Doing The Impossible!

Question Text:  The  Bible talks about many impossibilities.  How can I do some thing which is impossible to people around me?

Answer Text:  Hi,  I am so very happy to see you with your question!  The Bible teaches that God is a God of impossibilites.  Nothing is impossible to God is repeated several times in the Bible in different words (Gen.18:14; job 42:2; Lk.1:37).  Now the most amazing thing about the Bible is that it also says “nothing shall be impossible to them that believe” (Mt.17:20). 

 We live in a time when every one talks about the human ‘mind power’ and about achieving the impossible as something which ordinary people can dream of.  Whether that is true or not, being in link with God, man is truly capable of  achieving what is otherwise  impossible with man!  There is NO doubt about it at all.  The Bible and histroy of the church is replete with examples of men and women who achieved the impossible with the help of God.  ok, 

Now coming to your personal situation,  your desire to achieve the impossible is really great and you are on the right track.  Your faith in the Bible and your genuineness is also deeply appreciable.  Now you seem to be staying with your parents and still you depend on them.  Very good.  The present impossible task you need to achieve is to remain obedient to them!  Look at Jesus, our Lord.  The Eternal Word who is the agent of creation, the one who sustains the universe by the word of His power, to limit Himself within a 6 foot human body is some thing beyond imagination!  Then at the age of 12 He demostrated such intellectual power which amazed those who were around and heard Him (Lk.2:47).  Still He continued to be submissive to His parents till He was 30 years old!  That was some thing really difficult for Him to do.  Why thirty years?  Because the Jews considered some one mature enough do do public service only at  age of thirty (cf. Num.4:2). 

 So my dear young friend, the first impossible thing you need to achieve in your life is to learn to be submissive to your parents till you are independent and ready to act on your own.  Remember Joseph had that dream when he was just 17 and he had to go through situations and turmoils beyond imagination till he was thirty when he became the supreme authority in Egypt!

While being submissive to your parents I would suggest that you get as close to the Lord as possible and become one spirit with Him (1Cor.6:17) so much so you train yourself to think the way the Lord thinks.  Fill your heart and life with the Word of God (Col.3:16).  Learn of the Lord what He wants you to achieve in your life (Ps.32:8).  Then when the time comes for you to demonstrate it in life,  do the impossible for Him  and for HIS GLORY (2Chr.16:9).  May God give you grace as you want to do the impossible for Him.  My prayers are with you.    Please go to  www.mathewpaul.org/category/book-on-prayer    and  learn about praying for the impossible.  God bless!!

How To Have Concentration While Praying?

Question Text:  I am unable to concentrate when reading bible and praying and mind gets distracted and devitates easily.   How can I overcome this? 

Answer Text:  This is a real problem faced by many who want to read the Bible and pray sincerely. This is one of Satan`s greatest tricks and we need to overcome this. Otherwise we will be defeated. Satan can prevent us from praying. He knows that once we pray sincerely he will be defeated. So he will do every thing within his limits to PREVENT us from praying. This is one of the tricks he uses for the same. But we must overcome this struggle by our determination. Remember that it is the Spirit of God who will teach us to pray (Rom.6:26). Remember also that it is God`s desire that we should reisist the devil (1Pt.5:9; Js.4:7).

So let me try to give you some practical suggestions about your private prayer life. First and foremost is to find a quiet place and a fixed time for Bible reading and prayer. Man, as you know, is an animal of habits and once certain habits are fixed in us, it is very difficult to get out from there easily. Having a fixed place and time will create in us a hunger for the same when that time comes. You know that you can train our stomack in such a way that you become hungry at a particular time during the day. Many people have NO hunger for God`s Word and for prayer because they do NOT have a fixed place and time for doing this! Then go to that fixed place at that fixed hour with a Bible, a hymn book and a note book.

Then you need to PLAN YOUR TIME IN SMALL BITS of five minutes each. Use the first five minutes for praising God. Sing a song of praise, read a Psalm of praise or praise God from your heart as the Lord gives you utterance. Any one can concentrate for five minutes for the same. Then take the next five minutes to search your heart to see if what you did during the past 24 hours was pleasing to the Lord. Check through your life and ask God to search your heart for any thing which hinders your fellowship with Him. Again concentrating for five minutes is NOT a problem for any one. Then for the next five minutes take a small portion of the Bible and read it quietly with a prayerfull attitude. If you try to streatch longer time for reading and for prayer mind will wander unknowingly. Now that you are timing your activites there is less temptation to wander. Then use the next five minutes to go through the same passage trying to answer three basic questions. Observation questions like who, what and where etc. Then interpretation question like why it is said like this. Lastly application question like how can I practice this truth today in my life. Use the notebook to answer these questions.

Since you are timing each of your activities, and since it is only for five minutes each, you can’t easily lose your concentration. Then take the next five minutes to pray for two prayer points. Take another five minutes to pray for another two prayer points. After every five minutes of prayer, you are going to open your eyes and look for new prayer points from your note book. So divide the twenty or thirty minutes of your prayer time in to five minute slots and if you do this for about three weeks regularly you will find that it will kind of become an automatic process with you.

Kneeling to read and to pray will give you a better atmosphere for prayer and it will also help you to concentrate because while kneeling you are humbling yourself in the presence of the Almighty and in His awesome presence.   Why dont you try this out and respond to me after a month or so? If you want to read further about developing a meanigful prayer life you can go to. www.mathewpaul.org . May the Lord bless you and may you have a powerful prayer life for His glory. Amen. 

 

Marry Some One Whom You Don’t Know and Don’t Love!

Question  Text:    Marry someone whom u don’t know and don’t love? 
               
Answer Text: 

Hi, Your question is a very interesting one. I would expecet a question like this from some one living in the West. But your profile says that you are from Asia. Any how, my answer to your question is that you should NEVER marry some one for whom you do not have love; and you can never marry some one of whom you know all about!

I will explain.   Knowing a person is really a difficult task. No one knows any one else fully and people can easily put on a show to give a false appearance till the date of marriage, if they want to. In the Western countries almost every one marries after `knowing` each other to a large extend. But how come, there are more divorces there than in any other place? Did they not `know` each other even before marriage? Many `know` each other before marriage in the euphemistic sense of the word `konw`as well. But then, where is the problem? Is it because they did not know each other? Or is it because they knew too much of each other? My friend, you can not marry some one whom you know sufficiently well, because it is simply an impossible task. On the other hand, you can get to know a person well enough if you spend a few hours talking to each other.

Now, the question of love is very crucial. You MUST never marry some one for whom you have not felt that passionate love.  No one ever marries a stranger who suddenly appears on the stage! Before one decides to marry, both the spouses are given opportunity to hear about each other and to hear from each other. Photos are exchanged through a middle man.  Unless love is generated on hearing about a person and seeing the picture  in the context of marriage, one should NOT even get to see that person at all. On seeing that person and talking to each other for some time, if that love is NOT intesified as passionate love,  they should not marry each other. Both the spouses must have that passionate love for each other before the marriage is fixed. In a country like India, it is mandatory that after the marriage is fixed and announced there should be a gap of three weeks when the marriage could be finally executed. This is the period when the spouses usually long for each other.

You must remember that marriage is some thing which is in the plan of God. It is God who prepares the bride and the groom for each other WITHOUT the knowledge of each other. Adam was having a deep sleep just before he saw his spouse for the first time. Then, when he saw her, he busts into a beautiful poetic expression. This is the first ever poetic verse in the Hebrew Bible. `Made for each other` feeling will come to you if that is the person whom God has planned for you if you approach the issue with much prayer and dedication. If you consider marriage as a contract between three instead of two, God being the third person, the whole outlook will change. Assuming that you are not married yet, may I wish you a blessed and a happy married life, a married life in the perfect plan of God when the God element is in the forefront of marriage. If the human element is in forefront, chances are that the marriage will fail soon. May that not happen to you. May the Lord`s name be glorified through your marriage. Amen.

Am I Forgiven?

          
Question Text: My name is Dany.   I did a lot of wrong things in my life and I want a change now.  I prayed a lot and  I confessed to God the sins that I know of.  Now,  what about the sins that I forgot about?  How do I confess them?  I just said,   “Lord, you know me better than I know about myself.  I ask you to forgive me.”  I confessed all my sins like that.   Is that sufficient?   Honestly I believe that I confessed my sins to him but I dont know whether they are forgiven.  Please tell me,  how to recognise God`s work in my life?  I know that I am still alive is because of  his grace but my life is still like yesterday’s.  I want to see God in my life.  In my prayes I said I will be waiting for his reply but i dont seem to get any response.  I dont know what to do.  Please help.
               
Answer Text:    I am so pleased to meet such an earnest soul like you with your question. I pray that the Lord will help me to give you a satisfying answer for His glory.  

Dany, there are one or two things you need to remember when it comes to confessing sins to God. It is from 1Jn.1:8 & 9 that you get this knowledge. Please read the verses. “If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness”.

Did you notice in v.8 it is ‘sin’ in singular and in v.9 it is ‘sins’ in plural? This is very significant. When you come to the Lord for forgiveness for the first time, all that you have to confess is that YOU ARE A SINNER. In fact, you are accepting the fact that you belonged to the devil and that you were living a self-life with out God till now. Repentance means to turn from sin and self to God. Then all that you confess is the sinful nature that you have and the Lord will accept all who call upon Him in truth. It is He who said that He would forgive us and give us rest (Mt.11:28). So if you ever went to Him with repentance and faith, He accepted your plea with out a question. He will forgive you.  Then you have to invite Him to come and live within you.   He will come in to live within you as the Holy Sprit and you then will be adopted into the family of God. This you have to believe  because this is what God promised in His Word.

When you begin to believe the promise of God and thank Him for forgiving you, the Spirit of God who has come to live within you will begin to witness to your spirit that you ARE a child of God (Rom.8:16). The Bible clearly says that as many as received Christ, God gave them authority to become children of God (Jn.1:12). 1Jn.3:2 says that we are children of God NOW. These are not any one’s opinion. This is the Word of God. So you can believe it with out a doubt or a question.

 Rom 8:1 says that there is no condemnation to them who are IN CHRIST Jesus. Till then you were IN ADAM.    Now your position is changed and you became some one IN CHRIST. You can not and need not think about and confess ALL individual sins that you committed all your life till  that time. But if you had done some serious crimes against some one, like Zacheus (Lk.19:2,8), you need to make restitution for the same. All right. But after you became a child of God, it is your responsibility to confess and reject each individual sins in your life regularly.

Now, if you are NOT sure that God has forgiven you and that He has adopted you as His child, I request you to pray the prayer I am going to give you here. Remember, saying this prayer or any other prayer will not save you. It is only trusting in Christ that can save you from sin. This prayer is simply a way to express to God your faith in Him and thank Him for providing for your salvation. `God, I know that I have sinned against you and am deserving of punishment. But Jesus Christ took the punishment that I deserve so that through faith in Him I could be forgiven. I place my trust in You for salvation. Thank You for Your wonderful grace and forgiveness—the gift of eternal life! Amen!`

From now on you need to live a thankful life praising God for making you His child. Then you need to walk daily with God according to the Word of God. You must decide to spend time in the morning and evening to be alone with God and read His Word and pray. When reading His Word, He will speak to you and you need to make sure that you live according to what God has said in His Word. When you begin to do it regularly, you will begin to see the mighty working of God in your life. Here is what God has done for me. This I give here to encourage you to pray in secret. Surely this could be your experience as well. www.mathewpaul.org/2008/10/21/brief-testimony . Please feel free to write to us for any doubt or question. May the Lord bless you and give you a powerful life. To His Name be all glory.