EFFECTIVE PRAYER: 5 WAYS TO SETTLE THE WORD IN YOUR HEART
Effective prayer requires you to settle God’s Word in your heart. You must believe the Bible more than you believe the news, your bank account, and the symptoms in your body. The Word of God must be more than head knowledge it must be heart knowledge. There are five keys to settling God’s Word in your heart. You must believe that the Bible is the inspired Word of God. All scripture is God-breathed (2 Timothy 3:16). Although penned by man, the Bible is inspired by God. Sometimes God told the writers precisely what to say; other times He used their minds, their vocabularies, and their life-experiences to reveal His true nature and character. If you don’t believe that the Bible is God speaking to you, then you will struggle to trust that the Bible’s promises are from God and not man and this unbelief will limit the power of the life-giving Word you breathe-in. You must believe that the Bible is true and not just made up stories to teach us valuable “life lessons”. You make your own reality. You limit God by how you see God. If you find it impossible to believe that God rescued the Israelites from their enemies by parting the Red Sea, then you will struggle to believe that He is your rescuer. If you find it hard to believe that Jesus fed 5,000 people with five loaves of bread and two fish, then you will struggle to believe that He is your provider. God is the God of creation; if He is powerful enough to speak the universe into existence, then He is powerful enough to part the seas and multiply food. Don’t limit God to what you see in the natural but instead choose to see Him through the lens of the supernatural. You must believe that God said what He meant and meant what He said. God is not a man; He will never lie. God is reliable; He does not change His mind. Therefore, His Word will always come to pass (Numbers 23:19). Unless you trust God, you won’t approach Him with confidence; you may not even approach Him at all. Choose to take God at His Word; let His Word take shape in your heart so that you will not be what James called double-minded, and waver back and forth in your belief. You must believe the Word of God is the final authority. Jesus has the ultimate victory. His Word, the truth wins. Nothing can shake His Kingdom; His Word is unmovable. (Matthew 24:35). No matter how hopeless your circumstances appear, no matter what others tell you to believe, you must consider the Bible as the final authority on the issue, and trust that what is written there will prevail. You must nourish yourself with God’s Word daily. God’s Word is like an all-day buffet laid out in front of you: whatever sustenance you need, you can find it there. Taste and see that the Lord is good (Psalm 34:8). What better way to savor His truth than through His life-giving Word! Settle God’s Word in your heart and see your prayers come to life. Don’t limit the power of God’s Word by limiting God. Choose to expand your reality to the supernatural. Resolve to trust God and to stand firm in His truth and you will begin to believe the Bible more than you believe the news, your bank account or the symptoms in your body. His Word will begin to gravitate from your head to your heart and your heart will cry out “all things are possible for those who believe and I believe!”
The Bible: Is It the Inspired Word of God?
No Ordinary Book The Bible is not just any ordinary book. Its message has caused people from all generations, all walks of life, and all nationalities to change the direction of their lives radically. Written words on their own do not have this kind of power. However, if the Bible is the inspired word of God, then its words have the weight and power to affect such profound change. In The Bible: Is It Really Accurate and Reliable?, we concluded that the Bible is truth and not fiction – that it is historically reliable and its authors are credible. For those reasons, we can look to the Bible to answer the question: Is the Bible the inspired Word of God? God Breathed The Bible was written by ordinary men with no extraordinary power or authority. The authors did not claim the words they wrote as their own, but rather attributed them to God. Paul, in 2nd Timothy 3:16 says that “All scripture is inspired by God.” Inspired comes from the Greek word theopneustos, which means God-breathed. Over and over again, both the Old and the New Testaments refer to Scripture as the Word of God. Prophecy In the Old Testament, God spoke through prophets like Moses and Jeremiah. God chose these prophets to communicate His message to the world. Jeremiah provides a great example of how prophets were chosen and used by God. Jeremiah 1:5-10 says: “The Lord said to me, ‘Before I formed you in your mother’s womb I chose you…I appointed you to be a prophet to the nations.’ I answered, ‘Oh, Lord God, I really do not know how to speak well enough for that’…The Lord said to me…’But go to whomever I send you and say whatever I tell you…’ Then the Lord reached out his hand and touched my mouth and said to me, ‘I will most assuredly give you the words you are to speak for me. Know for certain that I hereby give you the authority to announce to nations and kingdoms that they will be uprooted and torn down, destroyed and demolished, rebuilt and firmly planted.” The Old Testament is filled with prophecies relating to the rise and fall of nations and kingdoms. Prophecies in the Old Testament were written hundreds, if not thousands, of years before they came to pass. An example of an Old Testament prophecy relating to the fall of a nation is recorded in Ezekiel. Between 587 and 586 B.C. Ezekiel predicted that many nations would come against the city of Tyre and that eventually Nebuchadnezzar would destroy it. In Ezekiel 26:12, Ezekiel predicted that the stone, timber, and rubble of the ancient City of Tyre would be thrown into the sea. “They will plunder your wealth and loot your merchandise; they will break down your walls and demolish your fine houses and throw your stones, timber and rubble into the sea.” This prophecy came to pass when Alexander the Great attacked Tyre in 333-332 B.C. His armies threw the stones, timber and rubble of the City into the sea to make a land bridge. This bridge is still there. There are hundreds more prophecies recorded in the Old Testament that later came to pass. The accuracy of these prophecies is uncanny and the likelihood of them coming to pass is low, unless of course, they were given by God to the prophets supernaturally. In addition to prophets predicting the rise and fall of people and nations, the prophets predicted the coming of Jesus Christ. There are over 300 prophecies concerning Jesus. Some prophecies tell when he would be born, “A period of seventy sets of seven has been decreed for your people and your holy city to finish their rebellion, to put an end to their sin, to atone for their guilt, to bring in everlasting righteousness, to confirm the prophetic vision, and to anoint the Most Holy Place. Now listen and understand! Seven sets of seven plus sixty-two sets of seven will pass from the time the command is given to rebuild Jerusalem until a ruler—the Anointed One—comes…” Daniel 9:24-25 his lineage, “When your days are over and you rest with your ancestors, I will raise up your offspring to succeed you, your own flesh and blood, and I will establish his kingdom. He is the one who will build a house for my Name, and I will establish the throne of his kingdom forever. I will be his father, and he will be my son. When he does wrong, I will punish him with a rod wielded by men, with floggings inflicted by human hands. But my love will never be taken away from him, as I took it away from Saul, whom I removed from before you. Your house and your kingdom will endure forever before me; your throne will be established forever.’” 2nd Samuel 12-16 that he would die and rise again. “I keep my eyes always on the Lord.With him at my right hand, I will not be shaken.Therefore my heart is glad and my tongue rejoices;my body also will rest secure,because you will not abandon me to the realm of the dead,nor will you let your faithful one see decay. You make known to me the path of life;you will fill me with joy in your presence,with eternal pleasures at your right hand. Psalm 16:8-11 Can One Man Fulfill All These Prophecies? What are the chances that one man would fulfill these prophecies? College students decided to conduct a scientific study to help answer this question. They used only 8 of the prophecies concerning Jesus. Upon completion of the study, they determined that the chance that one man would fulfill just 8 of these prophecies was 1 in 1017. I have trouble imagining that number, so I’m going to use the visualization that Peter Stoner, in his book Science Speaks, used:Imagine that we took 1017 silver dollars and laid them across the entire state of Texas. By the time we got done, they covered all of Texas