Praying Daniel Style 01

Recently I have been going back to praying Daniel style.

Last year I started praying Daniel style. I take the Hebrew words used to describe Daniel's prayer and search for other verses related to those words, then use them in prayer.

For your reference, I blogged about those words here: - http://jvworship.blogspot.sg/2013/08/prayer-life-lessons.html

Here are my passages for today:

1) Bless - 

Psalm 104:1-4 (NKJV) - Bless the Lord, O my soul!O Lord my God, You are very great:You are clothed with honor and majesty,Who cover Yourself with light as with a garment,Who stretch out the heavens like a curtain.
He lays the beams of His upper chambers in the waters,Who makes the clouds His chariot,Who walks on the wings of the wind,Who makes His angels spirits,His ministers a flame of fire.

2) Bow down - I take this to refer to humbling myself.

1 Peter 5:5-7 (NKJV) - “God resists the proud, but gives grace to the humble.” Therefore humble yourselves under the mighty hand of God, that He may exalt you in due time, casting all your care upon Him, for He cares for you.

3) Give thanks (lift up hands) - 

Psalm 63:3-4 - Because Your lovingkindness is better than life, my lips shall praise You.Thus I will bless You while I live; I will lift up my hands in Your name.

4) To gush over, to pour out - 

This is the point I bring up whatever is on on my heart. Today I prayed especially for success in my work.

5) To make supplication (implore for mercy) - 

Isaiah 30:18 (NIV 84) - Yet the LORD longs to be gracious to you; he rises to show you compassion. For the LORD is a God of justice. Blessed are all who wait for him!

The word for "gracious" in the above passage is taken from the same root as "make supplication". So today, instead of asking God for grace and mercy, I looked at his word to see his willingness to be merciful towards me.

So that was my prayer outline for today. Hope you find it useful. Be blessed! 

Strong and Courageous?

Joshua 1:9 (ESV) - Have I not commanded you? Be strong and courageous. Do not be frightened, and do not be dismayed, for the LORD your God is with you wherever you go.

I now know for sure I am NOT courageous.

Over the past 8 years or so I have faced all kinds of trials. Some have been distressing, like the time loan sharks threatened my family in order to get neighbours to pay up the money they owe. And though the trials have bothered me (I am not Superman, for crying out loud!) none have been able to make me feel THAT scared.

Until now.

Ironic, isn’t it? Actual physical danger to my sons and I didn’t disturb my sleep, but the thought of traveling to Japan for my own personal upgrading gave me sleepless nights. And on the actual day of departure, the fear was so acute that it even upset my stomach.

Embarrassing!

Why does this trip trouble me so much? It’s like an onion, I’m sure I can find many layers of reasons should I be honest enough to look. But at a basic level, I have the full responsibility of making all the arrangements (flight and hotel), travelling to a country where I know very few people, and where I do not speak the native language. My usual support group isn’t there and I am totally unfamiliar to the place. Good enough reasons to feel uptight?

2 Timothy 1:6-7 (ESV) - For this reason I remind you to fan into flame the gift of God, which is in you through the laying on of my hands, for God gave us a spirit not of fear but of power and love and self-control.

 

Paul tells us that God has not given us a spirit of fear, which tells me God does not want me to get uptight or anxious over the situations or matters that arise. But on our part we have to fan into flame, to awaken, to stir up, the spirit of power, love and self-control that God has already given us.

 

In other words, don’t sit back and expect it to work out without any deliberate effort on your part!

 

What are some of the ways we can stir up that spirit within us?

 

1)      Speak Directly

 

Open up your mouth and speak to your spirit. You can say, “Spirit of power, love and self-control, arise within me!” And do that a few more times, until it feels good!

 

There will be people who will criticise that as being merely mindless chanting, positive affirmations and all that. But the fact is, we already have clear Scriptural precedent of speaking to ourselves:

“Bless the LORD, O my soul” (Psalm 103:1, 103:22, 104:1)

And calling upon the LORD to arise:

2 Chronicles 6:41 (ESV) - "And now arise, O LORD God, and go to your resting place, you and the ark of your might.  

And

Numbers 10:35 (ESV) - "Arise, O LORD, and let your enemies be scattered, and let those who hate you flee before you."

2)      Speak the Scriptures

 

John 6:63 (ESV) - It is the Spirit who gives life; the flesh is no help at all. The words that I have spoken to you are spirit and life.

If the words of Jesus are spirit and life, won’t they resonate with the spirit of power, love and self-control within us? 

John 16:33 (ESV) – “I have said these things to you, that in me you may have peace. In the world you will have tribulation. But take heart; I have overcome the world."

To be totally frank, I don’t see any reason Jesus’ words in John 16, especially that last verse, would help me overcome fear. Jesus didn’t promise anything concrete and tangible here, so I don’t have a logical reason to find his words comforting. They are too vague for me.

 

But when I made the effort to speak the whole of John 16 to myself, reading it aloud 3-4 times in a row, I did receive courage and comfort in the midst of my trials and fears. And it was be a comfort that does not make logical sense to the un-spiritual. I don’t care. I’ll take anything God wants to give me!

 

3)      Pray it out

Philippians 4:6-7 (ESV) - do not be anxious about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God.  And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.

God has given this promise, that if we will commit our problems to him, via prayer, supplication AND thanksgiving, we will have a peace that surpasses all understanding. In other words, a peace that makes no logical sense. To our hearts and minds this peace is like a strong and gentle father consoling a frightened child. “Rest assured, child, Daddy is here and Daddy will take care of everything!”

 

Just take this Scripture at face value, and pray about everything!

 

Bonus Tip – ignore pride

 

In my most recent struggles with fear, it wasn’t the fear that caused me so much emotional pain. It was my pride. I was supposed to be the one who had it all figured out. I was the one who had fought with and overcome fear so many times. I was the one who had successfully taught others how to deal with fear. How could I be so scared now? My pride did not want to accept that I had to deal with fear again.

 

The reason why the Bible has so much to say about dealing with fear is because it is a universal problem. You can be a church leader, extremely wealthy businessman, battle-hardened soldier or internationally acclaimed musician. Whatever your earthly reasons for confidence, no matter how many times you have overcome fear before, you will still have to face fear again, and deal with it using the same spiritual tools as the rest of us.

 

Since we all have to deal with fear some time or other, do share this with other  believers if what I wrote is helpful to you. In the meantime, be blessed!

 

How great is YOUR God?

How great is our God, sing with me how great is our God, all will see how great, how great is our God. - Chris Tomlin, How Great is Our God.
I just led worship for the Sunday morning congregation of Acts Center yesterday. Wow!

The people were really singing their hearts out to God and encountering God in a real way during the worship. And again I had the satisfaction of bringing people to encounter God, using just a guitar and the anointing he gave me.

Of course I had help. People who lent me the guitar and the mike, people who helped project the lyrics for the congregation and of course a dear sister-in-Christ from Tuesday Group who specially took the time and effort to be there and sing backup for me to help the congregation flow in worship.

Kinda interesting, this sister, Sister F, arrived late for the pre-service preparations because her car broke down. And after the service when we were chatting she told me that the projected cost of repairs was $2000.

I couldn’t believe it. She too sang her heart out during worship and during the sermon she was furiously soaking in every word from the pastor. It was as if she wasn’t given a $2000 piece of bad news just that very morning.

Either that or she has a God who is greater than a $2000 problem.

Which brings me to the question I have for you. How great is YOUR God?

O LORD my God, you are very great; you are clothed with splendor and majesty. He wraps himself in light as with a garment; he stretches out the heavens like a tent. (Psalm 104:1-2, NIV)
Now, we all have the same God as Sister F. But not all of us can shrug off a $2000 problem just like that, because not all of us have a revelation of God in which he is bigger than a $2000 problem.

Let’s look at things in a different way. If you discover that you’ve left the baby’s things behind at home JUST after you’ve struggled to get the pram and the two boys up the bus, and you’ve got to get off, head home, grab the bag and then head off to church to meet the rest of the family, does that ruin your Sunday worship service and leave you fuming at yourself (or your spouse) during worship? Or is your God so great that all that hassle is a hiccup barely worth mentioning or thinking of?

What I am getting at is that you can see how great your God really is to you by seeing how great a problem has to be before it can trouble your peace and affect the way you relate to God and to others. The greater God is in your eyes, the smaller other problems become.

Now of course problems are problems and need to be dealt with. But do they need to affect your peace? Or you can just deal with them as if they are no big deal, because your God is bigger than they are? One very common source of quarrels for Sunday mornings is being late. I know of people who will argue bitterly with their spouses over being a few minutes late for worship.

And when the arguments start getting hysterically historical (“You ALWAYS XXX, I told you not to XXX for the last 3 Sundays and you promised that you won’t XXX again. Now you’ve XXX-ed again and we’re going to be late again, just like the last 3 Sundays…”) that’s when we tend to forget that nowhere in Scripture are we specifically told to be punctual for services, but we are repeatedly admonished to watch how we treat our siblings-in-Christ. Do we honestly believe God is so concerned about our punctuality for services that he’ll close one eye to us emotionally abusing our spouses or children for the sake of punctuality?

Anyone who does not love his brother, whom he has seen, cannot love God, whom he has not seen. - 1 John 4:20, NIV
Of course, I’m not advocating that you should be late for worship. In fact you should make a special point to be on time. (Especially when I am the one leading worship, of course). What I am saying is how great is your revelation of God will determine how much all these matters trouble you to the point that you forget what is really important to God.

So how do we grow in our revelation of the greatness of our God?

1) Pray for such revelation

I keep asking that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the glorious Father, may give you the Spirit of wisdom and revelation, so that you may know him better. I pray also that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened in order that you may know the hope to which he has called you, the riches of his glorious inheritance in the saints, and his incomparably great power for us who believe. - Ephesians 1:17-19, NIV
2) Feed such revelation.

How, then, can they call on the one they have not believed in? And how can they believe in the one of whom they have not heard? And how can they hear without someone preaching to them? – Romans 10:14, NIV
We feed the revelation of the greatness of our God by exposing ourselves to preaching, whether during church sermons, sermon CDs, the preaching in the Bible, the preaching we sing to ourselves and to others during worship, or even from the indirect preaching of others as we hear their testimonies.

I’m willing to bet that if I were to quantify the amount of time, money and effort Sister F has put into feeding her revelation of the greatness of God, it will be easily be worth more than $2000. Because she has a greater than $2000 revelation of the greatness of God, I am looking forward to seeing how God will deal with her car problem. Will he just do something to the repair bill that it becomes negligible? Or give her a sudden windfall to cover the repair cost? Or just give her a new car? I don’t know, but I look forward to finding out.

Important note: If you are serving as a worship musician, don’t let your service deceive you into thinking you don’t need to further feed your revelation. There are musicians who serve in church for the sake of the music, not for the sake of serving God and his people.

Frankly, I’ve got absolutely no problem with that at all. If people want to indulge their desire to play music, I’d rather they do it in the house of God and let his people be blessed, than do it in a pub someplace, where the quality of their music is judged on how many alcoholics they can attract to that pub. And besides, there’s less 2nd hand cigarette smoke in church.

What I am concerned about, however, is that the musician may spend lots of time in the house of God and not feed the revelation within. And that would be such a waste. Here’s a quick test for you to see if a musician is there for the sake of the music or feeding the revelation of God’s greatness. Look at what happens when something goes wrong with the music.

Yesterday when I was leading the worship, the E bass string on the guitar went drastically out of tune, going to some out-of-tune D. So I had to immediately change my playing style to avoid that string, and tune that string later at the first available break. (Since I was the only musician, that break took a long time in coming.)

And I totally forgot all about it after that. It was only later yesterday evening when I was thinking through the points of this email, how Sister F just shrugged off the car problem she had, that I remembered that something went wrong with the music also. But because I knew my God is greater than the E bass string on the guitar it just didn’t affect me at all. My peace was unruffled and I just continued leading worship, being a blessing to God’s people and being blessed by his presence myself.

So that’s it for this somewhat longer post. Feed your revelation of the greatness of God. And may he reveal his greatness to us in ever-increasing measure as we continue to grow in him!

Prayer time: I’m going to be conducing worship training for the worship personnel of Acts Center this coming Saturday. Because I know the people involved (and have sat in for the services even when I am not playing for the worship) I am going to adapt my sharing to be more specific for this group (rather than share what applies to many churches across the board). Pray for me that I will say the right things and that what I share will be received in the right way. Other words, pray that if there are people offended with me, let them be offended because they heard me correctly and didn’t agree, rather than because they misunderstood me. Thanks, everyone! Be blessed!