Category: Devotions

Keep Praying Until

"Be anxious for nothing, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God."  Philippians 4:6 NASB

I had to look up what the word supplication meant.  There are a lot of words in the Bible that I am a little vague on the meanings, and this has always been one of them.  Fortunately, I was able to read the commentary on the scripture as it broke it down into sections, and thus defined what supplication meant.  I also read a few other translations and discovered they used petition instead.  I have read this scripture countless times and I did not fully grasp the meaning of it until today.  I have been uncertain about many aspects of my life lately.  I have been praying for everybody and seeing God moving in their lives, answering question they have, and I have yet to see some of my own answered.  I think it is because I did not know what supplication meant–at least fully.  So after a much-needed talk today, I realized that I have not been continually petitioning God about my concerns, and I have instead been trying to figure them out on my own.  I have come up with ideas and plans about the way ahead and yet I still lack peace about the right direction to follow.

And so I realized, if I do not have peace about it, then that means that I have not heard from God on it, which means I have not brought it to Him enough that it is a priority for Him to answer me.  Or on the other hand, I could be so preoccupied with my plans, that I have not heard God's answer.  At any rate, I realized that I have not petitioned God enough on the things that have been bothering me, and so I have allowed the enemy to plant his seeds of doubt, whether it be through a trusted friend and their 'well-intentioned' advice or simply my being lost in the clouds.  The scripture above does not say sometimes or some things.  But it tells to be anxious for nothing–in layman's terms do not worry about a single thing, not the weather, not the future, not the past, not your family or friends, your job, NOTHING.  Then comes the but; I was once told that everything you say before a but is basically irrelevant–so your worries and concerns are irrelevant and meaningless in the face of continual prayer and petition.  If you constantly bring and leave your concerns at the throne of God, then God has room to work on them.  As long as you do not pick them back up again, God can move those mountains that you entrust to Him.  It is like the parable of the unjust judge and the persistent widow in Luke 18:2-8–she kept coming and coming and coming until he got tired and saw to it that she got the justice she sought.

Keep getting on your knees, keep falling on your face before God and see what He will do!

And the Lord said, "Hear what the unrighteous judge said; now, will not God bring about justice for His elect who cry to Him day and night, and will He delay long over them? "I tell you that He will bring about justice for them quickly. However, when the Son of Man comes, will He find faith on the earth?"  Luke 18:6-8 NASB

Help Our Unbelief

"But you haven't believed in me even though you have seen me."  John 6:36 NLT

I think about the man whose son was possessed and got discouraged when the faith of the Disciples could not heal his son.  In Mark 9:24 the story notes 'Immediately the boy's father cried out and said, "I do believe; help my unbelief."'  Help my unbelief.  Sometimes I experience blessings and I will thank God for them.  Then the next challenge that arises, I immediately forget and sometimes I allow doubt to enter my mind.  Among other things, the enemy has been attacking me in my faith and in believing the things God has told me.  But as the Word says, Faith comes from hearing, and hearing by the Word of Christ (Romans 10:17). 

I'm sure you are familiar with the old saying, "Believe half of what you see and none of what you hear," right?  I actually wrote a devotion about this before, and I realized that we are so conditioned to not believe what we hear.  We instantly doubt.  It took the man in Mark to actually bring his son to Jesus before he believed his son was healed–not only because he doubted, but the Disciples doubted as well.  If we do not believe in our own confessions, we waste God's time asking Him to move on our behalf.  We in turn negate our own faith and allow the perverted faith, or fear to rule in that situation.

The mobs and the Jews only believed in Jesus' miracles that they actually saw Him perform.  Even sadder is the fact that many still doubted who He was, worse yet some accused Him of being demon-possessed!  God wants us to believe in Him.  Believe that once you accepted Jesus Christ as your personal Lord and Savior and asked for the forgiveness of your sins, that it was done.  You instantly became the righteousness of God through your faith in what you professed to believe.  Believing that God will do what He says is one thing, but believing that God will do what He says in your life is a whole different concept.  Why?  Because it forces you to activate your faith for yourself.  It is easy to trust God for someone else.  But when you have to wait patiently for God to move on your behalf, righting some wrong or restoring to you what you lost, it requires you to remember His Word and His promises and truly trust that they will produce a harvest in your life.  It requires that you enact the kind of faith needed to move mountains…and according to Matthew 17:20 all that takes is mustard seed-sized faith!!  'And He said to them, "Because of the littleness of your faith; for truly I say to you, if you have faith the size of a mustard seed, you will say to this mountain, 'Move from here to there,' and it will move; and nothing will be impossible to you.'  So maybe you have microscopic-sized faith, and it is time for you to tell God the same thing, 'help my unbelief' so that you can grow.

And Jesus said to him, "'If You can?' All things are possible to him who believes."  Mark 9:23 NASB