The Pastor's Pocket

For the child of God, prayer must be a priority.  It cannot, it must not, be a secondary force.  If prayer is considered a last resort, it makes God a last resort.   In Acts 6, the apostles were confronted with the challenge of multiple ministries.  Lots of people had realized they could not do it all. What was God’s solution?  Delegate.  The business of caring for the widows and other church related affairs would be delegated to other believers while the apostles would give themselves to prayer and to the ministry of the Word (verse 4).  The result?  The church continued to grow (verse 7). Above all else, prayer had to be a major priority. What does that mean? It means they remained steadfast at praying.  The same principle is found in Colossians 4:12 and Romans 12:12. Prayer is a necessity.  It must be priority number one for effective ministry.   We are all busy with work, family, church, civic responsibilities, but we must never...

Acts chapter 4 tells us that Peter and John were put in prison by a religious sect known as the Sadducees for preaching a gospel that declared the resurrection.  The rulers in Jerusalem got together, questioned them, threatened them, and then let them go.  What did Peter and John do? They called a prayer meeting and prayed for boldness (verse 29).  What was the result of that prayer meeting? Verse 31–33 tells us that God granted them favor. Acts chapter 12 tells us that King Herod had James executed and sought to persecute the Christians.   Because some were pleased with this course of action, he had Peter arrested also. But the church prayed fervently on Peter’s behalf (verse 5), and what happened?   The angel of the Lord came and broke Peter out of jail.   Perhaps one difference between the prayers of the earliest Christians and the prayers of today’s church is, they prayed fervently, aggressively, seriously and with great intensity.  They had to....

How many people do you know who are stressed-out? The truth is, God built into our mortal make-up the need for rest, for sleep.   None of us can go and go without sleep. Sleep is the body’s way of recharging.   God made it so we would get tired physically and have need of sleep. In the spiritual realm, we must learn to pause, to still our minds and our heart so that God can do for us spiritually what sleep does for us physically.   It’s amazing, years ago churches would stop doing everything and hold revival meetings that would last for weeks. What was the result of those meetings?   God would visit His people, unleash His power, and revive the church.   Today, we can’t seem to slow down long enough to hold a three-day meeting.   Our lives are full throttle, and the results are obvious: anxiety, heart issues, stress, problems in relationships, even church strife. We lose sight of our priorities.   A few years ago, I read of a stunt pilot in an air ...

Luke 5:16, “And he withdrew himself into the wilderness, and prayed.”   Matthew 14:23, “And when he had sent the multitudes away, he went up into a mountain apart to pray: and when the evening was come, he was there alone.”   It is obvious that Jesus often withdrew from the crowds and got alone with His Father.  He used these times to pray, to refresh His soul, and to seek direction.  What an example we would do well to follow. After Jesus got away from things, He would return with renewed power and begin to minister again. Jesus knew that fatigue could be costly, that’s why He taught His disciples the principle of periodic isolation. In Mark 6:31, Jesus told His disciples, “Come ye yourselves apart into a desert place, and rest a while:”   God created the universe in six days and on the seventh day, He rested; He paused.  Why is pushing the pause button so hard to do in our own lives?  Why do we think we can have power with God without periods of isol...

Ephesians 5:25b-26 says that Christ “Loved the church and gave Himself for it; That He might sanctify and cleanse it with the washing of water by the Word”.   You cannot have a great life unless you have a pure life.  You cannot have a pure life unless you have a pure mind.  You cannot have a pure mind unless you wash it daily with the Word of God.   I believe we all want to have a great life. A great life is the result of maintaining a clean life. A life lived in obedience to the will of God.  A clean life is an extension of a clean thought-life, which comes from consistent time in God’s Word.   God’s Word will wash impure thoughts and attitudes away. You just can’t bypass your time in the Word and expect to live a clean life. Psalm 119:11 says, “Thy word have I hid in mine heart, that I might not sin against thee.”   Let’s face it, we live in a dirty world, a culture that is filled with iniquity. It’s imperative that we not let the people of such a c...

In Genesis 18 we read where the Lord appeared to Abraham in the plains of Mamre. Then in Exodus 3 we read that at Horeb, the mountain of God, the angel of the Lord appeared to Moses in a flame of fire out of the midst of a bush.   We must always celebrate turning points in our lives.  It is important that we attach significance to the places where God speaks to us. Throughout the Bible, we see God revealing His will to various people at specific places. In Acts 9, Paul, on the road to Damascus was told what God wanted him to do.  At the brook Cherith, God told Elijah to go to Zerephath because He had commanded a widow to sustain him during a famine (I Kings 17).  Over and over in the book of Jeremiah it says, “and the Word of the Lord came to me saying”. At specific places, God spoke to the prophet Jeremiah, and revealed to him what he was to do.   The greatest day of my life happened at a specific place, a church altar in Charlotte, North Carolina. It was there...

The scriptures teach us in Psalm 9:12 that God doesn’t forget the “cry of the humble.”  Humility is an attitude that God has promised to honor.  James 4:6 says that “God resisteth the proud, but giveth grace unto the humble.”   God will honor our humble cry because it demonstrates our utter dependence upon the Him in our time of need.  Let’s face it, we want people to think we’ve got it all together. We don’t like to admit we might have problems we can’t solve ourselves.  Remember this: any move toward self-sufficiency is a move away from God.  He won’t intervene in our affairs, our problems, our crisis, unless we cry out to Him with a humble and sincere heart. A sincere cry to the Lord is an open declaration that we are unable to fix the situation we are in without God’s intervention.  It says, “Lord, I don’t have the wisdom, ability, or strength to solve this.  I need your help.”  At that moment, God delights in releasing His power and wisd...