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Foster, Richard J. Prayer: Finding the Heart's True Home By Richard Foster Prayer confronts us with great mysteries: Why is some prayer apparently unanswered? How can a finite person communicate with an infinite God? Isn't prayer merely psychological manipulation? As he guides you in understanding, experiencing, and practicing prayer in all its forms, Foster also helps you learn to be comfortable with its mysteries. This volume will help you to deepen your understanding and practice the most crucial spiritual discipline. Foster's willingness to explore different expressions of prayer together with his ability to apply these expressions to the Christian life make this volume one of the most essential contemporary works on prayer. |
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Daily Guideposts 2007: A Spirit-Lifting Devotional
By Edited by Andrew Attaway Daily Guideposts is unique among devotionals in that it is brand-new each year. Here, sixty contemporary writers create 365 all-new devotionals to take the reader through the year 2007. Each day Daily Guideposts devotions offer: a short Scripture verse for reflection; a true, first-person anecdote, told in an informal, conversational style; a brief prayer to put the day's message to work. In just five minutes a day, this devotional brings readers the resources to add richness to their spiritual lives. And it makes them part of a remarkable family of readers and writers who are brought together in faith and prayer. The Daily Guideposts writers are men and women of all ages and from all walks of life. They draw upon their individual experiences and offer reflections on the ways in which God works in our daily lives.  Available in Large Print As Well |
Whatever is Pure, September 2003
Approximately twelve and a half years ago, my husband and I purchased a home in Gas City, Indiana. We moved in (along with our four daughters) and, to our amazement, found we'd inherited thousands upon thousands of blackbirds. This certainly was a new experience for us. Never, in my entire life, have I seen such a mess as the blackbirds left! Months went by, then came warm weather and they were as bad as ever.
One day, my brother parked his car in front of my house, for twenty minutes, and thought he'd never get it clean! Cleaning my sidewalk would take every bit of two hours and, the following morning, you couldn't even see our sidewalk or front yard. The stink was out of this world! Being raised on a farm in Kentucky, I'd raised chickens in 4-H Club. But, nothing compared to this! The rain seemed to bring out the entire aroma. Besides, my eighteen month old daughter wanted to play in it. Ugh! As energetic as she was, I had to keep her locked in the house. As time passed, my nerves became very raw from this type of existence. Being desperate, I asked the Lord if He'd help me find a way to rid myself of these birds... especially since I was using my home for Him. (You see, my husband and I had moved to Gas City for the purpose of starting mission work. In fact, we were already having services in our home.) So, believing the Lord would help me find the answer, I began my search.
Asking neighbours if they could tell me how to get rid of the birds, every answer they gave was either illegal or impossible. So, I called the Health Department, thinking 'if they saw the mess - they'd have to do something.' However, they never showed up. then, a long time neighbour told me I might as well give up. Those birds had been there eighteen years and no one had been able to get rid of them. Having eight or nine trees didn't help either. Beginning to read the book, GO HOME AND TELL (by Bertha Smith, a Southern Baptist missionary to China), I was amazed as she'd tell of numerous accounts where the Lord had rid her of pests that were unbearable. She'd give scripture references of the Lord's promises, then claim them as her own, as she went to her knees asking the Lord for deliverance. I must admit, I didn't know what to think. Searching the Bible, as Bertha had given references... sure enough, the promises were there. Oh, it touched my heart! I didn't know the Lord did things like that. Could I really just ask Him to take them?
Appealing to Him, I said, "Well, Lord, if you can do these things for Bertha Smith, you can surely deliver me of these birds. Lord, I've done all I know to do except cut the tress down and my husband won't let me do that. (He thinks it would greatly depreciate our property.) Lord, you gave me this house and I'm using it for you. You know this isn't a fit place for worship, in this condition. So, Lord, just take them."
Praying for three nights, while getting angry at the birds... I commanded them to leave, in the 'name of Jesus'. My neighbour, then having come for a visit, noticed such quietness that she just knew something bad was wrong. Going outside to see what it might be, we discovered the birds were gone!
Quiet for the next three days, on the fourth evening the birds came back. I went to tell my neighbour to move her car, so she wouldn't have to wash it. But, she insisted, "You prayed." I responded, "I know. No one but the Lord could have taken them, even for three days." Refusing to move her car, in about fifteen minutes, the all birds flew away at once. It was a sight! After this, I'd sit on a neighbour's porch, in the evenings, and observe the birds as they'd flock to the trees, then flee. It was as though the trees were wired with electricity. Before, neighbours always avoided walking down my sidewalk. If they had no other option, they'd run past my house, and yet would, in spite of everything, get sprinkled from the birds. But now, they'd stop and ask, "By the way, what happened to those blackbirds?" I'd chuckle, then share my testimony of what the Lord had done. they would leave amazed. Living there for ten years, I never had that problem again.
© by V. Oranell Cupp
Oranell's Daughter's Website
I am always amazed at the grace and love of God in my life. I know my life, I know all that I have been through and I know that from a very young age I knew rejection more than anything. I didn't know what love was and because of that I went down many wrong roads looking for love in all the wrong places. This is why I am so amazed at My Lord, for I know where I have been, where I am still am and yet have the faith to know where He is taking me.
I remember the first time I was invited to a church that was different from any church I had ever visited. Being bought up R.C. I was use to going to church every week because that was what we were supposed to do but as I sat in this church week after week I found myself wanting to be there all the time. the preacher was preaching "God loves you and He showed His love through His Son Jesus Christ." Love me? That was my first question, how could He possibly love me. There wasn't an area of my life that was Godly and I knew it, yet the words of the Pastor drew me back week after week. As I said earlier rejection was a big part of my life and I had just assumed that God would have nothing to do with me either. But those words:
stayed with me daily and for the first time in my life I began to believe it, yet I still wasn't sure about making a commitment mainly because the awesomeness of God loving me was almost too good to believe.
Eventually I walked up to that altar and received Jesus in my heart and a confidence came in me that was never there before. I finally believed that I could do anything because He loved me. I took those words and held on to them for a long time and things began to change in my life. My language before that time was not very good but after a few weeks of being saved I noticed I was not cursing anymore, there was complete deliverance the day I got saved, it just took me a little while to notice this was the first thing to change in my life.
You know sometimes when we have experienced so much rejection the root of it stays for awhile and over the years I struggled back and forth about His love for me although He gave me no reason to doubt. As my children grew a little older I went back to school, obtained my GED and went on to graduate with a Bachelor's Degree in Business. This was never a thought in my head that I could do something like that. As far as I was concerned I was a failure but this new found love was causing me to rise up and believe that through Him I could do all things. The Lord also took me and raised me up in the business world and I went from earning minimum wage to earning a very large salary. As much as I was amazed at all this I still found it hard to believe I was good enough to do all these things. I gained a lot of respect and status in the business world and went places I never thought possible.
But the problem was I started putting my trust in the works I was doing and started to forget the source of this goodness.
I went through a lot of things and finally the day came when I was broken into a million pieces and found myself alone and hurting, mad at God and mad at the world. Suicide became my only option and I was hospitalized for a short time. But God who is so faithful and never leaves us no matter how far we go from Him sent someone to minister to me in the hospital. This man shared that this depression would go and that the Light would shine in my life.
I don't know if you have ever been in the pit of depression but it is a very dark place where you cling to every word of hope that someone gives you. This went on for over two years and after trying all the world's ways to solve this I finally went to a minister who walked me through deliverance by showing me the need to forgive those who I had felt so rejected by. A few days later the love of God was poured into my heart but as the minister had shared with me that this was just the beginning I found his words to be truth. I wanted to know freedom in Christ. I wanted to know His love as a Father yet it seemed no matter what I did my heart could not receive it to the point where it would bring forth fruit and manifest in my life.
During one season of my life two memories from my past kept coming up in my mind and somehow I knew these two memories were keeping me from receiving the Love of My Father. I went to a writer's conference in Titusville one weekend and on Saturday night they had a service. The teaching was all about the love of the Father and the things that keep us from completely receiving it not just by faith but by truly knowing His love in the inner most parts of my heart. They had an altar call and I went up from prayer. This man that I had never met before began to pray with me and said:
I cried and cried and cried. I cried all the way home to my friend's house and I stayed outside for a while and the tears just kept coming. They were good tears, not sad ones, I was just so overwhelmed with His love and His power to heal our hearts that all I could do was cry. I finally got myself together enough to go into the house and my friend looked me straight in the eyes and said "Pat, God loves you so much" and the tears started all over again. It was a blessed evening, a night I will never forget and a breakthrough in my heart that has remained healed to this day.
I know these were the words I had heard when I first got saved, but now these words were becoming life to me and I knew that this time the enemy would not be able to come and steal this from me. His love is everlasting. His love knows no boundaries. It will break through the hardest heart and the most broken heart and His love will bring healing. Know that He loves you.
If you are struggling with this ask Him to show you why. He is faithful and He will give you the answers you need to know right when you need to know them. His love is more powerful than anything in our past and His love is the perfect love that casts out all fear. He is faithful and I am here today to tell you:
"For this reason I bow my knees to the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, from whom the whole family in heaven and earth is named. That He would grant you according to the riches of His glory to be strengthened with might through His Spirit in the inner man. That Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith, that you, being rooted and grounded in love may be able to comprehend with all the saints what is the width and length and depth and height, to know the love of Christ which passes knowledge, that you may be filled with all the fullness of God. Now to Him who is able to do exceedingly abundantly above all that we ask or think according to the power that works in us, to Him be glory in the church by Christ Jesus to all generations, forever and ever. Amen."
Romans 8:38
For I am persuaded that neither death nor life nor angels nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present nor things to come, nor height nor depth, now any other created thing shall be able to separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.
by Patricia Couchman
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