Handle With Prayer: Unwrap the Source of God's Strength for Living by Charles Stanley

Author:Charles Stanley
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Tags: Prayer
ISBN: 0781404460
Publisher: David C. Cook
Published: 2011-03-01T22:00:00+00:00

Joshua’s prayer sounded much like the prayers of the Israelites as they wandered in the wilderness. It seems they would have learned to trust God after that experience. But Joshua was repeating the same old lines, “Oh, God, why did You allow us to get into this mess? Why didn’t You leave us over on the other side of Canaan?”

Joshua didn’t mention a single promise from God in his prayer; there was no thanksgiving for the good things God had done and no praise for the Lord either. In fact, his prayer was one of total defeat; this shows what he had his eyes on.

We have all come to God at times with this kind of prayer. We cry out, “Oh, Lord, why did You let me get into such a mess? Why do You treat me this way?” We blame God for our unpleasant circumstances. But look at what God told Joshua: “Get thee up; wherefore liest thou thus upon thy face?” (Josh. 7:10). God had something for Joshua to do; his time for crying was over.

When God sent the men of Israel into Jericho, He told them to kill every man, woman, and child. He also told them that “all the silver, and gold, and vessels of brass and iron, are consecrated unto the LORD: they shall come into the treasury of the LORD” (Josh. 6:19). What Joshua didn’t know was that these instructions concerning the spoils were not followed. God told Joshua that Israel had sinned and that it was his responsibility to rid Israel of “the accursed thing,” which they had stolen. It was this sin of covetousness that caused God’s wrath to fall on Israel at Ai. So God told Joshua to quit crying and assemble the elders together to find the source of the problem.

Joshua obeyed God and soon found out that Achan was the guilty one. He had taken a Babylonian garment, two hundred shekels of silver, and a wedge of gold that was to be offered to God. As a result, Achan and his entire family were stoned and burned. God removed His wrath from Israel and restored His blessing. After that, the Israelites defeated Ai swiftly.

We often make the mistake in our prayers of talking too much and not listening enough. After we pray about something for a while and nothing happens, or things even get worse, we develop an attitude like Joshua’s. We start blaming God, maybe not audibly, but in our own thinking. We look at other people and ask God why He doesn’t bless us the same way He blesses them.

Instead of complaining, we need to ask God why we are defeated; then we should be quiet and listen. When we give God the opportunity, He will show us what to do.

A young man came into my office one morning to talk to me about which seminary he should attend. As we talked, I asked him when he felt God called him to the ministry. He said he felt that God wanted him to preach about three years ago.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.