When we are searching for the words and ways in which to pray to God, we can look to Jesus Christ. He is our living example, in all things, as we walk through our lives on this earth. As we faithfully look to Him, these verses Luke recorded in His Gospel show us to follow His lead as we pray.

The Real Deal …is Love. God is Love. We are called to love others as He has loved us. The real deal is praying for and loving our enemies; forgiving without apology; seeking others to serve instead of looking to fulfill our own needs. Jireh will make sure we have what we need, as we faithfully follow His call on our lives to love the people He has purposefully placed in them. 

Each day, we wake with a schedule, a calendar, and a plan. But only God knows what each day will bring. When the bottom falls out of our day, our plan, our schedule, and our calendar …who do we run to? How do we react? The way we daily prepare and care for our hearts, minds and souls matters in moments of distress.

Freedom is a product of the cross. Jesus chose to die on our behalf, breaking chains and forgiving our sins before we set foot on the earth. Free is freedom from sin, not from ignorance (NIV Study). It’s important to know, for example, that where there is a high pollen count, allergies to pollen will be aggravated. We can take antihistamines to calm the reaction, but the underlying truth doesn’t disappear, no matter how much we want to convince ourselves of it. The same is true in this life.

Our home is in heaven. On the way there, as we are sanctified by the Spirit, we will no doubt experience times when our legs are wobbly and we’re coaching ourselves just to keep moving. In all of our wobbly moments and victorious climbs, we are never alone.

God gives us the strength to run the race with the fruits of the Spirit to bring glory and honor to Him. This is the reason we run through the line when He tells us to “go.” He doesn’t have to involve us in His plan, but He chooses to, giving us all a unique purpose as workers for His kingdom.

We often support causes and campaigns that benefit our lives. There is no greater blessing, no more powerful benefit, than following Jesus. We can search our entire lives for sources of happiness. Each one – each bumper sticker, button, yard sign, even vote – are not what our hope is based in.

Looking down too often can pull the bones in our neck and back out of place, causing nerve pinches and numbness. Failing to meet with our Father in His Word and in prayer pulls us down into the doldrums of what the world has to say to us … what others have planned for us. Only in the effort we make to meet with Him does He faithfully adjust our perspective.

Halfway through the Ten Commandments, God instructs His people to honor their fathers and mothers. Peter repeats in Ephesians 6:1, “Children, obey your parents in the Lord, for this is right.” God knows we are incapable of following His commands, and thus made a way for us to be forever forgiven by Jesus’ death on the cross. Belief in Him saves us, not following rules.

So, what then, is the purpose of commands such as “honor your father and mother,” in our New Testament lives? It’s out of God’s protective and provisional love for us that commands like this continue to act as guardrails to the full life Jesus died to give us.

Life is as deep as the ocean currents I witnessed in the inlet the day my family went shell-hunting on vacation. To fight the good fight, and finish the race, we have to keep the faith, the deep truths, with a clear conscience. Scripture tells us to take our thoughts captive. The only way to know the truth is to learn God’s Truth in the Bible.

God promises us complete strength and complete peace, not a momentary sigh of relief or a temporary rescue. The Bible tells us to pray about everything. God knows and cares about each hesitation, butterfly in our stomachs, and lump in our throats. He’s aware of His big asks of us.

The teetering trap will cause us to cry out to God! Let’s face it, human nature tends toward dramatic reactions! Pain gets our attention, whether physical, spiritual, or mental. Weariness brings us to the end of ourselves, because we were never meant to do life alone. We were meant to walk through it in Christ, and rest in His arms when our circumstances threaten to trap us in despair and hopelessness.

This powerful love of God fuels the body of Christ, and the Spirit enables us to be one on a mission for the Gospel. “Be completely humble and gentle;” Paul wrote, “be patient, bearing with one another in love. Make every effort to keep the unity of the Spirit through the bond of peace” (Ephesians 4:2-3).

God’s timing is better than our planning, but it’s extremely hard to loosen the grip of control we have on our schedules and our people, and the fear of what in the wide world of chaos is coming next.