The Favor of God

This word – FAVOR – can change your life. In the Old Testament it means grace, charm, acceptance, goodwill or desire. In the New Testament, “favor” is from the Greek word “Charis” or “Grace.” It is the divine influence upon the heart and its reflection in the life; the spiritual condition of one governed by the power of divine grace. Lance Wallnau may have defined God’s favor the best when he said, “Favor is the special affection of God toward you that releases an influence on you, so that others are inclined to like you, or to cooperate with you.”

Favor is different from grace, although it comes from the same root word. Grace is undeserved, unmerited. But the Bible is full of instruction about how we can obtain favor. Often I think we believe that God’s favor is reserved for the giants of the faith, i.e. Moses, Joseph, Ruth, Nehemiah, Mary, Paul or John. These luminaries we know God granted favor to but we also realize that we are not in their spiritual class. We need to remember, however, that God's favor is not reserved just for the gifted of the flock. It is available to all of us no matter our stature. But how do we get it?

There are many Scriptures which teach that favor is obtained by the righteous, “For You, O Lord, will bless the righteous; with favor You will surround him as with a shield” (Psalm 5:12). “And if you faithfully obey the voice of the Lord your God, being careful to do all his commandments that I command you today, the Lord your God will set you high above all the nations of the earth” (Deuteronomy 28:1-14). “When a man's ways please the Lord, he makes even his enemies to be at peace with him” (Proverbs 16:7).

There really is no magic formula when it comes to God’s favor. He bestows it on anyone who favors Him and His commandments. In Matthew 6:33 we are told to put the kingdom of first and “all these things will be added unto you.” These “things” are referring to our physical needs – food, water, clothing and shelter. So we see that God will continually bless our lives even down to our basic needs IF we put His kingdom first in our lives. And I think this is where most of us struggle. The cares and trials of this world seemingly make it impossible to put the things of God first, yet this is how we obtain His favor. Of course, this makes perfect sense as God wants a relationship with us not just a token hour of worship each Sunday. He wants what is important to Him to be important to us.

I have found in my own life that as I have walked in obedience, God will meet my needs and the needs of my family in ways I would never have expected. Just this past week, I had a friend who I have only known for a few months give me bags of clothes and toys for my daughters because her daughter had outgrown them. I can’t even begin to express the gratitude I have toward this woman as we are not in a financial position to be able to afford to buy such things right now. This is just a simple example but I found a wonderful list of what God’s favor can do in your life. I have included it below. I hope it is a blessing as you realize all that God wants to bestow upon your life as you commit to following Him.

What God’s Favor Can Do in Your Life

1. Produce supernatural promotion and increase (Gen 39:21)

2. Bring restoration of everything the enemy has stolen (Exodus 3:21)

3. Bring honor in the midst of adversaries (Exodus 11:3)

4.  Produce increased assets (Deuteronomy 33:23)

5. Give great and unusual victories even against impossible odds (Joshua 6:20; 10: 9, 20)

6. Give recognition and promotion even when you seem to the least likely one to receive it
(1 Samuel 16:22)

7. Produce prominence and preferential treatment, favor and kindness (Esther 5:8)

8. Get petitions granted, even by ungodly civil authority (Esther 5:8)

9. Change rules, regulations, even laws if necessary to your advantage (Esther 8:5)

10. Win battles you did not even have to fight because God will fight them for you (Psalm 44:3)
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“For I know the thoughts that I think toward you, says the Lord, thoughts of peace and not of evil, to give you a future and a hope.” - Jeremiah 29:11

By Way of Prayer

I have recently read a couple of books on prayer and have been contemplating my own prayer life in light of what the Bible teaches. It is interesting to note that Jesus never taught His disciples how to preach but He did teach them how to pray. Prayer is the means that God Himself has instituted to perform the will of heaven on earth. How it all works is hard to really put your finger on exactly just like so many other spiritual realities, but nonetheless, we can be assured that when we pray angels and demons are moved into action.

But why does it seem that so often our prayers never reach higher than the ceiling? I think James 5:16 provides a clue, “The effective, fervent prayer of a righteous man avails much.” The key word being “righteous.” Our prayers are only as effective as our life is holy and obedient to God. Of course, Jesus tells that if we put His kingdom first than all things will be added unto us. The Apostle John echoes this same sentiment when He tells us in his first epistle, “Now this is the confidence that we have in Him, that if we ask anything according to His will, He hears us.” (1 John 5:14)

Do you see a pattern emerging? If our prayers are to be heard then they need to be according to the will of God which is only possible if we are abiding in Christ. In other words, God is not obligated to answer any prayer from anyone who is not following His commands. I would also go one step further and add that if we are not following Christ then it is impossible for us to even ask the Lord for the right things in our lives or the lives of others. And I believe this point is paramount. Many of the prayers in the Bible are intercessory in nature. The praying person is praying for someone else. Abraham prayed for Lot and spared him from the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah. Moses prayed for the people of Israel after they had erected the golden the calf and the Lord spared their lives because of Moses petition.

Our prayer life becomes strangely void of self the closer we are to God because he lays His will on our hearts. This is not to say that we are not to pray for ourselves as the Lord tells us to bring all our cares to Him but I have found in my own walk that the closer I am to the Lord the things that burden the Lord’s heart become my prayers. So often in mid-sentence my prayer will change as the Holy Spirit prompts the prayer that is most needful.

The Bible also admonishes us to prayer fervently and unceasingly. Prayer is to be the central focus of lives as believers. We see this in Acts chapter 6 when the church was in its infancy and it was brought to the apostles attention that the widows were being neglected. The apostles called the other disciples and told them to appoint seven men to help minister to the widows so they could give themselves completely to the ministry of the Word and prayer. Right here we see the importance of prayer as the apostles understood that it was critical that they did not neglect this area as the power of God over the church was at stake.

We seem to have lost this sense of urgency regarding prayer in today’s churches. I am not sure if it is because we do not believe in the power of prayer as much anymore or if it is because we have gotten too busy with life or even the ministry. It is critical that we get back to constant communion with God. I know it is something I want to be a focus in 2012. I hope it is for you as well.
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"Prayer strikes the winning blow; service is simply picking up the pieces." - S.D. Gordon

Only One Thing Is Needful: Choosing the Good Part

Over the past few weeks I have been thinking about how God desires to meet our most crucial need. It is a need that we seldom contemplate as so often our prayer life is laden with petitions to have temporal needs satisfied and frequently we are discouraged with how God chooses to answer or not answer our requests. Perhaps the very things we are asking for are not the things that God most wants to give us.

When examining the Scriptures it is hard not to notice that when Jesus intervened in a life, a need was not just met, or a prayer answered, but a life was changed. Jesus did not just perform miracles for the sake of alleviating some discomfort or ailment but to display his love. It was Jesus’ love that motivated his acts of healing the sick, feeding the hungry, and resurrecting the dead. For you see everything Jesus did was to give people what they really needed – Him. In fact, every circumstance that comes into a person’s life whether they are a believer or not is designed by God for the sole person of bringing that individual to Him. It is God’s will that no one perish (John 3:16) and it is in Him alone that we find perfect peace (Philippians 4:7). The Bible itself is the divine communicating with man. Every book details God’s action toward man, not man toward God. It is God who is reaching down to man continually to bring man to Himself.

The greatest blessing God can bestow is not helping us pay a bill, fix a broken relationship, or heal our wounded bodies, but to give us a new revelation of Himself. It is interesting to notice that the one thing that Moses asked for when he was commissioned by God to lead the people of Israel out of Egypt and into the Promised Land was a greater revelation of God’s glory (Exodus 33:18). He did not ask for strength, provisions, or more men. He asked for God Himself. Moses acutely understood what we so easily miss at times. Nothing is impossible for God (Luke 1:37). As God reveals Himself to us, we truly receive everything we have ever sought but so often we get caught up in the circumstances of life and miss God’s still, small voice that is trying to speak to us of His great glory. It is no wonder that when Moses met with God on Mount Sinai his face shone so brightly that he had to wear a veil. Such is the effect of a personal encounter with the Living God.

When this truth permeates our life, our prayer life will change. We will begin to pray for spiritual growth, discernment, and obedience instead of the next promotion, new house, or lavish vacation. We will no longer look toward Wall Street as the barometer of economic certainty but toward the Cross of Calvary. For it is at the Cross that we find what we truly need – unconditional, unfathomable, incomprehensible love. It is here on the hill of Golgotha that we discover our Savior, our Redeemer, our Blessed Hope and are able to join in unison with the Apostle John as he closes the Book of Revelation with the following plea, "Even so, come, Lord Jesus!”

“God loves each of us as if there were only one of us.” - St. Augustine

I Will Exalt the Humble

I have been reading D.L. Moody’s classic book, The Overcoming Life during the past couple of months. If you have never read this book, I highly recommend you add it to your Christian library. Moody writes it to encourage believers in the daily struggle of Christian warfare. He dedicates an entire chapter to the subject of humility that I wanted to spend time discussing.

There may be no harder lesson to learn or virtue to possess than humility. Ben Franklin, who spent most of his life exploring the role of civic and personal virtue, had this to say about humility, “In reality, there is, perhaps, no one of our natural passions so hard to subdue as pride. Disguise it, struggle with it, beat it down, stifle it, mortify it as much as one pleases, it is still alive, and will every now and then peep out and show itself; you will see it, perhaps, often in this history; for, even if I could conceive that I had completely overcome it, I should probably be proud of my humility.”

As I ponder Franklin’s statement, it is apparent that as much as the world tries to teach and attain humility, it cannot be found in text books or within the walls of our most learned institutions. It can only be found in the schools of Christ. In fact, it may have well been the hardest virtue of all that Christ tried to teach His disciples.

Moody states that it was interesting to him to discover that the reason Christ gave for learning about Him was not because He was the most advanced thinker of the age or because He performed supernatural miracles but because He was “meek and lowly in heart.” For you see humility does not consist of thinking meanly of ourselves as some believe, but in not thinking of ourselves at all. If humility speaks of itself, it is gone.

Many of the other virtues like love, faith, goodness and joy can be counterfeited, but humility cannot be faked. A false humility is detected almost immediately. This fact comes into sharp focus when we look at our own age of boasting. I remember listening to a TV evangelist years ago who said that because he was a man of God, he deserved to have his shoes custom made for his feet because his feet were especially made by God for His service. Can you even fathom Christ, who bent down to wash his disciple’s feet at the Last Supper, making a statement such as this?

When the followers of John the Baptist asked him, "Who are you?" He replied that he was nobody and that there would come “one mightier than me, the latchet of whose shoes I am not worthy to stoop down and unloose” (Mark 1:7). Now notice what Christ says about John, “He is a burning and shining light” (John 5:35) and after he was beheaded, Christ declares that John was “greater than any man born of a woman" (Matthew 11:11). Wow. Christ gave John the honor that belonged to him. If we take a humble position, Christ will see it and exalt us, "Therefore humble yourselves under the mighty hand of God, that He may exalt you in due time"(I Peter 5:6).

I really believe, as I look at my own walk with the Lord, that humility is a result not an achievement. The closer I am to the Lord, the more I see myself decrease. But make no mistake, this is a daily, minute by minute battle. We have to be in the Word and on our knees continually seeking the Lord’s face and will. I would suggest that if this is the pattern of our life than as we gaze into the face of the Lord, our face will disappear and we will shine the same way Moses did when he met with the Lord on Mount Sinai. Moses' change, like that of Jesus on the mountaintop, was so dramatic that ordinary people were overwhelmed simply by seeing the reflection of the presence of God on his face. That is humility in all its glory. God’s face shining in place of ours.

“As the lark that soars the highest builds her nest the lowest; as the nightingale that sings so sweetly sings in the shade when all things rest; as the branches that are most laden with fruit bend lowest; as the ship most laden sinks deeper in the water; so the holiest Christians are the humblest.” - James Montgomery

Considering the Literary Brilliance of the Bible

I have always been a lover of literature since I was a child and consider myself a lifelong student of the English language. Two years ago I took a Bible course called Hermeneutics, which is a fancy name that simply means the study of interpretation theory. In this case, it was the study of how to interpret the Bible. I found the course fascinating because it broke down the Bible into several categories that needed to be considered when approaching the interpretation of any portion of Scripture. These categories included the text’s historical setting, geographic location, cultural aspects and its use of linguistics. It is this last category that I wanted to spend some time discussing.

It is an amazing thing to consider that the Bible, written over a period of fifteen hundred years, has a common theme - the redemption of sinful man by a gracious and loving God. Approximately forty men, from Moses to the Apostle John were Bible writers from circa 1500 BC to 100 AD.

The Bible is what one person has called a "linguistic incarnation" as it is 100% the word of man and 100% the word of God, as God used men to write down His thoughts in the same way a businessman uses a secretary. He allowed them to put these thoughts in their own words, but the men themselves were inspired (2 Peter 1:20-21). The authors differed in many ways. Some were Pharisees, including the Apostle Paul. Others were fishermen, such as Peter and John. Matthew was a tax collector. David was the King of Israel. Amos was a shepherd from Judah. Although their backgrounds and occupations were vastly different, God used these men to accomplish his will as each one used their life experience and individual talents to pen their respective books.

It may surprise you to know that the Bible contains 8,000 figures of speech! A figure of speech is simply a word or a sentence thrown into a peculiar form, different from its original or simplest meaning or use. If we say "It is raining hard," we are using a normal, plain statement. But if we say, "It is raining cats and dogs," we have used a sentence that means the same thing but is a more unusual or colorful way of expressing the same thought. The Bible is filled with metaphors, similes and other figures of speech to convey God’s message to its readers in a palatable and memorable way.

The Bible also employs several genres or literary writing styles, including narratives, legal writings, poetry, wisdom literature, gospel writings, epistolary (letters), and prophetic literature.

The Book of Psalms, often called the hymn book of the Bible, is its most poetic. William E. Gladstone, who was prime minister of England during the 18th century, had this to say about the Psalms, "All the wonders of Greek civilization heaped together are less wonderful than is the simple Book of Psalms."

There may not be a more captivating and thrilling chapter in the Bible than Ezekiel chapter one, where the prophet describes in explicit detail his vision of the Lord coming in a whirlwind. The entire book of Revelation uses wonderful imagery and symbolism to convey the Great Day of the Lord and Christ’s triumphant return to the earth. The four synoptic gospels all detail the life and ministry of Jesus Christ as each writer skillfully depicts a different aspect of the Savior, from His deity to His humanity to His coming kingdom. Then there is the Book of Ruth, a love story from other days, which moves the reader from tragic heartbreak at its outset to overflowing joy at its conclusion in just four short chapters.

Alas, I do not have the time or space to touch on the literary brilliance of each book of the Bible, but would encourage you to begin reading it if you never have in the past. So many people believe the errant perception that the writers of the Bible were old men that offer nothing of value for our present age. This statement could not be more false. Quite simply, the Bible is the divine communicating to the human, conveying His message of salvation through every genre of the human language.

"If I were asked what has been the most powerful force in the making of history, I should have answered figurative expression. It is by imagination that men have lived; imagination rules all our lives. The human mind is not, as philosophers would have you think, a debating hall, but a picture gallery. Remove the figurative expressions from the Bible and its living spirit vanishes…the prophets, the poets, the leaders of men are all of them masters of imagery, and by imagery they capture the human soul." - W. MacNeil Dixon, Professor of English Literature at the University of Glasgow