Tag Archives: prayer

Praise God in the Hard Times?

You’ve got to love children and the things they come out with. Here’s an example from the praise board in the Sunday school room of the local churches. ‘I praise God for making crabs and I’m going to get one.’ Don’t you just love it! It was interesting the other night when at choir to sit and read the things children praised God for. It reinforced what I’d been talking about the other day about how ready children are to praise God and how we can learn from them. Another one I saw recently was from a young woman who … Continue reading →

What Does God Want Us to Pray About?

What do you pray about? Do you only pray about the big issues of life? Certainly they are worth praying about, but I believe God is also concerned about the small details of life too. The bible tells us ‘be anxious for nothing, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God, Philippians 4:6. Yes, I’m back in Philippians again. This book contains so much wisdom. So we should pray about everything – big and little. Have you ever listened to children pray? They will pray about whatever is on their mind. … Continue reading →

Praying for Others

One of the simplest and kindest things that we can do for others is to pray for them. This is as simple as including them in our daily prayers or it can include a special prayer on behalf of someone who needs it. When you are unsure about the best way to help someone you can simply say a prayer for him or her. At times you may be prompted on a course of action that you can take, and you may not. The times that you do receive a prompting in regards to your prayer you should act on … Continue reading →

Three Keys to Peace

Have you ever thought how nice it would be if you could have peace regardless of what was happening in your life? I know it’s something I struggle with at times. But Philippians gives us some helpful tips about how to have that peace. One of the keys to achieving and maintaining peace is to ‘stand firm in the Lord,’ Philippians 4:1. It’s easy to become unsettled when we are flitting from one new thing to another. We need to come back to what we know to be true and stand firm in our Christian faith. The next key comes … Continue reading →

Protecting Your Child from Mistakes

You can’t always protect your children from mistakes. Sometimes you’ve got to let them go, trusting God to uphold and undertake for them. It’s not easy. I know. Letting go is something I struggle with, but I’ve had to learn to do it. You have to trust that you have brought them up so that ultimately they will make the right choices and not make decisions that will endanger their lives. It might mean making choices we won’t agree with, like dating a non Christian or them becoming involved in activities we would rather they did not or that we … Continue reading →

Exercise Those Muscles

With a new year many people make a resolution to exercise more and get their body in shape. But how about making a resolution to exercise your spiritual muscles more, to devote more time to prayer and to get your Christian life in shape? Yesterday we looked at how a lack of prayer weakens the church. Lack of training in how to live for Christ is often the root cause of the problem that results in the church’s lack of effectiveness. The apostle Paul was a great believer in the power of prayer. He knew no great work for God … Continue reading →

Keep On, Keeping On

Years ago in Australia we had ad for some paint and the slogan was, ‘keep on keeping on’ I have to say at this point, advertising fails on me. I remember the slogan but never remember the product. I do know it’s much the same in the Christian life we need to keep on, keeping on. Sometimes people might ask us to pray for them because they don’t think God will listen to them. I had a friend say to me once, ‘I don’t pray. God wouldn’t listen.’ Of course I could have replied ‘How much notice did you ever … Continue reading →

For the Good of Others

Each year our family gathers together over the Christmas period. Only twice has our while family not been together. Once was years back when our son and his wife were overseas, and I found that hard. Then this Christmas for the first time ever we did not have our daughter with us on Christmas day. She and her husband are overseas on a short term mission in a third world country. I admit when they first told me what they were thinking of going on mission, I was less than impressed. All I could think of was that our family … Continue reading →

Effective Use of Christmas Cards

Well, I finally got around to sending our Christmas cards out yesterday. It was interesting on the weekend to read in the Sydney Morning Herald that Australia is the fourth largest greeting card market in the world. We come behind the US, UK and Netherlands. Of course all of those are not Christmas cards. But the article said on average Australians send out 21 Christmas cards a year. We must be sending out someone else’s share as well as we sent out more than that.Not surprisingly between 85-95 percent of the cards are bought by women. We usually buy them … Continue reading →

Them’s the Breaks!

How quickly and easily life can change! It did for me 7 weeks ago. All it took was our pup’s four wet paws to make the tile floor slippery, and next minute I was seeing stars. When I could eventually get up to sit in a chair, I suspected I’d broken my arm. I’ve had enough broken bones in my life to know how it feels. I hoped and prayed that wasn’t the case. That was before I looked down and saw the bone sticking out at a peculiar angle. Even then I thought perhaps it was just dislocated. Mick … Continue reading →