10 POWERFUL PRAYER POINTS BY APOSTLE JOSHUA SALMAN

Who Killed Jesus

 

He who did not spare his own Son but gave him up for us all, how will he not also with him graciously give us all things? (Romans 8:32)

One of my friends who used to be a pastor in Illinois was preaching to a group of prisoners in a state prison during Holy Week several years ago. At one point in his message, he paused and asked the men if they knew who killed Jesus.

Some said the soldiers did. Some said the Jews did. Some said Pilate. After there was silence, my friend said simply, “His Father killed him.”

That’s what the first half of Romans 8:32 says: God did not spare his own Son but handed him over — to death. “This Jesus [was] delivered up according to the definite plan and foreknowledge of God” (Acts 2:23). Isaiah 53 puts it even more bluntly, “We esteemed him stricken, smitten by God. . . . It was the will of the Lord to crush him; he (his Father!) has put him to grief” (Isaiah 53:4, 10).

Or as Romans 3:25 says, “God put [him] forward as a propitiation by his blood.” Just as Abraham lifted the knife over the chest of his son Isaac, but then spared his son because there was a ram in the thicket, so God the Father lifted his knife over the chest of his own Son, Jesus — but did not spare him, because he was the ram; he was the substitute.

God did not spare his own Son, because it was the only way he could spare us and still be a just and holy God. The guilt of our transgressions, the punishment of our iniquities, the curse of our sin would have brought us inescapably to the destruction of hell. But God did not spare his own Son; he gave him up to be pierced for our transgressions, and crushed for our iniquities, and crucified for our sins.

This verse — Romans 8:32 — is the most precious verse in the Bible to me because the foundation of the all-encompassing promise of God’s future grace is that the Son of God bore in his body all my punishment and all my guilt and all my condemnation and all my blame and all my fault and all my corruption, so that I might stand before a great and holy God, forgiven, reconciled, justified, accepted, and the beneficiary of unspeakable promises of pleasure forever and ever at his right hand.

Help My Unbelief

 

For by the grace given to me I say to everyone among you not to think of himself more highly than he ought to think, but to think with sober judgment, each according to the measure of faith that God has assigned. (Romans 12:3)

In the context of this verse, Paul is concerned that people were thinking of themselves “more highly than [they] ought to think.” His final remedy for this pride is to say that not only are spiritual gifts a work of God’s free grace in our lives, but so also is the very faith with which we use those gifts. “. . . each according to the measure of faith that God has assigned.”

This means that every possible ground of boasting is taken away from us. How can we boast if even the qualification for receiving gifts is also a gift?

This truth has a profound impact on how we pray. Jesus gives us the example in Luke 22:31–32. Before Peter denies him three times Jesus says to him, “Simon, Simon, behold, Satan demanded to have you, that he might sift you like wheat, but I have prayed for you that your faith may not fail. And when you have turned again, strengthen your brothers.”

Jesus prays for Peter’s faith to be sustained even through the sin of denial, because he knows that God is the one who gives faith. So we should pray the way Jesus did — for ourselves and for others that God would sustain our faith.

Thus, the man with the epileptic son cried out, “I believe; help my unbelief!” (Mark 9:24). This is a good prayer. It acknowledges that without God we cannot believe as we ought to believe.

Let us pray daily, “O Lord, thank you for my faith. Sustain it. Strengthen it. Deepen it. Don’t let it fail. Make it the power of my life, so that in everything I do, you get the glory as the great Giver. Amen.”

GOD’S GREATEST COMMANDMENTS!

 EVERYDAY IN THE WORD!

SATURDAY JUNE 12, 2021.

SUBJECT: GOD’S GREATEST COMMANDMENTS! 

Memory verse: "He who has My commandments and keeps them, it is he who loves Me, and he who loves Me will be loved by My Father, and I will love him and manifest Myself to him." (John 14 vs 21.)

READ: Matthew 22 vs 37 - 40:

22:37: Jesus said to him, “‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind.’ 

22:38: This is the first and great commandments."

22:39:  And the second is like it: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’

22:40: On these two commandments hang all the Law and the Prophets.”

INTIMATION:

The “Ten Commandments” of God are all relationship based; our relationship with God, and six our relationship with others. Keeping God's commandments is the true demonstration of your love for Him. When you love God, you keep His commandments, and Jesus reciprocates by manifesting Himself in you. An intimate relationship is what God desires from us. It is the most outstanding truth in the universe - that our Creator wants to fellowship with us. 

God is love, and He made us to love us, hence He created us in His own image and after His likeness. He longs for us to love Him back. God says, I don't want you rituals (sacrifice), I want your love; I don't want your offerings, I want you to know Me and Love Me. (See Hosea 6 vs 6.) God deeply loves us and desires our love in return. He longs for us to know Him and spend time with Him. This is why learning to love God and be loved by Him should be the greatest objective of our lives. Nothing else comes close in importance. Jesus called this the greatest commandment. 

Jesus said that love for your neighbor is the second greatest commandment. Jesus summarized it in what is commonly known as the Golden Rule; “Therefore, whatever you want men to do to you, do also to them, for this is the Law and the Prophets.” In many religions, it is stated negatively, “Don’t do to others what you don’t want done to you.” Jesus made it more significant by stating it positively. It is not difficult to refrain from harming others; it is much more difficult to take the initiative in doing good for them. The Golden Rule, as Jesus formulated it, is the foundation of active goodness and mercy, the kind of love God shows to us every day. 

The apostle James also called it “The Royal Law.” (James 2 vs 8), which was given by our great King and Messiah Jesus Christ. Jesus said, “Love one another as I have loved loved you.” (John 15 vs 12.) Jesus demonstrated His love for us by giving up His life for us so that we can live. While we are still sinners He died for us. He was rich but He became poor that we might through His poverty became rich. What an awesome show of love.

By fulfilling these two commands, a person keeps all the other commandments of God. They summarize the Ten Commandments and the other Old Testament moral laws. When you love God completely and care for others as you care for yourself, then you have fulfilled the intent of the Commandments and laws. According to Jesus, these two commandments summarize all God’s laws. Therefore, if we truly love God and our neighbor, we will naturally keep the commandments. 

We should look at God’s law positively; rather than worrying about all we should do, we should concentrate on all we can do to show our love for God and others. Let them rule your thoughts, decisions, and actions. When you are uncertain about what to do, ask yourself which course of action best demonstrates love for God and love for others.

To demonstrate love for your neighbor, Jesus said: “But I say to you, love your enemies, bless those who curse you, do good to those who hate you, and pray for those who spitefully use you and persecute you, that you may be sons of your Father in heaven; for He makes His sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the just and on the unjust. “ (Matthew 5 vs 44 - 45.)

Jesus says that we should love our enemies. If you love your enemies and treat them well, you are truly showing that Jesus is Lord of your life. This is possible for those who give themselves fully to God, because only He can deliver people from natural selfishness. We should trust the Holy Spirit to help us show love to those for whom we may not feel love.

Prayer: Abba Father, endue me with the spirit of love and selflessness, that I may love You completely and keep Your commands, and also love my neighbor as you loved me. Give me the grace to do to others as I will like them to do to me, in Jesus’ Name I have prayed, Amen.

PRAISE THE LORD!

HOLY SPIRIT OUR HELPER IN HOLINESS!

EVERYDAY IN THE WORD!

FRIDAY JUNE 11, 2021.

SUBJECT : HOLY SPIRIT OUR HELPER IN HOLINESS!

Memory verse: ""Sanctify them by Your truth, Your word is truth." (John 17 vs 17.) 

READ: John 14 vs 15 - 18; 25 - 26:

14:15: If ye love Me, keep My commandments.

14:16: And I will pray the Father, and He will give you another Helper, that He may abide with you forever—

14:17: the Spirit of truth; whom the world cannot receive, because it neither sees Him nor knows Him: but you know Him; for He dwells with you and will be in you.

14:18: I will not leave you orphans: I will come to you.

14:25: These things I have spoken to you while being present with you.

14:26: But the Helper, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in My name, He will teach you all things, and bring to your remembrance all things that I said to you.

INTIMATION:

A follower of Christ becomes holy (sanctified) through believing the Word of God. He or she has already accepted forgiveness through Christ's sacrificial death. But daily application of God's Word has a purifying effect on our minds and hearts. Scripture points out sin, motivates us to confess, renews our relationship with Christ, and guides us back to the right path: "For the word of God is living and powerful, and sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing even to the division of soul and spirit, and of joints and marrow, and is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of heart." (Hebrews 4 vs 12.)

We cannot become holy on our own, but God gives us the Holy Spirit to help us obey and to give us power to overcome sin. We rely on God's power to free us from the grip of sin. Don't use the excuse that you can't help slipping into sin to continue in your sinful lifestyle, for God has made available His power, through the Holy Spirit, to overcome our evil desires. There is life-changing power in the Word of God. The Holy Spirit is the embodiment of that power of God. The Holy Spirit convicts people of sin, and also assures them of the truth of the gospel. The Holy Spirit is the power of our new lives in Christ. He begins a lifelong process of change, making us more like Jesus. 

A message about holiness without a message about empowerment simply produces pressure. Because it causes people to go out and start trying to live a holy life without knowing how to do what they know they should be doing. If we don't know about the power of the Holy Spirit to help us do what He has revealed to us to do and not do, we would be overcome. 

For insistence, we see the commands, such as in First Peter 1 vs 14 - 16, “an obedient children not conforming yourselves to the former lusts, as in your ignorance; but as He who called you is holy, you also be holy in all your conduct, because it is written, “Be holy for I am holy,” which about not conforming to the former lusts that governed us before, when we were in ignorance and didn't know the requirements of the Gospel, and about being holy even as God is holy, we then realize out inability to do all that without help. Hence the need to go back to our empowerer, the Holy Spirit. 

If you study the subject of holiness, for instance, you will learn that there is no such as a person becoming holy apart from a great involvement with the Holy Spirit in his or her life. Why? Because the Holy Spirit is the power of God given to us to do in us and through us and for us and to us what we could never do on our own.

Jesus said in John 15 vs 5, "....Without Me you can do nothing." We are not capable of anything in our own power or strength, "....For by strength no man shall prevail" (First Samuel 2 vs 9). To make available His power to help mankind, God became a man in Jesus so that Jesus could die for our sins. Jesus rose from the dead to offer salvation to all people through spiritual renewal and rebirth. When Jesus ascended into heaven, His physical presence left the earth, but He promised to send the Holy Spirit so that His spiritual presence would still be among humankind. All believers have the power of the Holy Spirit available to them. It's only the power of God in the Holy Spirit given to us can the believers have the strength to do all things (Philippians 4 vs 13).

Prayer: Abba Father, thank You for the gift of Jesus Christ our Messiah, and the Holy Spirit our Helper. For without the Holy Spirit empowerment I am capable of doing nothing. Give me the grace to always listen and obey the prompting of the Holy Spirit at all times, in Jesus’ Name I have prayed, Amen.

PRAISE THE LORD!

Faith for the Future

 

For all the promises of God find their Yes in him. (2 Corinthians 1:20)

If “all the promises of God find their Yes in [Jesus],” then to trust him now in the present is to believe that his promises will come true.

Those are not two separate faiths — trusting him, and believing in his promises. Trusting Jesus — believing in Jesus for salvation — means believing that he keeps his word. Being satisfied in the crucified and risen Jesus includes the belief that at every future moment, to all eternity, nothing will separate us from his love, or keep him from working all things together for our good. And that “good” is ultimately seeing and savoring the beauty and worth of God in Christ as our supreme Treasure.

The confidence that this all-satisfying good will be there for us forever is based on all the glorious grace of the past, especially the grace that God did not spare his own Son but gave him up for us all (Romans 8:32).

We need to taste now the spiritual beauty of God in all his past achievements — especially the death and resurrection of Christ for our sins — and in all his promises. Rooted in this past grace, our confidence and trust lay hold on all that God himself will be for us in the next moment, and in the next month, and in the endless ages of eternity.

It is he and he alone who will satisfy the soul in the future. And we must be sure of this future, if we are to live the radical Christian lives that Christ calls us to live here and now.

If our present enjoyment of Christ now — our present faith — does not have in it the Yes to all God’s promises, it will not embrace the power for radical service in the strength that God (in every future moment) will supply (1 Peter 4:11).

My prayer is that reflecting like this on the nature of faith in future grace will help us avoid superficial, oversimplified statements about believing the promises of God. It is a deep and wonderful thing.

When Reason Serves Rebellion

 

The sluggard says, “There is a lion outside! I shall be killed in the streets!” (Proverbs 22:13)

This is not what I expected the proverb to say. I would have expected it to say, “The coward says, ‘There is a lion outside! I shall be killed in the streets!’” But it says, “sluggard,” not “coward.” So, the controlling emotion here is laziness, not fear.

But what does laziness have to do with the danger of a lion in the street? We don’t usually say, “This man is too lazy to go do his work because there is a lion outside.”

The point is that the sluggard creates imaginary circumstances to justify not doing his work, and thus shifts the focus from the vice of his laziness to the danger of lions. No one will approve his staying in the house all day just because he is lazy. But they might excuse him if there is a lion in the street.

One profound biblical insight we need to learn from this is that our heart exploits our mind to justify what we want. That is, our deepest desires precede the rational functioning of our minds and incline the mind to perceive and think in a way that will make the desires look right, even if they’re wrong.

This is what the sluggard is doing. He deeply desires to stay at home and not work. There is no good reason to stay at home. So, what does he do? Does he overcome his bad desire — his laziness? No, he uses his mind to create unreal circumstances to justify his desire.

Jesus said, “The light has come into the world, and people loved the darkness rather than the light because their works were evil” (John 3:19). We love the darkness so that we can keep on doing what we want without exposure. In this condition, the mind becomes a factory of darkness — a fountain of half-truths, equivocations, sophistries, evasions, and lies — anything to protect the evil desires of the heart from exposure and destruction.

Consider and be wise.