Seek the Lord

Do you seek God’s counsel?

Many of us pray and ask for God’s help in our lives, but are you listening for His counsel? Or are you just giving Him a list of things that you want, and then ending the prayer with “in Jesus’ name, Amen”?

Prayer is needed in our world today and it is necessary for us to communicate with God about our lives and our needs (although He knows what you need). But our prayers shouldn’t be like a child’s list to Santa in Jesus’ name!

Seeking the counsel and the wisdom of God can and should be done through prayer but in order to hear God’s counsel you have to be willing to do something…listen! You don’t just spout off a prayer and “thank you, Lord, in Jesus’ name, Amen” and then go about your business as if you haven’t engaged God in your day!!

When God called Gideon he gave him a command but He also gave him the ability to perform that which He was calling him to do. Read it here:

The Call of Gideon

11 Then the Angel of the LORD came and sat down under the oak in Ophrah that belonged to Joash the Abiezrite, where his son Gideon was threshing wheat in a winepress to hide it from the Midianites. 12 And the Angel of the LORD appeared to Gideon and said, “The LORD is with you, mighty warrior.”

13 “Pardon me, Sir,” Gideon replied, “but if the LORD is with us, why has all this happened to us? And where are all His wonders about which our fathers told us, saying, ‘Has, not the LORD brought us up out of Egypt?’ But now the LORD has forsaken us and delivered us into the hand of Midian.”

14 The LORDa turned to him and said, “Go in the strength you have and deliver Israel from the hand of Midian. Am I not sending you?” Judges 6: 11-14

Gideon tested the Lord after this to be sure he was hearing Him right, but the point of this passage is that Gideon listened and obeyed God. It is likely that many in Israel had been praying for deliverance from the Midianites, but God chose someone who would do what He told him and how He told him to do it. God knew that Gideon would listen and obey and that is what is needed in the church today!

Our churches do some great things by shepherding the people who have been called by God to be the church. Teaching them from God’s Word and teaching the next generation about God and what His Word says. But…how many of the churches in the world today are stepping out in faith and walking with God in these things? Are the churches today more interested in how many people show up for services on Sundays or do they go out at all into the community and take the love of Jesus with them to those who need to hear it?

Those in the church may say, “Well, that’s the preacher’s job.”, today most preachers are busy trying to take care of their own families. Paying bills, working a second job just to make the ends come close during the month, that is what most pastors are doing. Some have the time but aren’t able to get out and make house calls on those in the community.

What would Jesus do?

If I asked that question today, most would say that He is God so He can do anything for anyone. Well, didn’t He tell us through His disciples to go and tell others about the gospel and take it to all generations and to all the world? Are we doing that or do we eat lunch and go home (or go home and eat lunch) and think that’s for someone else to do? Do you leave church feeling inspired to do something for Jesus and then the fire goes out on the way home?

Seek Him in His Word today, pray about what you read and listen for His voice in what you read and when you pray. Actively reading God’s Word with prayer is the best way to hear from Him that I know. Then, if He tells your heart to do something…go out and do it! God told Gideon to save Israel and he did, if He tells you to go and tell someone in your family about Him then do it!

Is the Bible true?

There have been archaeological finds which have proven that many of the places and cities which are mentioned in the Bible are real and are or were in the places where the Bible says they were. If this is true then why should we doubt the veracity of Scripture? Do we doubt it because we don’t want it to be true?

Among Christians, there is only about thirty percent on average who claim to believe that it is the inspired Word of God. These are not Catholics but Protestants, and of those, the numbers go down with the amount of education that they have. The most educated of them only believe that the Bible is the inspired Word of God in about ten to fifteen percent of the polls taken.

Why does more education lead to less belief in the Bible? It doesn’t change because you have a Ph.D. or a Master’s degree, so what caused those with graduate degrees to discount the Bible? I think it is because of the liberal education system which pushes evolution theory as fact and all sorts of liberal ideas which contradict the wisdom found in scripture.

I have a Bachelor’s degree in Clinical Lab Science but that only reinforced my belief in God and His wondrous works! Our cells and the cells of bacteria are so complex until there is no possible explanation for our existence except that God created everything that is here and out in the universe. Look at a drop of pond water under a microscope and see all of the small single cell and multicellular creatures swimming in it! Those did not come about by accident or evolution, they are there because the Creator brought them all into existence when He made our world.

I will not reverse my belief in Him for someone’s idea or theory and I will not discount the truthfulness of God’s Word in the Bible. Why? Because if by some weird coincidence that the Bible is just a “book of fables” then when I die I am just buried in the ground and that’s that…but if what I believe is true then my life goes on into eternity in Heaven and that is where my Hope is. It is in Jesus, the Son of the Living God!

“Absent from the body, present with the Lord“; that is what I believe and will continue to do so until I am in that glorious place with my Lord and Savior. Won’t you join me?