It Starts With Prayer and Bible Reading

Everything good in life and ministry comes from Jesus, and therefore often begins with/is born out of prayer and bible reading.  

The book of James tells us that

"Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, and comes down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no variation or shadow of turning." (James 1:17)

You leaders who are reading this... do you teach your congregations this truth, but not live it out yourself?

Jesus encountered religious leaders who didn't do the things that they told others to do. This was one of His main complaints with the Pharisees. His words to them and their hypocrisy are some of the harshest that we have recorded out of Jesus mouth. See Matthew 23.

It is a simple if/then equation: If everything good comes from Jesus, then coming to Jesus is the path to receiving everything good.

Yes, "coming to Jesus" means accepting Him and His ways in full in our hearts and lives. But "coming to Jesus" also means regularly coming to Him, as in – spending time with Him. But, this is a concession… the real focus here is to be continuously attached to the vine.

"Abide in Me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself, unless it abides in the vine, neither can you, unless you abide in Me. I am the vine, you are the branches. He who abides in Me, and I in him, bears much fruit; for without Me you can do nothing." (John 15:4-5)

I find that most problems in the life and/or ministry are rooted in the fact that a person, especially a leader, is not abiding in Jesus.

To put it into sports terms, every athlete and team will lose most games when they lack a basic mastery of the fundamentals of the sport. Can't dribble the ball? Your team will not win most soccer/basketball games. Can't at least find the time to pray and read the Bible – let alone a constant abiding? You will not win at most of life nor ministry.

Every answer to every problem begins with the fundamentals of prayer and Bible reading… including the secret to beginning and maintaining abiding. You don’t start with abiding. You start with daily, dedicated time(s) of prayer and Bible. Think of daily, dedicated time(s) of prayer and Bible as a first kiss. Abiding is the full consummation. If you keep having kiss after kiss, consummation will happen. Abiding in Jesus works the same!

Yes, it is really this simple. Fundamentals are generally simple to understand and yet difficult to master – but only because the mastery is often in the faithful repetition. The truths of Jesus are very much this way for anyone who has ears to hear.

But, some of you are not spending time with Jesus, let alone abiding in Him, because you are NOT insane. You read that correctly. Rational people do not voluntarily spend large amounts of time with people whom they blame for their greatest tragedies. Yes, bitterness at Jesus is often the reason that many people avoid Jesus as much as possible, even as Christians… even as leaders. I am not called in this blog to shift the focus of it to helping you resolve this bitterness. But I do want to give you a few practical things to help get you on the track to resolving this:

Does it make sense that Jesus would freely give such a costly sacrifice, only to then to allow and/or do things to you that were harmful to you? Jesus didn’t need to sacrifice anything to ensure your harm… humanity’s representative at the time, Adam, freely gave Lucipher the power to ensure our regular harm and demise. Jesus came to give you life, and life more abundantly. In fact, this is John 10:10:

“The thief does not come except to steal, and to kill, and to destroy. I have come that they may have life, and that they may have it more abundantly.”

Whatever bad has happened in your life, it is not God’s doing. It is not His desire, nor His will. He is not to blame. I usually teach it to teenagers this way:

I call a student to the front of the room – usually a smaller junior high or high school girl. (You will see why in a moment.) I have her introduce herself to the crowd. Then I tell her, in front of everyone, that in a few moments, she is going to slap me.

Every time I have done this, she (whomever she is), turns a shade of red, backs away, and says no. And every time I do this, a gaggle of boys in the crowd loudly volunteer to take her place! I always say no to the boys and then quiet the room down. I assure her that it is ok. I assure her that this is ultimately a good decision for her to make. She VERY hesitantly agrees, especially when the crowd begins chanting “Do it! Do it! Do it!”

I bend down to put my face more within reach of her hand (I am a pretty tall guy). She gets ready to do it but almost always stalls once or twice; backing away again stating that she cannot do it. Many times, the chanting from the crowd begins again.

Sometimes, she just taps my cheek. The crowd, now bloodthirsty to see this happen, almost always heavily and negatively reacts. I too tell her not good enough. And then, she usually halls off and slaps me good across the face.

Yes, it hurts – every time. It hurts worse when she misses my cheek and catches me more on my ear and the side of my head.

The crowd roars with delight. I admit, I have played it up a little bit at this point. I try not too anymore.

She again has changed colors in her face to some variation of red; sure that she has just committed some heinous crime. And technically, if unsolicited by me, she would have actually committed a crime.

She almost always seeks to quickly sit back down. I stop her and bring her back to the front. I tell the boys scrambling for their turn to have a chance to slap me, that no such chance will be given. And in the chaos of it all, I then let me voice ring out strong and clear through the sound system by saying: “Who is responsible for slapping me?”

The crowd erupts and often gets divided. Some say that it is my fault. Some say that it is her fault. If the crowd is pretty split, sometimes I will chime in that even though we all pressured her to slap me, she made the choice. The crowd almost always agrees.

You know who NO ONE has ever said – Jesus. I even ask the crowd at some point, “Isn’t this Jesus’ fault?” No one has ever agreed. They almost always look at me like I have immediately just lost my mind. Jesus being at fault never even entered their minds, until I suggested it. And once I suggest it, they are at best confused by the concept. Usually, it is outright rejected.

How this all ends is different from time to time, but the best way it ends is that I let the young lady go back to her seat, thanking her for her participation, and assuring her that she made the right choice – and that she helped me. And then I ask the crowd again, is Jesus responsible for her slapping me… again, but more quietly, the crowd says “no” in unison. Why more quietly, because they grow confused why I would bring up an idea that was so clearly and abjectly rejected as being crazy. And then VERY seriously I ask them, “Then why do we blame God for the bad things that happen to us?”

No matter how big the audience is, of teenagers mind you, you can ALWAYS hear a pin drop in that moment. ALWAYS!

Why?

Because even the youngest Junior High student immediately gets the full force of the point… that blaming God for the slap was ridiculous; and that it is just as ridiculous to blame God in any other part of our own lives.

Are you blaming God for bad that has happened to you, but now see the error of believing that lie? If yes, stop reading this book and take time to connect with Jesus about this newfound truth.

But, whomever you are, begin today to elevate your time of prayer and Bible reading. Because it all starts with Prayer and Bible reading!

Lastly, a good follow up to this blog is this one: There Are No Spiritual Batteries.

All Bible passages are quoted from The Holy Bible, New King James Version, Copyright © 1982 Thomas Nelson.