There is no doubt that prayer literally influences men and nations in accordance with God’s promises and purposes. Ask the Holy Spirit to give you a similar burden and leading for our country or another nation or group of people. Maybe it will be China, South Asia, Africa, Europe, South America, or whatever. When He does, obediently step out in faith with it, pray, fast, ask and keep on asking, and believe God’s promises.
Goal setting involves aiming. You have to have a target at which to aim. The opposite of aiming is aimlessness. Paul said, “Aim for perfection” (2 Corinthians 13:11, NIV). Let us aim for perfection in all that we do for the Lord and He will take care of the results.
There is only one Person in the universe worthy of our praise, and that is our wonderful Creator and Savior. “Worthy is the Lamb, who was slain, to receive power and wealth and wisdom and strength and honor and glory and praise!”
God desires our persistence, no doubt because it demonstrates our seriousness and sincerity. In Matthew’s gospel where our Lord Jesus says, “Ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you” (KJV), scholars explain that the Greek words really mean to “keep on asking, keep on seeking, and keep on knocking.” It does not mean a one-time, half-hearted request.
When I began to practice loving by faith, I found that conflicts with other individuals seemed to disappear, often miraculously.
I remember the day my youngest daughter suggested “family therapy.” My immediate reaction was that my daughter was simply trying to deflect her issues on me instead of going through the hard work that she needed to do. How wrong I was! As we went through therapy together, I learned what Jesus so wisely taught: that you must first get healthy yourself in order to be any help to another.
As a Christian abides in Christ, living in the fullness of the Spirit, the fruit of the Spirit is developed and the Christian becomes more mature spiritually. The maturing of the fruit of the Spirit is a lifetime process that goes on continually as Christ-like characteristics are being formed in the life of the Christian. Some Christians give greater evidence of the fruit of the Spirit than do others because of a greater degree of yielding to His working.
The more we acknowledge ourselves to be dead to sin and surrender to our Lord Jesus Christ and His life within us, and the more we allow Him through the power of the Holy Spirit to live out His life through us, the more evident will be the fruit of the Spirit.
God tells us if we go about faith in small ways, our returns will be small. But if we go about faith in big ways the harvest will be huge – not only in our lives, but in the lives of others. But whatever you choose to invest whether it’s your time, your heart, your resources, whatever, God calls you and me to do so with a cheerful heart. You choose to do it, because you want to, not because you have to!
