I came across this definition in a secular setting, but I couldn’t help but think that this applies almost perfectly to why it is so hard to open our hearts to another person when they are totally different and even unbecoming in their ways.

We like to stay in our little comfort zone most of the time and opening your heart to another whose life is messed up and might need more than just an encouraging word every now and then will definitely make you have to depend on God for answers.

What is cognitive dissonance? It’s the discomfort you feel when you try to reconcile two conflicting ideas or thoughts in your mind.

Cognitive dissonance is a hugely powerful force in our minds and our lives.

We need to make sense of our lives and our beliefs, so we avoid ideas and beliefs that contradict what we already think is right or true.

Many times we find ourselves going to huge lengths to justify our current belief, because to even consider the alternative is just too uncomfortable. I have found that something might not be morally or spiritually wrong, but it might contradict what I want to do versus what God wants me to do. His way usually takes me out of my comfort zone and places me into the “unknown” for a short period of time or even a long one.

During Jesus’ earthly ministry, He made it a point to seek out the people who were the neediest and gave them something that changed their life forever. The neediest people are not always the ones who are poor or hooked on drugs. Zaccheus was a very rich man, though he had gotten most of his riches from charging too many taxes to the ordinary people so he could pad his own pockets. That didn’t stop him from being miserable enough with his life to climb a tree so he could see this Jesus better that was passing by. Somehow he must have known this man could help him in his miserable condition.

What if Jesus had passed him by because it would have taken too much time to help him? Zaccheus might have never taken another opportunity to seek help again.

Our Jesus can help even the worst of sinners, but He wants you to be willing to get involved and also  be willing to pray intensely for that person to change and let the Holy Spirit show you how to help them. You can’t do it on your own, but with God’s help all things are possible.

I can look back on my life and see that more times than I would like to admit, I have been stubborn and bull-headed about things I knew God was telling me to do. Sometimes I just didn’t want to take the time to get involved because I had my own agenda or the need was too overwhelming and I didn’t know where to begin.

Sometimes it gets messy when we try to help others or we might even get burnt, but God wants us to concentrate totally on what He desires and not worry about anything else.

He wants us to be a bright light in a very dark world so that those with the most desperate needs will be able to see there is something better than what they have now.

 Then they might do like Zaccheus and run to our source of light (God) because they can see that we have something that can truly change their life.

I know that living out of your “comfort zone” will never be easy, but OH! how great will be the rewards that will come from it. You can have the same peace and joy that Zaccheus had after his encounter with Jesus totally turned his life around – never to be the same again!

Related posts:

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Sometimes I feel a burden on my heart about a particular person or situation and pray a passionate quick prayer; then I feel a relief and am able to go about my daily business knowing that things will work out.

The above kind of prayers take a lot of energy, but you don’t have to use a great deal of concentration or discipline to pray for only a few minutes at the time.

The marinating-type of praying calls for a much more disciplined prayer life. You might feel God leading you to pray for a critical family or church situation that might take some time to be resolved.
I prayed for a situation in my church for several years before I started to actually see the victory. I know God was working on the situation all the time, but I certainly could not see it. Over and over again I would watch Satan win huge battles with little effort at all. I felt as if he was rubbing his victories in my face and saying, “Your prayers will never make a difference in this situation, so you might as well quit praying.”

I know I would have given up if I had not had a direct word from God telling me that I was not to leave the church, but to pray and fast for the situation there. When you get a “word” like that, it is up to you to then decide if your desires to leave are so great that you want to voluntarily live in rebellion against God.

In the end, I decided that being in rebellion against God would be the worst decision I could ever make under any circumstances. I figured I might end up “in the belly of a big fish” like Jonah did until I came to my senses and started to walk in obedience.

No matter what type of prayer the situation calls for, if you spend time with God just fellowshipping with Him and getting to know His Character, you will know how He wants you to pray.

I came to realize that it is an awesome thing when God can look at your life and know that He can trust you to be consistent in prayer for something huge that might take awhile.

Real and powerful prayer does take a lot of effort and energy, but you can feel yourself moving closer to God each day. How awesome it is to be able to walk in His Power to pray for and minister to others each day that might desperately need a touch from Him.

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1. What Kind of Prayer Describes You?
2. Prayer – The Thing That Draws God Near To A Church
3. The Vital Importance of Prayer!

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When a man becomes cold, indifferent, and careless, one of the first things that will suffer will be his devotion. When a sick man is in a decline his lungs suffer and his voice; and so when a Christian is in a spiritual decline the breath of prayer is affected, and the cry of supplication becomes weak. Prayer is the true gauge of spiritual power. To restrain prayer is dangerous, and of deadly tendency. You may depend upon it that, take it for all in all, what you are upon your knees you are really before your God. What the Pharisee and the Publican were in prayer was the true criterion of their spiritual state.

You may maintain a decent repute among men, but it is a small matter to be judged of man’s judgment, for men see only the surface, while the Lord’s eyes pry into the recesses of the soul. If he sees that you are prayerless he makes small account of your attendance at religious meetings, or your loud professions of conversion. If you are a man of earnest prayer, and especially if the spirit of prayer be in you, so that in addition to certain seasons of supplication your heart habitually talks with God, things are right with you; but if this be not the case, and your prayers be “hindered,” there is something in your spiritual system which needs to be ejected, or somewhat lacking which ought at once to be supplied. “Keep thine heart with all diligence, for out of it are the issues of life;” and living prayers are among those issues.

From a sermon by Charles Haddon Spurgeon entitled “Hindrances To Prayer,” delivered September 13, 1871.

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Emily Dickinson

I found this quote quite interesting as I think back to certain times in my life where I made a decision to do something that came back to haunt me for awhile. Fortunately I didn’t get involved in anything that had terrible lasting physical consequences, but I do recall instances where I made decisions that I didn’t feel good about at the time. I just didn’t want to take a stand if it meant being ridiculed for being different.

All Satan is looking for is the tiniest of openings in which to start his work in any person’s life. He will start as small as he needs to and gradually make the opening wider and wider until we sometimes don’t know how everything happened as quickly as it did. In reality, he may have been at work for many months or years and we haven’t noticed at all.

Satan works very smart, is highly organized, and has much patience; many people are hooked deeply before they realize what is going on.

If you have asked Jesus into your heart, you have the awesome power and guidance of the Holy Spirit to always lead you in making right decisions. He will warn you when you are about to do something that could lead you into a trap.

As soon as you feel that something might not be right, or have a doubt about it, ask the Holy Spirit to show you more about what you need to do; then heed his warning immediately.

He will keep you from doing something the first time that might end up causing much heartache and pain in the future.

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Two Parts To Every Burden

There are two parts to every burden. One is the burden in itself, and the other is how much of that burden you internalize and take for your own. You cannot magically transport yourself away from difficult circumstances. Yet you can choose to see, understand and live the fact that even the most difficult burden is not a part of who you are.

Ralph Marston

When a huge trial comes your way and stays there for awhile, it seems as if it tries to become a part of you. If you are not careful, it can change your whole personality and make you go from being cheerful and lively to bitter, depressed or moody. God never intended for you to carry a huge burden on your own with no help from Him in any way.

Matthew 11: 28-30

Come to me, all you that labor and are heavy-laden and I will give you rest.

Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls.

For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.

The following quote is from Charles Finney, who explains it very well.

1. Then let it be understood that Christ’s real yoke, or the true service of Christ, is never hard. His real yoke is never heavy. It is self-will and selfishness that at any time fault the yoke or the service of Christ.

2. If what we call religion is burdensome, it is not Christ’s yoke, it is not Christ’s religion. If we make an uphill business of it, and if we find it “hard to obey, and harder still to love,” Christ says to us, Who has required this at your hand? What I require of you is a love-service, not this slavish service. If you love me not, if you do not serve me from love, I abhor your doings. Let no one think himself truly religious whose religion is a bondage, and not the highest liberty.

3. Whatever is hard in religion is made so by our want of heart, our want of love, our want of confidence; and is therefore not Christ’s yoke at all. It is not true religion, it is not Christian liberty, but legal bondage.

4. All truly religious duties are easy. If we make them hard, they are not a love-service, and not what Christ requires. If we make them hard we spoil them. If we go complainingly about his service, grumbling about the difficulties and the hardness of his service, he loathes our bondage, he cannot accept it.

I know that many times I have lived in huge bondage because I took on burdens and problems that I should have given to God and left with Him to work out when the time was right.

Charles Finney has written such an awesome definition of the difference between living in bondage and living in freedom.

Make the choice right now that you will choose the way of Christ’s yoke of freedom!

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If the spirit of prayer be not with the people, the minister may preach like an angel, but he cannot expect success. If there be not the spirit of prayer in a church there may be wealth, there may be talent, there may be a measure of effort, there may be an extensive machinery, but the Lord is not there.

It is as sure evidence of the presence of God that men pray as the rising of the thermometer is an evidence of the increase of the temperature. As the Nilometer measures the rising of the water in the Nile, and so foretells the amount of harvest in Egypt; so is the prayer-meeting a grace-ometer, and from it we may judge of the amount of divine working among a people.

If God be near a church it must pray; and if he be not there, one of the first tokens of his absence will be slothfulness in prayer.

from thedailyspurgeon.com

The Holy Spirit has convicted me about the amount of time I have spent praying for my church, and really praying for a miracle to happen in our midst as we worship together.

I think many times we have gotten to the point that we don’t really expect God to show up any more and do something where only He could get the glory.

It takes time, dedication and concentration to get before God and get in the right frame of mind and heart to pray fervently for the needs of others. God desires to use each one of us to do His Work here on earth, but we must align our desires and hearts with His.

The church as a whole has become powerless against Satan and his methods because we do not take the time to make prayer a priority. It is easy to say short prayers here and there, but hard to really get down to the business of the kind of praying that changes lives and hearts for good.

I challenge you to ask the Holy Spirit to help you make prayer a priority in your everyday life.

I found an awesome prayer that I know can make a huge difference in your life if you will ask God for these three things each day.

Ask God to do whatever is necessary in your life so that you can be a part of His supernatural Kingdom work. He wants to use you in a mighty way to make a difference in whatever way He chooses.

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It does take a lot of energy to pour out your heart to God in prayer because you must get everything out of your mind and concentrate only on Him. Most of us are so busy “doing things” that this is not an easy feat to accomplish.

Many times we think that we don’t have time to pray or read our Bibles, but the truth is we ALWAYS have the time to do what is most important to us. We think that we must be busy all the time to lead a productive life, but many times that is just a way of keeping our minds occupied so that we don’t have to deal with the most important things. AND we have learned to be professionals at staying busy at things that aren’t nearly as productive as we would like to think.

There are thousands of articles that have been written on how to pray, but this one is written from the perspective of getting your life in a position that you can always be open to pray however the Holy Spirit leads you and to be ready to do it at a moment’s notice.

God wants to work through His Children in order to accomplish what He desires. What an awesome thing it is to be chosen by Him and be open to hear Him when he speaks.

Many people will never be able to get past their own selfish thinking enough to walk in obedience to God. You don’t have to watch many advertisements or television shows to get the impression that life is all about “ME” and what I want. It is easy to be compassionate every now and then and go out of your way to help someone, but to do it on a regular basis is not nearly as easy.

Being a great “prayer warrior” does not mean that you have no social life because you choose to lock yourself in your “prayer closet” all day praying. Unless you are old enough to retire, you must either have a job yourself or live with someone who provides you a living. We all have to at least make enough money to buy essentials for our everyday needs.

But I do have good news about how you can be a prayer warrior for the Kingdom of God and still live and function well in this world.

It is God’s desire for you to live to the utmost in your everyday life, and you can do it with an attitude of prayer. Then any time the Holy Spirit lays a person or problem on your heart, you can instantly be to the point where you can pour your heart out to God.

You can’t always go to a place of solitude and stay there for two hours, but you can pray an intense prayer for the person or situation right where you are at the time.

There are other times when God might wake you up in the middle of the night to pray urgently for a particular person or situation. You might be called to intercede on the other’s behalf until you feel a peace that things are going to be fine, no matter how long it takes.

God wants you to be so familiar with His Word and His Character that you can stand on the Bible and its promises with everything in you. He will give you the strength you need to do whatever it is He has called you to do.

Make the choice to read the Bible first thing each morning and ask the Holy Spirit to open your mind to see the truths it contains. God wants you to be ready to be used by Him at a moment’s notice.

Living in an attitude of prayer is a wonderful thing to God because He knows that your life is open to him to use whenever He chooses and in whatever way he chooses.

The next time you feel that God has laid an urgent need upon your heart, pray with everything in you. You may be the one person who will be able to intercede for someone and really make a difference – and you might be able to do it from halfway around the world without knowing that person at all or the full impact that your prayer might have.

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When asked how he determined the will of God on any matter, Muller listed the following steps he believed were necessary:

1.     “I get my heart into such a state that it has no will of its own in regard to any particular matter.”

2.     “I do not leave the result to feelings or simple impressions.  That can make one open to great delusions.”

3.     “I seek God’s will through, or in connection with, his Word.  If you look to the Spirit without the Word, you open yourself to delusion.”

4.     “I consider providential [God-controlled] circumstances.”

5.     “I ask God in prayer to reveal his will to me.”

6.     “I make sure I have a clear conscience before God and man.”

7.     “Every time I listened to men instead of God, I made serious mistakes.”

8.     “I act only when I am at peace, after much prayer, waiting on God with faith.”

When you give yourself to prayer, your faith rises.  And when you feed on God’s Word, your confidence in his power to lead and help you increases.  The more you read His Word, the more you will understand His Character.

George Muller got to the point that he knew he could trust God to provide his every need as long as he was in the center of God’s will. There is absolutely no safer place to be than right in the center of where God would have you to be.

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I Corinthians 1: 26-31

For ye see your calling, brethren , how that not many wise men after the flesh, not many mighty, not many noble, are called:

But God hath chosen the foolish things of the world to confound the wise; and God hath chosen the weak things of the world to confound the things which are mighty;

and base things of the world, and things which are despised, hath God chosen yea, and things which are not, to bring to nought things that are:

That no flesh should glory in his presence.

But of him are ye in Christ Jesus, who of God is made unto us wisdom, and righteousness, and sanctification, and redemption .

That, according as it is written, He that glorieth, let him glory in the Lord.

These verses are very refreshing and give much hope to all who read them, especially if we are just “plain joes or janes” and feel that we don’t have special talents or gifts that can be used for the Kingdom of God.

The awesome thing about these verses – God is looking for people who absolutely don’t have the ability to do what He has called them to do on their own merits.

Most of the disciples Jesus called were rough, hard, unlearned people who were definitely not suited for the job from man’s standpoint. We are told specifically in verses 29 and 31 that only God deserves the glory and He will not share it with flesh.

So if you have surrendered your life to God and are asking Him to use you, EXPECT, I SAY AGAIN EXPECT Him to tell you to do something that you are not capable of doing on  your own.

Why are we so afraid of trusting our life to the God who created the universe and everything in it and made MAN the crowning part of His creation. Just because you can’t see with your physical eyes where you are going, doesn’t mean that God doesn’t know.

Why not go out on a limb? Isn’t that where all the fruit is?  -C S Lewis-

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Our God desires marinating-type praying.

-Peter Lord-

More and more God has been dealing with me about my prayer life. I know that sometimes I just feel a burden on my heart about a particular person or situation and pray a passionate quick prayer; then I feel a relief and am able to go about my daily business knowing that things will work out.

But more and more God has been laying on my heart situations that need in-depth prayer and showing me that it will take many prayers to give the victory.

I want my life to be such that God can use me in either situation.

I challenge you to examine your prayer life and see into which of the above categories you fit most. Let God do a work in your life regarding prayer and He will put give you more and more discipline to pray for victory in harder areas.

Learn to make prayer a vital part of your everyday life!

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