As I am preparing my blog post on Steve Munsey, I realized that I must first teach on the issues of positive confession and the prosperity Gospel, two erroneous doctrines that Munsey teaches. Part 1 defines these heresies and gives a simple response to them. This post is a quote from Chuck Smith in his book Answers for Today, where he talks about praying according to God’s will:

“We have this confidence in Him, ‘If we ask anything according to His will, He hears us.’ I’m so glad that qualification is there! I’m glad that this Scripture doesn’t say, ‘Whatever we ask we receive.’ I’m very grateful that He inserted ‘according to His will.’ Had God answered all of my prayers, I wouldn’t be here today. I would have destroyed myself a long time ago!

I have prayed for a lot of ridiculous things that would have totally ruined me. “According to His will” keeps a proper perspective between God and me. Any other way would remove the authority of God over my life. It would then mean that I was the master of my fate, the captain of my destiny. My life wouldn’t be governed by God; instead, it would be governed by me.

If I can demand that God does anything, if I can lay out demands to which God must acquiesce because I’m demanding it in Jesus’ name; or if I can just make positive confessions and start laying claims to things and, by my positive confessions, create situations and things for my life, then God is no longer in control of my life. I take control by the demands that I make upon God and by the confessions I make of these things. And God becomes the magic genie! I rub the lamp and God must come out to follow my orders.

Not so! God is far too loving for that. He loves you too much to let you run your life. When you put the “I” in “run,” you’ve got the true picture: you’ll ‘ruin’ your life when you try to run it.

Paul tells us that we don’t always know what the will of the Lord is. That’s one of our problems in prayer. From past experience, I realize that I made so many mistakes in the analyses of my own needs that if God had answered some of those prayers, it would have been absolutely tragic!

What if I were in control? What if God were acquiescing to every confession that I made? People say, “Be careful not to make a negative confession! What you say is what you get.” That’s ridiculous!

David said, ‘I know one day Saul is going to kill me.’ Don’t say that, David! That’s negative confession. Now it’s going to happen, because what you say is what you get! And now one day Saul is going to kill you. But Saul didn’t kill David.

I have a good friend who’s been saying for years, ‘I’ll be a monkey’s uncle.’ To my knowledge he hasn’t become one yet.

‘If I could have things by just making a positive confession.’ ‘If God must yield to my demands.’ Do you see what that immediately does? It elevates me to the position of God and puts God in the subservient position. I’m no longer serving God, but God is serving me and my every whim.

Certainly, the greatest prayer any of us can ever pray is, ‘Not my will, but Thy will be done.’ That isn’t a spiritual cop-out as some people would accuse. It’s just glorifying God as God and recognizing that He’s a lot smarter than I. I may think that something is best for me, but He knows what’s best for me.

Behind every prayer I offer is an understanding with God that if I’m making a stupid request, He should please not honor it or answer it. I want God to do what’s best for me or whatever is wisest in each situation. If you accuse me of a spiritual cop-out because I pray ‘Thy will be done,’ then you must also accuse Jesus Christ of a spiritual copout-because He’s the source of the prayer!

If God should come to me and say, ‘Chuck, I’ve been thinking about you lately. I’d like to do something special for you just to show you how much I love you’-what would I ask Him for? Oh, what will it be? Let’s see…I might pay off the mortgage on my house. ‘Lord, what about twenty grand?’ No. Before I get that far I’d stop and say, ‘Lord, just give me whatever You want.’ You see, I might be thinking of twenty grand, but He might be thinking five hundred thousand! Why should I cut Him short?

God delights in giving good gifts to His children. He’s more anxious to give than we are to receive! If you can have the proper concept of God then you can, with confidence, totally cast yourself upon Him and say, ‘Here I am, God! It’s Your problem now! Take care of it. Whatever You want, whatever You wish. My life is Yours. You work out all the details and circumstances. I’m going to relax and let You do it!’ You won’t be able to believe those things He desires to do for your life-just because He loves you! No way am I afraid to say, ‘Lord, Thy will be done in this situation.’ That’s all I want.”

Without sound biblical teaching regarding prayer, people will be deceived into being ineffective and frustrated in their prayer lives. When we understand how to pray and claim God’s word and not use His words out of context, we will find ourselves in line with His holy and perfect will.

I personally experienced this when I was struggling with the death of my former pastor, Steve Szoke. I wrote extensively about the dangers of positive confession and false teachings about physical healing as I grappled with his suffering and eventual death.

We’ll never understand why some people are healed and others are not, why some notorious sinners enjoy marvelous health while some sincere Christians suffer from chronic illnesses. It frustrates me, but I know that the God in whom I place my hope is a sure foundation. I can’t even begin to relate to what Steve and his family have gone through, but I have a mighty Savior who can. And my job isn’t to give an answer to the question “why?” I’d be foolish to do so. I am simply to point them to Christ, who has suffered in every way and can relate to them and walk with them.

Look for part 3 tomorrow, the final part of this series, where we will compare the prosperity gospel to the biblical gospel. Also, I will be quoting Jim Bakker’s book I Was Wrong, sharing wisdom from a man who learned this the hard way.

Daily prayer is and always has been a struggle for me. I don’t prioritize it like I should. I often neglect His Word and prayer. Lately I’ve taken somewhat of a hiatus from blogging to get in the Word more and to pray (plus many other areas of my life have been busy). If I don’t feed on God’s Word, the content on this blog can get pretty bad. I got a Christmas present that is helping me though, a book called the Treasury of Daily Prayer.

Essentially it’s a book that has daily readings from the bible and orders of prayer, and the entire Psalter (all the Psalms). Every day has an Old and New Testament reading, a psalm (or portion of one), and some general guides for prayer. I like it because everything is contained in one book, I don’t have to switch between my bible, a format, and a devotional (although I do enjoy using Eckardt’s Meditations for the Daily Office in conjunction with it sometimes). It’s all in one place. I’ve never been one to really get into any kind of formal prayer material, preferring spontaneous prayer and scripture over any prescribed format. But the bottom line is that when left to my own devices, I simply don’t pray or read the bible that often. If I do, I’ll most likely read a couple of bible verses then pray a 4-5 minute half-hearted prayer, during which I’ll succumb to my short attention span and begin thinking of something entirely non-related.

Understand that I’m not saying there is anything wrong with short prayers or scripture readings. I’m simply saying that I often resort to this approach out of laziness and a failure to prioritize God and His Word in my life. Perhaps you can relate. I’m not trying to push the Treasury of Daily Prayer or anything, I am just stating that it is really helping me get into the Word and prayer more (plus it was a fun project making my own ribbon bookmark for it).

What helps you pray? How do you make His Word a priority in your daily life?

I posted this in tandem with Daily Prayer in order to give instructions for how I created my ribbon bookmark. I recently received the Treasury of Daily Prayer as a Christmas present and discovered that it was supposed to come with a ribbon bookmark to help me navigate the various sections and psalms. It didn’t. So what was I to do? Purchase one? Nahh….

I googled “make a ribbon bookmark” and ran across a well-illustrated set of instructions. But I decided to make a slight modification to the design and customize it. I also came across a blog post that mentioned a design flaw in the ribbon bookmark that comes with the Treasury of Daily Prayer, so I decided to correct it in mine by reversing the order of two of the ribbons. I decided to take some pictures of the process and give some instructions how I did it so that you can do the same if you’d like – for any book.

I went out and bought some ribbon first, using the colors specified in my book (with one change to fix the glitch mentioned earlier). The correct color sequence for the Treasury of Daily Prayer is:

1. Dark Green = marks the Church Year calendar section.
2. Gold = marks the current day in the Church Year
3. Red = marks the order of prayer currently in use
4. Purple = marks the additional prayers you may choose to use daily
5. Blue = marks “Prayers for the Baptized Life”
6. Light Green = marks your place in the Psalms

All you need is the ribbons, an index card, a glue stick, tape, and scissors.

First measure the ribbons to ensure proper length. Do this by placing them about an inch above the book and extending them diagonally across the page (so it’s long enough for you to flip the page with the ribbon). Longer is better, you can always cut them shorter later.

Next fold the index card in half lengthwise as shown to the right. I forgot to take an image after gluing the ribbons to the card, but you’ll get the idea once you see the finished product. I had to overlap the ribbons somewhat to fit them all, but I glued them onto the inside edge of my index card (in the proper order). I then glued the entire folded index card together, thus the ribbons are adhered to the card on both sides. I stuck it under some heavy books to make sure it stuck together well. I then reinforced the index card with tape to ensure it did not open. Here’s the final product:

All that remains is to insert it into the spine of the book, in the space between the binding and the cover. Be sure to place it in the right direction so that the colors are in the right order!

Once you’ve inserted it into the binding and made it flush with the cover, voila! You’re all done. I cut the ribbons again to make them more even (I had a lot of excess).

Enjoy!

P.S. For those who are keenly observant, the gold ribbon comes after the red only because we are currently in the 12 days of Christmas, so they are crossed for this part of the year because today’s date in the Church year falls after the orders of prayer. Most of the year will be in the proper order, during the time of Easter, thus the gold will come before the red.

God’s really been humbling me this week. I’ve decided to try and read the entire Bible in 90 days. It takes me about an hour and a half daily to accomplish my daily readings (plus work and school). It might take me slightly longer than 90 days, but I’ll do my best. I’m doing this in a Bible designed for this purpose that has no commentary: just me, the Holy Spirit, and the text. It’s been very eye-opening. I’m taking notes and asking questions along the way to go back and answer.

One of the things I’ve noticed in Genesis so far is how Abraham builds altars for God wherever he goes. That might sound like a simple observation, but this shows that he takes the time to dedicate places to God, show Him respect, sacrifice to Him, and worship Him. I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: too many Christians these days spend more time talking about God than they do talking to God. And I’m one of those Christians.

I was reading an article a few days ago entitled Prayer: Rebelling Against The Status Quo by David Wells. In the article, Wells says:

There is plenty of passionate and lively discussion in the church today – whether justified or not – about the mediocrity of the preaching, the emptiness of the worship, the superficiality of the fellowship and the ineffectiveness of the evangelism. So, why, then, don’t we pray as much as we talk? The answer, quite simply, is that we don’t really believe prayer will make any difference.

When I read that, I felt the Holy Spirit tug at my heart. That’s me, I thought. While I try to balance my critique with helpful solutions and the grace of Christ, I spend more time thinking, writing, and talking about what the Church can do better rather than praying for it to happen. To all of my readers: I’m sorry, please forgive me.

I will continue to write thought-provoking and faith-stimulating material as always, but I am making it my goal to plead with God for His grace and healing in the situations about which I write.