faith – Page 5 – John Markum

Teach Us to Pray

Posted on August 22, 2012 by johnmarkum

6 things to include every time you pray, based on the model prayer that Jesus gives here in Matthew 6:

Praise: “Hallowed be Your name.” The Bible tells us in Psalms that God “inhabits” the praises of His people. Always take the opportunity to thank God for who He is and what He’s done.
Submission: “Your will be done.” This is not the last time we hear Christ praying this to the Father. God does His greatest, most intimate work through those who are broken before Him.
Needs: “Give us this day our daily bread.” Interestingly, Christ does not encourage us to pray for material abundance, but rather only for our “daily” needs. In other words, living paycheck-to-paycheck is a gift from God and something to be desired!
Forgiveness/Repentance: “Forgive us…” Demonstrates humility and a desire to remove all things that impair our fellowship with our Heavenly Father.
Others: “as we forgive those who have trespassed against us.” It’s good to pray for yourself, but there is more power when we pray for each other.
Submission: Christ ends His model prayer much as He began it, in acknowledging and anticipating God’s will, and praising Him. “Amen” literally means “so be it” or, “let it be so.”

I’ve also recently heard from one of my leaders that he grew up learning the acronym PRAY: Praise, Repentance, Ask for others, Yourself. I thought that was pretty good also!

Blessings,

John

In John 6, we see an incredible story of Jesus feeding multiple thousands of people off the lunch of one young man consisting of 5 loaves of bread and 2 small fish. The miracle was nothing short of incredible as God proved His ability to expand and multiply our simple resources beyond imagination. I could preach on this passage for weeks!

But something that jumped out to me recently was Christ’s comment after everyone ate. He told the disciples to gather up the leftovers “so that nothing is wasted.” Seriously? He was worried about some scraps not getting used after stretching this meal to feed thousands over what it should have?!? I think we get to see the heart of God in a powerful way in this passage…

Jesus, though He had multiplied the volume of this meal to unbelievable proportions, was unsatisfied with wastefulness on any level. The disciples had gathered 12 baskets full of leftovers, which I believe went home with the boy who humbly allowed his lunch to be used by Christ to feed the needs of the crowd. But they didn’t just get discarded. Because Jesus dislikes wastefulness.

That causes a variety of responses:

God expects a return on every investment.
The expectation on my life as a steward of God’s blessings is high.
Nothing God allows into my life is a waste: not even pain. Especially not pain.
God always has more than enough.
Whatever I give to God in my life, He returns the blessing exponentially.
If I have Jesus, it doesn’t matter how many fish I have, or how many people there are to feed.

Don’t be discouraged in your weakness or lack. God will see to it that nothing that comes into your life is wasted. Even when others rise against you, God has a way of taking others’ bad intentions and using them to make something unexpectantly beautiful.

Blessings,

John

Where Religion Fails

Posted on February 20, 2012 by johnmarkum

The biggest thing that God has taught me in 20+ years of following Jesus, is the most basic:

It’s not about what I do. It’s about who He is.

The implications of this simple thought, however, are far-reaching and profound. You see, religion, of any flavor, is a human attempt to appease a Deity(ies). It’s biggest question ultimately is “How do I not get in trouble?” This is why getting churched-up doesn’t change your life for the positive.

Getting religious only demonstrates how broken and far from God we are. It accentuates our failures and minimizes our successes. And no one stays in that situation for long… unless they fake it. And those who are not willing to fake it begin to see the hypocrisy of those who are. Eventually they come to the conclusion that religion is full of fakers. Sadly, they are correct.

But God knew our broken status and our inability to affect lasting change. His solution was not “do these things and not those things.” Instead it was “Come unto Me all you who are weary and heavy burdened… You’ll find rest for your soul.” You see, it’s not about what you do. It’s about who He is. The best thing we can do, is get close to the Person who makes change happen in our lives for His glory and our good.

Try as you may, you can’t chase away the shadows from your life. So stop attempting to clean your act up and just open the blinds and let the Light come pouring in. And interestingly enough, as we get closer to Jesus, and farther from a list of Do’s-and-Do-Not’s, the darkness that once entangled us becomes far less appealing. We do not overcome our faults by trying harder than we’ve ever tried. We overcome by drawing close to the One who overcame for us.

Blessings,

John