Talk of JESUS . com

Tag: Church

Prayer List
May our Lord and Savior, Christ Jesus, who we worship with the Father and Holy Spirit, kneed our impenitent hearts of stone into soft sands of His overflowing love. Amen.

To begin, let’s not forget that God is a Person who cares about us. In Christ Jesus we have a personal relationship with the Living God!

And by our intimate relationship with the God of Heaven, a spirit to Spirit relationship the Bible describes as most like that of a wife to her husband, we have the intimacy of the love of God and the ear of His loving heart.

Who, then, do we pray for? (and to whom do we pray?)

Can we begin any relationship without attention given to the intimacy of love between the one who asks and the person we would have answer?

IF you ignore the loving question of your loved one, how is it that you ask God and expect to receive an answer? His is an even more intimate relationship, not unlike that of husband and his wife.

Did I say, ‘His wife?’

Yes. Unless we are submitted to Jesus Christ as our Lord, He cannot be the Bridegroom of our hope. What a shame that He would say to you, betrothed christian, “I never knew you.”

Prayer is most personal with the Person of God!

If we pray privately, which I pray you do and will do so even more, the intimacy will give you more understanding of His will, alongside your dedicated devotion to the scripture of God’s written and living word. (I am too often guilty of a lack of intimacy in my prayer with God, a lack of time and commitment.)

Privately, (& trying to praise and thank the lover of my soul) I ask God my Lord for what I need, showing me what I need rather than what I want which is not in His will. I guess that I would say that I NEED God to sustain me in my prayer for my own heart-felt needs.

Corporately, that is in praying as part of our church or a prayer group, I find that prayers like my deepest prayers to God are sorely neglected by most of those asking ONLY for prayers for others, not confessing our own deepest hurts, needs, and desires for God’s love and the love of our Christian community.

We border on hypocrisy in our false, hopeful faces before our brothers and sisters in Christ.

If we only ask prayer for our family, friends, loved ones and others, while hiding the depths of our brokenness from those who would, along with God, sustain us in prayer; is our prayer request not disingenuous, an easier substitute for our own heart-felt needs for love and prayer?

Our God is a God of relationships – loving relationships. We dare not neglect His expected intimacy in our prayer relationships in which we would intercede for others by our own prayers.

I pray first for my wife, then for our three (grown) children. I try to do this more than daily. This has always been my first priority of prayer.

I try also to pray for my Christian family, as if they are nearer to me than my own biological family; for through Christ in eternity, they are also adopted alongside me into His body, through the Blood of His Holy Sacrifice of love for all of our sins.

Pray first for the person. Pray then for their need.

I try to bow my head and thank God in prayer before I eat or enter into some activity of the day. (I seek to do this both privately and publicly as witness.) This is not so much about the person, as it is for our immediate need. For example, my wife once insisted on praying for our safety most times we left home in the car. Our security and safety are needs, of course. Yet the soul of a loved one is certainly more important to God and to me than any thing I might ask for a trip across town.

Is it right that one who claims Jesus as “Lord,” should pray for help in winning in the world so that they might live comfortable in Christ?

Do you pray that you or someone in your family will ‘hit the Lottery’ and help answer your unanswered prayers? Do you pray for a blessing from God, nearer than the blessing God already sent for you to have and to hold?

We know the true answer in Christ.

Yet is not forgiveness and grace so necessary in dealing with the struggles and sins of our most beloved ones as they trustingly share the concerns of their own heart?

The false face of our prayer requests (sometimes)

Some of the sins of our lives and struggles of our flesh remain even more as anathema to ‘church’ prayers. Who will hear our cries to God, a crying out for help, love, forgiveness and grace; cries from some of our beloved Christian sisters and brothers?

Dare you even mention one of these at ‘church?’

Dare your brother or sister even mention: an abortion, adultery, a homosexual experience, pornography or any other such ‘christian’ taboo?

Dare any of our Christian youth even mention the passions and indiscretions which most commonly lead to the pregnancies the church must hide? For that matter, dare one divorced, widowed or unmarried for a time ask the help of a brother (sister) in prayer for the same?

Dare any ‘grace-faced christian’ even reveal these struggles and prayers to a pastor, let alone a dear friend of the church? Again, let us be careful not to judge too harshly.

You know why you put on the mask of hypocrisy.

Do you not suspect that those you love in Christ are not threatened by the judgment of your rejection?

How difficult it is for us to not judge (for even Jesus would not judge). I am guilty. May the Lord have mercy on me, for I endure the punishment of His curse. Yet I include loved ones guilty of each or these sins just mentioned and more in my prayers to God.

If God can forgive them (should they turn to His love), how can I not also pray for their repentance and return to God through the same Blood of Christ Jesus shed for me?

David committed adultery with a woman and murdered her husband! Yet when the man after God’s own heart finally repented, David prayed:

Against you, you only, have I sinned
and done what is evil in your sight,
so that you may be justified in your words
and blameless in your judgment. – Psalm 51

How difficult it is for us to reprove in love – give a Christian sinner the help for which they have asked God in their own deepest prayer. How difficult to love AND forgive those most dear to us.

Yet by the Blood of Christ, God has covered even our sins of today (in addition to those long past).

Blessed is the one whose transgression is forgiven,
whose sin is covered. – Psalm 32:1

The revelation of God’s love for us is in Christ Jesus, who died on the Cross and IS risen! He hears our pray. Jesus hears our plea. He is revealed to us. We are freed by his blood.

Amazingly, by his blood, we are made His Priests and His intercessors!

Revelation 1:5 … and from Jesus Christ the faithful witness, the firstborn of the dead, and the ruler of kings on earth. To him who loves us and has freed us from our sins by his blood.

To him who loves us and has freed us from our sins by his blood 6 and made us a kingdom, priests to his God and Father, to him be glory and dominion forever and ever. Amen.

Help us, God. Help us, beloved believer. We all need prayer. Allow us, as His Priests to intercede for those near and dear to our hearts and our souls.

Who is important in your life?

Are you praying for your VIP in humble humility to God and asking your loving brothers and sisters in Christ to stand by you in prayer for their needs?

Who is most import in God’s will?
- A husband to his wife &
- A wife to her husband.
- BOTH parents to every child.
- a loving father to all of his children, at home and by example in Christ,
- a nurturing mother to all of her children, at home and by example in Christ.
We all FAIL in some of these most important relationships God expects from us in His love, don’t we?

So why not ask God, with whom we have a personal relationship in prayer, to help us to do what is right in His will and not our own?

And why not ask our most intimate of friends, Christian brothers (sisters), who care for us in Christ deeply, to support us in prayer for these same relational needs for the VIP’s of our daily life? Sometimes the difficulty of these struggles of life are more appropriate for a small group of believers or even one life-minded brother (or sister) in the Lord, than for the prayer list of the entire church (often as fodder for speculation and gossip).

It seems the ‘perfect christians’ must go to some other church.

OR perhaps some we know just hide behind their masks of Christ’s perfection.

Let us, dearly beloved of Christ Jesus, love them as He has loved us.

Let us bow down before the Lord our God in great humility, with hearts overflowing in love and pouring forth forgiveness, through our prayers for for the family of Christ Jesus. Amen.

How may I pray for you, adding you to my personal prayer list?

Please comment. If you would like any of our readers to also pray for you, please share your personal prayer needs with us.

(IF you would rather have your request remain private, please begin your comment with the word, ‘Private,’ and I will not post it publicly.)

Pray also for me, that I might return to a purer committed faith in God to both hear and answer my ceaseless prayers for my most beloved.

Roger Harned, author and site administrator
February 1, 2015
Woe!

Micah 7: 5 Put no trust in a neighbor;
have no confidence in a friend;
guard the doors of your mouth
from her who lies in your arms

8 Rejoice not over me, O my enemy;
when I fall, I shall rise;
when I sit in darkness,
the Lord will be a light to me.
9 I will bear the indignation of the Lord
because I have sinned against him,
until he pleads my cause
and executes judgment for me.
He will bring me out to the light;
I shall look upon his vindication.

He does not retain his anger forever,
because he delights in steadfast love.
19 He will again have compassion on us;
he will tread our iniquities underfoot.

Matthew 10

32 So everyone who acknowledges me before men, I also will acknowledge before my Father who is in heaven, 33 but whoever denies me before men, I also will deny before my Father who is in heaven.

Not Peace, but a Sword

34 “Do not think that I have come to bring peace to the earth. I have not come to bring peace, but a sword. 35 For I have come to set a man against his father, and a daughter against her mother, and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law. 36 And a person’s enemies will be those of his own household. 37 Whoever loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me, and whoever loves son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me. 38 And whoever does not take his cross and follow me is not worthy of me.

Matthew 11:17 “‘We played the flute for you, and you did not dance;
we sang a dirge, and you did not mourn.’

Woe to this generation as well! For our sin and neglect of the Lord’s household, the family of Christ Jesus, stand in witness against the Blood of the Cross. We betray the Betrothed to whom we have given our vows and solemn promise.

Do NOT condone divorce, but call the adulteress to repent and sin no more.

Division Among the People

John 7: 40 When they heard these words, some of the people said, “This really is the Prophet.” 41 Others said, “This is the Christ.” But some said, “Is the Christ to come from Galilee?

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Why are our faithless families, our faithless children, our faithless spouses not drawn to repentance? Why does the prodigal not desire to return to the Father’s house?

It is because the Father’s love and Christ’s redemption do NOT overflow from the hesitant hearts of the church.

Do not shun the faithful, but the faithless.

Acts:4:31 And when they had prayed, the place in which they were gathered together was shaken, and they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and continued to speak the word of God with boldness.

Acts 4:32 Now the full number of those who believed were of one heart and soul, and no one said that any of the things that belonged to him was his own, but they had everything in common.

33 And with great power the apostles were giving their testimony to the resurrection of the Lord Jesus, and great grace was upon them all. 34 There was not a needy person among them, for as many as were owners of lands or houses sold them and brought the proceeds of what was sold 35 and laid it at the apostles’ feet, and it was distributed to each as any had need.

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ALL, not ‘some,’ were filled with the Holy Spirit.

Those who believed were of ‘one heart and soul.’ The Church was not divided in witness: some for Christ, yet others against by their witness.

Believers were of one heart, filled with the spirit, filled to overflowing with the love of Christ Jesus. This is the witness of Christ to the world: that Christ Jesus is love, that Christians have the love of Christ for each other, even for those not of the church.

WE, the church, are (or should be) the new and redeemed family of God.

A New Commandment

John 13:34 A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another: just as I have loved you, you also are to love one another.

35 By this all people will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.”

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Are you, beloved of Christ, a disciple desiring to follow the commandment of the One you claim as ‘Lord?’

Woe! to the church. Woe! to those who witness by divorce against the Bridegroom of faithfulness. Woe! to this generation of hardened hearts, who have forgotten the love of our Lord for his family.

Woe! to those who claim the worship of cheap grace and the discordant noise of emotion from hearts easily deceived and broken but for a moment.

2 Peter 1

To those who have obtained a faith of equal standing with ours by the righteousness of our God and Savior Jesus Christ:

2 May grace and peace be multiplied to you in the knowledge of God and of Jesus our Lord.

… make every effort to supplement your faith with virtue,

and virtue with knowledge,

6 and knowledge with self-control,

and self-control with steadfastness,

and steadfastness with godliness,

7 and godliness with brotherly affection,

and brotherly affection with love.

8 For if these qualities are yours and are increasing,

they keep you from being ineffective or unfruitful in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ.

9 For whoever lacks these qualities is so nearsighted that he is blind, having forgotten that he was cleansed from his former sins.

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Woe! to those who shun the faithful, condone the unfaithful and forget the love of Christ Jesus.

January 1, 2015
Put away your revelries

and cleanse your whitewashed walls;

for the church is a soiled bride

and christians no witness of waiting,

no longer virgin and spotless,

uncovered in view of the world

naked before the eyes of the LORD.

Ezekiel 16

7 I made you flourish like a plant of the field. And you grew up and became tall and arrived at full adornment. Your breasts were formed, and your hair had grown; yet you were naked and bare.

8 “When I passed by you again and saw you, behold, you were at the age for love, and I spread the corner of my garment over you and covered your nakedness; I made my vow to you and entered into a covenant with you, declares the Lord God, and you became mine.

15 “But you trusted in your beauty and played the whore because of your renown and lavished your whorings on any passerby; your beauty became his. 16 You took some of your garments and made for yourself colorful shrines, and on them played the whore. The like has never been, nor ever shall be.

23 “And after all your wickedness (woe, woe to you! declares the Lord God), 24 you built yourself a vaulted chamber and made yourself a lofty place in every square. 25 At the head of every street you built your lofty place and made your beauty an abomination, offering yourself to any passerby and multiplying your whoring.

32 Adulterous wife, who receives strangers instead of her husband! 33 Men give gifts to all prostitutes, but you gave your gifts to all your lovers, bribing them to come to you from every side with your whorings. 34 So you were different from other women in your whorings. No one solicited you to play the whore, and you gave payment, while no payment was given to you; therefore you were different.

35 “Therefore, O prostitute, hear the word of the Lord: 36 Thus says the Lord God, Because your lust was poured out and your nakedness uncovered in your whorings with your lovers, and with all your abominable idols, and because of the blood of your children that you gave to them, 37 therefore, behold, I will gather all your lovers with whom you took pleasure, all those you loved and all those you hated. I will gather them against you from every side and will uncover your nakedness to them, that they may see all your nakedness. 38 And I will judge you as women who commit adultery and shed blood are judged, and bring upon you the blood of wrath and jealousy. 39 And I will give you into their hands, and they shall throw down your vaulted chamber and break down your lofty places. They shall strip you of your clothes and take your beautiful jewels and leave you naked and bare.

52 Bear your disgrace, you also, for you have intervened on behalf of your sisters. Because of your sins in which you acted more abominably than they, they are more in the right than you. So be ashamed, you also, and bear your disgrace, for you have made your sisters appear righteous.

59 “For thus says the Lord God: I will deal with you as you have done, you who have despised the oath in breaking the covenant, 60 yet I will remember my covenant with you in the days of your youth, and I will establish for you an everlasting covenant…

62 I will establish my covenant with you, and you shall know that I am the Lord, 63 that you may remember and be confounded, and never open your mouth again because of your shame, when I atone for you for all that you have done, declares the Lord God.”

Numbers 30:13 Every vow, and every binding oath to afflict the soul, her husband may establish it, or her husband may make it void.

Matthew 19

6 So they are no longer two but one flesh. What therefore God has joined together, let not man separate.”

“Because of your hardness of heart Moses allowed you to divorce your wives, but from the beginning it was not so. 9 And I say to you: whoever divorces his wife, except for sexual immorality, and marries another, commits adultery.”

Jeremiah 3:8 And I saw, when for all the causes whereby backsliding Israel committed adultery I had put her away, and given her a bill of divorce; yet her treacherous sister Judah feared not, but went and played the harlot also.

WHY do you celebrate? Why do you claim your fellowship is with Christ?

Is the LORD not angered by your licentiousness? Is the LORD not jealous for the love of the Bride of His promise?

Woe to you, churches! For you are like whitewashed tombs, which outwardly appear beautiful, but within are full of dead people’s bones and all uncleanness.

Why do you celebrate year’s end? Why do you call communion worship? Are these not an abomination of hidden sin?

Is your adultery not against the cleansing Blood of the Bridegroom of righteousness? Where is your account of Christ’s righteousness? Where is your evidence of Christ’s love?

Run. Run to hide from the wrath of the Bridegroom; for He will return to find you faithless!

Ephesians 5: ³¹“Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh.” ³²This mystery is profound, and I am saying that it refers to Christ and the church.

Beloved church, Bride of Christ Jesus, are we not whitewashed tombs? Are we not divorcing one another? Are we not unrepentant of our sin which we witness boldly before our worldly neighbors?

How then will we win others to Jesus Christ, if we can not even hold our own sisters and brothers in the Lord to His Holy standard?

Do we not impugn the Blood of Jesus sacrificed for the sins we commit over and again in witness against the Bridegroom of the Church?

For what partnership has righteousness with lawlessness? Or what fellowship has light with darkness? 15 What accord has Christ with Belial? Or what portion does a believer share with an unbeliever?

Why then, do we, Christ’s Church, act no differently than the world of unbelievers?

Joel 1

2 Hear this, you elders;
give ear, all inhabitants of the land!

5 Awake, you drunkards, and weep,
and wail, all you drinkers of wine,
because of the sweet wine,
for it is cut off from your mouth.

8 Lament like a virgin wearing sackcloth
for the bridegroom of her youth.

13 Put on sackcloth and lament, O priests;
wail, O ministers of the altar.
Go in, pass the night in sackcloth,
O ministers of my God!
Because grain offering and drink offering
are withheld from the house of your God.
14 Consecrate a fast;
call a solemn assembly.
Gather the elders
and all the inhabitants of the land
to the house of the Lord your God,
and cry out to the Lord.
15 Alas for the day!
For the day of the Lord is near,
and as destruction from the Almighty it comes.

Joel 2: 12 “Yet even now,” declares the Lord,
“return to me with all your heart,
with fasting, with weeping, and with mourning;
13 and rend your hearts and not your garments.”
Return to the Lord your God,
for he is gracious and merciful,
slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love;
and he relents over disaster.

Was your Baptism in Christ permanent change?

or just one more bath for the sin of your filthiness?

Is your word and your vow truth before God

or a lie for the world?

Put away your revelries, dear believer, IF in truth you worship the Lord your God and look to the coming of the Bridegroom of the Church, Christ Jesus, as your Lord.

For the time is near when the Lord will say, ‘Well done,’ or for the adulterous Bride, “I never knew you.”

December 31, 2014