Gospel (25)

The Celebration of Jesus

As Western Easter celebrations began this week and proceed through the month of April to Eastern Orthodox Easter on May 1st; pray that there will be many chances to tell the story of Jesus's death, burial, and resurrection to friends. This story; fundamental to our faith, is not accepted by most who live in the AP. Pray for many discussions. Pray that God will stir the hearts of those who hear this story to believe it.
 
Please pray for a college student, *Youssef, who has become close friends with his professor *David. Youssef has heard the gospel from him at a restaurant off-campus.  The friendship remains warm.  Pray that Youssef will return to thoughts of the Cross and be saved.  (*name changed for anonymity)
 
"This is what is written: The Messiah will suffer and rise from the dead on the third day, and repentance for the forgiveness of sins will be preached in His name to all nations, beginning in Jerusalem."  
- Luke 24:46-47
Pray for believers who have no believing community around them during this Easter Season. Pray that they will take comfort that the Risen Lord never leaves them nor forsakes them. Pray that they will soon be able to worship with a group who knows the Savior.
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THE GOSPEL OF ACCESS

It is hard to overestimate the gospel. It is the key to our forgiveness and redemption. It is the only hope of eternal life. And it is the passport to fellowship with God in prayer.The first chapter of Romans reveals the corruption of our hearts and our separation from God. From there Romans leads us to the gospel. Jesus died for our sins. Romans 5 declares that we now have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. Through him we have access into this grace. We can have fellowship with God.The gospel is the central message of God in the Bible. It is the purpose of God in history and eternity. And through it we have access into God's embrace in prayer.http://watchinginprayer.blogspot.com/daveswatch.com/
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INTERCEDING AGAINST JUDGMENT

Many are saying America and possibly most of the world is under the imminent judgment of God in these days. I am reminded of God's judgment upon Sodom and Gomorrah. God said the outcry against Sodom was great. People were crying out to him in oppression and suffering. God could not be a God of compassion and not judge the selfishness, wickedness, prejudice and violence we have turned to today. And yet as He was preparing to rain fire down upon Sodom the Lord invited Abraham to intercede for the city. If God is making you aware of imminent judgment, He is inviting you to intercede in prayer. Do you sense the urgency to intercede in prayer even if you are not sure how to do that? Interestingly enough Abraham came to some principles that will help us pray in these days.

First, Abraham appealed to God's love for righteousness. "Will not the judge of all the earth do what is right?" We need to pray for churches and believers and people who seek righteousness in high places in our society. They may be our only hope against immediate judgment. This week one of the most prominent pastors in America stepped down from his pulpit because of moral failure. I saw several Face Book posts on it. I made a comment on one of them. "If you were our enemy, who would you attack?" But while I had respected this man, I had never prayed for him. God forgive me.

Another principal that Abraham discovered was the intercession of the gospel. Some of you are skeptical of Abraham's understanding of the gospel. But he grasped a core principle in his interaction with the LORD over Sodom. The Lord loves righteousness so much that He was willing to spare the wicked because of the righteousness of the righteous. How does that relate to the gospel? That is its very heart. The only reason any of us are spared from immediate and final judgment is that God has imputed to us the righteousness of Jesus Christ. He alone is truly righteous. He is our only righteousness. He is our only hope. Interceding in the face of judgment must be based upon the spread of the gospel. Many of us in these days sense an urgency to pray for unreached and unengaged people groups in the world. That is intercession for the gospel. Are you praying and giving and going and sending so the gospel will be available to all who Jesus died to save?

Today, I believe there is another facet of interceding in the face of judgment. That is crying out to God for His supernatural hand in our ministry to hurting people. The first major judgment of God was a mercy on the world because of what we had become. God saw that the thoughts and intents of the heart of man were only evil continually. (Gen. 6:5) I do not know what kind of judgment God is preparing to send. We may well be preparing to taste the 7 bowls of God’s wrath upon the earth. But the Bible speaks of another kind of judgment that is in many ways worse. This is the judgment of what we become. In Romans 1 Paul says that God gives men over to the perversions and corruption of our hearts. 2 Timothy 3 says that in the last days people will be lovers of self, lovers of money, proud arrogant, disobedient to parents, ungrateful, unholy, heartless, unappeasable, slanderous, without self-control, brutal, not loving good, treacherous, reckless, swollen with conceit, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God. These are days in which we need to pray for God to use us to heal in the face of incredible wickedness all around and within us.

Father, we cry out for Your mighty hand upon us as we seek to be righteous, as we spread the gospel and as we show compassion to a hurting world.

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DAY ELEVEN:
VERSE:
that is the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it does not see Him or know Him, but you know Him because He abides with you and will be in you....(John 14:17)
PRAYER: (Part 2)
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Father, You said if we, as a people return to You - in spirit, in truth and through repentance, You will hear, heal and help us in our time of need. Lord, but we are still a people hard of hearing. We have more bibles in circulation in print and electronically around the world, more worship music, more "Christian" movies, more "churches", more....more....more. We send more people on missions trips around the world yet some of them only go for their own selfish reasons for their resumes. Some of them only go for a reason to do something on their summer vacation. Most of them have not truth in them, because the Truth was never in them.
 
This is the Spirit of Truth, the Holy Spirit, Who testifies within us that every jot, tittle, word, phrase and passage in the Bible is true. Yet the world cannot receive it because sin, intellectualism and humanism are obstacles to a simple understanding of what Your Spirit is saying to us in these last days. They cannot receive it because they doubt. Sometimes we, Your remnant have our doubts, oh Lord, but our doubts are not about Your existence, self-existence and sovereignty, but our doubts are the scar tissues of our fallen state which will not be done away with while we are still living on earth. Their doubts are because, to put it bluntly - they do not know You even while knowing OF You. 
 
They see You as their ticket to prosperity and nothing bad happening in their lives because some smiling preacher in $5000 suits on TV told them so in his books, and seminars etc....or their local minister talks only of Your fictional tolerance of sin and "loving everything and everybody" no matter what.  So when their concept of prosperity and the easy western life do not materialize, they walk away from you, just like the "disciples" did in John 6:66. These are the same people who will one day take the Mark of the Beast, whose number is 666....because they do "not see Him or know Him". Lord, You said in this Word above (John 14:17) that this "seeing or knowing" is literally about partaking of, experiencing, beholding and discerning YOU - the One True God of Heaven, Who is the Way, the Truth and the Life (Verse 6). This spiritual blindness exists today because even though the world and its false religions know of and about Your Word, they refuse and reject and were never truly reborn.
 
Father God, so we pray for them right now that they may "see" that they may "taste and see that the Lord is good" blessed is the man and woman and child who trusts in Him. We pray that they too will remove the self-embedded scales from the eyes of their own spiritual hearts and see that the Lord - He is God. The Lord - He is God. The Lord - He is God and there is no other. Give us the influence and boldness to share the joys of knowing this Truth that the world may know and seek to wait, rest and anticipate that glorious eternity with You, through Christ our Soon Coming King. Amen.
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