the Hebrew month of Elul?
It began today at sunset.
“Yeshua spoke of the shofar blast from the angels who would ‘gather together His elect from the four winds, from one end of heaven to the other.'” (Matt. 24:31)
The eclipse took place on Elul 1, the same day that Moses went up on the mountain for 40 days and nights, the same day Jesus went into the wilderness for 40 days and 40 nights. The shofar signifies spiritual warfare, and God’s victory.
Listen to the shofar. Can you imagine it?
If you want to read more about it, I found these websites:
http://www.hebrew4christians.com/Holidays/Fall_Holidays/Elul/Shofar/shofar.html and http://www.jewfaq.org/elul.htm
Keep Believing
“And immediately the father of the child cried out and said with tears, ‘Lord, I
believe. Help my unbelief.’”
Mark 9:24
Twenty-seven and a half years ago I believed in Jesus Christ as my Lord and my Savior.
Since then I have had countless opportunities to believe in His love for me despite my circumstances, to believe He had a plan in the middle of confusing trials, to believe He heard every prayer, to believe He understood me in my pain, to believe He was not finished with me even when it felt like He was.
For some funny reason, it’s always been easier for me to believe in God for the “big” things rather than the smaller ones.
I knew God would provide us a place to live; I knew God would provide a job for my husband; I knew God would bless my little son at Christmas when we couldn’t.
But, oh, those countless “little” things… When I’ve trusted in my eyes more than I’ve believed; when I’ve trusted in my understanding more than I’ve believed; when I’ve trusted in my own effort more than I’ve believed.
And I wonder how much I’ve missed out on, how many more blessings I would have had if I’d taken that same belief I had at salvation and applied it every, single time.
“Abram believed the Lord, and He credited it to him as righteousness. “
Genesis 15:6
God puts a lot of stock in belief.
It’s not about what we do, it’s not about who we are, it’s about Whom we believe.
And there is only One worthy of our belief.
If we are going to be followers of Christ, we will daily, consciously, make the decision to take the belief we had at the moment of our salvation, and believe Him for everything else.
Why would I ever believe that Christ died for the sins of a singular, unimportant, obscure little girl who lives 2000 years after His death and resurrection, called her by name, and then somehow think He forgot about her afterward?
He hasn’t, and He never will.
My belief in Him need not ever waiver.
He sees each and every one of us, and He is intimately acquainted with our comings and goings, with our every trial – big and small, with every tear, with every, single, solitary detail.
Nothing gets by Him.
The truth is, it’s a choice. Every day we have the choice to believe in Him – to believe He’s there right by our side, to believe He’s with our loved ones, to believe He wants the best for us, to believe He’s in our futures, to believe He’s bigger, much, much bigger, than our past mistakes.
While we can’t lose our salvations, unbelief is as much a sin after we’re saved than it is before.
The absence of belief in Christ for a particular situation will create a vacuum that’s usually filled with fear, and that can create a whole slew of messes in our wake.
Choosing belief in Christ or to be moved out of fear will determine the decisions we make and the roads we take.
I know it’s hard to keep believing sometimes when the trials seem out of control, when the world around us is a big, complicated mess.
But keep believing anyway.
I know when I’ve stood in belief in my prayers for a situation, God has answered. It’s when I waiver in my belief in prayer that He waits until I stand on faith in who God is – my Loving Savior – to answer me. He desires belief because it is the pathway to our righteousness.
God knows we’re all a work in progress, though, that the sanctification of our souls is not yet fully realized, that it is what we and the Lord are moving toward.
As with every sin, when we repent – when we turn around and do the righteous thing – in this case, choose to believe in Him, and ask God to help us with our unbelief, He will forgive us and set us back on the right path.
We then consciously walk on that path of belief, in full faith and trust in Him – in who He is, in His plans for us, in His love for us, in His grace and mercy that are continually poured out because of His goodness and faithfulness.
“Father, please help us when we are tempted to not believe in you. To not believe in all you say you are. To not believe in your love for us. To not believe in your plans for us. To give way to fear instead of believing in your holy perfection and your promises to us. Please help us choose belief over fear, self, the world, or anything else outside of you. May our constant belief in you be witnesses of your glory and power. In the Name of Yeshua Hamashiach, amen.”
Preparation Day
“As you know, the Passover is two days away—and the Son of Man will be handed over to be crucified.”
Matthew 26.2
The timing of Jesus’ crucifixion was no coincidence. God’s timing never is.
It was Passover, a seven-day holiday commemorating the day some 1336 years before when God delivered His people out of Egypt from the bonds of slavery.
In the last plague carried out before their freedom, the Destroyer would pass through Egypt, striking down every firstborn.
But to the Israelites He gave this command: kill the Passover lamb, spread its blood on the doorposts, remain inside, and the Destroyer will pass over the blood-stained homes and spare the firstborn.
This action more than a 1000 years before Christ’s death foreshadowed the freedom from slavery to sin that would be given to anyone who would choose to find refuge in the blood of the Lamb of God.
“It was the day of Preparation of the Passover; it was about noon. ‘Here is your king,’ Pilate said to the Jews. But they shouted, ‘Take him away! Take him away! Crucify him!’”
John 19:14-15
It was the day before the Sabbath. In the Hebrew culture, no work was to be done on the Sabbath, so all the arrangements for it – the cooking, cleaning, everything, had to be done by sundown the day before, known as Preparation Day.
Christ died on Preparation Day.
The work given to Him by His Father – His arrest, trials, beating, and His death on the cross to pay for our sins – was completed that day.
And He rested on the Sabbath.
Because Jesus, the Perfect Lamb of God, completed the work given to Him – the shedding of His blood as payment for sins – anyone who takes refuge in Him, who believes in Him as Lord will be forgiven and freed from the slavery of sin.
And those souls can rest in their freedom.
But God wasn’t finished.
Then came Sunday morning. The guards, the seal, the stone, even death itself could not hold Him.
He triumphantly rose from the grave, showing His power over death. And because He did, not only do we have freedom from sin, but freedom from spiritual death.
Could there be any greater love? Any greater gift?
Though we are free from the punishment of sin and death, we still wrestle in our flesh until we are brought into the presence of Christ and fully enter into our eternal rest from these earthly bodies.
As we walk toward that day, let us remember that nothing in Him is a coincidence. His timing, His choosing of our trials, are all to prepare us for that great and glorious day.
Until then, in this preparation time, let us “prepare the way for the Lord, make straight paths for Him” as we “continue to work out {our} salvation with fear and trembling” in expectation of the day we enter our complete and eternal rest.
Heavenly Father, thank you for sending your Son to die for our sins in our place. Thank you, Lord Jesus, for obediently finishing the work The Father gave to you. And thank you, Holy Spirit, for all you do to help prepare our hearts for our day of eternal rest when you bring us Home. We are so grateful, LORD, for your love and grace and mercy in our lives. In Jesus’ Name, amen.
2016 National Day of Prayer
Friends,
Tomorrow, Thursday, May 5, is our National Day of Prayer.
If our beloved country were ever at a crucial crossroads, it is now. And if we ever needed an opportunity to come together on one day to lift up fervent prayers to Almighty God on behalf of our cracked and crumbling nation it is tomorrow.
I am personally brokenhearted at the direction I see our country moving, at the lives being destroyed and the hatred being shouted. We cannot continue to live as though there is no God, as if we can govern it or riot it or picket it or troll it all away. We cannot continue to just hope it will somehow get better. Hearts must be changed and only God, through faith in Jesus Christ, can do that.
It is time to humble ourselves and repent of our own sins first, and then pray for God’s mercy on this land.
I believe there is still hope for God’s peace to return IF we will each – in faith – seek Him for grace and forgiveness.
I believe He is waiting for us to do just that.
May His love and wisdom and discernment in prayer go with each of you.
“…if My people who are called by My name will humble themselves, and pray and seek My face, and turn from their wicked ways,
then I will hear from heaven, and will forgive their sin and heal their land.”
2 Chronicles 7:14