Why Won’t God Hear My Prayer?

There is something we need to address in parts. Something that is difficult to hear, difficult to receive and against the spirit of our age. Against the pop theology so prevalent in the modern church, but it effects our fellowship with the living God and our day to day lives.

We pray and we feel like God doesn’t hear us. Prayer can be a source of doubt. The outrageous promises of Jesus in Prayer receive indignant uncertainty from most of us – mystified frustration from the rest.

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Love is a Way of Speaking

A series on Love, Part 3

The second way that Love becomes our livery is through the expression of love with our tongues. Once we are thinking differently about love and what it means to truly love people, it will naturally transform our modes of expressing love. The first and foremost involves the powerful, dangerous and volatile organ of the tongue.

We are made in the image of God and as so we are imitators of God, meaning what we do is a reflection or mimic of what He does.  In Genesis we read that God created everything out of nothing by speaking. His words are light, planets, animals, plants; creation itself. God’s word makes, God’s words are reality; the stuff we see, feel, taste and hear.

We don’t create from nothing as God does, our words reshape matter and speaking is a primary function of taking dominion.

Think of words that have lasting, material power. “I now pronounce you man and wife.” “The jury finds you not Guilty.” “Raise your right hand and repeat after me.” “Strike 3, you’re out.” In all of these instances men declare things and alter reality or define reality.

Writing poetry, stories, movie scripts, etc. is the same. Tolkien can create the universe of Middle Earth because he is an image bearer and a maker like God, who creates universes, lives, histories and story through the power of words. In like manner, God destroys with words of cursing and judgment. The Father curses Satan and the ground on man’s behalf at the fall which had permanent affect.

Love is a way of Thinking

A Series on Love, Part 2

I want to begin by discussing the life of the Mind. I know I said all of our external expressions must be expressions of Love. But we know from reading the Gospels that Jesus spoke and expressed love completely differently than any other person who ever lived. What this reveals is that He thought about love differently than any person who had ever lived.

It’s no surprise, Isaiah 55:8 says “For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, declares the LORD.” Jesus expressed love differently because his thoughts were perfectly aligned with God, the Father. So one of our major responsibilities is to conform our thoughts to the thoughts of God. Jesus commanded us to love each other like He loved us and to do that we have to understand the nature of the love He showed us. 

The Apostles were very concerned with the life of the Mind because they knew it was necessary for Holiness.

Romans 8:6 “For to set the mind on the flesh is death, but to set the mind on the Spirit is life and peace.”

2nd Corinthians 10:5 “We destroy arguments and every lofty opinion raised against the knowledge of God, and take every thought captive to obey Christ,”

Romans 12:2 ”Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind.”

To Act like God you have to think like God and to think like God you have to continually renew your mind by studying His word. Now I am not saying that Godliness, Holiness and Salvation are dependent on your thinking the right thoughts. It’s not a matter of knowledge or right doctrine.  A mere mental assent. In everything I am going to say about the life of the mind, I am presupposing that this mind has already been united to Christ through Justification; through the work of Christ on the Cross.

But the mind is kept alive by feeding it a regular diet of edifying material.

How Lordship Changes Everything

Jesus is the image of the invisible God. This is not merely a matter of Jesus’ features; the size of His nose or the color of His hair. It has to do with how Jesus conducted Himself. How did He act? What did He do throughout the Gospels? How did he respond to the Father? Jesus came to show men how to live in relation to God. He bore the image of God with His life, so that we would know how to bear the image of God with our lives. Jesus’ Lordship is unlike any kingly conduct in all of scripture. We look at Jesus’ life and truly know that God is love (1 John 4:8), because greater love knows no one than this; that someone lays down his life for his friends (John 15:13). Love involves more than one person. A lover must have a beloved. Without another person there is no love. Monads like Allah cannot love because there is nothing to direct their love toward. Monads like Allah are sterile, distant, impersonal tyrants.  

How Jesus Changes Everything

Through the Gospels, Jesus introduces us to something more primal and profound about God than anything formerly revealed. With the incarnation of Jesus Christ and in His life and ministry, man was introduced to God in a way never previously communicated to man (John 1:1-5). In the beginning was the Father, His spirit and His word who is Jesus Christ. This new revelation does not destroy what is recorded of God in the Old Testament, but instead recasts God in ever increasingly beauteous and humbling depths.