August 5, 2014
“A person’s steps are confirmed by the Lord.” (Psalm 37:23)
There are times on our journeys of faith when we come to a fork in the road and we simply do not know the will of God. There certainly are no verses of Scripture that tell us to go to the right or to the left. We have no prompting or leading of Spirit. We do our best to make the proper choice, while acknowledging the hard reality that we simply do not know which direction is the will of the Lord. Having done everything we can to discern the will of God, we journey down one side or the other of that road.
Psalm 37:23 offers insight when we find ourselves at this kind of crossroad. As a person’s steps are confirmed by the Lord, this means we should sometimes move forward into what we perceive to be the will of God, praying and looking for confirmation.
That confirmation may be positive or negative. If everything works out and the direction we have chosen obviously has God’s stamp of approval on it, we can say that God has given us a confirmation of His will. We have the conviction that God is saying to us, “This is the way, walk in it.” (Isaiah 30:21) We see evidence of the reality Jesus described in the Gospel of John, chapter 10, that when He calls His sheep to follow Him, He goes before them. After we commit to a direction, we see evidence that the Living Christ has gone before us and prepared the way for us.
Sometimes, the confirmation is negative and the results are the opposite. When that happens, we should be humble enough to go back to that fork in the road and choose the other direction.
Dick Woodward, A Prescription for Guidance
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Posted by Dick Woodward
July 25, 2014
“…If you forgive men when they sin against you, your Heavenly Father will also forgive you. But if you do not forgive men their sins, your Father will not forgive your sins…” Matthew 6:14-15
We need forgiveness in three dimensions: when we look up, when we look around, and when we look in.
If we believe the Gospel, the first dimension is a given. The great Bible word for that is “justified.” It literally means to ‘un-sin’ our sin. You can break up the word this way: just-as-if-I’d-never-sinned. Plus, the word means that He declares us righteous. In the 18th chapter of Luke, Jesus pronounced that anyone who prays, “God be merciful to me – a sinner,” is justified. Can you see why I say the first dimension of forgiveness is a given if you believe the Good News?
The second dimension is more complicated. You need a special measure of grace to forgive those who have greatly harmed you. And you can’t control whether or not those you have hurt will forgive you. But Jesus mandated that we have forgiveness in this second dimension. When He taught his disciples how to pray, He literally told them to pray, “Forgive us our sins as we have already forgiven those who have sinned against us.”
At the end of His teaching His disciples how to pray He added a solemn commentary: “If you do not forgive those who have sinned against you, then My Father in heaven will not forgive you your sins. In other words, if you don’t have forgiveness in this second dimension you lose your forgiveness in the first dimension. What a solemn truth!
Those who have sinned grievously will tell you that the third dimension of forgiveness is the toughest one. When devout people fall into sin, they especially have a very difficult time forgiving themselves.
Pray for forgiveness in these three dimensions because the greatest obstacle to inner healing is un-forgiveness.
Dick Woodward, 17 January 2009
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Posted by Dick Woodward
July 12, 2014
“Give us this day our daily bread.” (Matthew 6:11)
When Jesus taught His disciples how to pray He gave them a principle that has many applications. At the end of this chapter in the Gospel of Matthew, which records the central part of His great Sermon on the Mount, Jesus stated that we should not worry about tomorrow. Many have made that obvious application to this prayer petition. People with tragic challenges like addictions or overwhelming suffering are only able to get their heads and hearts around the concept of coping one day at a time.
Another application of this principle applies to divine guidance. In the third chapter of his letter to the Philippians, the Apostle Paul wrote that one way to discern the will of God for our lives is to live up to the light we now have. He promises that as we do, God will give us more light. Someone once said, “If you want to see further ahead into the will of God for your life, then move ahead into the will of God just as far as you can see.”
As a college student I drove across the United States several times, mainly at night because there was less traffic. My headlights only illuminated about 100 yards at a time. I discovered that if I kept driving into the light the headlights gave me, I eventually traveled from Pittsburgh to Los Angeles.
It is easier for God to steer a moving vehicle than one that is stationary. As we respond to the light God is giving us He adds more light to our path. The application of that principle leads us into His will one day at a time.
Dick Woodward, 17 August 2010
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Posted by Dick Woodward
July 1, 2014
“Our Father Who art in Heaven, hallowed be Your name. Your Kingdom come, Your will be done on earth as it is in Heaven...” Matthew 6:9-13)
The message of the Bible frequently sifts down to just two words: God first. From Genesis to Revelation, the bottom line interpretation and application of the commandments, character studies, allegories, parables, psalms, sermons, Gospels, Epistles and teachings of Jesus is simply “God first.” The prayer Jesus taught us begins with that God-first emphasis when He instructs us to begin by asking God that His name, the essence of Who and what He is, might be honored and reverenced…
Prayer is not a matter of us persuading God to do our will. The very essence of prayer is an alignment between our wills and the will of God. Prayer is not a matter of us making God our partner and taking God into our plans. Prayer is a matter of God making us His partners and taking us into His plans…
We are not to come into our prayer closets, or corporate worship, with a ‘shopping list’ and send God on errands for us. When we pray, we should come into the presence of God with a blank sheet of paper and ask God to send us on errands for Him. We should be like soldiers reporting for duty to their Commander in Chief.
Dick Woodward, A Prescription for Prayer
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Posted by Dick Woodward
January 28, 2014
“But when he saw the wind, he was afraid and, beginning to sink, cried out, ‘Lord, save me!’” (Matthew 14:30)
The Apostle Peter is the only man besides Jesus Christ who ever walked on water. Yet millions only remember that he took his eyes off the Lord and would have drowned if the Lord had not saved him.
We read that Peter’s magnificent faith was flawed. He saw the wind. Since we cannot see wind this actually means when he saw what the wind was doing, he lost sight of what Jesus was doing and he became afraid. The remarkable thing here is that when he kept his eyes on Jesus, he walked on water!
It was not until he was beginning to sink that Peter cried out this prayer. Two thousand years later, this remains a go-to prayer for us all through the many storms of life. Jesus taught that our prayers should not be long and we should never think we will generate grace with God by our many words. If Peter had prayed a longer prayer, the words beyond the third would have been glub, glub glub! When Jesus caught Peter by the hand He gave him the nickname, “Little Faith.” (I believe our Lord was smiling when He did.) He literally asked Peter: “Why did you think twice?”
While very ill the past two weeks many people have been recruited to pray for me. Yesterday it occurred to me that I had not prayed for myself. I then fervently pleaded this prayer that the Lord always answers: Lord, save me!
In your spiritual walk, don’t think twice and don’t be a “Little Faith.” Instead, learn to plead this prayer…and soon you will find your way through the stormy waves of life walking on water.
(Editor’s Note: As he recovers from a severe bronchial infection, Dick Woodward had a wee bit of extra assistance from his Blog Posting Elf getting his words online. Prayers appreciated!)
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Posted by Dick Woodward
September 7, 2013
“My voice You shall hear in the morning, O Lord; In the morning I will direct it to You, and I will look up.” (Psalm 5:3)
In one sentence in this beautiful psalm David twice emphasizes the reality that he will pray to his God in the morning. There are three directions of life we must master. We must learn to look up. We must learn to look in until our Lord shows us things we need to know about ourselves. Only then are we prepared to look around in all our relationships.
Anytime we are having difficulty in our relationships with spouses, children, parents or those who are outside the home we should always ask ourselves if we have looked up and looked in sincerely. Knowing ourselves as God wants us to know ourselves is crucial preparation for relating to others.
Smart people are very often right and so they sometimes think they are always right. It is very difficult to live with those who think they are always right. In the same way it is difficult to relate to those who think they never sin. When God helps us look in and see ourselves as He sees us it gives us a humility that is a tool we need to face our relationships.
What would you think of a concert violinist who plays a beautiful concerto solo and then instead of an encore comes out and tunes her violin? In the same way we should not play the concert of our day and then tune the instrument of our lives.
We should begin ‘in the morning’ tuning our lives through our prayers to God as the Psalmist directs us, so that we can look up, look in and then look around.
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Posted by Dick Woodward
June 28, 2013
Oh, that we might know the LORD! Let us press on to know him! Then he will respond to us as surely as the arrival of dawn or the coming of rains in early spring.” (Hosea 6:3 NLT)
When I first came to faith and for the first few years as a pastor I struggled with the concept of knowing God personally. I struggled until several spiritual heavyweights mentored me in this dimension of my faith journey. They helped me by shaking everything down to three simple propositions that were basic, yet absolute.
The three propositions are: God is there, God is real, and God is personal.
I have not struggled with the proposition that God is there. My mentors challenged me to think about all the ways God responds to our many prayers to Him. As proclaimed by Hosea I found that when I related myself to God He responded by relating Himself to me. That inspired me to believe that He is not only there but He is very real when I relate to Him and make contact with Him there.
Over time as I shared the intimate dimensions of my personal, private and even secret life with Him I affirmed the glorious reality that God is personal and I should believe Him when He tells me He knows the number of hairs on my head at any given moment. I should also believe Him when He tells me He has a plan for my life that when followed will make me an original person distinct from every other living person.
Are you pressing on to know the Lord? If you are, I offer you these three propositions that can help us all know the Lord when we believe them.
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Posted by Dick Woodward
June 8, 2013
“A person’s steps are confirmed by the Lord.” (Psalm 37:23 Berkeley)
THE NINTH STEP: Look for confirmation as you seek God’s will.
At times on our journeys of faith when we come to a fork in the road there is no verse of Scripture that tells us to go to the right or to the left and we have no prompting or leading of the Spirit. We do our best to make the proper choice, while acknowledging the hard reality that we simply do not know which direction is the will of the Lord. Having done everything we can to discern the will of God, we journey down one side or the other of that road.
The verse quoted above means we should sometimes move forward into what we perceive to be the will of God, praying and looking for a confirmation. That confirmation may be positive or negative. If everything works out and the direction we have chosen obviously has God’s stamp of approval on it, we can say God has given us a confirmation of His will. We have the conviction of God saying to us, “This is the way, walk in it.” (Isaiah 30:21) We see evidence of the reality Jesus described, that when He calls His sheep to follow Him, He goes before them. (John 10:1-4) After we commit to a direction, we see evidence that the Living Christ has gone before us and prepared the way for us.
Sometimes, the confirmation is negative and the results are the opposite of those just described. When that happens, we should be humble enough to go back to that fork in the road and choose the other direction. We see an example of this in Acts chapter 16 when Paul wanted to go into Asia and was directed instead by illness into Philippi.
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Posted by Dick Woodward
May 25, 2013
STEP NUMBER FOUR: Spend much time in God’s Word.
Let me tell you why. In chapter 55 of his prophecy, Isaiah tells us there is as much difference between the thoughts and ways of God and the way we think and do things as the heavens are high above the earth (vv. 8-9). He then goes on to describe one of the many supernatural functions of the Word of God.
The Word of God establishes an alignment between our thoughts, ways and wills, and the thoughts, ways and will of God.
I once heard Billy Graham tell of boarding a plane before he was famous. He spoke to an old pastor friend who was sitting in an aisle seat reading his Bible. The old pastor completely ignored Billy. When they had been in flight for about an hour, the pastor came back to where Billy was seated and greeted him enthusiastically. He apologized for ignoring Billy earlier. He said, “When I pray, I am talking to God, but when I open God’s Word, He talks to me. He was talking to me when you spoke to me and I could not interrupt God just to talk to Billy Graham.”
Thomas à Kempis opened his Bible every morning with this prayer: “Let all the voices be stopped. Speak to me Lord, Thou alone.” If we sincerely want to know the will of God, we must be in relationship and in conversation with God. We should speak to our loving heavenly Father in prayer and expect God to speak to us as we open the Word of God. That is why two of the bases we must touch when we seek to know the will of God are prayer and the Word of God.
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Posted by Dick Woodward
May 23, 2013
“One day Jesus was praying in a certain place. When he finished, one of his disciples said to him, ‘Lord, teach us to pray, just as John taught his disciples.” (Luke 11:1)
When the disciple’s asked Jesus this request they were not just asking Him the ‘how to’ of prayer. They were amazed at the large amounts of time Jesus prioritized for prayer. They were asking something like ‘teach us what you know about prayer that we obviously do not know that causes You to spend so very much time in prayer.’
STEP NUMBER THREE: Spend much time in prayer.
When you must know the will of another human being, what is the first step you take? Our first thought is usually that we must meet with that person and have a conversation with them. When a man is in love and decides he wants to marry a woman, his first thought is that he must meet with her and have a conversation with her.
When we seek to know the will of God, our first thought should be that we must meet with God and have a conversation with Him. Prayer is a conversation with God. If you do not know how to pray, think of prayer as simply meeting with and having a personal conversation with God.
Jesus responded to the apostles with a prayer that was not as much a prayer as it was an instruction about how to pray. When you are alone, use that prayer as an outline for your conversation with God. You will find yourself applying the second and third steps I have shared with you for knowing the will of God when Jesus instructs you to pray:
“Your kingdom come; Your will be done.”
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Posted by Dick Woodward
