Week 21 of 52 Prayers of Faith - Faith is loving God with all our all our heart, soul, mind and strength.

Faith is loving God with all our heart, soul, mind and strength - Lord increase our faith

Again I am using active words with regard to faith. Loving is an active verb. Love is a feeling but that is not all that it is. Love is action; Love Does (to borrow the title of a recently published book); love is the motive that guides a Christian's behavior. So when we talk about loving God, it involves more than our emotions

The Bible tells us that God first loved us. It tells us that God so loved us that He sent Jesus so that we could know Him better. The Good News is really "God loves humanity and He has demonstrated that in the person of Jesus Christ".

Knowing that God loves us and has demonstrated that love, demands a response from us. This only seems right. Just as children love their parents when their parents love them, so we must love God because we are his children and He loves us. Jesus said if fact that Loving God is the greatest commandment and the next thing closest to that is loving our neighbors.

Each of you will have to learn what that means to you. For me, it means I am a pastor/preacher/teacher who serves God by loving, teaching and training the people He puts in my path.

Lord, we thank you that You first loved us, help us to love You with our all of our hearts minds, strength and souls - Lord increase our Faith

Week 16 of 52 Prayers of faith - Faith is knowing that the Love of God transcends all things

Faith is knowing that the Love of God transcends all things - Lord, increase our faith

The love of God, God's love or Agape love is a love that is not rooted primarily in the human condition. There are many kinds of love. The love of a man for a woman, the love of a parent for a child, the love of a friend for a friend. But all these kinds of love come from the human heart. The human heart can be a very dark place. We can harbor secret lusts and hatred in our hearts. Human love is tainted; tainted by our sinful proclivities.

On the other hand God's love comes form the wellspring of God's heart. God is everything good and right. There is no darkness in Him. The Apostle John even goes so far to say that God is love, or stated another way, God's very nature is love. God may hate sin, but He loves sinners. God so loved the world that He sent is only begotten Son into the world to make a way possible for us to experience His love first hand.

Then He sent his Holy Spirit to dwell in those who believed in his Son, so that we would have the power to love others as He first loved us. That is a powerful thing. So powerful that the Apostle Paul said that this Agape love, never fails. This love gives us the power to love even our enemies. It grants us forgiveness so that we can receive God's forgiveness and so that we can forgive those who have transgressed against us.

God's Agape love in us is proof of God living in us. The Apostle John goes so far to say that if we don't love our brother or sister (referring to others of our faith) then God is not in us. That makes for quite the charge against us. Jesus says that our love is the evidence of our faith. We will be known by our love, not our piety or our theology. God's love makes it possible for us to love the unlovable. This is truly transcendent. Jesus said that anyone can love someone who loves them. But with his Love we can love anyone.

Thank you Lord, that your Love transcends: our fears, our hatred, our sin, our selfishness. Lord, your love transcends all of our shortcomings and makes us more like You. Lord, increase our faith.

Week 14 of 52 Prayers of Faith - Faith is knowing that Christianity is not merely a philosophy but rather a supernatural relationship with the Creator of Eternity

Until my conversion I considered myself a man of science and reason.  I accepted the idea that there was a God and that Jesus was his Son, but I didn't see at as something supernatural.  God was merely a concept we used to explain our existence.  I might have agreed with Thomas Jefferson (who removed all supernatural events from his Bible) and been more of a deist.  I believed there was a God, but I didn't put my trust and faith in Him.

So here I am some 25 odd years beyond my conversion and I know realize that anytime we try to explain away the supernatural aspects of God and our faith in Him, we jeopardize our faith.  We reduce our God to a god, having no more relevance in our lives than the Easter bunny.

I believe that faith demands that we must acknowledge the supernatural in all aspects of our faith.  Our conversion is a supernatural act.  Our baptism is a supernatural decent into Christ's grave and then being lifted into the supernatural resurrection of Christ.  Our life in Christ must embrace a supernatural expectation for his help and his Holy Spirit to abide in us.

We need the supernatural in our lives so that we can live the life that He has prepared for us. He has prepared good works for us to do.  He has empowered us, supernaturally to live a life free from hate, greed and fear, if we will only put our trust in him supernaturally.


Lord our faith in you is not merely a philosophical nor an intellectual act.  Our faith comes supernaturally from You and your Word - Lord, increase our faith.

Week 13 of 52 Prayers Faith is knowing that God is more interested in our character than in our comfort

Faith is knowing that God is more interested in our character than in our comfort - Lord, increase our faith

At the end of the Beatitudes Jesus said that blessed (which really means happy) are we when people revile us and persecute us and say all kinds of horrible things about us for His Name's sake, He goes on to say, "Rejoice and be glad for your reward is great in heaven"

That may seem strange to us. We want to be liked and found acceptable, yet if we are to be counted as Kingdom citizens we have to accept that the world may not like us, in fact they may revile us. That is uncomfortable for anyone. But Christ is more interested in the state of our heart than in the condition of our bodies or our reputation in the world, but we are encouraged that their will be rewards for our diligence through persecution.

The Apostle James goes on to say that we should "count it all joy" when we are faced with various trials because we know that the testing of our faith produces steadfastness, which in turn leads us to perfection in our faith. This is character building; becoming more like our Savior as we experience some of what He did.

That is Christ's real goal - our complete redemption and maturity in the faith. If that requires that we have to made uncomfortable so that we can be more like Him, then that is okay. We need to embrace all that our life in Christ requires of us if we are to live up to His good plans for us. He doesn't expect us to do it all in our own strength. He has give us is Holy Spirit that we might live life to the full as He uses our trials to transform us more and more into his Image.

Lord, we know that you are more interested our becoming like You than in our personal comfort - Lord increase our faith!