Walking the Old Path

This is what the LORD says:

"Stand at the crossroads and look;

ask for the ancient paths,

ask where the good way is, and walk in it,

and you will find rest for your souls.

But you said, 'We will not walk in it.' "

Jeremiah 6:16

When I heard God's voice while reading this verse I wanted to know more about these crossroads and ancient paths. I took my Strong's Complete Word Study Concordance off the shelf and looked up the original Hebrew. I found out to stand at the crossroads and look, God is asking me to examine the pathways of my life, my modes of action. The word ancient or old (in the KJV) is olam. This word describes the span of time in which God is to be obeyed and praised. It also means a very long time. God wants me to ask for this path of obedience and praise. He also promises a reward for doing so--rest for my soul.

Now that I understand exactly what God is saying to me, walking God's good path must mean regular self examination, asking myself why I do the things I do. That takes time and reflection. Deep down I really want to walk the old path, but before I realize it, my body has stepped off the trail. Old paths are well worn and safe, so when I do leave the main road, I usually run into the briers of stress and worry. When I worry I am being disobedient, for Jesus said, "Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life" . . . (see Matthew 6:25-34).

Despite my mess-ups, I have still managed to figure out that obedience and praise do bring rest to my soul, just like God promises. But, the longer I stay on the old path, the more help I need. In God's Kingdom things are often opposite than the way it works in the world. Usually, practice makes you better, but with God, it makes us more and more dependent and this is where we find the abundant life Jesus promises (John 10:10). The more we listen, the more dependent we are, the more dependent we are, the better our life gets.

So I pray, "Oh Lord, may it never be said of me that I will not walk on your old path. I am asking you where the good way is. I now know that I need to ask you for the ancient paths regularly. Thank you for the rest you give my soul and all you will give in the future. I love you Lord, with all my heart, soul, mind, and strength. Keep me on your old path. In your precious name I ask all of these things. Amen."

The Prayer God Always Answers

"Father, glorify your name!"

John 12:28

“In this brief exchange we learn everything we will need to know about prayer and what it means to follow God in this life. For in every situation you’ll encounter you will be offered two options in prayer: “Father, save me,” or “Father, glorify your name!” One will lead you to frustration and disillusionment; the other to the greatest wonders in God’s heart.”

From He Loves Me: Learning to Live in the Father's Affection by Wayne Jacobsen

Jesus had a choice between two prayers: "Father, save me from this hour" (John 12:27) or "Father, glorify your name!" We have the same choice. We can constantly beg to be saved from our trials and pain or we can purposefully pray, "Father, glorify your name!"

When I read the statement above by Mr. Jacobsen, it struck a chord in my heart. I immediately began to count the many times I prayed to God and asked him to take away the troubles set before me--"Oh Father, save me from this hour--this week--this month!" No wonder I have been so frustrated. I couldn't count them. I had prayed "Father, save me" way too many times.

Today, I want to avoid frustration and disillusionment completely. To do that I have to change my mindset. To pray, "Father, glorify your name!" requires trust. Jesus had perfect confidence in and dependence on his Father. By his choice to pray, "Father, glorify your name!" and die on the cross for all mankind he made it possible for me and you to have complete trust, too. We just have to hold on tight on not let go of his promises. Oh, the unspeakable joy we can experience as we discover the greatest wonders in God's heart.

"Though you have not seen him, you love him; and even though you do not see him now, you believe in him and are filled with an inexpressible and glorious joy, for you are receiving the goal of your faith, the salvation of your souls." 1 Peter 1:8-9

Father, glorify your name! Amen!

True Confession Part 2

. . . for we have made a lie our refuge

and falsehood our hiding place.

Isaiah 28:15

Since confession is agreeing with God that we are not living or thinking right, I get the feeling God desires us to get to the root of our problems. Most of us don't set out in the morning saying, I am going to sin today, so searching for the reason we do the things we do will help us find the solution to our dilemma. The verse above reveals one of the main reasons we mess up. When we believe lies they become our refuge and hiding place in place our loving God.

Let me explain. Since the beginning of time Satan has tried to convince us that our worth is dependent on what we do and what other people think about us. Satan's lie has a ripple affect on our lives and messes up our thinking. This false belief convinces us that:

1. We must meet certain standards to feel good about ourselves (this leads to fear of failure, perfectionism).

2. We must be approved by certain others to feel good about ourselves, otherwise know as the performance trap (this leads to fear of rejection and attempts to please others at any cost).

3. Those who fail (including ourselves) are unworthy of love and deserve to be punished, otherwise known as the blame game (this leads to fear of punishment and propensity to punish others).

4. We are hopeless and incapable of change (this leads to feelings of shame and hopelessness).

This totally wrong belief system holds within it the root of most of our problems as Christians and ultimately leads us into withdrawal from the genuine living God intends and loving others (even ourselves).

God counteracts these lies with his truth-Our worth equals what God says about us. What does God say about us?

1. He says that we are justified by faith (Romans 5:1-2). This makes us completely forgiven and fully pleasing to God. We no longer have to fear failure, manipulate others or strive for perfection.

2. He says that we are reconciled by Christ's physical body through death to present us holy in his sight, without blemish and free of accusation (Colossians 1:21-22). We no longer have fear rejection or please others at any cost.

3. He says that he loves us so much that he made atonement for our sin (I John 4:9-10). We no longer have to fear punishment or punish others.

4. He says that we are brand new, changed forever and complete in Christ (2 Corinthians 5:17). We no longer have to experience the pain of shame.

When we think about why we do the things we do and agree with (confess to) God when we have done them, He will then teach us how to exchange lies for his truth. This great exchange brings liberty and godly richness into our lives. Praise the LORD! Let freedom ring!

A Listening Heart Learns About True Confession

Return, O Israel, to the Lord your God,

for your sins have brought you down.

Bring your confessions, and return to the Lord.

Say to him, “Forgive all our sins and graciously receive us,

so that we may offer you our praises.

Assyria cannot save us, nor can our warhorses.

Never again will we say to the idols we have made, ‘You are our gods.’

No, in you alone do the orphans find mercy.”

Hosea 14:1-3

Confession means to agree with. This tells us that with God, confession cannot mean making a comprehensive list of our sins and reading them off to him, the way we usually think it should be done. Confession must mean then that we are to agree with God about a certain sin his Holy Spirit has convicted us about. The verses from Hosea above show that we agree with God in three simple ways: 1) Agreeing with God (our sins have brought us down) 2) Claiming his forgiveness (forgive our sins and graciously receive us) 3) Turning to God--repentance (Assyria cannot save us . . . never again will we say to the idols we have made, 'You are our gods')

In my reading and studies, I have been profoundly affected by the book, The Search for Significance: Seeing Your True Worth through God's Eyes by Robert S. McGee. I'm not the only one. Billy Graham said that every Christian should read this book. Mr. McGee describes confession best, he wrote:

Confession does not make us forgiven. We have forgiveness because Christ

died to pay for our sins. Confession is a means for us to experience our

forgiveness, not a means to obtain it. Confession should be done with

an attitude of repentance, which involves turning away from sin and

turning to God. Repentance is not a matter of feeling sorry just because

we got caught. True Confession causes us to reject sin because it grieves

the Lord. Confession enables us to experience our forgiveness and enjoy

our fellowship with God.

In turn agreeing with God can look like this--Turning to the LORD and taking with us words along these lines:

Lord, You are the Potter, I am the clay. I sinned when I ________________. I understand that I am completely forgiven through your precious Son's death on the cross. From your word I know and agree with you that I am deeply loved, complete, accepted and pleasing to you, even though I don't act like it sometimes. I now choose to act like the child of the King that I am. I will turn away from falsehood and turn towards the truth for you are the way and the truth and the life. I will honor your holy name by ______________________.

Stand in Awe of God

Guard your steps when you go to the house of God.

Go near to listen rather than to offer the sacrifice of fools,

who do not know that they do wrong.

Much dreaming and many words are meaningless.

Therefore stand in awe of God.

Ecclesiastes 5:1, 7

You probably won't be surprised that whenever I read the word listen in God's word, I always linger a while and mark my Bible in some way. The passage written above is no different. We are to guard our steps when we go to church. Why would we need to watch the way we walk on the way to God's house? After looking closely at the first seven verses of Ecclesiastes 5, I see that they deal mostly with words of advice on proper worship. And since listening in the Old Testament is closely connected with obedience, God must be asking us to check ourselves before we worship. Are you and I walking in obedience or as a fool who worships God without even realizing that he or she has done anything wrong?

In these seven verses on worship we receive simple ways to improve our worship like not being quick with our mouths and keeping it simple--if we make a vow keep it. God is in heaven and we are on earth so let our words be few. So our hearing must be improved when we check our worship, check our mouths and check our steps. That way I hear it, we need to make our best effort to be purposeful when we head to church, not haphazard (like the fool who talks too much and thinks he or she always does it right).

Therefore may we all stand in awe in awe of our incredible God! He deserves pure worship with our ears open and our mouths shut. And maybe we should take off our shoes, too, while we are there (Exodus 3:5).

A Little More on Warfare Praying

The Apostle Paul often uses the language of warfare. When he does, we should pay attention and listen to God's voice through his word because this is where we learn. This morning in my quiet time God laid out three major ways to improve our battle tactics, some new, some old, some re-discovered.

1. Clothe yourselves with the Lord Jesus Christ. (Romans 13:11-14)
2. Put on the full Armor of God. (Ephesians 6:10-20)
3. Follow God's instructions in 1st and 2nd Timothy. Fight the good fight (1 Timothy 1:18) and endure hardship like a good soldier of Jesus Christ (2 Timothy 2:3-4), desiring to please our commanding officer.

Stand strong. We are more than conquerors through him who loves us.

Warfare Praying

Recently, while studying I ran across the phrase, “warfare praying,” in Warren Wiersbe’s BE (Bible Expository) Commentary. God used that phrase to send me on a new adventure in learning. In Dr. Wiersbe's teaching on 2 Corinthians 10:1-6 he wrote about how he met weekly with three pastor friends and together they united in “warfare praying.” They claimed God’s promise to cast down the wrong thinking that was keeping people from surrendering to God; and God did great things in the lives of many people for whom they interceded. Once the walls in the mind have been town down, the door to the heart can be opened.

I am asking God to teach me all about effective warfare praying. I desire to learn about this for all of you, my family (including my church family), and ultimately for all of the unsaved people who may read this blog, so the doors of many hearts will be opened. This caused me to go on a google adventure to find Dr. Wiersbe and ask him about the way he prayed. I found him at the Sherwood Baptist Chuch in Albany, GA of all places and wrote to him. They have a ministry there to pastors called 2ProphetU (www.warrenwiersbe.org) and have an online bookstore (www.SherwoodBaptist.net). Michael Catt, the editor of 2ProphetU, wrote me back and said Mr. Wiersbe is 79 years old and retired and does not e-mail, but is still writing and would forward my letter to him. He advised me to order the book by Warren Wiersbe called, The Strategies of Satan, which I plan to do.

After I found Dr. Wiersbe at his 2ProphetU Online Ministry, I was led to Sherwood Baptist's Book store that features a lot of his books. He has a new one which I ordered even before Mr. Catt wrote me back. It's called Life Sentences: Discover the KEY THEMES of 63 Bible Characters. What sentence will sum up your life? He spends about 4-5 pages on each character that ranges from The LORD GOD himself to Phoebe (Old and New Testament Characters). He even writes about his own life sentence. He is number 64. He wrote that he is not worthy to be classed with the Bible greats mentioned in his book.

Anyhow, back to my adventure. Within a day of praying to God and asking him to teach me about warfare praying, I received an answer. While reading in the Psalms, God made a promise in Psalm 144:1: “Praise be to the LORD my Rock, who trains my hands for war, my fingers for battle.” I like that he is trains our fingers, because this is how most of God’s ministry is done—through writing sermons, lessons, letters, studies, books (especially the world’s greatest book, The Holy Bible) and online ministries like Dr. Wiersbe’s. “The weapons we fight with are not the weapons of the world”(2 Corinthians 10:4).

I will keep you posted on what I learn about fighting with weapons that are out of this world. Mostly, what he has shown me so far is what I already know: 1. Keep my armor of God in place. 2. Stay alert at all times. 3. Pray without ceasing. I have also found out that you can pray even while Jazzercising. While dancing and jumping around we often do boxing moves, punching and uppercuts. Whenever I punch, I punch out the devil and all of his team--in my life and those I pray for. That would be YOU.

STAND STRONG IN THE LORD AND IN HIS MIGHTY POWER!!