Devotional Song: … GO TO THIS LINK … Please take the time to take in a video of Chris Tomlin singing How Great Is Our God, … expressing the reality of the God to Whom we surrender our lives.
Highlight Passage: 1st Kings 18: 45 [NKJV] …
45 Now it happened in the meantime that the sky became black with clouds and wind, and there was a heavy rain.
… Elijah prayer in the drought; and there was rain.
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Highlight Context – 1st Kings 18: 1, 41-45 [NKJV] … USE THIS LINK …
… Elijah believed in God’s power when he prayed for rain.
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Reference Passage #1 - Proverbs 3: 5-6 [NKJV] …
5 Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding. 6 In all your ways acknowledge Him and He will direct your paths.
… Many can quote it; but how many really believe it and pray as if it were true.
Reference Passage #2 - Isaiah 46: 9 [NKJV] …
9 Remember the former things of old, … for I am God; and there is no other; … I am God, and there is none like Me.
… If we believe it, why don’t we act like it?
My Journal for Today: Today’s Our Daily Bread author, Poh Fang Chia, use a real-life example to illustrate his teaching. He writes about a drought in China, … Life is hard for the villagers who live on a hilly terrain in the Yunnan Province of China. Their main source of food is corn and rice. But in May 2012 a severe drought hit the region and the crops withered. Everyone was worried, and many superstitious practices were carried out as the people attempted to end the drought. When nothing worked, people started blaming the five Christians in the village for offending the spirits of the ancestors. … These five believers gathered to pray. Before long, the sky darkened and thunder was heard. A heavy downpour started and lasted the whole afternoon and night. The crops were saved! While most of the villagers did not believe God sent the rain, others did and desired to find out more about Him and Jesus.
How often do we, as Christians, pray and believe as did Elijah in the highlight passage, linked above? How often to we pray, believing, as did those five Chinese Christians in the ODB’s story, copied above? … All too often I fear (or know in my own heart) that we, in our human, very tainted hearts (see Jeremiah 17: 9), pray, wanting but not really believing. And how often do we pray desperately as a last alternative, having first trusted in so many of our own human alternatives such as human intellect, political power, science, or the power of wealth to solve some problem like the drought which faced Elijah against King Ahab or the withered corn depicted in the attached photo to which those five Chinese believers addressed themselves in faith.
I don’t know about any other readers here with me; but I’m under conviction right now, knowing that all too often I come to my God in prayer, really not believing, as did Elijah, that our God is as great as the God Chris Tomlin sings about in today’s linked song above.
How about you? Is there something we could pray about today in belief that our God is really big enough to bring down the rain of His love and the power of His Name?
My Prayer Today: Oh, my Lord, … Help me to pray in belief, rather than my half-hearted faith. … Amen
Blogger Note: Everyday during this year, my daily devotional blogs are influenced by the reading and study of the online devotional blog entitled Our Daily Bread, distributed online via email by RBC Ministries. If you GO TO THIS LINK on the date of my blog, you can read/study the ODB blogs; or you can subscribe to the blog via email at that site.
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