From Love to Self-Control: Unlocking Powerful Arsenals for Prayer

As Parliament resumes, Christians are urged to maintain spiritual grounding amidst challenges. This post emphasizes the importance of self-control and kindness in prayer and interactions.

Transcript

So, how many Christians does it take to change a light bulb? Change? What do you mean change? The apostle Paul talks to us in Corinthians 2 Corinthians chapter 2 about that when we know God, when we come into that place of revelation of walking with God that Jesus is Messiah, we are changed from glory to glory, from encounter to encounter. The more we walk with him, the more we're changed. There's an interesting thing that's coming up this uh parliamentary session. Um it looks like it's going to be a pretty bumpy road. Lots of uh things that are coming in the media and lots of things are going to be happening in the hill. And I want you to stay in the place where your heart is guarded. I

want to encourage you to stay in that place that you have a guarded heart because it's important that we stay in the right place and not get all riled up and all upset and all, you know, a flutter. James says this in James chapter 4, you have not because you ask not. And when you ask, sometimes you ask a miss. And what he's talking about, he's talking about, okay, the reason why your prayers aren't necessarily getting answered is because of your attitude. Your attitudes are being in your you're quarreling, you're upset. He actually said uses the word you're murdering, but it's not so much murdering like literally with literal, but he's saying that you're murdering with your tongue,

with your mouth. Often times we we speak from James 3 about salt water and fresh water coming from the same source. It's not supposed to be that way. It's either one or another. We are speaking blessings or we are speaking curses. As when we speak curses, we speak death, we speak murder. So I want to just remind us and help us a little bit in this little while. You know uh though many of us know the fruit of the spirit right and this is what we we say well the fruit of the spirit is love joy peace something something something something something right usually that's it we like the love joy peace part we like that portion because what's not to love about love we're like

come on joy I like joy could use more joy peace totally let's have more peace let's have more absence of conflict let's have more completeness and fullness of God. But I want to encourage you today to look at your life and see where's the fruit. Remember that Wendy's commercial where the little old lady says, "Where's the beef?" We need to be saying to ourselves, where's the fruit? So, let me read to you the way I like to read Galatians 5 22. For the fruit of the spirit is self-control, gentleness, faithfulness, goodness, kindness. Be kind. It's a political season. Be kind. Patience, peace, joy, and love. So, let's look at ourselves this season. Let's look at us.

Let's put away the pointing finger. So let's pray from a posture of self-control, gentleness, faithfulness, goodness, kindness, patience, peace, joy, and love. I'm Chris Byber, the director of the National House of Prayer, and we will see you next time. Bye for now. [Music]