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.

Related posts:

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

God just wants to be able to use you where you are planted right now. In the course of an ordinary day at work, you might have many opportunities to minister to others that you are not even aware of unless you are prepared for the important job of ministry.

It seems that there are at least a million ways to waste time and look as if you are really working – at least, convince yourself that you are accomplishing a lot of good things.

I decided to keep track of how I spent my time each day and found that even though I thought I was pretty disciplined, there were many areas where I could improve. It is hard to sit down and take a frank look at your habits because “pride” tries its best to get in the way of real and productive change.

It is not the easiest thing in the world to be able to concentrate for a long period of time without your mind starting to wander (BELIEVE ME I KNOW THIS FOR A FACT.)

I want to share with you something that has worked for me in the past and still helps me to stay disciplined:

Before you start a big project make up your mind that you will not be distracted by anything, but will ZERO in on what you are doing until it is finished. You can even break up a huge project into several smaller projects with a time line for each. Give yourself a certain amount of time to do each project and then take a short break to do something else that doesn’t require such intense concentration.

Discover how you work best and concentrate on improving that until you really are disciplined to get maximum work each day.

We all need times of rest and relaxation where we can kick back and enjoy the day or a few days without feeling guilty, but that shouldn’t be our normal daily activity. Those times should be like dessert, and when they do come we can enjoy them much better because we don’t have to feel guilty that we are wasting time.

Even Jesus had to get away every now and then for some “down time” to get refreshed and rejuvenated for the important work ahead. Totally enjoy your “down time” but then get right back into doing your very best for each thing you do during the day.

If you have asked Jesus into your heart, you need to set an example for others to see that you are different and every job you do is ultimately for God and not man. Just that one thing will make a huge difference in your work habits.

When you know that God is your ultimate boss, and He will be the one that measures your performance, you definitely won’t want to cut any corners or waste time doing meaningless things. You might be able to fool your boss or someone else close to you, but you will never fool God. He knows your innermost thoughts and attitudes. If you treat everything as extremely important because you are doing it for Him, you won’t have to worry about doing mediocre work.

Let God be THE BOSS each day and see how much more disciplined you can be.

Related posts:

1. What Do You Unleash By Doing Something For The First Time?
2. Let God Change your Life 2° at a Time
3. The Ultimate Hate Crime

-Harvey S. Firestone-

I ran across this quote in a marketing newsletter, so I know the context of it was written with regard to having enough money on hand to be able to always have a surplus for unexpected things that might arise.

I would like for you to think about this SURPLUS from the perspective of being disciplined to spend time with God each day, not in the sense that you can store up something you can physically touch or see.

If you don’t put God first each day, when something bad or unexpected happens you will have to ask forgiveness and get in a right relationship with Him before you feel you can ask Him to work on the situation that has arisen. That might take a lot more time than you can afford if your need is urgent.

God wants you to have such a personal relationship with Him that you never think of trying to handle any situation yourself without His help.

If you make the decision to put Him first, He will give you the exact amount of power, faith, and strength you need for whatever arises.

In the world in which we live, it can be such a comfort to know that you don’t have to depend upon your own strength to handle a situation that might have spiraled totally out of control. God knows exactly what to do and always works at exactly the right time to meet your need.

Start working on your SURPLUS by being disciplined to spend time with God each day and put Him first in everything you do. Then it will be easy to pour your heart out to Him in time of need.

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Since I have surrendered to God, it feels like my life has been something like the picture above. It has been a remarkable ride in every way. God always astounds me with the direction in which He leads. I gave up a long time ago trying to figure out the way He will end up doing something or answering a prayer.

It truly has been the ride of my life, and like the tracks around the tree above, I can’t begin to imagine how God has worked some things out. When I looked back, there was just no logical way for it to have happened.

I will never be able to see what the future holds, but God doesn’t have a problem in that area. He knows exactly where you and I will be 5, 10, even 20 years down the road. He also knows the plans He has for each of His Children.

We like to feel in control of our lives, so we try to make decisions based on facts that we already know or directions we want to go. It also makes us feel more comfortable if we think we are doing the driving. That way we can at least have the illusion that we know exactly where we are headed.

It is not an easy thing to completely surrender your life to God when you cannot clearly see what is ahead. You decide to walk forward with Him when you don’t know exactly where you are going. Sometimes He just takes you one step at a time and you don’t have a clue what the end result will be. Sometimes you do know what the end result will be, but you must discipline yourself to walk at His pace so that you don’t try to make it happen yourself.

God wants His Children to know His Character; then they will know that they can trust Him with everything in their life. He has things totally figured out, and all He wants is for you to be obedient to what He says.

Spend time reading the Bible each day, and ask the Holy Spirit to show you the CHARACTER of God.

Check out my other sites:

Handbook for Victorious Christian Living - For the person who truly desires to live a victorious Christian life.

Blueprint for Victorious Christian Living

Power of the Living Word

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