We will explore all these different ways of 'stepping up' our rational service to God in this series of Beroean, but the combined advice and experience of our authors will be wasted if we do not have an attitude of willingness to both make positive changes to our lives to become more like Jesus and to become occupied with serving among his people in gratitude for the life that he lived for us.
But we know that in everything God works for good with those who love him. We ought always to pray and not lose heart.
If you’d to choose someone to pray for you, who would you enlist? Does it make a difference?
It makes complicated concepts like ‘intercession’ understandable, explores what it actually means to pray in Jesus’ name, and looks at how we should pray, and how long, among many other topics.
Remembering in whose name we pray will also cause us to reflect on what we are going to ask. We will surely not ask for anything dishonouring to God in that name, or anything that would harm others.
God is much greater than our personal longings and requests. And so I wonder, then: does disappointment in prayer actually give me the potential for an even greater knowledge and experience of God, as I live by faith in his inherent — and sometimes incomprehensible — greatness and goodness?
Perhaps in our private prayers we can find that our thoughts wander, or we go off on tangents. Praying out loud forces us to stay on track with what we intend to say to God, and helps us to remember who it is we’re talking to.
With time, we become more able to express our deepest desires and thoughts to God, and we find that our desires start to naturally conform to his will.
Giving God his proper place changes our perspective, and we can then trust him with whatever is to come.
The pressure to vote can come just as much from other Christians as from non-Christians, who may add the argument that Christians should vote for the party that will most closely uphold the teachings of Jesus...But we cannot count our voting for the party with the best social care programme as our service to those in need.
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