Now I have been home taking it very easy since I returned from Sweden. It has been good and I have continued studying the word of God as scheduled. Before I used to have a light problem with concentration while reading but I decided to pray about it. I asked God to help me out when I read as I just felt how important it is to read. Reading the word of God is feeding our Spirit and praying is our conversation with God. For a long time I have felt that I have to read more and this feeling I can describe in a raw hunger for more of the word. It is strange how the word of God works. There is such power in the word of God and when we pray while reading, our helper, The Holy Spirit will make the word of God alive.
Another thing I have been wondering and prayed about is why we don´t see as many wonders, signs and miracles around us today. I remember when I first got saved there were more miracles taking place in the churches, especially in the area where I live. I came to two different answers regarding this: 1. I have changed and I do not see things as I saw them when everything were new. 2. We do not pray enough in our churches. I know for a fact that I am right in both cases and I do not want to blame any specific church or specific movement of God for not praying enough. I believe this is something that we ALL, Christans should consider important in our lives, to pray more. I never heard about anyone who prayed too much. Can we pray too much? Personally I do not think so.
Prayer is important as it is our conversation with God. We do not only speak to God but we are also moving the spiritual, unseen realm with our prayers. Some basic things that I have been reading about lately is the power in prayer and we really need to realize that we can not pray about anything that is agains Gods will. Why would God answer a prayer if it is against His will. Yes, He loves us very much and He wants to do everything for us but according to His will. He looks at our motives when we pray and we have to remember that Jesus Himself told us that our Heavenly Father would give us whatever we ask about when we pray in His (Jesus) name. In John 14 we read what Jesus said and I have been meditating over these words for a couple of days now and it just gets stronger and stronger. Here we have a really powerful promise to count on but we have to remember if we wont give glory to The Father we might be left without a prayer answer.
"Whatever you ask in My name, that will I do, so that the Father may be glorified in the Son. If you ask Me anything in My name, I will do it." (John 14:13-14) Read again! This is such a cool promise! He says; I will do it! That means that HE WILL DO IT! He did not say; "I will try to do it", "I might do it" or "I will help you". He said: I WILL DO IT!
Too often we sit on our big butts and buts saying God is deaf or that God is not answering our prayers and we have nothing. Why is this? James has the answer: "You want what you don´t have, so you commit murder. You´re determined to have things, but you can´t get what you want. You quarrel and fight. You don´t have the things you want, because you don´t pray for them." (James 4:2) Here we have one of the important keys: You don´t have the things you want, because you don´t pray for them! After reading this a couple of times I get more and more motivation to pray more and more. I know that it sometimes is hard to find the time to pray and for me personally it took a long time before I understood how to pray. I am still working on getting my prayer life better and better but since I realized that what I pray is between ME and GOD and that GOD knows ME better than I DO myself I can be myself before God and just boldly and humble ask HIM in prayer. I do not have to have a nice prayer language or ANY rituals. I can speak with GOD where ever I am and it actually works best when I am alone. This is also another biblical truth. I have seen those that the Bible speaks about standing in the corners praying loud. Thats nothing for me. Still we all do the mistake that when we pray together with other people we want to impress on others. We might be able to impress people around us but what do we get for that. The Bible says this: "When you pray, go to your room and close the door. Pray privately to your Father who is with you. Your Father sees what you do in private. He will reward you." (Matthew 6:6) Again we have another great promise. It is written: He WILL reward you. He did not say "He might..." or "He will consider...".
Think about it when you pray as when you pray you shall believe that you get it! Thats another secret: "We are confident that God listens to us if we ask for anything that has his approval. We know that he listens to our requests. So we know that we already have what we ask him for." (1 John 5:14-15) Now we see that the word of God is full of promises. Here God says that we already HAVE! He did not say "we might have" or "we may be given". These are parts of the simple Gospel and when we keep the Gospel simple we can also understand the deal. Jesus made it available for us at Calvary. We just have to ask in prayer and receive. It IS as simple as that. Have faith!
Upcoming things & Future plans
As some of you know things are moving forward and we are looking forward for a great Biker Season 2011 with some of our American brothers visiting us here in Europe in may and june. More about that later. Next on the schedule is a trip to Raahe and Kalajoki. Thursday february 10th I will be speaking at Rauhantalo in Raahe at 6PM and at Vapaaseurakunta in Kalajoki on Friday, February 11th at 7PM and Saturday, February 12th at 6PM. The meeting on saturday night will be streamed live on the internet and if you want to watch you can do it by clicking HERE!
The following weekend I have the privilege to enter a high school in Halsua and Friday, February 18th I will attend a meeting together with The Pentecostal Church in Halsua held at Leirikeskus Majakka and following day, Saturday, February 19th we are having a meeting together with Evangelist and Ambassador Jimmy Huhtala at Vapaaseurakunta in Lapua.
Lots of things are going on and I am excited. Hope you all enjoyed the updates of this week and please remember to pray more. I am sure that we will see more wonders, signs and miracles also in Finland and Sweden as long as we do take GOD seriously and start to pray more.
Love Ya´ll!
Pontus
