Why You Should Keep Praying When There is No Answer - RICK WARREN CHARISMA NEWS

There are several reasons why you should keep praying when God isn't answering. (Flickr )

Why You Should Keep Praying When There is No Answer

12/10/2016 RICK WARREN  CHARISMA NEWS

"To that end be alert with all perseverance and supplication for all the saints" (Eph. 6:18b).

Why should you be persistent in your prayers, even when you don't get an answer? There are four reasons:

1. Persistent prayer focuses your attention. When you pray a prayer request over and over, it's not to remind God. He doesn't need to be reminded. It's to remind yourself who is the source of your answer and all your needs. If every prayer you ever prayed were instantly answered, two things would be true. First, prayer would become a weapon of destruction in your life. And, you'd never think about God, because He would become a vending machine. If every time you prayed, you instantly got results, all you'd think about is the blessing. God wants you to think about the blesser.

2. Persistent prayer clarifies your request. A delayed answer gives you time to clarify exactly what you want and to refine your prayers. When you pray persistently to your heavenly Father, and you say something over and over again, it separates deep longings from mere whims. It says, "God, I really care about this."

It's not that God doesn't want to answer your prayers. He does. It's just that He wants you to be certain about what you really want.

3. Persistent prayer tests your faith. James 1:3-4 says, "knowing that the trying of your faith develops patience. But let patience perfect its work, that you may be perfect and complete, lacking nothing." The only way you can grow to spiritual maturity is to have your faith tested. One of the ways God's going to test your faith is by delaying some answers to your prayers.

4. Persistent prayer prepares your heart for the answer. When you make a request of God, He almost always wants to answer in a bigger and better way than you've prayed. Sometimes He denies your prayer requests because you're thinking and asking too small. He wants to give you something bigger and better. But first, He has to prepare you for it. So God uses delays in answering prayer to help you grow, to help you get ready and to help prepare you for a bigger and better answer.

Remember, "Now to Him who is able to do exceedingly abundantly beyond all that we ask or imagine, according to the power that works in us" (Eph. 3:20).

Talk It Over

• What is something you've been praying about for a long time? How do you need to refine your request?
• If God is testing you right now by delaying an answer to your prayer, how can you show Him you are willing to grow and accept his will and purpose for you?
• Think of something you prayed for over the years that God never supplied. How have you seen that His denial was actually a blessing in your life? 

Rick Warren is the founding pastor of Saddleback Church. His book, The Purpose Driven Church, was named one of the 100 Christian books that changed the 20th century. He is also founder of pastors.com, a global Internet community for pastors.

For the original article, visit pastorrick.com.

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Why Hasn't God Judged America Yet? - RON CANTOR/FOR MAOZ ISRAEL CHARISMA NEWS

Why Hasn't God Judged America Yet?

4/8/2016 RON CANTOR/FOR MAOZ ISRAEL  charisma news

Harry S. Truman was a true friend to the State of Israel. (Wikimedia Commons )

A very good question is why hasn't God already judged us as we deserve? Despite our massive moral failures over the decades, clearly God has not judged us according to our sins. There are several reasons for this, but this may be the biggest one:

Support for Israel from the day it was born. Harry S. Truman could not sleep on May 13, 1948. He kept seeing the face of the man who would be Israel's first President, Chaim Weisman. Weisman had begged for his support in a previous meeting. Truman shared his feelings on the morning of the 14th with his top aide, Clark Clifford. Clifford said, "Mr. President, if you are going to recognize the Jewish State, you must do it today." The president asked the Israeli consulate to send a request for formal recognition.

When Truman sent the letter to the diplomats, he didn't even know the name of the new state that would be declared at 4 p.m. that day. The letter simply said "the Jewish state."

At 9 a.m. (4 p.m. in the Middle East), it was announced in Tel Aviv that the new prime minister, David Ben Gurion, proclaimed that the Jewish state would be called the State of Israel. The president's envoy caught up with the courier on the steps of the White House and the words "Jewish state" were scratched out and the word "State of Israel" was handwritten in its place.

Meanwhile, the anti-Jewish State Department was arguing another plan for the area, when the U.S.'s U.N. ambassador was given a note that Truman had recognized Israel. He angrily got up and returned to his hotel. The State Department led by General George Marshall was 100 percent against the idea of a Jewish State and had made that abundantly clear to Truman. It took great courage, but Truman did what was right.

This support for Israel undoubtedly brought the blessing of God on the United States as Genesis 12:3 declares that God will bless those that bless Abraham and his descendants and curse those who curse them.

Before America, it was Great Britain's Foreign Secretary Lord Arthur James Balfour who fought in England's parliament chambers for a Jewish state and God blessed Great Britain as the greatest power on earth. It was said that the sun never set on the British Empire, as she controlled lands from Africa to Hong Kong, from India to the Caribbean.

Yet the minute she turned on Israel in 1922, taking 80 percent of the lands she promised to Israel in the Balfour Declaration and instead created the Muslim state of Jordan, the sun began to set, and today Great Britain is a shell of her former self. In fact, how ironic is it—as Britain in 1922 chose oil over the Jews and the Muslim world over Israel that according to demographic experts, Britain is now in danger of being overrun with Islamic migrants.

So, while judgment on America has been held back, is there a limit? The question is, will we remember our calling as a world leader, protector and refuge for the persecuted, or will we reject that calling in favor of mediocrity, wickedness, socialism and protectionism?

It is time to repent.

It is time to rise up.

It is time to be who God called us to be.

"If My people, who are called by My name, will humble themselves and pray, and seek My face and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven, and will forgive their sin and will heal their land" (2 Chron. 7:14).

Ron Cantor is the lead pastor of Tiferet Yeshua congregation in Tel Aviv, a Hebrew speaking outreach to Israelis. He is also the author of Identity Theft, Leave me Alone—I'm Jewish and his newest book coming out this spring, The Jerusalem Secret, a novel about the first Jewish believers. Ron blogs at messiahsmandate.org.

For the original article, visit maozisrael.org.

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So That's Why - Now Think On This by Steve Martin

So That's Why

- Now Think On This

by Steve Martin

“We don't yet see things clearly. We're squinting in a fog, peering through a mist. But it won't be long before the weather clears and the sun shines bright! We'll see it all then, see it all as clearly as God sees us, knowing him directly just as he knows us!”

(1 Cor 13:12 THE MESSAGE)

You have, as I have, many times thought, or even said out loud, “Why?” “Why did it happen that way?” “What was the purpose in me having to go through that?” “I don’t get it. Why did it have to happen to me?” Surely there was a better way, right Lord?

I like how The Message translation of the Bible puts it, how we are “squinting in a fog, peering through a mist.” We try hard to do what is right. We press on as Paul said he did, in Phil 3:12-14, “Not that I have already obtained it or have already become perfect, but I press on so that I may lay hold of that for which also I was laid hold of by Christ Jesus. Brethren, I do not regard myself as having laid hold of it yet; but one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and reaching forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus.” (NASU)

But sometimes we still don’t get it, or see it happening as expected.

There were situations that my kids had to deal with, and thus as their parents, so did Laurie and I, that we didn’t comprehend. Even as we pressed on to seek the Lord’s answer, sometimes it didn’t come as we liked, or as soon as we wanted, or as it had been prophesied it would. Even though we prayed diligently and continually for them, there were occasions when we just didn’t know exactly what to tell them, or what would bring the understanding we sought from the Lord.

It was as if He would say simply, “In time you will know.”

We don’t have full knowledge of what the Lord does, when He will do it, or how He will do it. I know that even ones who have known and walked with the Lord for years (personally true in my life) don’t have all the answers. But what I do know is that the Lord wants us to keep seeking Him, keep knocking at the door, keep letting Him know, or rather ourselves, that we are totally dependent on His daily interaction with us. He likes that. So He does what He does.

It is also one good reason why He has given us apostles, prophets, teachers, evangelists and pastors, as written, “for the equipping of the saints for the work of service, to the building up of the body of Christ; until we all attain to the unity of the faith, and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to a mature man, to the measure of the stature which belongs to the fullness of Christ.” (Ephesians 4:12-13 NASU) We are not meant to go it alone. We have been created to need one another, rely on one another, walk together in common purpose, so that we can obtain more understanding in all His ways and purposes.

There will come a time when we’ll look back, probably years from now, and say, “Yes, NOW I know why that went that way!” Until that time happens, that moment (some call it an “Ah ha! Now I get it!” moment) when it is revealed to us, when the fog has lifted, we’ll see the immense wisdom that the Lord had in directing and guiding us, His beloved people.

In our consistent time of daily prayer, Bible reading, and meetings with gathered believers, what the Lord is doing in our lives, and why, will be more fully known. In our efforts to seek and understand, we will receive understanding, as He rewards those who diligently seek Him.

Then we will know the “whys”!

Now think on this,

Steve Martin

Founder

Love For His People. Inc.

Love For His People, Inc. is a charitable, not-for-profit USA humanitarian organization started in 2010 to share the love of the Father in the nations.

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Now Think On This #183 “So That Is Why” by Steve Martin 

Date: In the year of our Lord 2015 (10.05.15) Monday at 5:00 am in Charlotte, NC

All previous editions of Now Think On This can be found on this Blog, and on the website: Now Think On This

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