Beltway Weekend Services (Video)

When God says no, He is often up to something better. God loves us too much to give us everything we ask for. Because Jesus now sits at the right hand of God and intercedes on our behalf, we can boldly approach the throne of God in prayer, knowing that Jesus will filter and adjust our prayers to make them what they should be.

We pray, first and foremost, so that God might birth mountain-sized dreams in us. He has set eternity in our hearts and desires to deposit in us dreams that seem impossible and require us to wholly trust Him. When we begin to circle those Spirit-inspired dreams in prayer with faith, we join God in bringing the wonder and goodness of His kingdom to earth. When we faithfully cry out to God about the dreams He has put in us, mountains will be moved and the impossible will become possible.

God wants to hear from us. He wants us to pray bold, Spirit-led prayers, to draw or pray circles around our greatest dreams, fears, or needs. In fact, it honors God when we do so. But the reality is that most people struggle to pray. Even the first disciples of Jesus said to Him, “Lord, teach us to pray…” Because God is our Heavenly Father, He gives good gifts to those who ask Him. His heart is to respond when we cry out to Him.

To face the future with courage we must regularly recount God’s faithfulness in the past. The temptation, when looking at a future that is uncertain and difficult, is to forget or minimize what God has done and instead to look to our own abilities and become self-reliant. Relying on ourselves causes us to live without faith or courage. Remembering the work of God in our lives and telling the stories over and over helps us face the future with confidence and boldness.

You are not alone. When we feel that it is impossible to do that which God has asked us to do (e.g. pray without ceasing, sin no more, submit to your spouse, obey all that He has commanded, etc.), the Holy Spirit is with us and lives in us. The Holy Spirit is our helper, and when we learn to rely on Him and walk in relationship with Him, we can attain the unattainable. He gives us power to do the impossible, the same power that raised Jesus from the dead.

The more we give, the more we receive. When we say yes to God – just as Mary, Joseph, and the shepherds said yes to Him in the original Christmas narrative – out of us flows deep rivers of living water. When the blessings of God flow out of us to those around us and to our community, we experience abundant life and find the longings of our heart satisfied. It is the counter-cultural design of the Kingdom of God: we are more blessed when we give than when we receive.

Our relationship with God is always greater and more significant than keeping all the rules of our faith. By healing on the Sabbath and violating the rules of the Jewish establishment, Jesus made it clear that God wants us to do more than obey the rules. He wants us to know Him intimately and personally as a father and friend.He wants us to know Him closely like a husband knows his wife. Such relationships are about the heart – about affection and tenderness that bring pleasure – and not just about obligation.

This Christmas, we are called to remember well how we got clean. We will never know the grandeur and greatness of the good news that gives great joy – the birth of Jesus – unless we acknowledge and embrace the utter impossibility of our condition without Jesus. Apart from Him, we are hopelessly lost, slaves and enemies that stand condemned and separated from our Heavenly Father. But when He appeared, Jesus saved us by the washing of regeneration and renewal of the Holy Spirit. He makes us clean, not with water but with His precious blood on the cross.

We are called to a life of peace, not stress. Facing the anxiousness that often accompanies the Christmas season begins by deliberately choosing to battle against stress, to guard the things and relationships that matter most to us. The first step to this is approaching God in prayer, with a thankful heart. When we do this, God then replaces our worry and anxiety with His perfect peace. The second step is to thoroughly examine our priorities and to give intentional time and energy to what matters most. This often entails saying no to less things or activities, and it means not giving in to the situations that scream the loudest for our immediate attention.

For the love of money is the root of all kinds of evils. Understood within its proper context, money is not the root of all kinds of evil; the love of money is. The problem, however, is that the human heart naturally gravitates towards loving money, believing the lie that more money will provide acceptance, identity, security, and happiness. The answer for believers today is not to get rid of money. Instead, radical gratitude is the remedy to the love of money. Radical gratitude means purposefully speaking words of thanksgiving instead of complaining and developing a heart of generosity instead of consumption.