by Tim Cameron | Mar 15, 2016 | Holy Spirit
What kind of life does a person have to lead to pray and see God answer prayers? Is there something a person has to do to receive what is prayed for?
Here’s the short of it. Power in prayer depends on the life we live. When our life is in line with God’s Word our ways are pleasing to Him, and the Holy Spirit will teach us how to pray. We will see answers to prayer. The scriptures are all to familiar:
“If you stay joined to me, you may ask any request you like, and it will be granted” (John 15:7). And in James, it is the prayer of a righteous man that “has great power and wonderful results” (James 5:16).
So, what must we do? The answer is as unassuming as it is guileless, we must live as a branch totally depending on the vine for our strength. All power comes from the vine. You see the branch has but one purpose, to produce fruit. Followers of Jesus live to bear fruit and bring glory to God. With this life of abiding comes the grace to pray in the spirit and receive whatever we ask.
The Father seeks fruit from out lives. He is the vinedresser. God Himself takes on the responsibility to see that we are all we should be. He is the one who prunes so more fruit will be produced. Pray and let the Holy Spirit take the snips to your life.
My earthly father taught me that no fruit-bearing plant like the grapevine produces so much “wild wood”. It must be pruned severely every growing season. Any branch that desires to bring glory to the Father and produce much fruit must submit itself to the vinedresser. All this wild wood pulls away the strength of the vine and hinders the growth of fruit. It is the luxurious, good for nothing wild wood that must be pruned and thrown away.
What is it in your life that saps away your strength and produces ornamental trappings good for nothing? It must be pruned! It is abiding in the vine and seasonal pruning that produces a life that can pray.
by Tim Cameron | Jan 27, 2016 | Holy Spirit
Quote for today
Intercessory prayer is the purifying bath into which the individual and the fellowship must enter every day.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer
Provoking Thoughts on Prayer
And pray in the Spirit on all occasions with all kinds of prayers and requests. Eph. 6:18
As we go on in intercession we may find that our obedience to God is going to cost other people more than we thought. The danger then is to begin to intercede in sympathy with those whom God was gradually lifting to a totally different sphere in answer to our prayers. Whenever we step back from identification with God’s interests in others into sympathy with them, the vital connection with God has gone. We have put our sympathy, our consideration for them in the way, and this is a deliberate rebuke to God.
It is impossible to intercede vitally unless we are perfectly sure of God, and the greatest dissipater of our relationship to God is personal sympathy and personal prejudice. Identification is the key to intercession, and whenever we stop being identified with God, it is by sympathy. Sympathy with ourselves and with others will make us say – I will not allow that thing to happen. Instantly we are out of vital connection with God.
Intercession leaves you neither time nor inclination to pray for your own sad sweet self. The thought of yourself is not kept out, because it is not there to keep out; you are completely and entirely identified with God’s interest in others lives.Discernment is God’s call to intercession, never to fault finding.
Oswald Chambers
by Tim Cameron | Jan 26, 2016 | Holy Spirit, Intercession
It all comes down to this
It all comes to standing and crying. Will you stand and cry, or can you be dissuaded? As long as you are standing before God and continuing in prayer, nothing can stop your spiritual destiny. But if you can be moved from the place of prayer – from the place of gazing upon the face of Christ – then everything God has planned for your life is at risk.
The enemy has three primary strategies for accomplishing this plan of moving you from before the throne: distraction, temptation, and discouragement.
Bob Sorge
by Tim Cameron | Jan 17, 2016 | Holy Spirit
Jan. 18 “The Road Show with Laurette Willis” with Laurette Willis Oasis Radio Network KNYD Broken Arrow/Tulsa, OK 90.5 FM (prerecorded) @ Tuesday, December 15 at 1:30 PM Central time (air time to be announced. The road show reaches an audience of 3 million people, also @ http://OasisNetwork.org
• KNYD Broken Arrow/Tulsa, OK 90.5 FM
• KDIM Coweta/Tulsa, OK88.1 FM
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• WYCS Yorktown/Hampton, VA91.5 FM
• KOZO Branson/Springfield, MO 89.7 FM / 93.7 FM
WOFN Beach City/Canton, OH 88.7 FM
by Tim Cameron | Jan 13, 2016 | Holy Spirit, prayer, The Word
Is Your Zeal Wasted?
We all have enthusiasm for church. There is a great fervor for Bible study, and there is excitement for the clothing drive at the local shelter. And zeal for worship abounds! But have you experienced the passion for prayer? Prayer grows ever more marvelous the more it increases in my life!
Recently I heard the whisper of the Lord in a deep, still quiet morning, “You have lost your first love for others.” I thought, wait a minute, my first love is about you! Isn’t that scripture about losing my first love for you? More to come on that in a minute.
I find this so true: we focus on a scripture out of context from the verse before or after it or take only part of the verse and lose the whole meaning of what the Holy Spirit was communicating through the writer.
A couple of examples:
Galatians 6:2, “Carry one another’s burdens, and in this way you will fulfill the Law of Christ”. We usually read a translation that says something akin to, “Bear one another’s burdens…” We think, oh yea, we are supposed to help each other out when we are burdened down. No, that is not what the verse means. This particular translation says, “in this way”. What way? Rarely have I ran across anyone who knows the verse that precedes Gal. 6:2 and answers the question, “How do we bear each others burdens?”
Galatians 6:1, “Brethren, even if a man is caught in any trespass, you who are spiritual, restore such a one in a spirit of gentleness; each one looking to yourself, lest you too be tempted”. This is the way we carry the burdens of others, we become people who restore those who have taken a fall in sin, no matter what the sin. No matter what the sin? Bankruptcy, sexual sin, pornography, embezzlement, manslaughter, murder, the list goes on. And the answer is Yes.
How about this one:
James 5:16, “The effectual fervent prayer of a righteous man availeth much”. This is a verse most of us are familiar with. Not too long ago I decided to memorize the verse. I was shocked! Since taking a deeper look at this verse I have asked well over thirty people, “Do you know the first part of the verse? I have yet to get the right answer from one person. Do you know?
The answer is this, “Confess your faults one to another, and pray one for another, that ye may be healed. The effectual fervent prayer of a righteous man availeth much.” Oops, Lord, do you mean that part of being a righteous man includes confessing my sin to other people and having them pray for me? How embarrassing. Kind of changes the verse by reading the entire words, Hugh.
Now let’s go back to that “first love” issue. In Revelations 2:2-3, eight signs are identified that show the great zeal of the church at Ephesus. But, there was something missing. The Lord said to them, “Look how far you have fallen! Turn back to me and do the works you did at first. If you don’t repent, I will come and remove your lampstand from its place among the churches” (verse 5). Wow! That is serious.
The same sin exists in the church today. It is alive and well in me and I am repenting as I write and confessing my sin right here. There is great enthusiasm for the study of the gospel and the truth. Oh, do we work hard serving! But, what does the Lord value most? He values–“But I have this complaint against you. You don’t love each other or me as you did at first!” (verse 4). The sin is not loving God and each other as much as we are capable of!
What the Lord values most is tender, sweet, vulnerable, fervent love for Him and for each other. A Christian can work hard being a wonderful example to others; however, if this tender love for our savior and love for others is missing—it is all for naught in the eyes of Jesus.
My dear brothers and sisters, Revelations 2:2-5 speaks of our deep abiding in Jesus, making time every day to find the secret place in His presence. Absolutely everything in this journey with Jesus depends upon concentrated fellowship with Him in quietness, stillness, and intimacy—be still and know Him.
Is your zeal in religion to first know Christ? Does all your service, prayer and consumption of the Word flow from a profound yearning to know Him intimately? Let us declare with the Psalmist, “My soul thirst for thee, my flesh longs for thee”.
