Post by Cindy on May 12, 2015 9:38:19 GMT -5
Ideas for prayer:
• Spend one day JUST in prayer.....
• Ask God to impress on you those areas of your relationship with Christ in which you need to improve. As He does so, ask Him for guidance on how you might specifically begin to apply the appropriate spiritual truths each day.
• Ask the Lord to reveal to you the ways in which you tend to follow the world’s priorities and compromise His truth. As He does this, pray for guidance on how you can reverse those trends.
Ask God to direct you to one or more people to whom you can proclaim the Gospel. Ask Him to give you boldness yet humility in your presentation, knowing that He alone can give them the gift of salvation.
• Pray for your church and your leaders. They have a great responsibility before God, and one of those is to be true and loyal to His Word. Ask God to help them be constantly nourished on His Word and to remain committed to live out its truth moment by moment and day by day.
• Pray that the quality of love in your life would be more and more as God wants it, and less and less as the world exhibits it.
• Ask the Lord to make you a thinking Christian, one who can discern between the good and the best. Pray for a specific issue in which you need guidance and wisdom to choose the best option.
• Ask God to help you use Scripture as you draw the line concerning your convictions. Spend some extra time in prayer if you are facing an issue that is testing your determination to remain uncompromised.
• Pray for missionary efforts in areas (for example, Islamic countries) where the culture is especially resistant to the Gospel. If you know a specific missionary who might be facing persecution, pray for that person.
• Ask God to help you be diligent and honest in all you do and to avoid the temptation to take shortcuts.
• Pray that the Lord would give you a daily hunger for His truth and His righteousness.
• Examine the areas in your life where you might be too proud. Pray that God and His Word would show you ways to be more humble.
• Prayerfully examine your heart in the coming days, and ask the Lord to show you any areas of your life in which you’ve regularly behaved hypocritically. Repent of those actions, and ask God to help you be more faithful. If no problems are brought to mind, thank Him for His faithful mercies toward you.
• Ask God to give you a more balanced Christian life, based on the truth of Philippians 2:12–13.
• Ask God to keep you mindful each day that He is to be first in your life.
• Pray that you will more successfully separate yourself from worldly temptations and sins that threaten your life of integrity.
• Thank God for the possessions He has blessed you with and ask that He would grant you a greater degree of contentment.
• Sometime during the next week, devote special time to praying for your nation and community. Ask the Lord to make you and other believers more sensitive to evil and injustice and more determined to stand for what is right.
• Think about Francis Schaeffer’s quote at the opening of this chapter. Ask the Lord to make you more of the kind of believer described there. All men are our neighbors, and we are to love them as ourselves. We are to do this on the basis of creation, even if they are not redeemed, for all men have value because they are made in the image of God. Therefore they are to be loved even at great cost.
This is, of course, the whole point of Jesus’ story of the good Samaritan: Because a man is a man, he is to be loved at all cost.
So, when Jesus gives the special command to love our Christian brothers, it does not negate the other command. The two are not antithetical. We are not to choose between loving all men as ourselves and loving the Christian in a special way. The two commands reinforce each other.
If Jesus has commanded so strongly that we love all men as our neighbors, then how important it is especially to love our fellow-Christians. If we are told to love all men as our neighbors—as ourselves—then surely, when it comes to those with whom we have the special bonds as fellow-Christians—having one Father through one Jesus Christ and being indwelt by one Spirit—we can understand how overwhelmingly important it is that all men be able to see an observable love for those with whom we have these special ties. Paul makes the double obligation clear in Galatians 6:10: “As we have therefore opportunity, let us do good unto all men, especially unto them who are of the household of faith.” He does not negate the command to do good to all men. But it is still not meaningless to add, “especially unto them who are of the household of faith.” This dual goal should be our Christian mentality, the set of our minds; we should be consciously thinking about it and what it means in our one-moment-at-a-time lives. It should be the attitude that governs our outward observable actions.
• Pray for someone at your workplace or school whom you have found difficult to get along with. Ask God to show you some practical way to love that person.
• Make some time for extended prayer, and pray through 1 Kings 8:56–61. Take long enough to pray over each verse and important thought. Write down items the Lord impresses on your heart that you can do to conform better to the desires of Solomon’s words (for example, a bad habit to forsake, a way to be more diligent in Bible study, etc.).
• Thank God for His plan for your life. Seek wisdom and grace to live accordingly.
• Thank the Lord for sovereignly giving you a course to run in life. Pray for His perfect will to be reflected in your life as you run the course.
• Write out 2 Corinthians 4:7 or Micah 6:8 on an index card and place it where you will see it frequently during the next week. Let the verse be a reminder to you at those times when pride taints your words, actions, and attitudes. Do this long enough so you can keep track of your growth in humility; record times you did and did not remember your verse when tested by pride. Assess your progress after several months.
• Read the entire book of Daniel during the next two weeks. Take notes each day, and write out specific verses as additional things impress you about Daniel’s wisdom and integrity. (One passage to devote extra study and meditation to would be Daniel’s prayer in 9:4–19.)
• Read, study, and meditate on John 13:3–17. Take special notice of the contrast between Christ’s attitude and Peter’s. Ask the Lord to give you an opportunity within the next month to lovingly reach out and help someone with a specific need. Be alert for the needs of those in your church, but don’t overlook ways you might help neighbors or coworkers.
• Read and study Colossians 3:1–17. Make a list of every word or phrase that refers to transformation or renewal. Next to each one, write what kind of behavior ought to result from that transformation. Begin to set goals and objectives for accomplishing those behavior patterns so that you will better reflect your commitment to Christ.
• Pray that you would be more diligent in gleaning wisdom from your study of Scripture.
• Ask God for wisdom to better understand and accept the truth that He is sovereign over all areas of life. ✧ Pray for a friend or family member who might be currently in the midst of a trial.
• Ask the Lord to strengthen you today and to remind you that even though you are not of the world, you are to be a light to it.
• Ask the Lord to help you begin grasping what it means to partake in “the fellowship of His sufferings.” (Phil. 3:10)
• Ask the Lord to remind you throughout the day of your humble dependence on Him, whether or not you are going through a trial.
• Ask the Lord to make you more willing to rely on His strength and less willing to lean on material things.
• Ask the Lord to help you meditate today on the glories promised for you in the future.
• Pray that your priorities each day would stay in line with God’s.
• Ask God to give you the desire to see the benefits of trials from an eternal perspective.
• Praise God for His wonderful grace, by which He granted you salvation and all the spiritual resources you need. ✧ Thank Him for His Word, through which you learn the principles of godly living. ✧ Ask Him for opportunities today to encourage the faithfulness of others.
• Thank God that you have peace with Him through faith in Jesus Christ. ✧ Ask the Spirit to reveal any sin that might be hindering God’s peace from ruling in your heart. Be prepared to respond in confession and repentance. ✧ Ask for opportunities to demonstrate God’s peace to others today.
• Identify ten specific blessings God has granted to you in recent days, and praise Him for each one. ✧ Ask Him to make you more aware of and thankful for His goodness in your life. ✧ Always be ready to seek forgiveness when you take His blessings for granted.
• Thank the Lord for any difficult circumstances you might be facing. Ask Him for continued grace to see them through His perspective and to not lose heart (James 1:2, Gal. 6:9). ✧ Be aware of any sinful attitudes or actions on your part that might diminish your joy. Confess them immediately.
• Thank God for your spiritual leaders. Pray for them and encourage them often.
• Thank God for the privilege of communing with Him in prayer. ✧ Ask Him to reveal any areas in your praying that need to be strengthened.
• Make a list of your current plans, thoughts, and concerns. Have you made each of them a matter of prayer? Commit yourself to sharing every aspect of your life with God.
• Be a diligent student of the Word so you will know God’s will. ✧ Ask God to reveal areas in which your will is not conformed to His. As He does, take immediate steps to deal with the situation.
• Thank God for the people who have prayed for you over the years. Be aware of those for whom you should be praying. ✧ Sometimes the demands of prayer can seem overwhelming because there’s so much to pray for, but be faithful, knowing that your prayers are a delight to the Lord (Prov. 15:8).
• If there is someone who has wronged you, pray for that person, asking God to give you a heart of compassion for him or her. Make every effort to reconcile as soon as possible.
• Thank God for His infinite grace and forgiveness. ✧ Look for opportunities to extend forgiveness to others.
• List the areas of your Christian walk that are inconsistent or vacillating. Make them a matter of earnest prayer, asking God for wisdom and grace as you begin to strengthen them.
• Thank God for His precious Word and for the marvelous transforming work it accomplishes in you. Ask the Lord to keep you sensitive to His Word in every situation you face today.
• Ask the Lord to guard your tongue from speaking anything that might dishonor Him. Be aware of everything you say.
• What has the spiritual privilege of being chosen by God meant in your life? Express your answer to God in prayer, thanking Him for His wondrous grace.
• If you are currently going through a time of testing, ask God for the grace and wisdom to pass the test. Thank Him in advance for the joy and confidence you’ll gain when the test is over.
• Ask God for a greater capacity to love Him, then demonstrate your love by obeying His Word.
• Is there someone from whom you’ve been withholding forgiveness? If so, recognize it as sin and confess it to the Lord. Ask God for the grace to forgive those who wrong you. Then be reconciled to that person right away. ✧ Thank God that He doesn’t keep an account of your sins (cf. Ps. 130:3–4).
• Seek discernment and grace to identify the enemy and to stand against him courageously.
• Ask the Spirit to help you search your heart and to reveal any self-righteous attitudes that might be making you vulnerable to Satan’s attacks. Confess them, and then praise Christ for the true righteousness that is yours in Him.
• Thank God for His precious Word and the study resources that are available to Bible students today. ✧ Renew your commitment to daily systematic Bible study.
• Ask God to increase your desire to know His Word. ✧ Ask for wisdom in applying what you already know to the decisions and situations you’ll face today.
• Ask the Holy Spirit to control every aspect of your life today. ✧ Be diligent to apply the appropriate Biblical principles to every circumstance you face.
• If you’ve lost your appetite for God’s Word, it may be because of sin (1 Peter 2:1). If so, ask God to cleanse your heart and to give you a renewed longing for His truth. Then commit yourself to daily time in the Word.
• Ask God to increase and strengthen your faith through the events of this day. ✧ Look for specific opportunities to trust Him more fully.
• Thank God for His unwavering faithfulness to you. ✧ Seek His forgiveness when your obedience is reluctant or withheld altogether. ✧ Ask Him to teach you to love Him in the same unwavering, resolute way He loves you.
• Ask God to help you humbly trust in God’s power when you face spiritual conflicts.
• Ask God to strengthen your resolve when you know you need to confront someone regarding his or her relationship with the Lord.
• Before you do another thing today, praise your Heavenly Father for His wonderful plan of salvation.
Taken from:
MacArthur, J. F., Jr. (1997). The power of integrity: Building a life without compromise
MacArthur, J. (1997). Strength for today. Wheaton, IL: Crossway Books.
MacArthur, J. F., Jr. (1993). Drawing Near—Daily Readings for a Deeper Faith
• Spend one day JUST in prayer.....
• Ask God to impress on you those areas of your relationship with Christ in which you need to improve. As He does so, ask Him for guidance on how you might specifically begin to apply the appropriate spiritual truths each day.
• Ask the Lord to reveal to you the ways in which you tend to follow the world’s priorities and compromise His truth. As He does this, pray for guidance on how you can reverse those trends.
Ask God to direct you to one or more people to whom you can proclaim the Gospel. Ask Him to give you boldness yet humility in your presentation, knowing that He alone can give them the gift of salvation.
• Pray for your church and your leaders. They have a great responsibility before God, and one of those is to be true and loyal to His Word. Ask God to help them be constantly nourished on His Word and to remain committed to live out its truth moment by moment and day by day.
• Pray that the quality of love in your life would be more and more as God wants it, and less and less as the world exhibits it.
• Ask the Lord to make you a thinking Christian, one who can discern between the good and the best. Pray for a specific issue in which you need guidance and wisdom to choose the best option.
• Ask God to help you use Scripture as you draw the line concerning your convictions. Spend some extra time in prayer if you are facing an issue that is testing your determination to remain uncompromised.
• Pray for missionary efforts in areas (for example, Islamic countries) where the culture is especially resistant to the Gospel. If you know a specific missionary who might be facing persecution, pray for that person.
• Ask God to help you be diligent and honest in all you do and to avoid the temptation to take shortcuts.
• Pray that the Lord would give you a daily hunger for His truth and His righteousness.
• Examine the areas in your life where you might be too proud. Pray that God and His Word would show you ways to be more humble.
• Prayerfully examine your heart in the coming days, and ask the Lord to show you any areas of your life in which you’ve regularly behaved hypocritically. Repent of those actions, and ask God to help you be more faithful. If no problems are brought to mind, thank Him for His faithful mercies toward you.
• Ask God to give you a more balanced Christian life, based on the truth of Philippians 2:12–13.
• Ask God to keep you mindful each day that He is to be first in your life.
• Pray that you will more successfully separate yourself from worldly temptations and sins that threaten your life of integrity.
• Thank God for the possessions He has blessed you with and ask that He would grant you a greater degree of contentment.
• Sometime during the next week, devote special time to praying for your nation and community. Ask the Lord to make you and other believers more sensitive to evil and injustice and more determined to stand for what is right.
• Think about Francis Schaeffer’s quote at the opening of this chapter. Ask the Lord to make you more of the kind of believer described there. All men are our neighbors, and we are to love them as ourselves. We are to do this on the basis of creation, even if they are not redeemed, for all men have value because they are made in the image of God. Therefore they are to be loved even at great cost.
This is, of course, the whole point of Jesus’ story of the good Samaritan: Because a man is a man, he is to be loved at all cost.
So, when Jesus gives the special command to love our Christian brothers, it does not negate the other command. The two are not antithetical. We are not to choose between loving all men as ourselves and loving the Christian in a special way. The two commands reinforce each other.
If Jesus has commanded so strongly that we love all men as our neighbors, then how important it is especially to love our fellow-Christians. If we are told to love all men as our neighbors—as ourselves—then surely, when it comes to those with whom we have the special bonds as fellow-Christians—having one Father through one Jesus Christ and being indwelt by one Spirit—we can understand how overwhelmingly important it is that all men be able to see an observable love for those with whom we have these special ties. Paul makes the double obligation clear in Galatians 6:10: “As we have therefore opportunity, let us do good unto all men, especially unto them who are of the household of faith.” He does not negate the command to do good to all men. But it is still not meaningless to add, “especially unto them who are of the household of faith.” This dual goal should be our Christian mentality, the set of our minds; we should be consciously thinking about it and what it means in our one-moment-at-a-time lives. It should be the attitude that governs our outward observable actions.
• Pray for someone at your workplace or school whom you have found difficult to get along with. Ask God to show you some practical way to love that person.
• Make some time for extended prayer, and pray through 1 Kings 8:56–61. Take long enough to pray over each verse and important thought. Write down items the Lord impresses on your heart that you can do to conform better to the desires of Solomon’s words (for example, a bad habit to forsake, a way to be more diligent in Bible study, etc.).
• Thank God for His plan for your life. Seek wisdom and grace to live accordingly.
• Thank the Lord for sovereignly giving you a course to run in life. Pray for His perfect will to be reflected in your life as you run the course.
• Write out 2 Corinthians 4:7 or Micah 6:8 on an index card and place it where you will see it frequently during the next week. Let the verse be a reminder to you at those times when pride taints your words, actions, and attitudes. Do this long enough so you can keep track of your growth in humility; record times you did and did not remember your verse when tested by pride. Assess your progress after several months.
• Read the entire book of Daniel during the next two weeks. Take notes each day, and write out specific verses as additional things impress you about Daniel’s wisdom and integrity. (One passage to devote extra study and meditation to would be Daniel’s prayer in 9:4–19.)
• Read, study, and meditate on John 13:3–17. Take special notice of the contrast between Christ’s attitude and Peter’s. Ask the Lord to give you an opportunity within the next month to lovingly reach out and help someone with a specific need. Be alert for the needs of those in your church, but don’t overlook ways you might help neighbors or coworkers.
• Read and study Colossians 3:1–17. Make a list of every word or phrase that refers to transformation or renewal. Next to each one, write what kind of behavior ought to result from that transformation. Begin to set goals and objectives for accomplishing those behavior patterns so that you will better reflect your commitment to Christ.
• Pray that you would be more diligent in gleaning wisdom from your study of Scripture.
• Ask God for wisdom to better understand and accept the truth that He is sovereign over all areas of life. ✧ Pray for a friend or family member who might be currently in the midst of a trial.
• Ask the Lord to strengthen you today and to remind you that even though you are not of the world, you are to be a light to it.
• Ask the Lord to help you begin grasping what it means to partake in “the fellowship of His sufferings.” (Phil. 3:10)
• Ask the Lord to remind you throughout the day of your humble dependence on Him, whether or not you are going through a trial.
• Ask the Lord to make you more willing to rely on His strength and less willing to lean on material things.
• Ask the Lord to help you meditate today on the glories promised for you in the future.
• Pray that your priorities each day would stay in line with God’s.
• Ask God to give you the desire to see the benefits of trials from an eternal perspective.
• Praise God for His wonderful grace, by which He granted you salvation and all the spiritual resources you need. ✧ Thank Him for His Word, through which you learn the principles of godly living. ✧ Ask Him for opportunities today to encourage the faithfulness of others.
• Thank God that you have peace with Him through faith in Jesus Christ. ✧ Ask the Spirit to reveal any sin that might be hindering God’s peace from ruling in your heart. Be prepared to respond in confession and repentance. ✧ Ask for opportunities to demonstrate God’s peace to others today.
• Identify ten specific blessings God has granted to you in recent days, and praise Him for each one. ✧ Ask Him to make you more aware of and thankful for His goodness in your life. ✧ Always be ready to seek forgiveness when you take His blessings for granted.
• Thank the Lord for any difficult circumstances you might be facing. Ask Him for continued grace to see them through His perspective and to not lose heart (James 1:2, Gal. 6:9). ✧ Be aware of any sinful attitudes or actions on your part that might diminish your joy. Confess them immediately.
• Thank God for your spiritual leaders. Pray for them and encourage them often.
• Thank God for the privilege of communing with Him in prayer. ✧ Ask Him to reveal any areas in your praying that need to be strengthened.
• Make a list of your current plans, thoughts, and concerns. Have you made each of them a matter of prayer? Commit yourself to sharing every aspect of your life with God.
• Be a diligent student of the Word so you will know God’s will. ✧ Ask God to reveal areas in which your will is not conformed to His. As He does, take immediate steps to deal with the situation.
• Thank God for the people who have prayed for you over the years. Be aware of those for whom you should be praying. ✧ Sometimes the demands of prayer can seem overwhelming because there’s so much to pray for, but be faithful, knowing that your prayers are a delight to the Lord (Prov. 15:8).
• If there is someone who has wronged you, pray for that person, asking God to give you a heart of compassion for him or her. Make every effort to reconcile as soon as possible.
• Thank God for His infinite grace and forgiveness. ✧ Look for opportunities to extend forgiveness to others.
• List the areas of your Christian walk that are inconsistent or vacillating. Make them a matter of earnest prayer, asking God for wisdom and grace as you begin to strengthen them.
• Thank God for His precious Word and for the marvelous transforming work it accomplishes in you. Ask the Lord to keep you sensitive to His Word in every situation you face today.
• Ask the Lord to guard your tongue from speaking anything that might dishonor Him. Be aware of everything you say.
• What has the spiritual privilege of being chosen by God meant in your life? Express your answer to God in prayer, thanking Him for His wondrous grace.
• If you are currently going through a time of testing, ask God for the grace and wisdom to pass the test. Thank Him in advance for the joy and confidence you’ll gain when the test is over.
• Ask God for a greater capacity to love Him, then demonstrate your love by obeying His Word.
• Is there someone from whom you’ve been withholding forgiveness? If so, recognize it as sin and confess it to the Lord. Ask God for the grace to forgive those who wrong you. Then be reconciled to that person right away. ✧ Thank God that He doesn’t keep an account of your sins (cf. Ps. 130:3–4).
• Seek discernment and grace to identify the enemy and to stand against him courageously.
• Ask the Spirit to help you search your heart and to reveal any self-righteous attitudes that might be making you vulnerable to Satan’s attacks. Confess them, and then praise Christ for the true righteousness that is yours in Him.
• Thank God for His precious Word and the study resources that are available to Bible students today. ✧ Renew your commitment to daily systematic Bible study.
• Ask God to increase your desire to know His Word. ✧ Ask for wisdom in applying what you already know to the decisions and situations you’ll face today.
• Ask the Holy Spirit to control every aspect of your life today. ✧ Be diligent to apply the appropriate Biblical principles to every circumstance you face.
• If you’ve lost your appetite for God’s Word, it may be because of sin (1 Peter 2:1). If so, ask God to cleanse your heart and to give you a renewed longing for His truth. Then commit yourself to daily time in the Word.
• Ask God to increase and strengthen your faith through the events of this day. ✧ Look for specific opportunities to trust Him more fully.
• Thank God for His unwavering faithfulness to you. ✧ Seek His forgiveness when your obedience is reluctant or withheld altogether. ✧ Ask Him to teach you to love Him in the same unwavering, resolute way He loves you.
• Ask God to help you humbly trust in God’s power when you face spiritual conflicts.
• Ask God to strengthen your resolve when you know you need to confront someone regarding his or her relationship with the Lord.
• Before you do another thing today, praise your Heavenly Father for His wonderful plan of salvation.
Taken from:
MacArthur, J. F., Jr. (1997). The power of integrity: Building a life without compromise
MacArthur, J. (1997). Strength for today. Wheaton, IL: Crossway Books.
MacArthur, J. F., Jr. (1993). Drawing Near—Daily Readings for a Deeper Faith
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