Cry "Hosanna!"

They took palm branches and went out to meet him, shouting, “Hosanna!”  John 12:13

In Hebrew, the cry “Hosanna!” means “save now” or “help me.” It was a cry of distress but also of intense happiness. The Jewish people were overjoyed that their Messiah had come at last. When He rode into town on a donkey, He was fulfilling the ancient prophesies written about Him (Zech. 9:9). Surely He would overthrow the oppressive Romans, punish the arrogant Pharisees, and establish His throne in Jerusalem. So they cheered with all their might, but those cheers turned to jeers in less than a week when He did not live up to their expectations. His deliverance was not what they had in mind so they turned away.

 “Help me, God!” we cry when the doctor says “No hope,” the IRS says “Pay up,” or the landlord says “Get out.” “Hosanna!” we cry to the Deliverer we imagine. Then the loved one dies, the debts stack up, or we lose our home and we assume our God failed us. This was not what we had in mind when we cried those words, so we turn away. We’re not much different from the crowd that lined the street that day. Maybe we too would have shouted “Crucify Him!” when He did not fulfill our expectations. God’s way of delivering us is often not what we had in mind because His ways are better. They’re eternal. God’s plan restores what sin destroyed. His deliverance is Kingdom-focused, not limited to earthly focus. “Hosanna!” was the right cry, but the wrong motivation. When we understand Who Jesus is and why He came, we can shout “Hosanna!” and trust His answers.

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Number One Goal

“Should I pray, ‘Father, save me from this hour’?... Father, bring glory to your name.”  John 12:27-28

“Lord, help me! Get me out of here!” How many times have you prayed something like that? “Get me out of this job. This marriage! This contract!” “Save me from these kids! This mortgage! My in-laws!”  We assume that if we’re stuck on a difficult path, it must SURELY be the Lord’s will to save us from it. After all, isn’t our personal fulfillment God’s Number One goal? Doesn’t the Bible say that God exists to make us rich and deliriously happy every day?

If it does, then Jesus should have read His Bible more closely, because His life was anything but rich and deliriously happy every day. He faced all the troubles and temptations we face. But instead of begging the Father to beam Him up, He kept His focus on His purpose. Jesus knew He was headed for one of the most horrendous murders in human history, and every fiber of His being yearned to be delivered from it. Yet, He refused to give in to His trembling flesh. 

Instead He walked by the Spirit and kept His mind on His calling. His joy was in knowing He was bringing honor to God. What if that was our goal? We can pray for deliverance, but as followers of Jesus, our greater goal should be like His: “Father, bring glory to your name.” When we encounter tough situations, and ask God to be glorified in the way we handle them, we start to look a lot like Jesus.

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Don't Waver

He did not waver in unbelief at God's promise, but was strengthened in his faith and gave glory to God. Rom. 4:20

Have you ever been with people who cannot make up their minds? You ask, “Where do you want to sit?” and they ponder this as though the fate of the free world rested upon their answer: “Um, how about there…no, over there…no, wait…”  Our natural tendency is to waver. We waver over where to eat, what to wear, and when to make a call. Some even waver over their eternal destination. Someone asks: “Do you know for certain that you are going to heaven?” Waverers grimace, twist their hands and say: “Uh, I sure hope so…maybe. I guess.” Waverers have a hard time moving forward with anything, including faith.

Abraham is a great example to us of someone who could have wavered, but didn’t. God had given Abraham a promise: “You will be the father of many nations.” Abe was old and childless when this promise came. Yet, for twenty-five years he held on to it. He had heard from God and nothing could convince him otherwise. Verse 21 tells us how he kept from wavering. It says, “He was fully convinced that God is able to do whatever he promises.” Before we can believe God, we must know what He says. We must accept His offer to be Lord of our lives (Luke 9:23) and spend our days learning to follow Him. The more we know Him, the more we trust Him. As our faith grows, we become like Abraham, fully convinced that God is able to do whatever he promises. Faith is believing promises before we see them. God honors such faith and strengthens those who persevere in it.
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Be Persistent

Then Jesus told his disciples a parable to show them that they should always pray and not give up.  Luke 18:1

“OK, OK, I’m coming,” Judge Barker growled, grabbing his bathrobe as he stomped down the hall. He flung open the front door and squinted into the porch light. The old woman was a familiar sight, silhouetted against the blanket of darkness. She smiled sweetly and held out a flower. “Your Honor, I haven’t heard from you in a couple of weeks, and your secretary stopped taking my calls. I just wondered if you’d made a decision about my case.” The judge glared at the wilted flower. “Did you pick that out of my yard?” “Well, yes sir, I hope you don’t mind. I hated to come emptyhanded.” The judge slumped against the doorjamb and sighed. “All right. You win. I’ll hear your case first thing in the morn—” His words were cut off as his visitor grabbed him around the neck. “Oh, thank you, sir!” He mumbled a curse, but she glimpsed the hint of a smile just before he closed the door.

What an odd story Jesus told to remind us to keep praying. God is not a grumpy judge, so why would Jesus compare Him to one? He is using contrast to illustrate the differences between a grumpy judge and our heavenly Father. If a grumpy judge would grant a persistent request, how much more does our Righteous Judge listen to the requests of His children when we persist in prayer. We have thousands of throw-away requests: “Help them not to see me here!” “Let that guy turn right!” “Make my bank balance not say what I think it says!” But important issues are worth our persistence. After we’ve exhausted our list of silly requests, we can get serious about what really matters. And if it matters that much to us, it matters that much to Him.

What in your life is worth persevering in prayer about? Have you given up? Jesus said to keep praying.

A Summons from the Most High

“Now go, for I am sending you to Pharaoh. 

You must lead my people Israel out of Egypt.”  Exodus 3:10

Moses shifted his bare feet on the hot sand as the words hit him. Pharaoh? Egypt? He’d left them behind years ago. Maybe the Lord didn’t realize that. Moses jabbed a toe into the sand and scolded himself. Of course the Lord realized it. The basket in the reeds. The palace. His destiny had been ingrained in him since birth, and this burning bush had ignited that old yearning. How he’d wanted to belong, but his enslaved kinsmen had only offered fearful bows to his royal garments. He had ached to free the grandpas and uncles who suffered while he dined in the king’s courts. But all that was behind him. He’d blown it. He thought he’d forever cancelled any chance of redeeming himself. But this burning bush. The voice of God. He approached the flaming bush as a shepherd; he walked away as the leader of his people. He had answered a summons from the Most High.

Moses is not the only recipient of such a summons. Thousands have heard that Voice and bowed before Him. Maybe you’ve heard it too, but like Moses, you came up with excuses. You ran. You blew it. You thought you’d forever cancelled any chance of redeeming yourself. But there it came again: “I have a job for you.” Prayer is the way we bow before that burning bush, and when our lives are positioned to obey, He speaks. We are invited to take off our shoes and put on our purpose. We may approach Him filled with excuses; we walk away a chosen vessel whenever we answer a summons from the Most High. 

Learning to Pray

“Father, if You are willing, take this cup from Me. 

Yet not My will, but Yours be done.”  Luke 22:42

“Oh God, please heal my daughter!” 

“Lord, if you are willing, don’t let me get fired.” 

“Oh, Father in heaven, please let me marry Jordan in fourth hour!” 

Heaven resounds with billions of desperate pleas by people like us. Many of them were answered; many were not. Most of those prayers did not end the way Jesus’ prayer ended, and that’s why God couldn’t answer them the way we prayed them. Aren’t you glad you didn’t marry Jordan in fourth hour? And aren’t we glad Jesus was willing to go to the cross anyway? Jesus laid His request before the Father, but He kept praying until His will matched God’s.

In those few words, Jesus gave us a model for our prayer life. He passionately made a request of His Father, but He didn’t stop there. We usually stop there. We think we’re showing faith if we lay our request before God and walk away. Jesus didn’t think so. He knew that what His flesh wanted did not line up with what His Spirit wanted. So He left the decision with God. He kept praying until He could agree with God’s choice. 

We must do that too. We may not want “Thy will be done” the first ten times we fall on our faces and cry out for help. That’s why we must keep going back, like Jesus did, until our hearts are aligned with His. Only then can we cooperate with God’s plan. And we are forever grateful that He did not go along with ours.

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The Prayers God Doesn't Want

If one turns away his ear from hearing the law, 

even his prayer is an abomination. 

Proverbs 28:9

Wait! What? You mean there are some prayers God doesn’t want? 

According to scripture, yes. Prayer is a universally accepted idea, but we want to set our own rules for it. The majority of adults claim that they pray, but is God listening to those prayers? Scripture commands us to pray, but there are some guidelines for those prayers. For example, will God honor the prayer of a man who flings himself off a skyscraper with the words: “God, keep me safe?” Or would God honor the prayer of a murderer asking for nice weather for his next kill? Obviously, God does not welcome every prayer, but we want to think that He always hears ours. But does He? How do we know? Fortunately, He’s spelled it out pretty clearly for us.

God is all about the heart, because the heart determines our actions. We may say, “I don’t believe in stealing,” but we slip a twenty out of our employer’s cash register. We lied. We do believe in stealing. We may say, “I don’t believe in having sex outside marriage,” but our significant other is moving in next week. We lied. We do believe we can do whatever we want. Actions are our hearts on display. We may say we love God, but our actions indicate whether or not we are lying (1 Jn. 2:4). So, when we continually defy God’s clear commands, He doesn’t want to hear our requests. They disgust Him. He’s not fooled by our lying lips; he sees our hearts. When we’ve become our own gods, He knows it and He does not listen to idol worshipers.

Are you turning your ear away from hearing God’s law? The only prayer He wants to hear is repentance. 

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Is Anything Too Hard for the Lord?

“Is anything too hard for the LORD?”  Genesis 18:14

Her husband is an atheist. His daughter is a lesbian. Your best friends are considering becoming Muslim. These situations and a thousand more dot our lives like stickers in the lawn. They’re painful, and we pick our way around them trying to hang on to joy. We may continue to pray about them, but in reality, we often write “The End” over seemingly impossible situations. 

That’s what Sarah had done with the idea of ever becoming a mother. Even when God got in her face and said, “If I said it, I will do it,” she laughed. It wasn’t a happy laugh. It was a “Yeah, right,” laugh and God did not appreciate it. He doesn’t appreciate our snarky attitudes either. When we confine the Lord God Almighty to our teensy understanding, we make a big mistake.

God is in the miracle business, but when He doesn’t perform on our schedule, we get cynical like Sarah. We secretly answer this Bible question with, “Yes, some things may be too hard for the Lord.”  When we hit a concrete wall, we assume God has too. 

But the truth is, atheists can be born again. Ask Lee Strobel. 

Lesbians can repent and live purely. Ask Rosaria Butterfield. 

Muslims can have their eyes opened to the truth of Jesus. Ask Nabeel Quereshi. 

If God can put a baby inside the uterus of a 90-year-old woman, and from that baby, create a nation that still exists today, then He can handle your problem.

What concrete wall in your life looks too hard for the Lord? 

Is it harder than what He did for Sarah?

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Not My Will

"Father, if You are willing, remove this cup from Me; yet not My will, but Yours be done." Luke 22:42

The plan had been in place since the beginning of time. Father, Son, and Holy Spirit had forever been in perfect agreement, but now… now the Son saw it from the vantage point of dusty sandals and human flesh. From this perspective, the price to buy back sin-drenched humanity looked almost too high. He’d stubbed His toe, cut His arm, and taken some breath-stealing punches in his brothers’ wrestling matches. He’d felt the ache of rejection, the passion of temptation, and the cry of loneliness. God’s spiritual idea had become His physical reality. The cross. Evil. Abandonment. His hands quivered at the thought of the spikes. Sweat beaded on a head that would soon be filled with every vile thought Satan could produce. Dread was a rabid lion roaring so loudly in His heart that it threatened to destroy the plan. “Father, please! Isn’t there another way? Please...”

None of us will ever face such a horrendous intersection of flesh and Spirit, but we have our own crossroads. When we accept God’s offer of salvation, we also receive a new nature that desires to please Him. But with that new nature comes the sudden realization that some of the things we have cherished cannot stay. Relationships. Dreams. Lifestyles that clearly contradict everything it means to follow Christ. God’s plan collides with ours and we fall to our knees in the garden and cry out, “No! Please, isn’t there another way?”  But, thankfully, Jesus’ prayer didn’t end there. Because of His next words, we can be made right with God. Because He said to God, “Not my will, but Yours,” we can say that too.  

Jesus never asks us to do anything He did not do first. Are you following His example in surrendering to God? 

Bullying God

“…Listen to the prayers of those of us who delight in honoring you…”  Nehemiah 1:11

“Daddy, I need new shoes. Look at these.” Five-year-old Macy held out one foot where a ragged tennis shoe dangled by one lace. Her father, Dan, smiled at her. “You’re right. We’ll go tomorrow, soon as I get my paycheck.” Someone banged on the front door, and when Dan opened it, twelve neighborhood kids glared at him from the porch. He recognized a couple of bullies who had terrorized his daughter and others who painted graffiti on his garage. “Hey, dude,” one bully shouted. “We heard you give out shoes. We’re here for ours, so hand ‘em over!” Dan shook his head. “I’d like to, but I can’t. You’re not my children.”

Some people treat God the way those neighbor kids treated Dan. They have no interest in loving and obeying the Lord, they merely want His blessings. They ignore His commands, but “claim” His promises. When they find themselves in a tough place, they demand that God rescue them. And sometimes He does, because He’s good. But He is not obligated to, because they are not His. Nehemiah could come with confidence before the Lord because He understood that God listens to His own children who delight in honoring Him. When we seek the Lord, we must do it His way. He knows His own children and is not fooled by those who pretend spirituality only when they need something. He delights in those who delight in Him.

Are you seeking God as a neighborhood kid, or do you delight in honoring Him?

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Powerful Praying

Elijah was as human as we are, and yet when he prayed earnestly that no rain would fall, none fell for three and a half years! James 5:17

The goal of effective prayer is to align our wills with God’s. But sometimes we treat prayer as though it was a spiritual checklist, and once we’ve gone down the list, we are free to resume our normal lives. The Bible doesn’t present prayer that way. Even the idea of a “prayer list” can be misleading if we view communication with God as a duty. Praying down a list is fine, but don’t stop there. After we have complained, begged, repented, claimed and exhausted our list of demands, God is just getting started. Some Christians call this “praying through.”

“Praying through” means we’ve come to the end of our ability to pray, and we let the Holy Spirit take over (Rom. 8:26). The real passions of God’s heart are usually revealed at the end of our prayer list. He longs for us to join Him in His work on earth. He is not indifferent to our wants and needs; He simply has a bigger agenda in mind. Prayer is like a parent who takes a child to the doctor for vaccinations. The child may beg not to go, but a wise parent does not allow a child’s desires to supersede the bigger plan. Our prayers are often attempts to supersede God’s bigger plan. When we “pray through,” we come to know the heart of God in a deeper way so that our prayers, like Elijah’s, bring about uncommon results.

Have you approached prayer as a checklist to be completed? Try praying through, and God will join you.

Open and Shut Case

I wonder why we ever adopted the posture of folding our hands when we pray. 

Maybe it was started by mothers of fidgety preschoolers, and we kept it when we grew up. Unfortunately, that posture often reflects the attitude we bring when we come before God. Many times we approach God with fists clenched, clinging tightly to what we consider ours: our rights, our pride, our relationships, or our dreams.

True worship, true prayer, comes with open hands. Whatever we cannot place in those open hands and offer to God is the source of our problems. What we refuse to offer Him fully will be the very thing that keeps us from being all God created us to be.

Maybe that's why God wants us to lift our hands in worship. He wants us to notice that when we try to lift closed hands... they are fists!

 

Your Only Job

He shifted in his seat, unable to look at me. "I don't know what I'm gonna do. I needed that job. I'm doing everything I know to do, everything I thought God told me, but...it isn't coming out like I thought."
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She wiped the tears from her cheeks and squeezed her eyes shut. "The burden is too big," she whispered. "I'm praying and believing, but I'm so scared. What if...?"

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"My daughter is making terrible choices. I've given her to God, tried everything I know, but she continues on this downward spiral. What am I supposed to do? I can't take this hurt."
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Could one of those illustrations be you?

Many times we've done all we can to obey what God tells us. We are keeping our lives as close to Him as we can, trusting Him as well as we can, but the circumstances are careening out of control. It feels like certain disaster.

And our hearts duck for cover. We go back over every decision, analyze every move, second-guessing our choices until we are a puddle of emotional turmoil.

There is a simple reason we do that. And when we understand the reason, we can swim out of the puddle.

We have adopted the false notion that we are responsible for the results in our lives. Results are not the same thing as consequences. We bring on consequences by making choices that have direct results. If I run a red light in front of a police officer, I get a ticket. That is my consequence.

However, if I have obeyed every law and am pulled over by the highway patrolman anyway, then I am reaping results I did not create.

Often in our walk with God, we get the cart before the horse. We think we know what God intends to do in a given situation, so we begin to pray "in faith" and expect Him to get to it. When He does something differently, we often turn inward. "What did I do wrong? Where did I fail?"

One simple understanding can eliminate a boatload of frustration and spiritual confusion:  

I am only responsible to God for my obedience to Him, not the results of that obedience.

Praying "in faith" does not mean I confidently tell God what I expect him to do. Praying in faith means I allow God to so conform my will to His that I place all my trust in his nature and character. I have faith that He will do what is best, even if it does not look like MY idea of best.

Then I confidently obey what He tells me to do and leave the results with him. At the end of every day, there is only one question that every child of God should ask him/herself: Lord, was I as obedient to you today as I know how to be?

If the answer is NO, repent and accept forgiveness. 
If the answer is YES, then you're done. Period. The results are up to him.

Freeing, isn't it?

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A Counselor's Prayer

(This post has received more hits than any other and is currently number 1 for a Google search of this title, so I'm running it again. Feel free to copy and use it, just give proper credit when you do. Thanks.)

Oh God, remind me why I'm doing this.

Why me? What do I know about anything?

They sit across from me, broken dolls whose dull eyes beg me to offer hope that they no longer believe exists. Hope is a four-letter word that belongs to someone else. They've given up because they are out of options. They can see nothing in the future but more pain.

And I'm IT? I'm all that stands between desperation and hope? Sometimes, life and death? What were you thinking, Lord?

Who am I to tell a young rape victim that God loves her?

Who am I to advise a wronged wife to stay with the man who tore her heart out?

Who am I to offer understanding in situations I have no ability to understand?

How can I make a woman believe in a loving Heavenly Father when all she knows is fatherly abuse?

How do I gather the scraps of a shattered life and put them together again?

How do I convince a woman consumed by rage that it is safe to leave that anger with You? She's mad at You too.

How do I pretend to believe that this round of sobriety will be different for the lifetime drug addict? The last eight times didn't work, but this one will? Because now he faces ME? I'm not sure I believe that myself.

I feel so inadequate. So unworthy. Who am I to be trusted with this great responsibility? Who am I to meddle deep inside the private recesses of a human heart, to hold it in my hands, twist it, turn it, hurt it so that it can finally struggle free from its prison.

It's scary, Lord. Sometimes, right in the middle of a session, I don't want to do this anymore. Why am I doing this?

But now I'm remembering something.

I'm doing this because You asked me to. You promised that you would do it through me if I would just stay out of the way.

And now that I think about it, You have every time.

You put a smile on the lips of that rape victim.

The young couple is holding hands again.

The ones who knew only hate are experiencing love for the first time. It's hard for them. They don't know what to do with it, but You're showing them a little at a time.

And as I watch, I know it isn't me at all. It never was.

You always seem to enjoy choosing as your tools the least likely people: the frightened Gideon, the obstinate Jonah, the renegade Moses. And look at that ragtag band of disciples Jesus chose. What an unlikely group to be entrusted with Your plan of salvation for the entire world! Frankly, I would have chosen some better candidates, if I'd been given the opportunity.

So I guess I'm in good company, huh? Is that what You're telling me? My inadequacy fits the profile?

Is this what you meant by "My grace is sufficient for you. My power is made perfect in your weakness"?

I'm glad to know that, because if I wasn't sure You were doing this through me, I would quit. The burden is too great. The price of failure too high.

But You're right. I have seen You work. I've sat there and watched Your Spirit open a closed heart, purify a perverted soul, cleanse a dirty conscience, heal a damaged spirit. And I just sit there. You're doing all the work.

If You called me, You will enable me. I'm just a warm body for Your Spirit to flow through. Healing is not my job, it's Yours.

I panic when I forget that. Help me never to forget again.

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Why Did Jesus Pray?

What in the world did He pray about?

Ever wonder that?

The Gospels record that when Jesus walked the earth, he slipped away often to pray--sometimes all night.



But wait a minute...


If he was God in the flesh, why did he need to pray? Didn't the Father already know what He was gonna say?
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We are familiar with his final recorded prayer the night before his crucifixion, and the famous line: "Not my will, but thine be done." We view it as though that was the first and only time he prayed something like that.


But I don't think so.


Often the destruction to which our world is headed overwhelms me. The darkness that creeps steadily over the earth, the perversion, the evil, the foolishness of the human race makes everything seem so hopeless. I cry out, "Lord, take me out of this! I want out of here!"


Then Jesus reminds me that he knows exactly how I feel. Evil has been evil since that first bite of forbidden fruit. It's nothing new to Him. He's disgusted, but not shocked. He's seen it all before.


I can see Him headed into the wilderness to be alone with his Father where he most likely cries out the same thing. "Father, it's awful down here! They hate me, they hate You. The sin makes me sick to my stomach and no one wants the truth. Please, Father. Isn't there some other way? Please...can't you get me out of here?"
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Yet even as he cried out his sorrow to God, he saw me praying the same thing 2000 years later. God showed him the echoes of that prayer in the hearts of the ones he'd come to redeem. Millions of echoes, down through time, following his lead.


After pouring out his heart to his Father, he would have ended it with: "Even so, Father. Not my will but yours be done. If that means staying here and seeing it through, then that's what I want too."
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And on my knees, I can finish the same way. If Jesus was willing to submit to God's will rather than his own, I can too. If He wants me to stay a while longer and contribute to his Kingdom, then who am I to ask for something different?
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Submitting ourselves to God's will can be the toughest challenge we ever face. Often it looks very different from what we would choose. We can't do it on our own, because everything within us wants to run, to change plans, to find an easier path. Jesus felt that, too. He placed himself in the strong arms of his Father when earth got to be too much.


And that choice sets the bar for the rest of us. We have the same source from which to draw strength. Jesus wanted us to know that.
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And that's why he prayed.


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A Prayer for the School Year

As kids head back to school this week, there are a few things that we can all agree on as we pray for them and their year, no matter what schooling situation they may be a part of. Having had a child in almost all of these at one point, I'm well aware of the pitfalls and potential for Satan's snares inherent in each.

For the public school students:

Lord, give them strength and nobility of character to stand alone, no matter what friends, teachers, or the cool kids say or do. Let the Scripture that's been planted in their hearts rise to the surface with every challenge. Let your truth come from their mouths as they answer their tempters, and with every true word spoken, let their hearts grow stronger. Allow them to see their school as a mission field, filled with hurting people who long for truth and not be swayed by the popular opinion of the day.


For the Christian school student:

Father, even within the supposedly Christ-centered hallways, darkness lurks and temptation waits, hiding in the hearts of those who are not there to learn truth, but to disrupt. Protect our children from themselves, and the tendency to become careless or shallow in their faith, assuming that anything they hear or do must be Christian, since that's the name of the school. Let them see clearly the difference between those professing the Name, and those with You entrenched deeply in their hearts. Let this time of growth and discovery prepare them with the ability from now on to tell the sheep from the goats and to never be led astray by false prophets.

For the homeschooled student:

As hard as we try, Lord, no parent can train the sin nature out of a child. They are each your unique creations with a free will. Guard the homeschooled child from puffed-up pride and self-centerdness. Rebuke the tendency to assume spiritual superiority. Just because they can quote whole chapters of your word doesn't meant their hearts are any more tender than the most hardened criminal. Let them see the struggle others must face and develop compassion for the lost and hurting who they may not see as often as they would in another mode of schooling. Help them to recognize that their relationship with You is not based on Mom's relationship with you and that God holds each one accountable for what he's been given.


For the college student:
Lord, this is a tough time in the life of any kid. The buffet of the world's choices is spread before them, tempting, inviting them to just "have a taste." Deepen their convictions now, Lord. Strengthen their minds that they can make the standards they were raised with their own. Bind the spirit of confusion that will try to muddle Your clear mandates and let them think clearly and rightly and refuse to be sidetracked. Give them a vision for their future, for a path You've created for them. One that will excite and motivate them to finish the race. Deliver them back to us whole, stronger and wiser, ready to use all they've been given to impact their world.


We pray that this school year will produce mighty warriors for God's kingdom from every school in the nation and from every family. Amen.