Strengthened By Prayer

If you have been following my journey for a while, you will know I wrote early last year about some of the difficulties I faced. Although the year started rough, I learned many lessons and ultimately came out better than before. I firmly believe that my growth happened because I decided to start seriously praying.

At the start, the prayer increase was partly due to not having anything else to do, and not desiring to find anything else to do with my time. I heard a sermon at the start of the year about being equipped for battle by spending time with God, and I realised that I’d rarely spent more than an hour at a time seeking God. So I made it my goal to spend longer amounts of time with God to see what would happen.

The result of increased prayer was spiritual alertness and vision I had never experienced before. As I grew spiritually throughout the year, I saw most things differently; My perspective changed dramatically in only 12 months! The most obvious change to me was that I became more aware of the spiritual health of myself and those around me. I have realised that gifts (in and out of the church) do not equal spiritual maturity. In some cases, I saw that people with gifts had become spiritually dry over time as they started to lean on their gifts rather than their relationship with God! However, those who were healthy all had one thing in common – a close relationship with God and regular prayer.

Seeing things the way I do now, I find it quite interesting that most christians I talk to do not see the need for much intentional prayer, if any at all. I agree that subconscious prayer is incredibly powerful and should be practiced by all christians, and the bible backs this up in Thessalonians:

Never stop praying.
1 Thessalonians 5:17 NLT

But, there’s more to prayer than the inner prayer. It’s the intentional prayer, when time is set aside specifically to address concerns and talk with the Father. I believe Jesus was talking about this kind of prayer in Matthew 6:

“But when you pray, go away by yourself, shut the door behind you, and pray to your Father in private. Then your Father, who sees everything, will reward you.
Matthew 6:6 NLT

And also in Luke 11:

“And so I tell you, keep on asking, and you will receive what you ask for. Keep on seeking, and you will find. Keep on knocking, and the door will be opened to you.
Luke 11:9 NLT

There are many other verses on prayer, but these three already start to show what a healthy prayer life looks like. I want to encourage you to work towards this kind of prayer life. Every prayer moment is another step with Jesus, so guard your prayer life.

Since increased prayer, I noticed increased spiritual activity around me. Jesus has visited me multiple times in dreams and visions. In addition, I notice more angelic and demonic activity. Demons have specifically targeted me to bring me down and cause me to stumble, but the Father has rescued me every time. Crazy things happen now, some of which I have shared, and many which I haven’t. I am incredibly blessed, and I have had opportunities open to me that would have taken me many years to see. These are only some of the benefits of a closer relationship with God.

If you struggle with anything at all, I want to encourage you to write it down and create a list of things you want the Father to develop in your life. As Jesus said in Luke, keep asking and you will receive what you ask for. I personally focused on character development and prayers around growing spiritually and maturely, but you may want to broaden your prayers to your work life, family, friends, and other areas. In all your prayers, submit to the Father’s will so that your prayers will be answered.

Jesus is Returning Soon! Get Ready.

On this blog, I have shared intimate details of my life that I would feel uncomfortable telling most people. Today I will go even further because I believe very strongly this message is vital. So, without further ado, here goes.

When I was young, from about age ten onward (I don’t remember exactly how old I was), I had powerful dreams that I believe were from God. These dreams were the kind where I woke up in a cold sweat, heart pounding, fearing for my very life. They were dreams of Jesus returning. It wasn’t often I had a dream of Jesus returning, but when I did, fear and emotion gripped me! In those moments, all I cared about was that Jesus took me with him into heaven.

Up until this year, as far as I can remember, whenever Jesus returned in a dream, I was left behind. Sometimes I saw specific people being taken to heaven, and other times it had less detail and just showed a variety of people going. In either case, some people went while others were left behind. In one particular dream, I was pulled down a long chamber into hell to be tortured; this was arguably the most terrifying experience of my life.

However, just weeks ago, I had another dream of Jesus returning. This time, I was pulled toward him along with other people. I felt the fear of God as in all other dreams, but this time I felt relief too! I cannot describe how I felt; I have never felt this way my whole life on earth! I should also mention that in all of these dreams, they were so real, and the emotion, fear, and utter horror experienced in them was so terrifying, that I thought they were real life! There was absolutely no knowing they were dreams.

Now, in the dream, after an invisible force pulled me to Jesus, he set me aside and brought me to a tiny wardrobe-type cupboard in the wall and told me to wait there. The door in the wall opened to a small space that was so small that only my body could fit; there was no room for anything or anyone else. It was dark and lonely, but I knew I had to pray there; It was my assignment.

As soon as I awoke, I knew that prayer would prepare me for Jesus’ coming. It is when we get alone by ourselves and pray to our Father in heaven that our relationship with him starts to grow. No amount of other things can substitute. Jesus gave this lesson on prayer: be alone and pray to your Father only; prayer is a private matter between you and him.

“When you pray, don’t be like the hypocrites who love to pray publicly on street corners and in the synagogues where everyone can see them. I tell you the truth, that is all the reward they will ever get. But when you pray, go away by yourself, shut the door behind you, and pray to your Father in private. Then your Father, who sees everything, will reward you.
Matthew 6:5-6 NLT

Please set aside time to pray. The need to pray is no longer a light matter – this is very serious! You cannot understand the utter terror and horror experienced by those who do not know Jesus. They will be cast into hell for eternity, all because they didn’t cultivate a relationship with God; they never knew him. Jesus put it this way:

“Not everyone who calls out to me, ‘Lord! Lord!’ will enter the Kingdom of Heaven. Only those who actually do the will of my Father in heaven will enter. On judgment day many will say to me, ‘Lord! Lord! We prophesied in your name and cast out demons in your name and performed many miracles in your name.’But I will reply, ‘I never knew you. Get away from me, you who break God’s laws.’
Matthew 7:21-23 NLT

Notice that many of those who call Jesus “Lord!” will be cast away from his presence! To me this is scary, because I don’t see unbelievers calling Jesus “Lord”. I have only seen those who call themselves Christian call Jesus “Lord”.

You and I must do the will of the Father and know him. There is no substitute.

Rejoice because your names are registered in heaven

As many times as I write about this, it still burns in my heart: a healthy relationship and intimacy with God are more important than anything else in this world. At one time in Jesus’ ministry, he sent out the Twelve disciples, along with many others, to preach the gospel. They returned to him excited because demons obeyed them! However, Jesus brought perspective:

17 When the seventy-two disciples returned, they joyfully reported to him, “Lord, even the demons obey us when we use your name!” 18 “Yes,” he told them, “I saw Satan fall from heaven like lightning! 19 Look, I have given you authority over all the power of the enemy, and you can walk among snakes and scorpions and crush them. Nothing will injure you. 20 But don’t rejoice because evil spirits obey you; rejoice because your names are registered in heaven.”
Luke 10:17-20 NLT

From reading this, I can see how much value Jesus puts on salvation. Miracles are of more value than money because you can’t buy them, yet Jesus puts their value below salvation. Healing is impressive, but salvation is better. Spiritual authority is excellent, but salvation is better. Immunity from all earthly harm is unbelievable, but salvation is still better.

Salvation is of utmost importance to Jesus, and if it isn’t for you, you may need to change the way you think. Take a moment to pray and let the Holy Spirit point out one or two things in your life that you have put more value in than salvation.

Cambodia

Days before the coronavirus influenced border closures around the world, I went on my first overseas trip to Cambodia. I couldn’t have picked a worse time to go overseas, yet I don’t regret it for a second.

Although the trip was a short one-week arrangement I learned a lot about the culture, people, religion and area. When I stepped outside the airport, a very strong and unpleasant smell greeted me and didn’t leave until I flew out again. I was shocked to see my “taxi” driver blindly walk across four lanes of traffic (which in Cambodia translates to about 12 lanes. I’m not kidding.) and somehow make it out alive! I was surprised to see enormous amounts of trash, rubbish, food scraps and goodness knows what else thrown on the side of the roads. everywhere. My heart broke to hear the stories of the people who were oppressed by an evil government who killed close to 3 million of their innocent only 45 years ago.

The whole trip I soaked in the culture, doing my best to learn how they work, eat, travel and live. I learned that a lot of Khmer (Cambodians) make less than $1 per day. I saw young children playing in rubbish. Most children work when not in school. Yet somehow those children were happy. They were content to play in trash, and they didn’t mind the smell.

After seeing these things, I realised just how important my attitude is. I choose to be happy or upset. I can have fun playing in rubbish, or I can live in Australia with luxuries most Khmer only dream about and think of 101 things I don’t have. Getting back to Australia, I realised just how wealthy I am. I had a different appreciation for things that I didn’t before. I’m aware that I can still be a sour grape at times 😉 but I am trying to be more thankful for what I have.

I have realised the vanity and yes, even stupidity that lies in wanting more things and not being content. A discontent man will never be happy, but Godliness with contentment is great gain.

1 Timothy 6:6-11 But godliness with contentment is great gain. ⁷For we brought nothing into the world, and we can take nothing out of it. ⁸But if we have food and clothing, we will be content with that. ⁹Those who want to get rich fall into temptation and a trap and into many foolish and harmful desires that plunge people into ruin and destruction. ¹⁰For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil. Some people, eager for money, have wandered from the faith and pierced themselves with many griefs. ¹¹But you, man of God, flee from all this, and pursue righteousness, godliness, faith, love, endurance and gentleness.

Desiring money seems good at first, but it always leads to harmful desires. I think I need a reality check every so-often because the whole Australian culture revolves around where you work and what you do on weekends. Do you work for a big company? Do you have a university degree? How much money do you make? How nice is your car? These questions don’t ask a more important question: who are you? For real, who are you deep down? If you had no job, education, money, or possessions, who would you be? Would anyone want to be around you?

While I was away I had a lot of time to think about these kinds of questions. Almost all tourist sites were shut down due to the virus, so there was plenty of time for deep thinking. I started to realise how selfish I am. I want a good education, job, and above all I really want to be seen as “successful”. I think my perspective is starting to change. I don’t need any of those things to be happy. I realised that when you don’t have possessions, the only reason people stay around you is because the love you for who you are. That is worth more than any amount of money or success. However, even more important than relationship with people, is my relationship with God. Am I close to our Father in heaven? Am I actively listening to the Holy Spirit?

Now that I’ve seen another side of life, I want to go back there and help. Unfortunately, many Khmer pursue greed and desire to be rich like westerners. They don’t realise the trap it leads to and that they can have everything they need without money. All they need is Jesus. All I need is Jesus. With him I have everything, and without him I have nothing. To me this is clearer than ever, and I pray that by reading my story you see this just a little clearer too.

From Knowledge to Relationship

I was at home preparing for a bible study that met on a weekly basis when I realised I didn’t remember anything spoken at church on Sunday. I wanted to pass it off as being busy and having a lot of different things in my life leading to forgetfulness. However, there was a deeper underlying problem. A hint was that this happened regularly, almost every week. Was I not spiritual enough? Did I not care about God’s word? Why was I not focused at church? These kinds of questions floated around in my mind.

Here’s what I didn’t realise: I had more knowledge of God than a relationship with him. A hint of this was how I thought about him – I thought of him as God. I didn’t talk to my Father, Jesus or Holy Spirit. They were a distant God in my mind. If you asked me, I would have told you that of course God was close to me, but in reality he was not. Did I pray throughout the day? Did I talk with the Father? Did I listen carefully? Did I ask him questions? No. I did not.

I knew what God liked and disliked, but not because he was telling me directly. I knew everything I knew because of the Bible or church preaching. The Bible is incredibly powerful, but reading it without a relationship with the Father held back its power. When I read it, I assumed I was always in the right and every promise belonged to me. In the same way, every curse or rebuke was for ‘bad’ people… or something…

How wrong I was!

I was blind to the sin and idols in my heart because I didn’t have a relationship with Jesus. Knowledge of him doesn’t give room for him to touch my heart and bring up the things I need to deal with. If only I had talked with him, asking him to reveal sin to be dealt with, I would have saved myself so much pain!

So, when did the change from knowledge to relationship happen? Well, it’s hard to give a date or time because it was more of a journey, but I can say for certain the process accelerated during a recent part of my life. When I was at the end of myself I forced, yes, forced myself into prayer like never before. I changed from praying 5 minutes per day (on a good day) to many hours each day.

Through my prayer times, my Father in heaven showed me many things about my heart and the mess that was inside. He also gently showed me what other people were feeling because of my actions. Wow. That wrecked me. I had no idea of just how much pain I had caused, especially to those closest to me. It still hits me as I write this, months later!

There is so much more to God than you can ever understand through teaching. The only way to truly understand God is to have a close relationship with Him and experience Him for yourself. His power and love are so life-changing, that if everyone were to experience them, the whole world would be changed in a single day.

I want to encourage you to press into prayer and worship. Spend time meditating on the Bible and switch off other voices such as video and text media. Your hearing will clear up significantly and you will draw closer and closer to your Father and experience greater measures of His love and favour in your life.

The Pursuit of Acceptance, or the Pursuit of God?

Today I have been challenged by the scripture found in Isaiah 53:1-6 ‘Who has believed our message and to whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed? He grew up before him like a tender shoot, and like a root out of dry ground. He had no beauty or majesty to attract us to him, nothing in his appearance that we should desire him. He was despised and rejected by mankind, a man of suffering, and familiar with pain. Like one from whom people hide their faces he was despised, and we held him in low esteem. Surely he took up our pain and bore our suffering, yet we considered him punished by God, stricken by him, and afflicted. But he was pierced for our transgressions, he was crushed for our iniquities; the punishment that brought us peace was on him, and by his wounds we are healed. We all, like sheep, have gone astray, each of us has turned to our own way; and the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all.‘

Jesus spent His time on earth not for Himself, but sinners. He was despised and hated during His ministry. What hit me hard was how the Son of God came to earth and was misunderstood. If God’s own Son wasn’t liked and didn’t care to be liked, why am I so concerned with what other people think of me?

If I am to live for God and not myself, I will need to re-focus myself on Him. It seems so easy to get caught up in what the world defines as success, but to put that aside and look like a fool may be necessary to obey God. How far will you go to pursue God rather than acceptance of other people? This challenges me, because often my motives aren’t right. I love social media because it’s a platform that can be used to get even more acceptance from friends. Does a follower of Christ even need social media? I deleted Instagram because I do not have the self-control to use it in a healthy way. I have kept a Facebook account, but I wonder if I should delete that too. In any case, I will be judging my motives very closely the next few days. I want to be in the pursuit of God, not the pursuit of acceptance from people.

Passion For God

Acts 21:1-4, 7-8 tells the story of Paul travelling through various places and encouraging Christians as he went. Just focusing on the travel, it says ‘After saying farewell to the Ephesian elders, we sailed straight to the island of Cos. The next day we reached Rhodes and then went to Patara. There we boarded a ship sailing for Phoenicia. We …landed at the harbour of Tyre, in Syria, where the ship was to unload its cargo. We went ashore, found the local believers, and stayed with them a week…‘ (Skip verses 5 and 6) ‘The next stop after leaving Tyre was Ptolemais, where we greeted the brothers and sisters and stayed for one day. The next day we went on to Caesarea and stayed at the home of Philip the Evangelist, one of the seven men who had been chosen to distribute food.‘

This story illustrates the passion Paul had for God and the Church. He travelled the world teaching and encouraging believers wherever he went.

The passion Paul had for God and the Church inspires me. However, when it comes to my life, I can so effortlessly get busy with unimportant tasks. I never intend to put God below other things, but it is so easy to find fun and exciting things to fill my day.

Does your life reflect the passion Paul had? Travelling the world is obviously not required to pursue God passionately. Loving God looks different for everyone, but is there an opportunity to bring your passion to a higher level? Do you find yourself ‘too busy’ to spend a meaningful time alone with God each day?

Influencing Those Around You

I was at university, on my way to the library after class. ‘Caleb!’ Someone was calling my name. I looked around to see classmate from last year. He was fast-walking toward me with a friend of his. They asked me to join them in the library, and we ended up talking for hours. Later that week, I saw them again. I wanted to study alone because I get more done, but they saw me and were following me. I couldn’t shake them.

Every day provides an opportunity to have an impact on someone’s life. Are you influencing the people around you? Is the effect you have on others easily seen?

1 Peter 2:12 says ‘Keep your conduct among the Gentiles honourable, so that when they speak against you as evildoers, they may see your good deeds and glorify God on the day of visitation.‘ Every day you are with people who don’t believe in God, your actions are on display. You can show God to those around you in small, simple ways. Live each day intentionally.

Family

This week God has been talking to me about family. It started when I was talking with a friend about her family. Her family experienced some hardship but didn’t handle it well. As a result, some relationships suffered and today still need attention.

The conversation I had with my friend reminded me of my family. Last year I moved away from family but didn’t make an effort to stay in contact. I wanted to leave them behind as much as possible because of my past (terrible) experiences. However, after some thinking and praying, I believe God wants me to connect with them again.

Have you struggled with your family in the past? Are there relationships you can help mend?

1 Corinthians 13:1-3 says ‘If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. If I give away all I have, and if I deliver up my body to be burned, but have not love, I gain nothing.‘

God wants every one of us to love each other the way He loves. This includes family.

Respectful Yet Honest

I was talking to a friend at church when he started talking about another friend of mine in a negative way. He didn’t respect them at all, saying they were an idiot. I’m sure there was a reason why this friend wasn’t the smartest, but that doesn’t justify putting them down like that! Not only did my friend manage to pull down my friend, but he also lost my trust.

Honesty is critical, but say behind someone’s back what you would say to their face. It may be hard, to be honest in a respectful way when they are wrong, but it is so essential to maintaining trust in relationships. If something is wrong, tell them! The worst thing to do is gossip about them when they are likely to fix their problem if only they were told.

2 Corinthians 8:21 says ‘For we aim at what is honourable not only in the Lord’s sight but also in the sight of man.‘ Respect and honesty build trust, one small conversation at a time. Don’t underestimate its power, but instead aim to respect everyone, including God.