Spirit Led Living

James 4:8 Come near to God and he will come near to you Now that we have taken a look at the elements of prayer we can take a look at the one thing that makes it a source of daily nourishment and hope. Growing up in the Holiness Movement in the ‘60s and ‘70s, prayer was taught as a discipline. It was the obligation of every person that pursued holiness to get up at 5am and pray. We also had to go to Prayer Meetings and spend an hour with the 4-5 other brave souls who endured those times. By the time I was in college, prayer was a task to be endured. I knew that I had to do it, but I never got anything out of it. In truth, I didn’t understand prayer at all. My mother was a praying woman and I had seen my share of miracles as a result of prayer. The confusing part was that I had seen my father get up every morning before the crack of dawn to kneel in our living room in prayer. Everyone else saw him as this church planter, this evangelist and this spiritual giant but, I saw him as someone...

1 John 5:14-15 This is the confidence we have in approaching God: that if we ask anything according to his will, he hears us. And if we know that he hears us — whatever we ask — we know that we have what we asked of him. Prayer is the expression of man's dependence upon God for all things. Therefore we come as supplicants asking God to act on our behalf. The supplicant’s prayer then is a request to a personal Lord who answers according to His good will and pleasure. Remembering that we live in the here and the not yet of the Kingdom of God there are several factors that influence how prayers are heard. Several hindrances to answered prayer are mentioned in the Bible: iniquity in the heart (Ps 66:18), refusal to hear God's law (Prov 28:9), an estranged heart (Isa 29:13), sinful separation from God (Isa 59:2), waywardness (Jer 14:10-12), praying to be seen of men (Matt 6:5-6), pride in fasting and tithing (Luke 18:11-14), lack of faith (Heb 11:6), and doubting or double-minded...

Phil 4:6-7   Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving,   present your requests to God. When your sins have been forgiven and your sentence commuted you have much to be thankful for. That, of course, is just the beginning for the redeemed. Every breath we take should be a matter of thanksgiving for nothing is guaranteed to us, everything is a gift. As a child I was taught to always say thank you when you got a gift. I was taught that when someone does something nice for you that not only should you say thank you, you should right them a little note of appreciation. Think of the last time you got a thank you note from someone and how that made you feel. How much more likely are you to do something for that person than you are for someone whom you routinely do nice things for and they never acknowledge it? Working for Metropolitan Ministries for all of these years has made me appreciative of people who have an attitude of g...

1 John 1:8-9 If we claim to be without sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness. The next step in our prayer life that serves to put things in perspective is confession. The Bible tells us that all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God (Rom 3:23). While we are no longer slaves to sin and we strive toward the goal of perfection, the truth is that as long as we wear this suit of skin we will always fall short in some way or another. God knows this and has provided the way for those sins to be atoned for through the sacrifice of His Son. That forgiveness, though, needs to be accessed and applied. The process starts with our admission of sin. This not only overcomes denial, it keeps us humble and dependent on him. We deserve nothing. In fact, we deserve death. When we confess our sins it sets in motion a series of events that serve to wipe the slate...

If we continue in the model of the Disciple’s Prayer we can use the acronym of ACTS to guide our prayer: A – Adoration C - Confession T – Thanksgiving S – Supplication We exalt and praise Him for who He is. Ps 147:1 Praise the LORD. How good it is to sing praises to our God, how pleasant and fitting to praise him! Heb 13:15-16 Through Jesus, therefore, let us continually offer to God a sacrifice of praise — the fruit of lips that confess his name. He is worthy of our praise. When we praise Him we take our focus off of our belly button and we put it squarely on Him. It goes hand in hand with knowing Him whom we pray to. If we truly know who it is we are praying to, then by virtue of being God, He deserves our praise. Giving voice to that praise puts our relationship in the proper perspective. He is God and we are His creation. While He calls us sons and daughters, there can be no reaching for His level. The creation is always inferior and subservient to the Creator. Not only do we prais...

Prayer is one of those disciplines that we realize needs to be a part of our walk by but many of us find it difficult to do on a regular basis. Over my next few blogs I hope to take a look at prayer and explore our journey in prayer and hopefully have it make sense in a practical way. For me it all starts with the Disciples’ Prayer. I know, most of you know it as the Lord’s Prayer but in reality it was how He chose to teach His disciples how to pray. Matt 6:9-13 "'Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name, your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Give us today our daily bread. Forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one, for yours is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever. Amen” It all starts with knowing whom we are praying to. We pray to God the Father. The Bible tell us to pray in the Spirit (Eph 6:18; Jude 20) and it tells us to pray in Jesus name (John ...

Phil 4:6-7   Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God. And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus. Recently at work I got to go through the Dale Carnegie Leadership Academy. One of the principles to avoid worry is to “live in day tight compartments”. Like most leadership principles found here and in 7 Habits of Highly Effective People they are all based on Biblical principles. Dale Carnegie says that a lot of physical problems stem not from “what you eat, but what is eating you”. Eccl 2:22-23 What does a man get for all the toil and anxious striving with which he labors under the sun?   All his days his work is pain and grief; even at night his mind does not rest. I recently had one of these sleepless nights. I just couldn’t turn my mind off. I had let a couple of interruptions and delays ruin my only night off this week. ...

John 16:7 But I tell you the truth: It is for your good that I am going away. Unless I go away, the Counselor will not come to you; but if I go, I will send him to you. We grow attached to people and things. We like things to stay the same in our lives. We like stability and continuity. So it is with much pain that we endure the changes that are a routine part of life. We grieve loss and with each loss we grow a little more resistant to new people and things in our life. It is said that during World War II there were many units that went through basic training together and then went through the D-Day invasion together. These units were very tight and had learned to lean on each other and trust each other. They fought for each other more so than they fought for the cause of freedom. Not that the cause was not important to them, it’s just that their camaraderie in the trenches was such that they became a Band of Brothers and had each other’s back. The problem was that when you get that...

Ps 46:10 “Be still, and know that I am God;” Years ago when I was in college I went through a crisis of faith. I was studying for the ministry and had already had many powerful God experiences in the limited years of my life at that time. I had grown up in a Christian home and my father was a Pastor and a Church planter. I had led youth groups and had accepted Christ in my childhood and been baptized at age 13. Although young, I was quite aware of my decisions. And yet, here I was struggling again and wondering if my faith was real or was it just something that was passed down from my parents. Was God real or was I just kidding myself and wasting my college education studying for the ministry? I was racked with questions and doubts. I decided to follow in the steps of my namesake in the Bible, Jacob, and wrestle with God (Jay is just my middle initial, my legal name is Carlos Jacob Molina). In my naiveté I had prepared a to-do list by which God could prove himself to me. Armed with ...

Sadly, this past Sunday I attended the final service of the Clearwater Vineyard. Over the past six years I have seen 3 churches that I helped to get off the ground close their doors. The Tampa Vineyard and Heart's Cry were the other two. In looking back, all three of these churches were instrumental in the lives of countless people. Many accepted Christ there for the first time and many more got to know the person of the Holy Spirit as an active, personal presence in their everyday lives. Families grew up together and infants are now adults serving Him with passion and dedication. While there is a sadness that goes along with seeing these churches close, there is also a sense of accomplishment in the knowledge that in their seasons these bodies made a difference and God was glorified through them. All three closed for different reasons. At least in the case of the Clearwater Vineyard there was a final Sunday which in many ways became a homecoming Sunday for many of us that ha...

So there I was at the Catalyst Conference in Atlanta and God is all over me. 13,000 believers worshipping together and listening to some of the most influential speakers in the world today speaking on Leadership. As is bound to happen at these events we start comparing what we are hearing to what is going on at our local church and surprise, we find it lacking. Now, there are about 10 of us here from our church and I can see all of us trying to get an audience with our pastor in order to "encourage" some changes. After all, it is important that changes come from him because we are "merely" the worker bees. There is a little grumbling starting to build when suddenly the Holy Spirit begins to talk to me. He takes me to Acts and the story of Stephen.  Remember him? He was the guy in Acts 6 that gets chosen to serve on tables and to make sure the Greek widows got as much food as the Hebrew widows. In essence, he is a waiter assigned to prevent cat fights between the old...

Let me take a brake from the study of Corinthians to talk about the Spirit led life. A Spirit led life must by definition be a life of intentionality. We cannot say that we are Spirit led and just let life happen. If we are truly Spirit-led then that same Spirit gives us a sense of urgency and of place that reminds us that other than living to have fellowship with the Father, our main purpose is to make dsiciples. We have turned things around in western Christiamity to make it about making converts. When we think in those terms then it is easy to think that our job is done when we get somebody to pray that magical prayer asking Jesus to come into their heart. Making disciples means that our job is just getting started at that point. It is our job to pass along that which the Holy Spirit has deposited into our heart. The last few "revivals" that have taken place over the last twenty years have died out because when the Spirit of God has been poured out people began to attend t...

1 Corinthians 1-7 Now, I have to admit that writing about marriage does not come easy to me. Not  because I don't have a good marriage, because I have a great marriage, but because I have a failed marriage behind me. To many of you this will disqualify me from saying anything on the subject. To me, by the mercy, grace and forgiveness of God it only makes me more humble to talk about the subject. Paul starts out by saying that it is good for a man not to marry. A curious thing to say at the start of a discertation on marriage. As an Apostle, always on the go and fully dedicated to the cause of Christ, he knows that for him and anyone called to that ministry it would be difficult to balance the demands of ministry and marriage. For those able to, it is better to remain single. However, for the vast majority of us Paul recommends that we take the plunge wisely. In fact, he warns against anyone prohibiting marriage in 1 Timothy. This chapter is written as a result of some query...