Category Archives: Agree with Others in Prayer

March 25, 2016

Health Food for Your Soul-Day 9

By marilynnchadwick

Where do you find strength when you feel weak? When your hopes grow dim? King David faced a traumatic crisis—his village was plundered and all the wives and children taken captive. The Bible tells us he “strengthened himself in the Lord.” God filled him with strength and empowered David and his men to recapture all that had been stolen(1 Samuel 30).

So glad you’ve dropped by for 21 Days of Strength. I hope you’ll find a word or a suggestion that encourages your heart and helps you grow strong.

I asked several friends for practical tips on how they strengthen themselves in the Lord. All agreed on the importance God’s Word as a means of encouragement.

But their answers for what this looked like were as varied as their personalities. As on friend put it, “I like to read and meditate on God’s Word. But with my creative and artistic side, I find it helps to actually draw the verses. Sometimes I embellish them with designs and colors. I meditate on the words of Scripture as I do this.”

Another has a more musical bent. Listening to worship music feeds her soul. After all, many worship songs are simply the words of Scripture put to melody. One young man prefers to hear the Word of God through preaching. Still another friend feels especially close to God through nature. So she likes to meditate on a special promise from Scripture as she walks outside. You get the point. God has wired each of us in a unique fashion—so it helps to experiment to learn how best to nourish our soul.

My friends all stressed that encouragement from other believers is vital. One confessed that sometimes he tries to find strength on his own. “Finally, after going around in my head, I realize I need to get perspective from somebody else,” he admitted. “And after a few minutes of talking things over with a friend, I realize that this was what I needed all along.” The Christian life, we agreed, is not to be travelled alone.

Each has discovered that giving hope to someone else who is hurting brings strength. One friend sends encouraging notes to those whom God puts on her heart–she’s done this for years.   Writing notes, she admits, always lifts her own spirits.  I’ve personally been on the receiving end of some of her beautiful words of encouragement.

God’s economy is upside down. We give life away, only to get it back in return. We grow strong as we pour out our strength to others. I’ve discovered that encouraging the broken hearted brings strength and even healing—both emotional and physical. So Isaiah 58:10 has become one of my life’s verses: “If you spend yourselves in behalf of the hungry and satisfy the needs of the oppressed, then your light will rise in the darkness, and your night will become like the noonday” (Isaiah 58:10 NIV).

How about you? What brings strength and healing, to your soul?

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December 18, 2015

Day 30: Love Hopes All Things

By marilynnchadwick

I’ll never forget the time a good friend listened as I shared the special dream I held close to my heart.  I hadn’t told a soul about my secret hope.  She looked at me and said with conviction, “I’m believing with you that this dream–which I sense is from God–will come true!”  Hope filled my soul.  I breathed in fresh resolve to keep standing on what I believed was a promise from God.  My friend was now “hoping with” me, and that gave me strength.  It was Jesus Himself who said to his followers:  “If two of you on earth agree about anything they ask for, it will be done for them by my Father in heaven” (Matthew 18:19, 20).

Through a remarkable series of circumstances, my dream eventually came true.  As someone once said, “Our dreams are the seeds of reality.”  My hope did become reality–and I feel sure the “prayer of agreement” with my friend helped pave the way.

Love does that, you know.  It shares the dreams of another.  Love hopes with someone.  When you think about it, hope is an action.  A verb.  It’s something you do.  The Bible even tells us that hope is a practical way to show  love:  “Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things” (1 Corinthians 13:7).

Love hopes all things.  That means that nothing within the realm of God’s will is off limits.  Love also bears, believes, and endures all things.  Love believes for our dreams to come true, endures with us when the going gets rough, bears with us when we get weary.  Love characterizes God, for God is love (1 John 4:18).

We are called to carry His love into a broken and dying world.  A weary people, desperate for the “thrill of hope.”  So as we reflect on 30 Days of Hopeful, let’s rejoice in the wonderful assurance of God’s love for us–let’s get a fresh grip on our hopes and dreams.

The Bible tells us a secret: Faith, hope, and love are eternal (1 Corinthians 13:13).   What’s more, love never fails.   And love hopes all things, so a God-given dream cannot die.  Because if our dream is His dream, He will work in us and through us to accomplish His will.

We’ve had 30 days to reflect on hope–30 days to rekindle the fires of our dreams.   Moving forward, let’s remember to be alert and watchful as we go into the world today: Look around you.  Whose dream is dying?   Is there a hurting face in your crowd who needs hope–somebody you can “hope with?” What more fitting season than Christmas to sow seeds of hope into the lives of those who are thirsty for hope.

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December 9, 2015

30 Days of Hopeful: Day 21

By marilynnchadwick

“Faith is the substance of things hoped for…” (Hebrews 1:1 KJV).  What things are you hoping for?  I come from several generations of school teachers.  If your mother was anything like mine, she reminded you never to end a sentence with a dangling preposition, such as “hoping for.”  So let’s ask the question another way: “For what things are you hoping?”  The King James Version completes the verse: “Faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.”  There’s a mysterious element, an “unseen” aspect to this thing called hope.

According to my “big fat Greek Bible,” the word elpis, translated as “hope,” describes an “inner, psychological sense of hope” and defines it as “confidence, eager anticipation, expectation, longing, or aspiration of the heart.”*

That’s a big hope—a risky, audacious brand of hope.  I don’t see a lot of “high hope” these days. People seem guarded. Cautious. Afraid to “get their hopes up.”  I don’t know about you, but I am more afraid of low-level living–without this kind of daring hope–than I am of falling from the cliff of high hopes.

Let’s ponder the question one more time: What are you hoping for? Let the thought roll around in your mind. Take it to the Lord and ask: “Lord, is this hope from you?” Then, over the next few days, seek Him with your whole heart.  Watch.  Listen.  Spend time in His Word.  Share your hope or dream with a wise friend.

Remember. Hope is hard. It calls for courage.   It’s costly and requires constant filling by the Holy Spirit.   Over the years, I have learned that to hold onto a high hope, you have to stay close to Jesus.

But with a God-given hope, the sticking power of the Holy Spirit, the affirmation of God’s Word, and a few good friends, nothing is too good to be true.  And nothing is too hard for God.

 

* The Hebrew-Greek Key Word Study Bible, NIV version, Spiros Zhodiates, ThD. Editor, (AMG publishers), is my personal favorite Bible ever!

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December 6, 2015

30 Days of Hopeful: Day 18

By marilynnchadwick

Sometimes it’s hard to hold onto hope in the middle of life’s storms. We may have to lean on the help of a few good friends. It was one of those times for the paralytic in Luke 5. We don’t know the man’s ailment; what we do know is that he was helpless. So his friends carried the man on a mat to see the Master.  Their way was blocked by the crowd, but they were persistent and clever. They climbed on the roof, hauled up their sick buddy, and lowered him through a hole they made in the roof—right in front of Jesus. Pretty daring!

But instead of rebuking them, Jesus (maybe with a hint of a smile) applauded their faith.  Right then and there, he healed their friend!

Let’s reflect further on this miracle:  Some men came carrying a paralyzed man on a mat and tried to take him into the house to lay him before Jesus.  When they could not find a way to do this because of the crowd, they went up on the roof and lowered him on his mat through the tiles into the middle of the crowd, right in front of Jesus. When Jesus saw their faith, he said, “Friend, your sins are forgiven”  (Luke 5:17-20 NIV).

Jesus saw the faith of the sick man’s friends and forgave the man of his sins. Then he healed him. As everyone watched, the man “jumped up, picked up his mat, and went home praising God” (Luke 5:25, 26). The onlookers were “gripped with awe and wonder” and praised God, too. Could the faith of a few friends have ignited such miracle? Was it their persistence? Their willingness to take a risk? Maybe all of those.

But I like to think it was also their love for their friend that opened the door to the miracle. They had suffered with this man. Prayed for him. Refused to give up on him.  Did whatever it took to get him to Jesus. Most important of all, they believed in the power of Jesus, Son of the Living God, to set their friend free.

These friends were true intercessors. They knew what it meant to stand in the gap. They remind me of some friends who stood in the gap for a woman I know. She was caught in the grip of addiction. She’d lost hope—even the will to live. Together, her friends waged a battle for her on their knees.

How they did pray! That little team of friends demonstrated the power of persistent prayer and loving action. They “made a hole in the roof” to place their friend at the feet of Jesus.  Maybe this is our calling as believers.  To be vessels of the same mercy we’ve received from the Lord. Agents of hope.  It was Jesus himself who reminds us that there is no greater love than to “lay down our life for our friends.”

I‘ll leave you with my favorite definition of mercy:  “Mercy is the willingness to enter the chaos of another person’s life.” 

Lord, make us willing to be Your vessels of mercy and agents of hope to a hurting and broken world. –Amen

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December 3, 2015

30 Days of Hopeful: Day 15

By marilynnchadwick

Some of your personal hopes and dreams may be big ones.  Enormous, in fact.  A baby. A spouse. The healing of a life threatening disease. God often says a quick “yes” to our prayers. But sometimes, He says “wait.”  Perhaps we have some growing to do before the answer comes.

The reality of life on earth is that we are always waiting for something. Always hoping.   Always dreaming. The challenge is to keep our hope alive in the middle of circumstances we don’t like so much.

We can learn to wait for our answers with joyful expectation. What we don’t want to do is give up. Accept the status quo. Lower our expectations, or worse, find ways to numb out. Too much social media, shopping, work, wine. There are plenty of pain killers out there. Problem is, they often kill our hopes, too.

Here are a few practical ways to kindle your fires of hope—even in the middle of a storm:

  1. First take care of your house–your physical house, that is. You can’t control when your dream comes true, but you can take steps to clean up your act. Be sure to eat well and get enough exercise. Get rid of known sin. Bad habits. Be ruthless. Hunt them down. Hebrews 12:1 challenges us to “throw off whatever hinders and the sin that so easily besets…and run our race with perseverance.”
  2. Take care of your actual house—your home. While you are waiting is a great time to declutter your surroundings.   It can be healing to clear out what you don’t need. Give it away. Simplify. Create structure. Order. Peace.
  3. Explore and develop your spiritual gifts. “Each one should use whatever gift he has received to serve others, faithfully administering God’s grace in its various forms” (1 Peter 4:10).  You’ll find your life as you give it away.
  4. Rest more. Go to the Lord often. Soak in the promises of His Word. “Come to me you who are heavy laden,” said Jesus, “and I will give you rest” (Matthew 11:28-30). It takes energy to fight the fight of faith. To hold onto your hope while you wait for your dream.
  5. Don’t travel alone. Find your teammates. God gives you endurance and encouragement through His Word to help you keep hope alive (Hebrews 15:4-6). He also gives us unity in spirit. Fellow believers. Prayer partners. The body of Christ.

 

 

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