I needed a car, so I accepted that. I take lessons coz otherwise I can't have one. I take that as listening to God. I also listen to God when my stomach growls and go eat something.
i'm not that good at reading the bible, prayerfully, so I suppose I just do what I can with what ive got. im jealous you guys on here can do that easily
hopefully, once I have progressed from understanding God,the simple things He requires of me, I may be able to progress into bible reading prayers, one in which He can show me more of my life and the wisdom to tackle it.
How about starting with prayerful focus upon 1 John 2:27. You have FAR better than just the Bible to which you can appeal for understanding and fillment in your journey to deeper understanding of the word of God. For crying out loud, partake of what's offered by the Lord to you and all the rest of us. Let the Spirit of the Lord set you free to receive from Him what He has for you. Stop making this a matter of effort on your part. You, like all the rest of us, will fail utterly when operating from the basis of your own strength and efforts in gaining understanding of the things of God. Come on! Never mind milk like unto the advertising of "Got milk?" No! The REAL questions is, "Got SPIRIT?" You, like all the rest of us here, have access to the Spirit of the Lord to fill us with Himself, and with His understanding. Just ASK! I did, and have continued to ask without ceasing, and, boy, does He ever honor His promises. We ALL sometimes need a swift kick in the pants (offered in love, of course) to get us up off the stool of weaknesses and procrastination. The seat of my spiritual britches are covered with the prints of loving kicks...from many a loving brother through the years. MM
Via....I would like to give you something to consider. YOU have a "Conscience". Your conscience is a God given ability so that you can know right from wrong in all spiritual matters. Your conscience is the lamp of God shedding lite on the dark path of life and it is the vehicle to which God speaks to all of us. Acts 24:16......."So always take pains to have a clear conscience toward both God and man." However, much of the time we ignore the voice of God speaking to our consciousness and instead listen to our fleshly side and then we live in defeat always asking......"why me Lord, what did I do to deserve this?" My advice.......STOP, SIT DOWN, and LISTEN and WAIT.
Praying isn't about effort, it's about connecting with God. Don't forget, God being God...is answering billions of prayers all the time. He's like...got an entire call centre helpdesk at His disposal. 24/7. He's not the telemarketer who calls YOU at inconvenient times.
Via, I find a problem I have with my Scripture memory muscle is I start relying on electronic concordances, bible apps with search engines and ugh, Google. The over use of these contrivances have in a way weakened my memory muscles. Or perhaps, God is not pleased I'm not looking to Him for the recall. Hmm, I wonder if Adam forgot what Eden was like after 900 years lol.
I
blue-lighted and in
MM's statement
red-lighted because these are
excellent posts that hit me hard this morning after yesterday's worship service.
Major, I'm sure you can identify with this.
What
Via said in contrast to what the responses were is a great example of our growing in Christ. Yesterday I had my
liberal theological moment before, during and after yesterday's worship service.
The
flow of the worship service was sloppy! I won't go into detail but many things just didn't go well. Afterward, I asked the leadership to meet with me in the library and the first thing I did was apologize to them. In my inner cup I was so intense and frustrated.
We always prepare for God's blessings for the Sunday worship service and especially the measures of preventive maintenance. Unfortunately, it didn't go well.
As they were listening, I confessed to everyone that deep inside, I was so frustrated over the mechanics of the service after everything I did to prepare my part. I let down my guard and instead of it being about God, it was about me, after all my efforts, yet many things went wrong.
The
liberal was God being there to allow me to figure this out, spiritually and Biblically. Then I was reminded in Job 2:10b,
Shall we accept good from God, and not trouble?”
After I opened up to everyone, thank God, they all understood. Then we prayed in accord and gave glory to God for His presence in not just the good, but also during the troubles we will endure.
I agree with
crossnote. I personally find that it's not always about how much we pray, read the Bible and apply the application of serving God that everything will fall into place, it's allowing the Holy Spirit to set us free from ourselves, exposing our weaknesses
when we do fail or when things fall apart. We have to be reminded from God, what is missing?
Things Happen. God knows this and as
Lanolin shared, always pray, connecting and let God be God.
Through it all, Major shares a profound lesson and by the prompting of the Holy Spirit's help,
Stop, Sit Down, Listen and Wait. It works!
God bless
you all for your posts. It gave me much to think about this morning.
