A Heavenly Father ...

October 29, 2012

Good Afternoon everyone,

Here is the next portion of my thoughts on the Lord's prayer. I hope you enjoy it.

Our Father which art in heaven .....

How often do we open prayer with Dear Heavenly Father  . . .  I know for me it can become just a ritual but He really is a HEAVENLY father. The Apostol Paul spoke of this in Hebrew 12:9: "we have had fleshly fathers and they corrected us". But God is not like an earthly father. He is so much bigger than the best father among us. He truly sits up high and looks down low as the song says. Isaiah 40:22 says that he sits enthroned above the circle of the earth. From that vantage point he can see the past, present, and future all at once. He can judge situations and make decisions that we can not. He can tell us what to do about situations that we would never be able to figure out alone. He is truly above all.

Psalm chapter 50 and verse 21 gives a warning to those who would think that God is like us. God says that he will set our thinking straight (paraphrase). His ways are so much higher than our ways and his thoughts are not our thoughts. When we come to him in prayer and acknowledge that he is a HEAVENLY father it makes all the difference in our frame of mind. It is so much easier to leave our problems and concerns in the hands of a God such as He. Our God reigns on high, Hallelujah!


Sincerely,

Rev. Sullivan Jones

Dynamics of Prayers - Step 1

Good Morning everyone,

I pray that everyone is having a great morning. During the month of October I have taken a break from my regular duties as adult Sunday School teacher at New Birth Church in Clinton. One sunday this month I was able to preach in another church and the other sundays I enjoyed sitting and listening to the teaching/preaching without having to be prepared myself. It has been a welcome break but I will be ready to go again starting in November. Starting in November I will be teaching a series of lessons called Dynamics of Prayers. If you are interested in getting weekly tidbits of my lesson I will be sending them out via email and my blog. If you decide you don't want to be in my blog, just let me know and my  feelings will not be hurt. Thanks everyone and God Bless.

Prayer thought for the day:

The very first thing Jesus taught us to pray was "Our father". Father is a good place to start. I believe this to be the important part of the prayer. If we do not understand and know God as father then the prayer will not be as effective. Prayer is communication with God and no one can commune with God like his children. Understanding that God is our father causes prayer to take on a new meaning. When I enter his presence I have a right to be there. He is anxious to hear from me. He wants to know all about my day, my thoughts, likes and dislikes, etc. It is like a child who comes from school full of ideas, plans, and maybe fears. He will not say yes to all of my plans. He may  correct my thinking on a few issues. But if I will listen in prayer as well as speak, it will be the most rewarding conversation I have all day. You may say, "But I don't know how to pray. where do I start". Just start with "Our father" and the rest will be much easier.

God Bless,

Rev. Sullivan Jones

Misunderstood!

This morning in my prayer time I was thinking about an incident, now funny, that happened when I lived in Honduras. I was living in a basement apartment in the Bible school complex where I was serving. I did not have access to the washing machine upstairs and so rather than wash all of my clothes by hand I decided to go to a local laundry. The public laundries in Honduras, where they do exist, usually consist of someone taking in your clothes and washing, drying and folding them for a fee. I went and inquired about the price. I can’t remember at this point how much it was, but I do remember that it was more than I could afford at the moment. I quickly realized that these were set prices and they weren’t just trying to see how much I would pay. So I left my clothes expecting to be able to come back in a couple of hours and pick up my clean clothes. I assured the guy that I did not need the clothes ironed and folded. I could do that myself.

I returned later in the day and, sure enough, my suitcase was ready and waiting. I happily paid the guy and trudged the three or four blocks back home. I thought that my suitcase was a little heavier than when I arrived but I shrugged it off and kept going. Upon reaching the Bible school and opening my suitcase I realized why it was so heavy. The clothes had indeed been washed and that was all. They were put back into the suitcase sopping wet. The Bible school director, Bro. Brad Schreckhise took me back around there in his jeep and talked to the guy. It seemed in my “haggling” over the price I had only paid for the washing and they assumed I would hang them out. I will never forget what Brad said; “Mal entendido”- Misunderstood.

It seems that misunderstandings come more often in life than we would like; a hurtful word from a loved one; an unkind remark from a coworker or even a perfect stranger. There are even bigger things that cause us to ask, “why God”? “Why did I loose my job when I needed it the most? “Why did my loved one have to die”? “Why am I battling this sickness”? The list of questions at times seems endless.

If we allowed ourselves to dwell on the “why” path for very long we would quickly succumb to depression and eventually insanity. There is always a why question. The answers aren’t always to readily available. Some only come with time and the wisdom that experience brings. Some questions may never be answered in this life. But God has not left us without hope.

He has given us the secret to overcoming the difficulties of life’s “whys”. It is found in the book of I Thessalonians 5:18. “In everything give thanks”. It doesn’t tell us that we must understand to give thanks but that we are to simply give thanks. It doesn’t tell us to give thanks for our understanding but it does say to give thanks.

Paul said it this way: “Nothing shall separate me from the love of Christ”. (Paraphrased) He also wrote that "all things work together for the good to them that love God". I don’t always know how something will work for my good but I find that when I can begin to give thanks to God for working out my situation, He has a way of working things out. It isn’t always to my understanding. It may not even be to my liking. But He does work things out to my good. And some days, if I praise him for my now, I will have a testimony of what God brought me through.

Let us pledge to ourselves and to God that instead of complaining when things don’t go our way we will praise instead. It will lift our spirits. And who knows? It may even cause God to bring us through our valley a little sooner.