ministry life

ABIDING TO THE ANSWER

/ joseph elon lillie / 2 Comments

I have learned that prayer is not primarily about asking. I have learned that prayer is primarily about connecting.

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Prayer is the place where all the puzzle pieces of our relationship with God and His people come together and solidify into action.

I have learned that before asking I need to connect with God and His thoughts about the subjects that concern me. the Bible calls this connection “abiding”.

If you abide in me, and my words abide in you, ask whatever you wish, and it will be done for you. John 15:7

Abiding prayer, then, is the key to successful intercessory prayer (that type of prayer that involves lists of things we would like God to do in the name of Jesus).

Abiding prayer starts with listening…. Listening to the Word of God. Discovering the promises of God in the Bible and learning to stand on them. This requires us to read and memorize the Word of God. For most of us that requires a lot of going over. I generally read a book of the Bible over and over until I have it deep in my heart. My current method is to read through the Bible and in between each book I read one of the biblical books that I have chosen over and over. I have done this with the book of The Revelation, the book of Genesis, and now the book of Psalms. That means I have read through The Revelation 66 times and Genesis 66 times. When you read something that many times through, things start to stick. This is the beginning of abiding prayer.

I will write more soon, but tell me…

WHAT SECRETS HAVE YOU LEARNED ABOUT ABIDING IN PRAYER?

BRINGING HOME

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I helped lead prayer at The Worship Room House of Prayer last night.

If I had to choose a theme for the evening it would be SHOW US HOME. At one point, during the devotional worship set, I began to sing a simple spontaneous chorus.

” OPEN OUR EYES TO SEE THE BEAUTY OF THE LORD. OPEN OUR EARS TO HEAR THE SONG GOD SINGS OVER US, THE SONG THAT CALLS US HOME.”

During our time of worship with the word we meditated on Song of Solomon 4:9 “You have captured my heart, my treasure, my bride. You hold it hostage with one glance of your eyes, with a single jewel of your necklace”

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The meditation again turned toward the idea of home as we repeated the line, “We are Your dwelling place and You are our home.”

Then, during our intercession set, I began to pray in the Spirit and I had this deep sense that I was calling the power of my heavenly home into this earthly realm to invade it and heal it. My prayer came from Isaiah 64 “Oh, that you would rend the heavens and come down,
    that the mountains would tremble before you!
2 As when fire sets twigs ablaze
    and causes water to boil,
come down to make your name known to your enemies
    and cause the nations to quake before you!”

I have this sense that a. very important part of ministry now is to bring the essence of Heaven to Earth: The love, the joy, the peace, the patience, the kindness, the goodness, the faithfulness, the gentleness, and the self control. We may not be able to experience the fullness of these things until we get to Heaven, but what we can bring of those things now we must.

WHAT ARE YOU DOING TO BRING A PIECE OF HEAVEN TO EARTH TODAY?

SURVEY

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I visited town hall the other day. I needed to renew Snug’s dog license and to check in with the Planning Commission to see if our building project was even viable.

Snug’s dog license was a quick matter. He just had a rabies shot in the fall, so he is good through next year. After the town clerk’s office I stopped over to see Nicole Roberts at the planning commission and I spent about twenty minutes telling her about our plans.

The Vicarage sits on two pieces of property which my father acquired at different times in the 1970’s. The property we are planning on building the cottage on has plenty of frontage and set back so the building project is a go, but on further inspection it was discovered that the main house of the Vicarage, while grandfathered in, is not actually a buildable lot any longer. It is short by three feet of being buildable.

The advice is to have the lots surveyed so we can build on the empty lot and then give some frontage to the main lot so that also become buildable so we can add a garage or something in the future.