The importance of corporate prayer

At our church we have a prayer meeting every week. Without fail the night of the week that has the most problems and delays is that night. The one thing that has the lowest attendance that our church does is our prayer night. Yet this night is perhaps the most important thing that we do in terms of the kingdom of God. It is during our prayer time that we consistently seek God's hand of blessing on the work that we seek to do for the sake of His kingdom. Without His blessing all that we do is as nothing. It is during this time as well that we lay requests of all sorts at His feet. We do not think that we are changing the mind of God, but rather that when we pray we are simply laying requests at His feet. He may answer no and He may answer yes. When God does answer yes we rejoice because this simply means that we were praying in accordance with His will. When God answers a prayer we realize that He ordained that we pray for those things so that when He answered it we would know that He ordained our prayers as well as His answer. When He answers in a positive manner we know that He has seen fit to ordain our prayers and use them as a means by which He has chosen to overcome the kingdom of darkness and bring glory to His marvelous name. But more than anything else the most important thing about corporate prayer is it brings all of our hearts to a place of focusing entirely on God. There is nothing more important than that. Prayer is one more means God uses to develop within us a God focus and longing. If your church has a corporate prayer time make a point to go and join them. Consistency at this meeting will help to cultivate a deeper embrace of your savior in your heart because it is here that you will see Him responding to those that seek Him (Luke 11:9, 1 Thessalonians 5:17).

Why where sin resides is important

Sin is never a thing outside of man. This is an important distinction to make. Sin cannot be an object that God has made. In a sense all objects of God's creation are completely neutral in regard to being sin in and of themselves. Where does sin come from? It issues from the heart of man (Proverbs 23:7a). Another way of describing the issue at hand would be that sin is man's abuse of something or being taken captive by something. Alcohol by itself is not sin in an object. Drunkenness or the abuse of alcohol is sin (Ephesians 5:18). Opiates were created by God and are not sin. They are used by the medical community to ease great pain without inducing other experiences or feelings. But opiates that are abused and used in other manners by man are sin because of how man uses them. In this case man is being controlled by the opiate instead of controlling it. This is an important principle because it is about living a God focused life.
Sin is an issue of the heart and as such true freedom is found when we see sin for what it is and where it resides. For example: (I am not super familiar with Alcoholics anonymous but I think this has a bit of application there.) In alcoholics anonymous they stand up and introduce themselves by name and say that they are an alcoholic. This can be good and this can be a potential problem for the recovering addict. You see alcohol is not sin. My experience with alcoholics is that they can easily start to view alcohol as sin. Their problem is not really an alcohol problem their problem is a heart problem. Their heart has come to be ruled by alcohol. This is no different than the sex addict whose heart has come to be ruled by sexual fantasies. The solution for the sex addict is not to mutilate the flesh so that they do not have to deal with the problem. The solution is to deal with the problem in the heart. The problem an addict has is that they have allowed their heart to be ruled by something. That something might be sexuality, alcohol, work, music, you name it almost anything can come to rule our hearts (Proverbs 23:7). The problem with seeing sin as a thing out side of us is that we never end up dealing with our hearts. We are called to love the Lord with all of our hearts (Matthew 22:37). If we would come to do this our hearts would begin to be consumed by God. This is what our flesh fights against. It will prompt you to be ruled by anything but God. But if an alcoholic or any kind of addict for that matter comes to be ruled by God and to see sin as an issue of the heart they will be freed. They will not go around avoiding an object out side of themselves but they will go to God seeking to be consumed by Him in all that they do. In this case they are freed to be addicted to God which frees them from addiction to sin (Romans 12:1-2). Let's prompt one another toward love and good deeds to the glory of God and it might be a really good thing if we became so addicted to God that we could not live without Him.

Is the goal of parenting our happiness??

There was an article on my news feed today called, "Two Simple Ways to be a Happier Parent".  While the fundamental premise of having a more peaceful home is laudable it ignores a more important issue that should present itself to each of us as followers of Jesus Christ. The reality is that as we deal with the children that God has blessed us with we are faced with the fact that they are fallen and in rebellion by nature against God. Because of that fallen nature all parents have conflict. Dealing with fallen children with the goal of raising them to develop their own God focused life will result in conflict. The conflict for the Christian parent will result when God's call comes into conflict with our fallen natures. As parents our correction should be focused on directing them toward God. Ultimately one of our key goals should be to help our children develop self-discipline.  Self-discipline is necessary to pursue God on their own should they come to be His followers. Proverbs 22:6 says, “Train up a child in the way he should go; even when he is old he will not depart from it.” I seek to instill in my children one primary thing. If they learn nothing else from me I want them to remember, that the most important person they must come to know and pursue with all of their hearts is our Lord Jesus Christ. If they enter into eternity without Him they are bound for eternal death. If they come to repent of their sins and know and pursue Jesus eternal life is theirs. Then they too can end up living a God focused life. For us as christian parents our greatest happiness will be realized not in having a peaceful home but being at peace with God and having children that are at peace with God. Our happiness will be found in Jesus and having a life focused on Him.