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Presidential Prayer Team – Real Power Source

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A 300-foot tower stood in the middle of the Mojave Desert. The Solar One project was the first test of a large-scale thermal power plant.

Behold, I have given you authority…over all the power of the enemy – Luke 10:19

Solar One collected energy by concentrating the sun’s rays onto a common focal point to produce heat to run a generator. It had 1,818 mirrors that reflected solar energy onto a tower where a black receiver absorbed the heat. The tower itself did not have the ability to generate power. Light from the sun, the real source of energy, was reflected onto a helpless receiver.

God’s power is most evident when it is displayed through weak vessels. II Corinthians 4:7 says, “But we have this treasure in jars of clay, to show that the surpassing power belongs to God and not to us.” In this verse, clay jars are a metaphor for fragile human bodies.

God has all the power you need to overcome challenges and be a shining reflection of His love to others. Tap into His energy source through prayer and reading the Bible. Pray also that God’s light will be shown through Christians so their lives will have a positive effect on the nation’s leaders.

Recommended Reading: I Corinthians 1:18-31

 

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Take Time to Listen by Joyce Meyer

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Understand [this], my beloved brethren. Let every man be quick to hear…slow to speak… —James 1:19

A friend of mine lives in a large city where homelessness is a huge problem. One winter night she was coming home from work and walked by a man asking for money. It was cold and dark, and she was anxious to get home.  Not wanting to pull out her wallet in a less than safe situation, she reached deep into her purse fishing for change.  As her fingers searched in vain, the man started telling her that his coat had been stolen in the homeless shelter where he’d stayed the night before. Still trying to come up with a couple of quarters, she nodded and said, “That’s too bad”.  When she finally found the money, she dropped it into the man’s cup.  He smiled and said, “Thank you for talking with me.”  My friend realized what meant the most to that man was the fact that someone had heard him and responded.

We have a team of people from our ministry who try to help people living in the tunnels under the downtown bridge.  They have found that each of these people has a story.  Something tragic happened to them that resulted in their present circumstance.  They appreciate the sandwiches and clean clothes, but mostly they appreciate someone caring enough to actually talk with them long enough to learn about them.

Let me encourage you to take time to listen.

Love Others Today: Do you know someone who simply needs a person to talk to? Be the one who will listen.

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As Sure as the Sun – Ravi Zacharias Ministry

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Although it might be less obvious in some parts of the U.S., spring is around the corner. The crocuses are ready to announce themselves; the trees are whispering of new life. Once clandestine signs of spring are beginning to defy the last attempts of winter to hang on. The seasonal underdog begins to suggest brazenly that it again will triumph. With such optimistic signs abounding, it is strange for some of us to admit we find the season of spring a sobering time of year. The once stoic world around us is about to be in full bloom; all traces of winter are about to fade. Like the thawing of a frozen Narnia, the promise of rebirth announces itself. And there is something about it that spurs reflection, maybe even dismay, every time.

Perhaps it is simply that spring is somewhat shocking after the dead contrast of winter. It comes suddenly and almost scandalously, proclaiming the definitive end of a season that once seemed to have the final word. No matter how accustomed to the dead of winter we may have become, the vigor of spring will not be stopped, and we just might not feel ready for the metaphor. When all has seemed dead or dormant for so long, the possibility of new life is almost too much of a promise to let in—like beams of sunlight unleashed on exhausted eyelids. When one’s spirit feels lifeless within them, the budding hope of a suddenly resurrected forest proclaims a story that we may not be ready to hear.

This is one reason why I am grateful as a Christian for the season of Lent. The time leading up to the promise of Easter and the hope of resurrection is something like the early signs of spring. Indications of new life spring forth all around us, each with the shocking call that we must prepare ourselves for what is coming, reflect on the place of hope via the road of suffering, and face the forces and temptations that come at us along the way. It is not always easy to prepare one’s heart for the Cross of Christ, but the changing of seasons is upon us, and in it God beckons us forward. Henri Nouwen describes the tension eloquently:

“The season of Lent, during which winter and spring struggle with each other for dominance, helps us in a special way to cry out for God’s mercy.”(1)

For forty contemplative days, the season of Lent calls followers of Jesus to the wakeful awareness that we are human, we are dust, and we are falling short, but that there is a story reaching beyond our lifetimes, beyond our deaths, and our shortcomings, speaking new life where death stings and tears flow.

On the scene of a people who had lived with God’s silence for 400 years, this Jesus suddenly and scandalously appeared like a crocus in still-thawing ground. There had not been a word from God since the prophet Malachi. The heavens were cold and silent, and hope remained dormant within time’s wintry grasp. But beneath the frozen ground of apathy, sin, and death, the Spirit of God was stirring.  Spring was on its way. Lent invites us to stay awake to the knowledge that this hope is still so: “Let us acknowledge the LORD; let us press on to acknowledge him. As surely as the sun rises, he will appear; he will come to us like the winter rains, like the spring rains that water the earth” (Hosea 6:3). If God is the maker of all creation then every season has a purpose, and today we are waiting for spring.

Of course, the journey to the Cross may take the believer through bleak and despairing seasons that make sanctification seem an unending winter. But we are being drawn to the very Cross that held the harbinger of spring and the hope of resurrection. As surely as the sun rises he will appear—again.

Jill Carattini is managing editor of A Slice of Infinity at Ravi Zacharias International Ministries in Atlanta, Georgia.

(1) Henri Nouwen, A Cry for Mercy: Prayers from the Genesee (New York: Doubleday, 2002), 43.

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A Basin of Water – Max Lucado

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I looked for a Bible translation that reads, “Jesus washed all the disciples’ feet except the feet of Judas.” I couldn’t find one.

A couple once told me about a storm they were weathering.  She learned of an act of infidelity that had occurred a decade ago.  And as you can imagine, she was deeply hurt. She could have left. Women have done so for lesser reasons. But on advice of a counselor, they went away for several days. On the fourth night of the trip, he found a card on his pillow. It said: “I’d rather do nothing with you than something without you.” Beneath that she’d written these words: I forgive you.  I love you.  Let’s move on.

Certain conflicts can be resolved only with a basin of water. Jesus made sure His disciples had no reason to doubt His love. Why don’t you do the same?

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Crowded Out – Greg Laurie

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“The seeds that fell among the thorns represent those who hear the message, but all too quickly the message is crowded out by the cares and riches and pleasures of this life. And so they never grow into maturity.”—Luke 8:14

I have always been amazed by weeds. You can take a little flower, plant it in the perfect location, water it, and make sure there are no pests to threaten it. You can do everything possible for that flower, and it will slowly grow. But then, in the same amount of time, some weed springs up from a little crack in the sidewalk, and that weed chokes out the flower.

But the weed doesn’t suddenly burst out of the ground, grab the flower, and start shaking it. The process is gradual. First, there is a flower growing, and then the weed appears. The next day, the weed is a little closer. And on it goes until the weed starts to wrap itself around the flower and choke out its growth.

That is what Jesus was describing in the parable of the sower when He spoke about those who are “choked with cares, riches, and pleasures of life, and bring no fruit to maturity” (Luke 8:14). This is not something that happens overnight; it happens over a period of time.

I also find it interesting that it is the “cares, riches, and pleasures of life” that prevent the seed of God’s Word from maturing and producing fruit. These are not necessarily bad things, in and of themselves. But these are good things that became the most important things and choked out the spiritual things.

This is not a picture of someone who says they don’t want to pray, read the Bible, or go to church. Rather, this represents someone who thinks those are good things to do. But over time, they start losing interest, and the things of this world become more important to them than the things of the next world. And that is what chokes them out spiritually.

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Weak and Strong – Ravi Zacharias Ministry

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After fifteen years and nearly 17,000 miles, an unlikely fleet was set to make port on the beaches of Britain. On January 29, 1992, three massive containers on a cargo ship from Hong Kong crashed into the Pacific Ocean during a storm. The containers were filled with brightly colored bathtub toys bound for the United States. Instead, 29,000 little plastic ducks, frogs, beavers, and turtles began a journey that would be carefully monitored by children, oceanographers, and newscasters alike.

After a decade and a half, the tiny bobbing friends have traveled past Japan and back to Alaska, drifted deliberately down the Bering Strait and past the length of Greenland, and carefully floated down the eastern coastline of the United States. They have persevered through storms that would have left boats and crews in dire straits. They patiently endured four years frozen in ice as they crossed the Arctic Ocean. They have arrived at various intervals on various shores, faded and tattered by sun and surf, some with animal bites and barnacles to show for the journey. But each smiling plastic face seems to return with an ironic confession: the smallest vessels on tumultuous seas are not necessarily the most vulnerable.

Life is far more than an attempt to keep our heads above water, and yet at times it feels a suited metaphor. Tossed like tiny rubber ducks in an oceanic bathtub, we hit rocks of fear and anger, are pulled under by currents of despair and disappointment, and are broken at times by the journey. Human fragility is often as startlingly obvious as the image of a bath toy in the Bering Strait. We are at times almost averse to this fragility, whether seen in ourselves or in others. Fighting to keep afloat in an unpredictable sea, we take on distracting cargo and build defensive walls—anything that makes us feel less like tiny vessels lost at sea and more like giant ships passing in the night.

But metaphors of strength can be misleading, and vulnerability is often misunderstood. Though we may be reluctant to hear it, the story of a fragile and fleeting humanity is not always told despairingly. Jesus spoke readily of his own death and wept at the grave of a friend. The apostle Paul spoke of bodies as “jars of clay,” words hastening back the image of powerful King David who lamented that he had become like “broken pottery.” Yet even well beyond these fragile images of humanity, the story of a vulnerable, incarnate God redefines all of our terms. The image of Christ on the Cross turns any understanding of fragility on its head, challenges our discomfort with brokenness, and redirects our associations of weak and strong. In these images is the strange suggestion that the vulnerability of God is far stronger than our greatest images of strength. In his cruciform journey, God uses the weak to shame the strong, a suffering Son to heal the wounds of creation, and the vulnerable image of a broken savior to show the all-surpassing vessel who saves us.

The Christian oddly professes that it is by the Cross which we live, by a seemingly weak vessel that we are brought home. Here, Christ is not an escape raft for the hard realities of this world. On the contrary, he calls to us in our weakness and reminds us that it is not unfamiliar to him. Through tumultuous waters, he beckons us to see there is potential in fragility, meaning in affliction, and life within and beyond the journey that currently consumes us. Something like the image of tiny ducks arriving after an unlikely voyage, the story Jesus tells redirects thoughts on vulnerability, the weak and the strong. And along the way, God is aware of every last and fragile vessel, going after even one that is lost, longing to gather us unto himself like a hen bringing together thousands of little chicks under her wings.

Jill Carattini is managing editor of A Slice of Infinity at Ravi Zacharias International Ministries in Atlanta, Georgia.

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Treasures in Darkness – Ravi Zacharias

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Those of us who make our home in the Northern Hemisphere must welcome the encroaching darkness of the winter months. At the height of winter in Kotzebue, Alaska, for example, daylight is but a mere two hours. Where I live, the light begins to recede around 4:30 PM. When the winter sun is out it simply rides the southern horizon with a distant, hazy glow.

Perhaps it seems strange to some, but I love the shorter-days and the darkening skies of winter. For me, the darkness of winter invokes nostalgia for the days of huddling around the fireplace with hot coffee and curling up with a good book. Indeed, there are some gifts that can only be enjoyed in the darkness of winter and in this season of lessening light.

Of course, darkness and night evoke ominous images as well. Pre-Christian inhabitants of the Northern Hemisphere—who did not separate natural phenomenon from their religious and spiritual understanding—saw the departing sunlight as the fleeing away of what they believed was the Sun God. Darkness indicated a loss of hope, absence and cessation of life.(1) Like it did for these ancient peoples, darkness creates fear. We are afraid of what we cannot see in the dark, and what is seen inhabits the mysterious realm of shadows. Darkness has always represented chaos, evil, and death, and therefore is rarely thought of in either romantic or nostalgic terms.

For many individuals—even those who live in sun-filled hemispheres—the darkness of life is a daily nightmare. Despair, chronic loneliness, doubt, and isolation conspire to prevent even the dimmest light. The darkness that comes only as a visitor during the night is for many a perpetual reality. Is there any reason to hope that the light might be found even in these dark places? Are there any gifts that can be received here?

It is not by accident that the season of Advent coincides with the earthly season of fading light and increasing darkness. With its focus on waiting, repentance, and longing, Christians view Advent as a season of somber reflection. Yet, even as the light recedes in winter, the season of Advent bids all to come and find surprising gifts in the shorter days, in the womb of pregnant possibility, and in the anxious anticipation that accompanies waiting in the darkness. Those pre-Christian peoples who watched their sun-god disappear found that there were gifts that could be had even in this dark season. They took the wheels off of their carts, and decorated them with greens and garlands, hanging them on their walls as mementos of beauty and hope. Taking the wheels off of their carts meant the cessation of work and a time to watch and wait. As Gertrud Muller Nelson writes about this ancient ritual, “Slowly, slowly they wooed the sun-god back. And light followed darkness. Morning came earlier. The festivals announced the return of hope after primal darkness.”(2)

While the dark is mysterious and often ominous, it is also a place of unexpected treasures. As one author notes, “[S]pring bulbs and summer seeds come to life in the unlit places underground. Costly jewel stones lie embedded in the dark interiors of ordinary rocks. Oil, gas, and coal reserves lie far beneath the light of the earth’s surface. The dark depths of the ocean teem with life.”(3) Indeed, unique gifts from earth, sky, and sea can only be observed in the dark.

Spiritual gifts often emerge out of the darkness as well. The writer of Genesis paints a picture of the Spirit of God hovering over the primordial chaos and the darkness that covered the surface of the deep. Out of the darkness of chaos came the light of creation. The covenant promises of God to give children and land to Abram were forged “when the sun was going down…and terror and great darkness fell upon him” (Genesis 15:12). Moses received the Law in the “thick darkness where God was” (Exodus 20:21; Deuteronomy 5:22). God’s abiding presence was the gift from the darkness. Speaking through the prophet Isaiah, the God of Israel promises: “I will give you the treasures of darkness, riches stored in secret places, so that you may know that I am the Lord, the God of Israel, who summons you by name” (Isaiah 45:3). Indeed, the long-awaited Messiah would be revealed to those “who walk in darkness” and who “live in a dark land” (Isaiah 9:2).

For those who dwell in the dark season of despair or discouragement, for those who are afraid in the dark, and for those who grope in the darkness, the promise of treasures of darkness may spark a light of hope. “The recovery of hope,” writes Muller Nelson, “can only be accomplished when we have had the courage to stop and wait and engage fully the in the winter of our dark longing.”(4)

The hope of Advent is that God is in the darkness with us even though our experience of God may seem as clear as shifting shadow. The hope of Christmas is that God’s coming near to us in the person of Jesus is not hindered by the darkness of this world, or of our own lives. We may fear our dark despair hides us from God, but the treasure of God’s presence awaits us even there—for the darkness is as light to God. And today, light has come!

Margaret Manning is a member of the speaking and writing team at Ravi Zacharias International Ministries in Seattle, Washington.

(1) Gertrud Muller Nelson, To Dance With God: Family Ritual and Community Celebration (Mahwah, New Jersey: Paulist Press), 63.

(2) Ibid., 63.

(3) Sally Breedlove, Choosing Rest: Cultivating a Sunday Heart in a Monday World (Colorado Springs: NavPress, 2002), 133.

(4) Gertrud Muller Nelson, 63.