Pray in the Best of Times

Pray in the Best of Times
                                       

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From Godly Woman's Daily Photo

Far too often people wait for the bad times to pray and get stuck in what to say.  I was very guilty of that in my earlier days.  Often when that is done, praying is a struggle because we have ignored God and then in embarrassment we want and expect His help, we then have no confidence in our prayers, and sometimes hardly know how to get started.  Like a good parents and their children, God wants to hear from His children.  

For many, in the good times, in the Best of Times we often think too highly of ourselves in our achieved accomplishments often thinking "I did it."  When in fact it was God who gave us the brain and body to accomplish the task. In seeking achievement we are going to run into bumps in the road to achievement and sometimes we will fail.  Prayer is the best way to learn how to handle achievement and the Glorious Way to learn how to accept failure.  In a prayerful life the least we can do is (1)- thank God for our abilities to achieve, and (2)- thank Him for teaching us the attitude that failure is unavoidable and just a stepping stone to success.

Praying in the Best of Times helps us in many ways, but it especially prepares us for our praying in the  Hard Times.  Here are just a few thoughts to encourage prayer during our "Best of Times":

1-  Prayer helps control our ego.   "I" is one of the most dangerous words in our language.  It get us in more trouble than we like to think about.  Too often "I" often leads us from the good times to the bad times (*1).

2-  In all our times, praying for others is important.  Praying for others helps us to be thankful for what we have and helps control our wants.  In being thankful for what we have it leads to giving up some of the desires and wants of what we don't have.  But best of all, praer is one of the chief tools to help us achieve a greater Personal Relationship with God, Jesus, and the Holy Spirit.

In praying for others, do not be shy about asking for prayers. Pray for friends in their hard times, but pray too for others in their Praise filled times (their good times) giving God the glory for a friends good fortunes.  Tell them you pray for them especially if they are not prayerful. When we ask for prayers it shows our Faith in God, Faith in prayer, and sets a good example for others.  It is a great Gift to others in praying for them, especially if they do not pray much.  When a friend sees the power of prayer they may just become more prayerful.

3-  Praying helps us forgive others.  In forgiving others we remove anger and hate from our lives and this leads us to better relationships with all people around us.  It also helps keep us out of trouble since seeking revenge can often ruin our lives.

4-  Forgiving others helps us become aware of our own sin and short comings.  Maybe in our work we hurt someone by a word or deed.  In our ego we might not recognize we have upset them.  What if that person is part of your work team, it could lead to team related problems and possible failures of the team.  In achieving humble prayers we find there is no room for our ego.

5-  In forgiving others we come to realize we need forgiveness too.  One of the best petitions we can have in our humble prayers is, "Lord, I love you, please forgive me of my sins."  This helps clear our mind for better vision of our needs and wants, and knowing the difference.  

6-  It generally requires humility to realize our need for forgiveness.  It requires more humility to respond and ask for forgiveness.  In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus tells us "Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth (Matthew 5:5).  In the writing "Meekness or Boldness"(*2) it is explained that meekness (humility) does not require us to be a doormat for everyone to step on.  Even Jesus chose just the right moments of His battles.  The world's greatest leaders people remember most are usually someone of humility from a modest background.  This includes people such as Moses, Abraham, Jesus, Paul, Martin Luther, Gandhi, and Martin Luther King to name a few.  Humbleness and meekness does not make a person weak.  In the end, humbleness and humility gives us greater strength to work with people and overcome the barriers to what should be done.  It it key to Trusting our Personal Relationship with God and accomplishing the goals He wants us to achieve.

7-  Praying reduces stress in our everyday life.  To learn about this Google 'prayer reduces stress'.  There are many articles on this.

8-  Prayers in our good times teaches us to accept God's answers in His timing and the difference between our needs and our wants.  God is not in the 'wants' business but is in the business of supplying our needs.  Learning to live with God answered prayers in His timing during our good times helps prepare us to be patient in our hard times.   Experience is a good teacher leading to remebering the great lessons we learn in our patience.

9-  In our acceptance of Jesus as Lord and Savior, we receive the guidance of the Holy Spirit in our daily lives.  To feel this Spiritual Guidance, to understand it is there, and to know it is real, we need to pray and pray and pray everyday.... and learn to listen.  Listening and feeling the Spiritual movement in our lives is hard when you have no experience in feeling and responding to the movement, pushing, and nudgings of the Holy Spirit.  Pray to God to feel the Holy Spirit move you.

We learn to feel the Holy Spirit in our lives by Seeking the Kingdom in Bible Study, community worship, and prayer.  Practice in the Good times makes this easier in the hard times.  It is encouraging to pray everyday  "Dear God, Help me feel the Holy Spirit in my life, even when I an not thinking about it, please help me allow and feel the Holy Spirit lead me in all I think, in all I say, and in all I do, especially in the panic of my hard times."  Doing this daily and often brings great change in our lives.  It is a great sign of trusting God and trusting our prayers.

10-  Finally, we must learn that sometimes the answer to our prayers is not what we expect and sometimes the answer is "no".  In the answer of "no", we may find that our request is not a need or sometimes God is expecting you to wait for something better to come.  But, whatever the answer is, praying daily in the good times we learn and experience the answer is always exactly what we need and exactly at the time we need it.  In our Hard times and being a prayerful person, patience and confidence in our prayers is already part of our prayer experiece.  Learning to wait on God's answers in His timing of delivering those answers builds our Personal Relationship with God, Jesus, and the Holy spirit.  In that, God builds us as with confidence in our prayers.

Pray Hard in the Good times, the Best of Times,
                   so in the bad times praying is easier.

But, above all, Pray in all times, often, daily; 
                     praying is a gift of God.

Thanks be to God

© lonnie coggins

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Additional Reading:

*1   Ten Threats to Personal Relationships

*2   Meekness or Boldness

Behaviors that Separate Us from God

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© Lonnie Coggins
ldcoggins@gmail.com

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lonnie

Publication  0194

Praying in the Best of Times can be difficult if we let our ego take control of our life.  Praying in the Good times, the Best of Times is good for us because it prepares us, teaches us, and helps us to feel and know the need to pray in our worst of times.  Click the link to read some thoughts on praying and how it helps us, in all our times.  Share on your fb page as you are lead to do so.

http://lonnieadailythought.blogspot.com/2013/12/pray-in-best-of-times.html

Giving Thanks in All Circumstances, Part 2

Give Thanks in                                   

All Circumstances?   Part 2

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Click Here for Part 1 on Giving Thanks

Please read Part 1 before you read this part.

1 Thessalonians 5:

17  Pray continually

18  give thanks in all circumstances,       

      for this is God's will for you in Christ Jesus.

Thankfulness in all Circumstances?

For the longest time after realizing these words from Paul, I had a difficult time with "give thanks in all circumstances...".  He even says it is the will of God we do so.  You may be having similar thoughts I had as you have just read these words.  "How can this be?" "How could I give thanks when I saw my sons' foot after a lawnmower blade damaged and mangled it so badly?"  "How could I be thankful about losing friends in Vietnam?"

A great part of reading a scripture passage over and over and over is learning to understand what a passage says, and very importantly, what it does not really mean. 

The passage "be thankful in all circumstances...."
does NOT say that
we should be thankful for the circumstances,
it says
be thankful "in" our circumstances.

To understand scripture, sometimes Reading and Rereading many times a difficult Bible passage is one of the greatest of lessons I have learned concerning Bible study.  Only then, if necessary, consult a commentary. Then, pray for greater understanding and more wonderful lessons do come out of the passage.  In doing this, it is totally understandable that Jesus and Paul wants us to be thankful in all situations we find ourselves.  Why?  It is good for us!  It keeps us sane!

Being thankful and living in constant thankfulness is so very good for us for it helps us survive our circumstances, especially our difficult circumstances.  Often thankfulness comes most rapidly through prayer. 

I have a good friend in the Philippines, a school teacher.  She was kidnapped out of her classroom, taken far away from her home, and in the next weeks ransomed and brain washed to convert to another faith.  In times private with her kidnapped co-worker they remembered Bible verses, quietly sang songs with the other, prayed, and truly sought God's Kingdom for their lives.  She was not thankful for the situation she was in, but she learned to give thanks in the circumstance for the God that provided her comfort, love, and care during those days.  She was released with no ransom paid after her captivity of exactly 40 days!  She lived this verse 18.  But, more than that, to her credit and to God's Glory, she survived through feeling His comfort, care and love.

It was to her good that she and her co-worker followed what Jesus desires of us.  God, Jesus, and the Holy Spirit do not require anything of us where, through Them, we will fail to feel Their comfort.  Everything God requires of us is good for us, and everything good for us is God's blessings. 

Finally, in accepting the Bible as the inspired word of God means we do not ignore passages we do not understand but seek to find God's will in them.   In time, in rereading scripture, prayer, and with patience the meaning will come.  And in that attitude with this passage, we come to understand that we can be thankful in all circumstances but we just do not have to be thankful for the circumstances.

Having the feeling of thankfulness in all circumstances is exceptionally good for us.  Pray daily for this and come to understand this scripture in our ordinary little things of life so that during the hard times, we can better see the blessing of joy we can have and the thankfulness we can feel in all the times of our life.

Thanks be to God

lonnie(c)

© lonnie coggins

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© Lonnie Coggins

ldcoggins@gmail.com

If you desire to use any of these messages in a For-Profit manner you must contact me (email) for permission.  Typically, I will most likely give permission.

Please email me if you find any broken links in this message.

lonnie 


Publication 0182

It is hard th think about being thankful in our circumstance.  But, It is good advice when we truly understand what it means to do so.  Click the link for more on this.

http://lonnieadailythought.blogspot.com/2013/01/giving-thanks-in-return-to-main-menu.html




Public

The Gift of Being Thankful

The Gift of Being Thankful

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1 Thessalonians 5:

17  Pray continually

18  give thanks in all circumstances,       

      for this is God's will for you in Christ Jesus.



In June, 1970 I drove out my parents' driveway in tears.  I was 22 years old and I was headed to Lackland Air Force Base in Texas.  I was crying because I realized that I would never again live in my parents' house as a resident but only as a visitor, but it would always be a home I could come back to.  For a moment, my thought was a man should not be crying at a time like this, but that idea was soon replaced in thankfulness that I had a home to cry about.

For the 99% of those last 22 years including most of the time attending college, living in that house had been a great time of love.  I realized then and there I was thankful in being who I had become but understanding change was coming in who I was to be.  No longer would my daddy be around to discuss my problems, but rather and mistakenly thinking, I would have to work most things out for myself.  Oh, as times went by I would talk to my father, but in time I would learn more about the importance of talking to a greater Father.  A Daddy Father that was waiting to hear from me, and He, in the near years after that, would teach me much greater understandings about patience, prayer, love, and giving thanks.  In that moment, I was so thankful that thankfulness came to mind.

Remembering my first reading of the scripture listed above is impossible, but in recent years it has become a favorite.  This scripture is difficult just like some others, especially the scripture of Jesus' last prayer in the Garden, "Not my will but Your will be done."

However, as difficult as Verse 18 is to accept, when we come to understand the nature of what the verse does not say, then what it means to us becomes most powerful.  It is most important to understand these scriptures in our good times before the sorrowful times tread upon our hearts.  Otherwise, these scriptures can be very hurtful and meaningless.

So, how can we be thankful in the death of a loved one, how do we give thanks as we see a life of love and dedication slip away from us or see a child seriously injured.

There is always thankfulness to be had in our relationship with God, most especially during our sorrows.   Some people often do not feel this during their sorrows often blaming God for letting this or that happen or for allowing a horrible event occur to someone.  It is all about learning to know and understand what God has and does for us.  We must trust and learn what sometimes seem opposite and counter to what society teaches us.

Just as a good parent will lovingly comfort a child when hurt, so too will God provide comfort to us.  But the reason the child feels comforted by a parent is based on the love and loving relationship the parent has established with the child.  This is why one of the first commands of Jesus is so important to us, in His comments to us about 'do not worry', Jesus commands us, "Seek first His Kingdom and His Righteousness..." (Matthew 6:25-34).  

God created us and loves us like the ultimate loving parent, and just as our children must do with us, we must learn that about God.  Children of good parents, because of the loving relationship set forth by the parents, learn what it means to be loved and comforted.  God gives us that love in abundance and we must seek The relationship with Him to learn and feel how great that love truly is.  We do that just like children with their parents, in communications with them, in our talking, and in sharing our feelings.  With God, our communication is through prayer, and in our prayers come feelings.  To feel the guidance of the Holy Spirit in your heart and to understand to the depths of our soul the love that God has for us, "we must pray.... and pray.... and pray....everyday."

When we come to feel the greatness of the love God has for us, then we begin to understand the thankfulness He gives us in all circumstances.  In His comfort and having His kingdom in our heart we can feel thankfulness in His love for us, regardless of our circumstances.

Click for Part 2 to learn more about being thankful in all circumstances and especially to learn about what the scripture does not say.  Reading and re-reading scripture often teaches us much about what the scripture does not mean and much as revealing new meaning for our lives.  As we we read scripture over and over and when we are accepting in attitude of His goodness, God reveals to us more of His Word for our lives.

Click Here for Part 2- on Giving Thanks in All Circumstances   and what this does not mean.

Thanks be to God

lonnie

© lonnie coggins

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© Lonnie Coggins        source- Facebook "A Daily Thought Group"
ldcoggins@gmail.com              www.adailythought.NET

If you desire to use any of these messages in a For-Profit manner you must contact me (email) for permission.  Typically, I will most likely give permission.

Please email me if you find any broken links in this message.

lonnie

Intro

The Great Theologian Apostle Paul in his letter to the Thessalonians tells us to be thankful in all circumstances.  This can be tough theology for most people as it is hard to think about being thankful in all and every one of our circumstances.  But, It is good advice when we truly understand what scripture means and what it does not mean.  Click the link for more on this.

 Please share the message on your Fb page as you like, and if you like, click the FB 'Follow' button to have notifications of these publications.  For other messages like this, visit my FB page, or on FB visit-"A Daily Thought Group".
http://lonnieadailythought.blogspot.com/2013/01/giving-thanks-in-return-to-main-menu.html

Publication  0091