Walking With Jesus

Faith

“So faith comes from hearing, that is, hearing the Good News about Christ.” (Romans 10:17 NLT)

How would you describe your faith? How is your life different since you’ve placed your trust in Jesus? What does having faith in Christ mean to you in practical terms? Is it a creed or conviction upon which your life is built? A set of spiritual guidelines to be followed? A system of belief? An interesting philosophy?

Over the years I’ve come to appreciate Dr. David Jeremiah for many reasons, but in a recent Turning Point devotion he inspired me when he wrote: “Many people have a mistaken view of faith, thinking that faith is believing in something or someone despite the evidence and we have to take a ‘leap of faith.’ That is nonsense. It doesn’t work in any area of life. You don’t step onto a rickety swinging bridge with rotten ropes and missing planks, just assuming the bridge will support you. To place your faith in the bridge, it would need to be anchored on both sides, sturdy, reliable, and trustworthy. Faith is believing because of the evidence. It’s not a leap into uncertainty but a step that is reasonable, logical, and sensible.”

Is that how you would describe your faith? Are you following Jesus because of your firm conviction in the trustworthiness of who He is? What He taught? The truth of God’s Word as it describes who Jesus is and why He died? Or do you still struggle with the whole concept of faith in God?

Faith is a many dimensional process. The tiny faith I possessed as I began my journey with Jesus more than 60 years ago has grown exponentially as I’ve found insurmountable evidence that He is exactly who He claimed to be, does exactly what He promised to do, and my expectation that I will one day soon meet Him face to face continues to grow.

To me faith isn’t an idea or conviction, it’s a daily, moment by moment basis of my life and how I order my daily living. Knowing the Lord is with me every second and realizing He’s invested in helping me in every detail of my existence steadies and undergirds me as surely as the strength of a well-constructed bridge. I don’t have to worry or fret about anything; I simply ask for His help and thank Him in the process for His strength and guidance.

Forgiveness of sin and eternal life are certainly critical pieces of why faith in Christ is so vital, but, at least in my humble opinion, not the greatest “draw” to following Christ. Those issues place the emphasis on us as individual believers, highlighting what seem to be the greatest “attractions” to the Faith. But to me the greatest draw to Christianity is Christ.

Knowing Him, loving Him, walking moment by moment with Him are all the reasons I need to have strong faith. Perhaps that’s the reason many struggle with their faith, they never develop intimacy with Jesus. His closeness sustains, strengthens, informs, protects, undergirds, teaches, and enables me to walk in faith without wavering. On some levels it’s like a child holding the strong hand of their father.

Hudson Taylor builds on that idea when he writes: “You do not need a great faith, but faith in a great God.” Faith grows with experience in trusting the God of the Bible who loves us without limit, never fails, never lies, and never leaves or forsakes us. It just doesn’t get any better than that.

Food for thought.

Blessings, Ed 😊

What God’s Up to

“And I want you to know, my dear brothers and sisters, that everything that has happened to me here has helped to spread the Good News. For everyone here, including the whole palace guard, knows that I am in chains because of Christ. And because of my imprisonment, most of the believers here have gained confidence and boldly speak God’s message without fear.” (Philippians 1:12-14 NLT)

Everything that happens in our life has purpose. There is no such thing as an “accident” in God’s scheme of things. If it happens, it has purpose. Our job is to let the Lord unveil that purpose day by day as He works in and through our life.

To worry, fret, and try to figure out “what’s going on!” is to work against the Spirit’s leading in our lives. Our goal in everything is to listen to the Spirit’s leading so as to determine what our role is in God’s activity. We’re never the issue, God is, so what’s going on in our lives is always secondary to what God’s intentions are.

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Elisabeth Elliot gives us insight when she writes: “We never know what God has up His sleeve. You never know what might happen; you only know what you have to do now.” What is it that we must do now? So often our initial response to God’s activity in our life is to question, fear, worry, or ponder, not to act, but that’s the issue! God’s activity always invites a response on our part and therein lies our greatest potential to grow in Him.

“What you have to do now” is, or should be, our standard response to the Lord’s invitation: “Yes, Lord!” Rather than whining, crying, fretting, and worrying about ME – “What’s this going to mean to ME?” We lay our lives before the Lord in humble surrender and say: “How can I most meaningfully submit my life to You and allow You, O Lord, to gain glory in and through my life in this new circumstance?”

He’s not asking us to be happy about something tragic that’s happened in our life, He’s asking us to submit it to Him and to trust Him in and through its outcome. Was Paul happy about being in prison? Of course not, but he knew he was there by the Spirit’s leading. It was the natural outcome of a life devoted to the glory of the Savior, so he continued to minister to Christ’s glory in spite of his circumstances.

Paul knew the risks he was taking by continuing to share his faith. After beatings, being stoned, shipwrecked, and other means of torment for his faith, the Lord had made it clear to him that He had appointed Paul to stand before influential people, including kings, for His holy Name’s sake.

With whom will our current circumstances give us audience that we might never have met were it not for the accident, illness, or other “negative” circumstance we’re now experiencing? The Lord has given me an audience with doctors, nurses, support staff, technicians, and other patients I would likely never have met were it not for my Alzheimer’s. The Lord never puts anyone in our path except to give us opportunity to share His life and love with them.

What God’s up to is filling, empowering, and enabling you and me to honor and exalt Him in every circumstance of our lives! We must be intentional in every opportunity to give His Spirit free rein to work in and through us to the Lord’s glory and honor.

Food for thought.

Blessings, Ed 😊

Upon What Is Your Faith Built?

“But the officer said, ‘Lord, I am not worthy to have You come into my home. Just say the word from where you are, and my servant will be healed…When Jesus heard this, He was amazed. Turning to those who were following Him, He said, ‘I tell you the truth, I haven’t seen faith like this in all Israel!’” (Matthew 8:8, 10 NLT)

Waiting often gives rise to doubting. We ask the Lord to do something specific: “Lord, heal my cancer!” “Lord, I need a job!” “Lord, save my marriage!” “Lord, deliver me from this incessant urge to sin!” In innumerable ways the enemy attacks and we, ideally, turn to the Lord expecting Him to help us in our times of need. Which is exactly as it should be.

Our faith is confident that the Lord CAN do whatever we ask, but it waivers when what we ask doesn’t happen on our timeline. It’s hard to understand, especially as a new believer, that faith is built in the waiting. It takes time to learn that the Lord isn’t our errand boy, He’s Creator, Sustainer, and Ruler of the Universe. Does that mean He doesn’t hear our prayers? That He’s not willing to meet our needs? That He doesn’t care when we’re suffering?

He loved us so much He suffered and died in our place before we were born. Of course He hears our prayers! Of course He’s willing to meet our needs! Of course He cares when we’re suffering! To not believe that is blasphemous! That’s why our faith can’t be built on emotion, but must be built on a solid, Biblical understanding of not only who Jesus is, but why He died in our place in the first place.

Ray Majoran helps us when he prays: “Please teach us to wait without fear, and to remember that faith is not built on what we understand but on who You are.” (from Home Beneath the Light – 11-03-25) Our understanding can be skewed, distorted, and wrongly conceived. Any understanding that lessens who Jesus is or shifts the basis from our faith in Him to anyone or anything else is misguided and misinformed.

Edward Mote had it right when he penned the words of the old hymn: “My hope is built on nothing less Than Jesus’ blood and righteousness; I dare not trust the sweetest frame, But wholly lean on Jesus’ name. On Christ, the solid Rock, I stand; All other ground is sinking sand.”

In this season of my life, when each day is a new adventure, I must have faith that is centered and focused on a certain, unchanging Rock, not on the fickle ebb and flow of my emotions. Will God heal me? He may heal me in this moment if I asked Him, but I haven’t asked, because His presence is enough. One day when I leave this life I’ll be perfect and forever whole, so, in the meantime, my faith is strong that He has me here for a reason.

He has you where you are for a reason also. And while I may not know your specific circumstance, I do know that if your faith is fixed on Jesus, He’ll be enough for you as well.

Though the soldier in the verses above got exactly what he asked Jesus to give him, faith isn’t always about getting the things for which we pray, it’s about growing in love for and dependence upon the One to whom we pray. Sometimes growing in our intimacy with Jesus means more than receiving the answers we seek.

Our faith can’t be built on answers; it must be built on the One who is the eternal Answerer!

Food for thought.

Blessings, Ed 😊

Strange?

“Then they took him to the high council of the city. ‘Come and tell us about this new teaching,’ they said. You are saying some rather strange things, and we want to know what it’s all about.” (Acts 17:19-20 NLT)

Do you know any strange people? The more I progress in my Alzheimer’s journey, the more strange people seem to me. Hmmmm! Could it be I’m the one becoming more strange? Nah, can’t be! Of course, there are those who think I’ve always been strange (yeh, I can hear you giggling! 😊) I’ve digressed!

What constitutes something that’s strange to you? Typically, as with the time Paul was visiting Athens, strange is anything with which we’re not familiar. Think of when you first came to know Jesus. Many of the disciplines and habits we form as believers were very strange to us. Attending church, praying, giving money, sharing our faith, giving up habits that we’re hurting us physically, emotionally, financially, spiritually, or otherwise.

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A.W. Tozer caught my attention when he wrote: “Go to church once a week and nobody pays attention. Worship God seven days a week and you become strange!” What is it about my life or yours that seems strange to those in our families or other spheres of influence? Could it be it should be strange if others don’t see things in us that seem strange to them in a good way?

Remember “strange” can equal “unfamiliar,” so, if there are those who aren’t saved viewing our life and finding nothing that’s different than how they conduct their lives, perhaps it should be a red flag to us. If we have the same habits, use the same language, frequent the same bars, share the same views on life, love, and what’s right and wrong, where is our “witness” for Christ?

Yes, of course, we’re going to have things in common with those who don’t yet know the Lord, but there should be distinctives that set us apart and likely seem strange to those outside the faith. When I go to restaurants with someone who doesn’t know the Lord, I let them know that I always offer thanks to the Lord for my food and ask their permission to pray for our meal. If they object in any way, I simply bow my head and pray silently.

Christ followers have distinctives that set them apart from others, some of which may seem very strange, but they can also be avenues of opportunity for us to introduce others to the Lord. It may seem strange to those with whom we work that we go from work to a Men’s or Women’s meeting that focuses on our growth in the Lord. Or it may seem strange that we use our break to do a prayer walk or spend time reading God’s Word.

In the book of Acts there were many distinctives that seemed very strange, but very attractive to their non-believing friends. On the Day of Pentecost believers were given the gift of speaking in languages they’d never learned, which was a very strange phenomenon, yet, was God’s tool for bringing thousands to Himself. In Acts 2 Paul outlines what the new Christian community looked like and closed the chapter by writing: “And each day the Lord added to their fellowship those who were being saved.”

The early Christian believers didn’t wait for the Pastor to preach and give an invitation, their strange, Christian behavior was so inviting they had their family members, friends, and neighbors coming to them to learn about their new faith. Would to God that would be the case with us today.

Food for thought.

Blessings, Ed 😊

Worship and Feelings

“These people honor Me with their lips, but their hearts are far from Me. Their worship is a farce, for they teach man-made ideas as commands from God.” (Matthew 15:8-9 NLT)

The words above, quoted by Jesus from Isaiah 29, challenge me as I ponder exactly what worship IS and why it is so vitally important? As I understand it, worship is a posture of the heart that enables us to voluntarily position ourselves before a holy God as needy and unworthy.

The word used in the verse above translated “worship” is derived from a word that means to kiss, and the picture painted is a dog licking his master’s hand. It’s an involuntary response to a love and devotion that flows from the heart of one who loves and is devoted to their master.

It’s an act of reverence often accompanied by “falling to our knees and bowing with our forehead on the ground, in an effort to do homage or to make obeisance, whether in order to express respect or to make supplication.” (Strong’s) Even so, worship isn’t as much about the position of our body as it is the attitude of our heart and mind.

We’re so prone to think of worship as an activity, something we attend or in which we participate, rarely stopping to consider worship isn’t something we experience, rather it’s a deliberate act of positioning our heart, mind, soul, and body into submission to the One who owns us and has every right to do with us as He wishes.

Elisabeth Elliot, wrote: “Worship is not an experience. Worship is an act, and this takes discipline. We are to worship in spirit and in truth. Never mind about the feelings. We are to worship in spite of them.” We tend to attribute certain emotions to worship, believing the more we get worked up emotionally, the better “worship” we experience.

And yes, of course, we can have an emotional response to the presence of God, but to believe we ONLY experience true worship when we have an emotional response is to miss the point of worship. Worship isn’t about us, how we feel or what we experience, it’s a decision we make regarding an appropriate expression of devotion to, our adoration of, and dependence upon our Savior.

A true, Biblical view and understanding of worship positions us to see God as He is and ourselves as we are – empty, lost, void of meaning, identity, worth, or value apart from the revelation of ourselves in and through the Person of Jesus. Jesus’ sacrifice on the Cross accomplished far more than our forgiveness of sin, it allowed for a repositioning of our personhood.

We have no identity except as children of God. Worship enables us to recognize that apart from Jesus we are nothing and can accomplish nothing of eternal value. Yes, of course, we celebrate who we’re becoming as children of God, but we can never lose focus of to Whom the glory belongs. Had Jesus not died in our place we would be hopelessly lost for all eternity, without purpose, value, or identity.

Jesus gives us all those things and many more, so, worship becomes our means of offering to Him our thanksgiving, yes, of course, but it also gives us opportunity to express our undying dependence upon Him for every dimension of our being. And while realizing those things may have an emotional dimension, it’s our heart, mind, soul, and body that must collaborate to give full expression to our worship.

Food for thought.

Blessings, Ed 😊

Who Will Be in Heaven Because of You and Me?

“Jesus called out to them, ‘Come, follow Me, and I will show you how to fish for people!’” (Matthew 4:19 NLT)

Multiplication has always been the heartbeat of the Church. If you ask why so many people are being tortured and murdered for their faith in our world today, it’s because the Lord is using them to draw millions of people to His eternal Kingdom.

In relative terms, there’s very little persecution of Christians in America because there are very few individual believers doing anything to challenge the kingdom of darkness. We’re satisfied with being nice people, saying and doing nice things that rarely, if ever, cause anyone to get upset with us.

Jesus’ boldness cost Him His life and how He trained His disciples got them killed as well. Why do we think we should get to skate into heaven on our good intentions? If we’re not regularly witnessing to the power of God to change lives through a personal relationship with the Lord Jesus, why aren’t we? We’re not saved to become museum exhibits; we’re saved to reproduce the life Jesus gave us by His Holy Spirit living in us.

The Spirit of God indwells us, not simply to make us holy, but to make us useful in Christ’s eternal Kingdom. The Lord speaks, not that we can become a reservoir of all the good things we read in the Bible, hear in a message, or read in a book, but to be a channel through whom the Spirit can flow. We honor the Lord as we share with those in our spheres of influence what the Lord is sharing with us.

However, a word of caution! Shoving a verse of Scripture down someone’s throat doesn’t constitute effective sharing. Sometimes it’s much more effective to “LIVE” the Scripture than to quote it “AT” someone. Life is contextual, which means we take what the Lord gives us and allow Him to shape it into something meaningful we can share with someone who needs encouragement.

Rather than quoting John 3:16, perhaps a more effective approach would be to put His love into shoe leather and go see someone in the hospital or who is recovering at home and needs someone to bring them a few meals. Perhaps a single mom could use someone to watch her child(ren) so she could go out for a relaxing meal with a gift card we have given her.

Presenting the Gospel doesn’t always have to look like the proverbial “Roman Road,” quoting Scripture that leads to a profession of faith in Christ. The most effective evangelism is built on friendship. Make friends with lost people who, yes, of course, need Jesus, but they may first need to see Jesus through you or me. Kindness, thoughtfulness, generosity, and love are very effective evangelistic “tools” when we allow the Holy Spirit to use us in kind and loving ways.

Yes, of course, we expect that there will come a point when explaining the Gospel is the most logical thing to do, but most people today want to “see” the Gospel before they want someone to explain it. People are much more open to hearing the good news of Christ’s love from someone they know and trust than from a stranger.

The Lord puts people in our spheres of influence for a reason. How many of them will be in heaven because of us – because of me and you?

Food for thought.

Blessings, Ed 😊

The Gift We Could Never Afford

“For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life through Christ Jesus our Lord.” (Romans 3:23 NLT)

What do you have today you wouldn’t have had it not been given to you? Think of all the gifts you’ve received over the years, most of which you’ve forgotten about long ago. What’s the most elaborate gift you’ve ever received? A car? House? An inheritance? Extensive trip?

The value of any gift is miniscule in comparison to the cost of a single drop of my Savior’s blood! “Yeh, but you don’t know the value of my inheritance!” No, you don’t know how much my Savior’s blood is worth! Peter wrote in 1 Peter 1:18-19: “For you know that God paid a ransom to save you from the empty life you inherited from your ancestors. And the ransom He paid was not mere gold or silver. It was the precious blood of Christ, the sinless, spotless Lamb of God.”

The word that Peter used that is translated “precious” is a Greek word that means of incalculable worth. It’s impossible to set a value to it! If you’re a believer in Jesus today, the gift of the blood of your Savior is the most valued treasure you possess. But if you’re not a believer. If you’ve not yielded your life and allegiance to the Lord Jesus, the blood He shed on the Cross was for your salvation also.

Some will hear that and hang their head in shame, realizing they don’t deserve such an invaluable sacrifice. Here’s the good news: no one does! None of us deserves what Jesus did, but that’s the point! He loves us so much He was willing to pay a debt He didn’t owe to give us a gift we could never afford. But it gets even better!

It’s a life for a life – His sinless, blameless life for our sinful, guilt-ridden life! A really bad deal for Him, right? But that’s the beauty of Jesus’ gift – He pours Himself into us in the Person of His Holy Spirit, enabling us to put the sin and shame of our life behind us in order that He might begin to live His life out through us. There’s no greater privilege than to be a child of God, filled and empowered by His Spirit.

It’s not something we could ever earn or deserve, it’s a gift of love that is offered from a heart that longs for us to come home to Him. We can think about it, ponder it, weigh our options, but one day each of us will stand before the Creator of the Universe and the issue He will ponder is: “What did you do with My Son?” And there will only be one of two answers: “I rejected Him!” Or “I received Him as my Lord and Savior.”

It will be pointless on that day to say: “I really wanted to!” “I thought about it a lot!” “I just let everything else crowd Him out!”

Receive Him today, you’ll be eternally grateful for the free gift of salvation that pays the debt for your sin you could never in eternity ever pay yourself. Go to Ron Hutchcraft’s website by clicking here and let him walk you through how to give your life to the Lord Jesus. It’s time for action!

Please don’t allow Satan to trap you in some form of the “pity party” excuse that sees how sinful you are and that you don’t deserve to be forgiven. That’s true, you absolutely do not. No one does and that’s the point. That’s why it’s called a free gift of grace! Receive Him today!

it’s time for ACTION!

Blessings, Ed 😊

Religious?

“If you claim to be religious but don’t control your tongue, you are fooling yourself, and your religion is worthless. Pure and genuine religion in the sight of God the Father means caring for orphans and widows in their distress and refusing to let the world corrupt you.” (James 1:26-27 NLT)

Everyone is religious, even those who have no use for God. We all have our ways of doing what seems right to us and, though we might not call it our “religion,” we go about it religiously without fail. We organize our places of residence to accommodate our “religious” practices. We place our coffee, tea, milk, soda, whatever our beverage of choice, in the same place so we know exactly where it is. We could find it in the dark if we had to.

We do the same thing with our behavior. We organize our toothbrush, hair products, brush/comb, soap, shampoo, toiletries, and clothes so we know exactly where everything is. It’s how we order our lives. We want things neat, orderly, undisturbed, but easily accessible.

We may not think of those things as having anything to do with “religion,” per se, but if we’re not careful, we’ll learn to order our lives by rote. We go through any given day almost without thought. We get up, get dressed, eat, go to work, come home, eat, watch TV or scroll our devices, go to bed and get up and do it all again. Very religious!

Life becomes a process that “fits” our needs and it’s very hard for us to allow anything or anybody to “rock” our proverbial “boat,” even Jesus. If we profess faith in Christ, if anyone was to ask us, we’d say we’re ordering our lives after the Bible, or Jesus, but truth be told, we’re more often ordering our lives after what feels right for us.

And there’s not anything inherently wrong with that unless Jesus gets left out of the process. Pastor Alistair Begg wrote: “Religion without the risen Lord Jesus Christ is ultimately worthless.” We can get so comfortable seeing things and doing things “our” way, it becomes very uncomfortable and difficult to all of a sudden begin doing things God’s way. But here’s the rub: even when seeking to order our lives in accordance with the dictates of the Spirit, we still have to order them in a way that makes sense to us.

Each of us who know and love Jesus have to order our lives in such a way as to accommodate personal worship, prayer, Bible reading/study, exercise, work, taking care of kids or pets, and so forth. The thin line that we must not cross is letting any or all of that become so rote we can do it without engaging our heart.

In my personal life, I pray for essentially the same people and the same issues every day with very little variation. I need structure and repetition in order to remember things. So, I must guard against rushing through words and missing God. I can religiously say the right things but miss the reason for saying them.

Religion is much different than relationship in the sense I cannot simply spout words without understanding those words are being directed to the Lord of my life. I’m not reciting, I’m seeking to communicate with my Lord and Master. I must listen even as I speak, understanding that words are meaningless, simply a religious exercise, without the purposeful engagement of my heart, mind, and spirit.

Food for thought.

Blessings, Ed 😊

Eating the Flesh of Jesus

“So Jesus said again, ‘I tell you the truth, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink His blood, you cannot have eternal life within you. But anyone who eats My flesh and drinks My blood has eternal life, and I will raise that person at the last day. For My flesh is true food, and My blood is true drink. Anyone who eats My flesh and drinks My blood remains in Me, and I in Him. I live because of the living Father who sent Me; in the same way, anyone who feeds on Me will live because of Me. I am the true bread that came down from heaven. Anyone who eats this bread will not die as your ancestors did (even though they ate the manna) but will live forever.” (John 6:53-58 NLT)

Perhaps hearing these words as Jesus spoke them would have been even more baffling and disturbing than they are to us today, but when we see them in their proper context, not only what He was saying, but how He was living His life, they become enlightening in powerful ways.

We can’t lose sight of the context of His words. He’d just fed 5,000 men, plus their wives and children, then gone away by Himself to pray, sending His disciples on ahead to cross the lake in their boat. After praying for several hours, He decides to take a little stroll across the water in a gale force storm while His disciples are fearing for their lives in their boat. As soon as Jesus entered the boat, they were at their destination.

The Bible is clear that the same crowd He’d fed the day before has now followed Him, walking around to the other side of the lake, so He’s well aware that they’re not seeking Him for spiritual food, but literal food. They want Him to teach them how to perform miracles so they can make a name for themselves and they’re hungry for Him to perform more miracles to prove Himself, “if you want us to believe in you.” They have no understanding of who He is, let alone what He’s calling them to.

Major W. Ian Thomas writes in reference to these verses: “From the context of this passage, we understand that the Lord Jesus Christ here uses the expression ‘to eat and to drink’ as representing ‘to come and to believe,’ so that those that come to Him and believe on Him enter into a unique relationship with Him – they dwell in Him and He dwells in them.”

It’s the same relationship He has with His Father. In John 5:19 Jesus said: “I tell you the truth, the Son can do nothing by Himself. He does only what He sees the Father doing. Whatever the Father does, the Son also does.” In John 15:5ff Jesus explains: “Yes, I am the vine; you are the branches. Those who remain in Me, and I in them, will produce much fruit. For apart from Me you can do nothing.”

To know and love Jesus is to invite Him into our lives, to ingest His “flesh,” that He may literally abide with us and us with Him. His Spirit indwells us, informs us, guides, and in innumerable other ways, enables us to be nourished by His holy presence in our lives. To believe in Him is to place our trust in Him as our new Resident Lord, indwelling us in the person of His Holy Spirit, who in every way represents and demonstrates Christ’s life in and through us.

The only way any of us can overcome sin and the power of the enemy who is constantly attacking is through the power of His Spirit, never in the energy of the flesh. The only thing that differentiates us from any other human being is the invisible, indwelling life of our Savior in whom we’ve placed our trust and in whom we believe with our whole heart, mind, soul, and body. We feast on His “body” as we come to Him by faith, and we drink fully of His “blood” as we daily walk with Him moment by moment.

Food for thought.

Blessings, Ed 😊

Pray What You’ve Got

“Come to Me with your ears wide open. Listen, and you will find life. I will make an everlasting covenant with you. I will give you all the unfailing love I promised to David.” (Isaiah 55:3 NLT)

While the context is a little different, the principle is the same as when Jesus declared in Matthew 11:28: “Come to Me, all of you who are weary and carry heavy burdens, and I will give you rest.” The invitation is the same, as is the needed response: come as you are! The beauty of the Lord’s invitation is that He doesn’t require us to clean up our life THEN come to Him. We do the coming, He does the cleaning!

When leading someone in a “sinner’s prayer,” I rarely, if ever, give them the words to pray. It’s almost like asking someone’s fiancée to marry them, it’s just not appropriate. What I do is make suggestions that help them form their own ideas so they can express to the Lord what is meaningful to them. One way of expressing that is “praying what you’ve got.”

The good news is, no matter how badly we think we mess up in expressing what’s on our heart, the Lord understands perfectly what we mean. We can trust Him to know our thoughts, not simply our words. When I first came to the Lord I had no “thee and thou” vocabulary, I simply spoke with Jesus as my new best friend and trusted Him to direct my steps and lead my life.

In a prayer meeting one evening the Pastor asked those of us in attendance how we were doing. There was a young woman in attendance for the first time. She didn’t know the “protocol,” so she simply responded, “It’s been a really shitty week.” She got a lot of “amens!” We may have expressed it differently, but that’s what many of us were feeling.

And please don’t misunderstand, I’m not suggesting we use profanity in our conversations with the Lord, but for a new believer who is struggling to not only clean up their life, but their language, the Lord understands and will hear us if our heart is truly in tune with Him. Do you think for a minute Peter, Andrew, James, and John, all seasoned fishermen, never used profane language?

Praying what we’ve got must include authentic and genuine need, expressed in the best way we know to express it. I’ve rarely used swear words, even before I was saved, but that doesn’t mean I haven’t struggled to give expression to my needs before the Lord. Sometimes I have to confess: “Lord, You alone know my heart, please help me to find the words I need to express to You what I want to say.”

Sometimes that includes words of affirmation, praise and worship, but at other times it includes having my heart and soul in such knots I simply have no words to express how I’m feeling. It’s not unusual for my wife to ask me: “How are you feeling?” To which I must confess: “I don’t know how to express it to you.”

She thinks it’s a cop out, but I’m content to know the Lord understands. 1 Corinthians 14 comes to mind where Paul is explaining the different roles the Spirit plays in our speaking and in our praying. Sometimes words are inadequate to give expression to what we’re feeling or even thinking. Sometimes I have to go to the Lord and confess: “Father, my words are failing to give expression to what I’m feeling and experiencing in this moment. Please search my heart, know my thoughts, and accept my praise and worship!” He will and He does!

Food for thought.

Blessings, Ed 😊