Especially for You

“Simon, Simon, Satan has asked to sift you as wheat. But I have prayed for you, Simon, that you faith may not fail. And when you have turned back, strengthen you brothers.” (Luke 22:31, 32)

Jesus knew well all the disciples, “all of you.” In fact, He knows well all people.

Jesus knew well the purpose of Satan. Satan had repeatedly endeavored to “sift” Jesus as wheat. What Satan tried to do with Jesus, he tries to do with Peter, sift all the wheat out of his life and leave only worthless chaff.

Christ foresaw Peter’s peril. Peter’s short and imperfect vision was not sharp enough to discern Satan’s developing strategies.

Christ helped Peter. Christ assured Peter that He would go ahead and, as it were, station Himself at the very spot in the path where Peter would stumble. Oh, the wondrous forethought and kindness of Jesus!

Christ’s help to Peter was the greatest He could offer-prayer. This is ever Christ’s greatest help to the believer. Now we begin to understand why Jesus entered into frequent all-night vigils of prayer-to intercede for His friends. And, bless His Name, the glorified Saviour still ceaselessly intercedes for His friends.

Satan expected Peter’s faith to “utterly fail.” All he saw in Peter was “Simon,” the old name, the old nature. Jesus knew that there was more. So Jesus’ look of forgiveness led Peter at once to weep his way back to the Saviour’s restoring love.

“Especially for you” Jesus prays today. Touched with the feeling of your infirmities, He mentions your name and need to the Father. His prayers are always heard and honored. Is this not enough to strengthen and assure your fainting heart?

--George E. Failing

Alone With God

But when you pray, go into your room, close the door and pray to your Father, who is unseen. Then your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you. Matt 6:6 


When we go into our room and shut the door, no one sees us, no one hears us but God. No one is present before whom to make a display or our devotion. No one is present to see our zeal, or compliment us on our well-rounded sentences. God is present, but not as a faultfinder always looking for a thing to condemn in us. God is present, as unlimited goodness, love, poise, peace, wisdom, strength. So all parade and self-applause, or self-vindication, should be left outside the closed door.

Prayer must never be a mere speech exercise. Prayer must be a living thing, born of conviction and enthusiasm. Every word must be white-hot with sincerity. Anyone who has really closed the door will feel that he is looking into the eyes of the infinite Christ, that He sees us and knows us thoroughly. Yes, it is a searching spot-alone in the presence of God.

When you pray, enter your room. When you have shut the door, shut out insincerity, shut out formality, shut out self and selfish interests. Then hear what God has to say.

The words of God are creative, powerful, energizing, illuminating, and he who comes from the room, having heard God’s words, will go out to confound the forces of wickedness and promote the kingdom of our Lord and of His Christ.



Oliver G. Wilson (excerpt from With Open Face. 1983)

Wait Upon the Lord

I wait for the LORD, my soul waits, and in his word I put my hope. Ps 130:5

Blessed is the person who, early in their Christian life, learns to wait upon the Lord.  The psalmist said, “I will wait for the Lord, my soul waits, and in his word I put my hope.”  In another place he gives us a heartening word of encouragement.  “Wait on the Lord; be of good courage, and He shall strengthen your heart; wait, I say, on the Lord” (Ps 27:14)

Everywhere we go, we find discouraged people who have given up the struggle.  Some of them have openly returned to the world.  Others follow along “afar off” from the warmth and comfort of the true faith and salvation.  Ask them what the trouble is and there are almost as many excuses as there are backsliders.  But to get right down to the truth of the matter, in nearly every case their trouble can be traced back to this:  They failed to wait upon God.

Waiting on God means more than a few brief formal prayers.  It means to pray until the soul lays hold of God and comes away with a blessing.  This may be a matter of minutes or even hours, but it means to seek until we find, knock until it is opened unto us, ask until we receive.

There is a waiting upon God, a pleading of the promises, a heart searching, a holding on the determination of love and faith, that puts the resources of heaven at our command.  Here is the great difference between defeat and victory.

How different might have been the attitude and action of the disciples on the night of the Savior’s betrayal, had they watched with him in prayer during the hour of agony!

Isaiah said “They that wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings as eagles; they shall run, and not be weary; and they shall walk, and not faint.” (Isa 4o:31).

Paul W. Thomas (excerpt from With Open Face. 1983)

Praying In Secret Is The Solution

But when you pray, go into your room, close the door and pray to your Father, who is unseen. Then your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you. Matt 6:6

SECRET PRAY is honest prayer. It’s hard to put on a show of piety, to be a hypocrite, in private devotions.

Only by an exposure of the soul to God in private prayer will a person get a true revelation of himself. Isaiah was alone with God in the temple when he saw his sinfulness – “I am a man of unclean lips.” He had lived with godly people, he had studied the Scriptures, he had preached. But there was something of himself he had never seen or known until he got alone with God.

Our primary problem is the sin problem. The only way of knowing how real and personal is the problem, and the only way to find a remedy for it is to get alone with God.


George E. Failing (excerpt from With Open Face. 1983)

Wisdom from the Past to the Present

For everything in the world--the cravings of sinful man, the lust of his eyes and the boasting of what he has and does--comes not from the Father but from the world.  The world and its desires pass away, but the man who does the will of God lives forever. I John 2:16-17

The three great spiritual enemies of man are the world, the flesh, and the devil. It is hard to say which does most harm to the soul. The last day alone will settle that point. But I venture boldly to say, that at no former period has "the world" been so dangerous, and so successful in injuring Christ's Church, as it is just now. Every age is said to have its own peculiar epidemic disease. I suspect that "worldliness" is the peculiar plague of Christendom in our own era. That same love of the world's good things and good opinion - that same dread of the world's opposition and blame - which proved so fatal to Judas Iscariot, and Demas, and many more in the beginning of the gospel era - each is just as powerful in the nineteenth century as it was in the first, and a hundred times more.

~ J.C. Ryle



http://jcrylequotes.com

The Weakness of Will

Asbury Seedbed: http://seedbed.com/

When to Suffer, When to Obey

Drawing Heaven

Some things just can't be neatly categorized or explained...

It burns in the spirit

But just as he who called you is holy, so be holy in all you do; for it is written: "Be holy, because I am holy." I Pet 1:15-16

It breathes in the prophecy, thunders in the law, murmurs in the narrative, whispers in the promises, supplicates in the prayers, sparkles in the poetry, resounds in the songs, speaks in the types, glows in the imagery, voices in the language, and burns in the spirit of the whole scheme, from the Alpha to the Omega, from its beginning to its end.  Holiness! holiness needed, holiness a present duty, a present privilege, a present enjoyment, is the progress and completeness of the Bible's wondrous theme!

Bishop Foster "Christian Purity"

Gratitude & Thankfulness

"Be still, and know that I am God; I will be exalted among the nations, I will be exalted in the earth." Ps 46:10


Have I this morning the spirit of humble gratitude? How do I feel? Do I take God’s mercy as a matter of course, and view my own gifts without thankfulness? Then I act like the brutes that perish, but let me pray this morning that humble, lowly gratitude may daily rule my spirit. Such gratitude will make you cheerful, it will make you earnest, it will in fact be an atmosphere in which all Christian graces will grow by the blessing of God’s Spirit.

-Spurgeon

http://www.thedailyspurgeon.com

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Family Sings Mighty to Save in Waiting Room With Baby in Critical Condition - INSPIRING! from keephopealive on GodTube.