At the very heart of Jesus’ vision of the kingdom — of heaven’s kingdom coming on earth — we have a picture of one person, secretly in their own room, praying.
Prayer is a mystery. I’ve often heard people saying, with a sneer, ‘It doesn’t go beyond the ceiling, you know.’ But the point of prayer, at least the way Jesus saw it, is that it doesn’t have to. Your father, he says, is there in the secret place with you. He sees and knows your deepest thoughts and hopes and fears. He hears the words you say. He hears, too, the things you can’t put into words but want to lay before him anyway. Prayer, in fact, isn’t a mystery in the sense of ‘a puzzle we can’t understand’. Prayer is a symptom, a sign, of the mystery: the fact that heaven and earth actually mingle together. There are times when they interlock; there are places where they overlap. To pray, in this sense, is to claim a time and place — it can be anywhere, any time — as one of those times, one of those places. (more…)
[A blog by Leif Hetland 3rd June 2023]
Without doubt, the greatest hindrance to our ability to step into our destiny is fear. Fear, which is rooted in unbelief, holds us back from the purposes of God. Unbelief thrives in a heart that is not in alignment with God’s nature, purpose, power, and presence. Because of this, every believer must confront unbelief and come face to face with fear. There is no way around it. To step into freedom, we need to deal with unbelief and fear—first within us and then around us.
Thankfully, our heavenly Father has given us everything we need to defeat fear (2 Tim. 1:7). These three gifts—power, love, and a sound mind—are the keys to saying no to fear in our lives.
1. The first key to overcoming fear is learning to walk in the power of God. When we face overwhelming circumstances, we can respond to them in one of three ways—we can run from them, we can ignore them, or we can face them. The first two options are rooted in fear. The third option, facing our circumstances, is the choice to step into God’s gift of power in our lives. (more…)
Kris Vallotton in a blog 14th September 2022 quotes a comment his son Jason made while they were have a conversation about ‘Becoming a man that shapes History’. Jason says …
“Your purpose in life comes out of your identity, so if you never really figure out who you are and how you were made then you spend the rest of your life chasing things you were never supposed to be chasing.”
Kris goes on to add something I believe is very important …
The truth is there is a big difference between
working from love and working for love.
If you are working so that you have an identity, you will never be able to work hard enough, long enough, or well enough to find fulfilment in yourself.
I’d propose that, if you want your life’s actions to produce a legacy that nourishes the future generations, you need to consider your internal motivator – are you working from a place of performance or a place of love? This will be the fruit that feeds the future generations.