Faithbase

Prayer day five, start with prayer. Dear God, please help me to hear you and understand your message for me. Amen. The beans, or the background. John was an apostle of Jesus and he wrote a letter to the believers in a church in Asia Minor. These people were being taught by a group who believed that they were morally perfect and other weird things like all physical matter is evil. This meant they were teaching that Jesus couldn't possibly be the Son of God. Oh, and they knew this because they apparently had direct knowledge of God. Clearly, John had a few things to clear up. Mainly, he wants them to feel confident in their forgiveness and acceptance through Jesus. The verse, 1 John chapter 5, verses 13 through 14. I write these things to you who believe in the name of the Son of God so that you may know that you have eternal life. This is the confidence we have in approaching God, that if we ask anything according to his will, he hears us. The fill, what's the point? These young believers weren't really sure that they belonged. They had so many other voices in their heads telling them that they wouldn't receive forgiveness, that they wouldn't receive salvation, that they didn't belong to the club. So naturally, they were very concerned about their spiritual status. Can you relate, possibly? Do you believe in God and have faith in Jesus but still have those voices in the back of your head that say, Yeah, but maybe you don't feel like you deserve forgiveness or that you don't know enough about the Bible or maybe you haven't given it much thought at all before and so now you're really worried you aren't in the club either. Maybe you're worried that your doubts or questions will get you thrown out or worry that you push God off to the side so often that you're convinced he's forgotten about you and put you off to the side. John was so concerned about these false beliefs, these lies that believers were being fed, that he wrote this letter to ensure the truth came out. The truth is true for those people in Asia Minor living between 80 and 90 AD and it still rings true for you and me in 2019. Notice the qualifier John uses as he writes. He doesn't say, I write these things to you who are morally superior. I write these things to you who are perfect and have never sinned. No. He says, I write these things to you who believe. Your acceptance was paid for on the cross. The work was done for you. All you have to do is accept it and believe. The steam. What does this mean to me and how can I apply it to my life today? When you pray, are you confident that God hears you? Now I don't mean are you confident he's going to answer immediately in the way you want him to. None of us are or rather none of us should be confident of that. That's another topic for another time. But what I mean is, do you believe that God hears you? Do you believe that you have the right to go to him? Do you believe that you are worth his time? Sometimes we hold ourselves back or refrain from praying altogether because we have this underlying fear that it's not worth our time. We falsely believe that he doesn't hear us, he doesn't care, or he isn't going to do anything about it anyway, so why bother? Oh friend, I have been there, so I understand. But I have also been on the other side. The side that isn't afraid to pray, that vulnerably spews my guts before God, which is never very pretty by the way. There are no flowery words in most of my prayers, let me tell you. But I pray with abandon because I am confident that he hears me. And I can stand here and say, I am confident because he has given me peace that is truly not of this world. I have experienced him in such real ways that I literally reached across the seat of my car to grab hold of his hand. Hand on the Bible, that is a true story. I've come to learn that his showing up has nothing to do with me, my works, or my flaws. He's there. I just have to believe it's so. And over time, as I came to know him better, I could recognize him showing up in bigger and bigger ways. Like anything else, it just took some practice. But friend, there is one thing I could tell you. One thing I could convince you to try, it would be to pray in confidence and then wait to be flooded with his peace when you do.