Category Archives: Prayer

January 24, 2019 · 10:38 am

Prayers for Families (1/24/2019)

When Jesus returned to Nazareth with His disciples and taught in the local synagogue, His neighbors were astonished at His wisdom and understanding and said, “Isn’t He a carpenter? Isn’t He the son of Mary?”

Both of these statements were putdowns.

By saying Jesus was a carpenter, they inferred that He had no formal theological training under a rabbi. So, how could people pay attention to His words without a proper resume?

And son of Mary? By not referring to Him as the son of Joseph, the people alluded to the rumors that Jesus was an illegitimate son.

Jesus looked at the crowd and said, “A prophet is honored everywhere except in his own hometown and among his relatives and his own family.” (Mark 6:4 NLT)

Shouldn’t Jesus’ family have honored Him? They had watched Him grow up into being a strong man of faith and saw His godly wisdom displayed over and over again. And He most likely supported His family by being a carpenter after Joseph’s death.

Plus, Joseph and Mary would have told their family about Jesus’ birth, the shepherds, the star, the three wisemen, the prophetic words by Simeon and Anna, Joseph’s visions and more.

Yet, with all of this, Jesus’ family did not honor Him during His earthly ministry.

My prayer today:

Lord, help us to love and honor our families on their good days, on their bad days, on the days when we haven’t a clue about why they’re doing something or whatever because You love families and consider Your children a heavenly family for You. (Based on Ephesians 3:15)

Join with me on Thursdays to fast and pray for our families.

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January 21, 2019 · 10:14 am

Politicians, False Prophets and Jesus (Part 6)

Global Warming

Two years after his An Inconvenient Truth documentary hit the movie theaters in 2006, former Vice President Al Gore spoke at the New Baptist Covenant Celebration in Atlanta.  “Global warming is not a political issue,” Gore told a crowd of approximately 2,500 paying attendees. “It is a moral issue. It is an ethical issue. It is a spiritual issue.”

Gore repeated his views that increasing amounts of carbon dioxide in the earth’s atmosphere was causing a global climate crisis. He used four Bible verses to justify his spiritual issue assertion:

Then He also said to the multitudes, “Whenever you see a cloud rising out of the west, immediately you say, ‘A shower is coming’; and so it is.55 And when you see the south wind blow, you say, ‘There will be hot weather’; and there is.56 Hypocrites! You can discern the face of the sky and of the earth, but how is it you do not discern this time? 57 “Yes, and why, even of yourselves, do you not judge what is right? (Luke 12:54-57)

“The evidence is there,” Gore said. “The signal is on the mountain. The trumpet has blown. The scientists are screaming from the rooftops. The ice is melting. The land is parched. The seas are rising. The storms are getting stronger. Why do we not judge what is right?”

Robert Parham, the executive director of the Baptist Center for Ethics referred to Gore as a Baptist prophet and added, “Prophets are unacceptable because their truth is inconvenient.”

Jesus said that we should judge prophets by their fruit. So let’s do that, okay?

First, if Al Gore is a true prophet, the truths he proclaimed in his ground-breaking documentary, An Inconvenient Truth, should be accurate. Are they?

Not really. Almost all of his predictions have failed so far. A judge in England went so far as to demand that nine untruths in the documentary be changed or a syllabus provided for the teachers, in order for the documentary to be shown in the nation’s school classrooms. Gore and his group caved in and provided a syllabus. Others have suggested even more errors than just nine.

Second, money, and lots of it.

Gore earns between $100,000 and $150,000 per speech. His wealth is estimated at almost $300 million dollars. Although his royalty earnings from his books and film projects are pledged to his nonprofit, Climate Reality Project, he has successfully leveraged himself as a climate activist and received invitations to be involved in numerous lucrative deals over the years.

Third, scriptural justification.

Gore’s use of Luke 12:54-57 to justify his spiritual issue assertion has nothing to do with his theories on global warming. He could just as well have used, “Balaam rose up in the morning and saddled his ass” because it’s just as meaningless to his cause as the verses in Luke. 

Fourth, hypocrisy.

Isaiah, Jeremiah, Elijah, Elisha and other prophets of God, not only preached what Israel needed to do to avoid calamitous judgments, they also lived in the righteous ways they expected others to follow.

But a critic of Gore said, “Al’s a limousine liberal, a tiresome pedant and climate alarmist who lives a jet-setting, carbon-profligate lifestyle while preaching asceticism for everyone else.” He lives in an oceanfront six-bedroom, $8.9-million villa — the exact place where he predicted the water would rise twenty feet when the ice in Antartica melts.

Okay, is Al Gore a prophet?

Then many false prophets will rise up and deceive many. (Matthew 24:11)

I believe Gore’s fruit shows that he is a false prophet on global warming. And if he is the point man who is at the forefront of the global warming movement throughout the world, what can we say about the others who are following him? At the least, I believe they are deceived and at the worst they are also false prophets and maybe even greedy hucksters.

It’s my opinion that God is still in control of the weather and that the global warming movement is an anti-God money scam.

You, of course, need to make up your own mind.

(Continued in Part 6…but if you want to read all of the parts to date, you can go here.)

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January 19, 2019 · 9:29 am

Do Our Personal Sins Hurt Our Neighbors? (Part 2)

 

As I wrote in Part 1: the word sin means “missing the mark,” as an archer’s arrow misses its target. One of our most common sins is fear.

The following is a true story from my life:

“If you can’t pay the truck payments up to date by Monday afternoon, bring us the truck. No more stalling because it has to be one or the other,” said the Ford Motor Credit official.

I hung up the phone, wondering if the Lord had another financial miracle in His basket to deliver me out of this predicament.

The new Ford F-150 pickup became a part of my life just five days before that dreadful morning on July 8, 1994. A special offer to businessmen lured me into the Ford dealership in Ames and the zero down payment financing sealed the deal. The dealership even filled the dual tanks with gas before I drove off the sales lot. What a blessing, I thought at the time.

Then, my financial nightmare hit.

The $300 monthly truck payment and insurance expenses added millstone weights to my downward death spiral. On the one hand, I needed the truck to remain a painting contractor so I could earn enough money to pay off my bad checks and painting debts. Yet, on the other hand, there never seemed to be enough money left over from my painting jobs for truck payments.

I eventually trusted the Lord to work out all of my other financial problems, and even had peace about each of them, but the Ford F-150 was a different story. I could not remove the nagging fear of losing it. It haunted me day and night.

The truck payments were ninety days late four times in the year after July 8, 1994. My problem was not an imaginary fear, but rather, a real one. I awoke each morning and looked out the window, checking if the truck still remained outside in the parking lot or had been repossessed during the night.

A friend grabbed my shoulder one morning during a prayer meeting, turning me around to face her.

“The Lord spoke to me about you, and said the cares of the world are pulling Larry under,” she said, staring into my eyes.

“Yeah, that’s right. It’s the truck. I can’t quit worrying about it. Pray for me.”

She prayed, but I still had no peace about the situation.

I fasted and prayed against every possible demon. I read Psalm 37 and countless other scriptures to bolster my faith, but still, the fear of losing the truck sucked every bit of joy out of my life.

The Lord finally spoke to me in a vision while I slept one night: “The truck is Mine −not yours. It is My responsibility to watch over it. If I choose to give it back to Ford Motor Company, that’s up to Me, and not you. So, quit worrying about it.”

My fears evaporated that morning. Why worry about someone else’s problems, right?

Ford Motor Company repossessed the truck six months later. I washed, waxed, and cleaned it before returning it to the dealership. It was the Lord’s truck and I wanted Him to know how much I appreciated driving it.

(An excerpt from my memoir – The Hunt for Larry Who by Larry Nevenhoven, ©2014, Amazon eBook)

(Continued in Part 3…but if you want to read all the parts to death, you can go here.

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January 17, 2019 · 11:28 am

Prayers for Families (1/17/2019)

At Thanksgiving, we love to see those advertisements with a happy family sitting around a big table enjoying their turkey feast and fellowshipping with each other. This is a part of our American tradition where families love to get together, especially during the holidays.

But what about dysfunctional families?

A friend recalls his childhood family experiences with horror. His mom adored his older brother, but from his earliest years onward, he can only remember his mom’s contempt for him. She would punish him for the smallest infractions by spanking him always hard enough to make him cry. Then she would continue spanking him until he would quit crying. A no-win situation for a four or five year old child.

“You will never amount to anything in your life!” his mom proclaimed to him over and over again.

And guess what?

His brother grew up to be a wealthy businessman, but my friend was always in trouble. First, in elementary school and then later on as a juvenile delinquent. At 18 years of age, my friend forged a check for ten dollars. The judge sentenced him to ten years in prison for his crime.

His mom never once wrote him a letter or visited him while he was in prison.

When I first met my friend, he was thirty-five years old and had spent half his life in prison. He had become a Christian, had joined a church once, had been on fire for the Lord, but the church had treated him poorly. So, as you can imagine, my friend had trust issues.

I prayed over him once and had a quick vision. In it, I saw him sitting on a cot in a prison cell. He was weeping buckets of tears as he faced a brick wall. The vision panned outward, revealing that the prison door was wide open. All he had to do was stand up, turn around and walk out the door to his freedom.

To this day, my friend is still sitting in bondage to his childhood past.

This is an extreme example, but there are thousands of others that are much, much worse.

My prayer today:

Lord, send Your Spirit to bring Good News to families and their members, to proclaim liberty to any captives, to open blind eyes and free those who might be suffering from ill treatment by their families. (Based on Luke 4:18)

Join with me on Thursdays to fast and pray for our families.

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January 16, 2019 · 10:32 am

Politicians, False Prophets and Jesus (Part 5)

 

Global Warming

As a reminder: let’s look once again at what God said to the prophet Isaiah –

Declaring the end from the beginning, and from ancient times things that are not yet done, saying, “My counsel shall stand, and I will do all My pleasure” (Isaiah 46:10 NKJV)

These words were so important that He repeated them here and here.

Thus, if God was able to look into the future when He set the foundations of the earth, do you really think He would have given humans enough power – good or bad – to destroy the earth? Is the One who fixed the stars, sun and moon in the heavens and also created the earth and all of its organisms so naive to overlook any important point like this?

Of course not!

From the Book of Genesis to the Book of Revelation, only Joshua, Elijah and Jesus have affected climate conditions so far.

Joshua asked God to have the sun and moon stand still so he could finish his nation’s battle with the Amorites.

And there has been no day like that, before it or after it, that the LORD heeded the voice of a man; for the LORD fought for Israel. (Joshua 10:14)

Elijah walked into King Ahab’s court and said, “As the Lord God of Israel lives, there shall be no rain or dew in Israel for the next few years unless I give it the word.”

Elijah was a man with a nature like ours, and he prayed earnestly that it would not rain…And he prayed again and the heaven gave rain, and the earth produced its fruit. (James 5:17-18)

Jesus and His disciples sailed in a fishing boat across the Sea of Galilee to the opposite side. Jesus fell asleep. A massive tempest arose, causing large waves to wash over the boat. The disciples feared for their lives and awakened Him. Jesus stood up and rebuked the wind and waves. The storm immediately ceased and the sea was calm.

Jesus looked at them and said, “Where is your faith?”

And they feared exceedingly, and said to one another, “Who can this be, that even the wind and the sea obey Him!” (Mark 4:41)

Now, in the end-times, the two witnesses who will prophesy for one thousand two hundred and sixty days just before Jesus returns will be able to control some climate conditions.

The two witnesses have power to shut heaven, so that no rain falls in the days of their prophecy… (Revelation

Yes, mankind’s sins have caused droughts and climate problems over a single nation, but it has not been a global phenomenon since the great flood nor will it be again until God cleanses the earth with fire.

So, what’s the real problem with global warming?

(Continued in Part 5…but if you want to read all of the parts to date, you can go here.)

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January 15, 2019 · 10:55 am

Prayers for California to Wake Up (1/15/2019)

 

Does anyone remember Azam Amir Kasav? Maybe this photo will help:

mohammed_ajmal_kasab

Kasav was one of ten Pakistani terrorists who stormed buildings and hotels in Mumbai and slaughtered 164 innocent people in November 26-29, 2008. Twenty-one year old Kasav was the only one captured alive.

The ten terrorists trained for months, learning how to use high-tech rifles, bombs and grenades, gobbling steroids to buff up their bodies, studying maps of Mumbai and the buildings they would attack and dedicating themselves to kill until their dying breaths. Their goal was to slaughter 5,000 people.

Azam Amir Kasav was found guilty and executed in 2012.

Wake up California!

Do we possibly think this type of attack can’t happen in California? Have politicians so hoodwinked us with their repeated spewings about the dangers of global warming claptrap that we actually trust these political shysters with our families’ lives? Are there terrorists training right now to attack San Diego or Los Angeles or San Francisco or other cities in our state? What can we do?

My prayer today:

Lord, blow a trumpet in California, sound an alarm, call the church to turn to You with all of our hearts, with fasting, weeping and mourning, to rend our hearts before You in hopes that You will show us mercy, even though we deserve Your judgment. (Based on Joel 2)

Join with me on Tuesdays to fast and pray for California and the West Coast.

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January 11, 2019 · 6:25 am

Do Our Personal Sins Hurt Our Neighbors? (Part 1)

I recently saw an interesting meme on a Facebook’s friend’s timeline, promoting pro-choice and abortion:

“This isn’t about abortion. It’s about people having options, and everyone else minding his own business. If it does not affect you directly, it’s not your business.”

The meme’s words caused me to ask myself, “Do my personal sins affect my neighbors’ lives?”

Let’s begin seeking answers to this question by looking at the various types of sin in the Bible.

Keeping mercy for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, by no means clearing the guilty, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children and the children’s children to the third and the fourth generation. (Exodus 34:7)

The Bible separates sin into three specific types: sin, transgression and iniquity.

Although the word sin can be used as a generic catchall word for all three types, its biblical definition really means “missing the mark,” as an archer’s arrow misses its target.

For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. (Romans 3:23)

Basic sin is disobedience to God’s commands and His word, but usually without willful intent. Examples of sin: losing your temper with your spouse, getting caught up in gossip with your neighbor, exaggerating your importance at work to a new employee and so forth.

All basic sins can easily be reconciled by asking forgiveness of the Lord and if needed, the person involved.

The word transgression means revolt or rebellion and is willful disobedience of God’s commands.                       

And Adam was not deceived, but the woman being deceived, fell into transgression (1Timothy 2:14)

Eve knew that God had commanded them not to eat the fruit of the tree of good and evil, but she rebelled and did it anyway. As with all acts of rebellion, Eve suffered consequences for her transgression.

Truthfully, we all have transgressed at different times in our Christian journeys and can probably give interesting testimonies about the consequences we suffered. But as with sin, transgression simply requires us to ask forgiveness of the Lord and anybody involved. Then, we need to change our ways and not continue in the transgression.

Yet, continuing in a transgression without repentance eventually leads to iniquity. The word iniquity means depravity (evil perverseness or moral corruption) and always carries within it the hatred of God and His ways.

Iniquity is not always a voluntary disobedience to the commands of God, like transgression is, but instead, it may be more of a second nature sin. It could be a demonic stronghold within the individual which was passed on through his ancestral lineage or through rape or it could be that the individual surrendered himself to an evil principality over a region.

The iniquities of the wicked ensnare him, and he is held fast in the cords of his sin. (Proverbs 5:22 ESV)

Ridding oneself of iniquity is not as easy as it is for sins or transgressions. Because it is intertwined with the individual’s personality and attitudes, it requires acceptance of truth, God’s mercy and the fear of the Lord to set an individual free. This usually needs a deliverance move by the Spirit of God upon the people.

…For I, the LORD your God, am a jealous God, visiting [punishing] the iniquity of the fathers upon the children to the third and fourth generations of those who hate Me. (Deuteronomy 5:9)

Iniquities are not committed in spiritual vacuums. They are committed before the throne of God and cry out to the Judge to be avenged.

(Continued in Part 2)

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January 10, 2019 · 11:43 am

Prayers for Families (1/10/2019)

There was a time when I thought that if I ever got my finances in shape, my health issues under control, my relationships all healed, my sin problems handled and my spiritual life raised to a higher level, I would do amazing things for God.

My focus was spent on reigning over these five areas of my life. But guess what?

No matter how hard I tried, there were always one or two of these five areas that were shipwrecked at any given time. My frustrations agreed with the Apostle Paul when he wrote: “O wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death?”

It took a few years, but I finally decided to check out how Jesus handled stressful circumstances.

Then Jesus said, “Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they do.” And they divided His garments and cast lots. (Luke 23:34)

Then the thief said to Jesus, “Lord, remember me when You come into Your kingdom.” And Jesus said to him, “Assuredly, I say to you, today you will be with Me in Paradise.” (Luke 23:42-43)

When Jesus therefore saw His mother, and the disciple whom He loved standing by, He said to His mother, “Woman, behold your son!” Then He said to the disciple, “Behold your mother!” And from that hour that disciple took her to his own home. (John 19:26-27)

Jesus on the cross, which had to be His worse time of stress, did not consider His painful circumstances, but cared about others more than Himself. He was a servant to the end and trusted that His Father would deliver Him out of His troubles.

A light turned on inside me when I saw this and thought: “If it worked for Jesus, it will work for me.”

Today, I spend very little time praying for my own issues and most of my time praying for others. It’s not that my problems aren’t big because like yours, they are, but I want to please Him, the One who with just a blink of His eye can turn all of my problems around in a nanosecond.

Okay, for the next few weeks, I plan on praying for families. If yours are like mine, then there are sick members, unsaved ones, troubled marriages and more. If you can, join me.

My prayer today:

Lord, stir up our love for our family members so that we are willing to lay our lives down for them, whether it’s in prayer, fasting or taking a bullet for them. And as You work Your love in us for them, I remind You that Your Word says, “Love never fails.” (Based on 1 Corinthians 13)

Join with me on Thursdays to fast and pray for our families.

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January 8, 2019 · 11:44 am

Prayers for California (1/8/2019)

Last December, I felt what we saw in Donald Trump was pretty much what we had to put up with. A 70-year-old man with swooped back hair, wearing a Brioni suit, dripping with pride, petty anger, intelligence and courage.

But I also felt what we saw did not count much compared to what God saw in Trump’s heart. I believed God saw a man who would take a stand for Israel, weather every international storm sure to hit him and still move the U.S. Embassy to Jerusalem, recognizing the Holy City as the capital of Israel. (WND, column by Larry Nevenhoven, 12/22/2017)

If my insight was correct when I wrote the above column for WND, then there might be some problems for those who openly defy or rebel against President Trump –

He allowed no one to oppress them; He rebuked kings on their account, saying, “Touch not My anointed ones, do My prophets no harm!” (Psalm 105:15 ESV)

I don’t believe President Trump is a prophet, but I do absolutely believe he is God’s chosen man to bless Israel at this stage in history. So, along with the anointing, I believe God will protect and avenge President Trump.

How will God do this? I don’t claim to know, but I do understand that the Hebrew word translated into our English word rebuked can mean more than a verbal reprimand. It can  also mean to be judged and chastened.

Why pray for California?

Gavin Newsom was sworn in as California’s 40th governor yesterday. In his acceptance speech, he stated that California would offer an alternative to the corruption and incompetence in the White House. Not only that, Newsom placed California in a nation-state category versus the Trump Administration and America.

Therefore, I live in California, a state that openly thumbs its nose at God’s anointed. This may not end well for us.

My prayer for today:

O Lord, California has sinned and done wrong and acted wickedly and rebelled against You and Your ways. To You belongs righteousness, but to us open shame because we have sinned against You. According to Your righteousness, let Your anger and Your wrath turn away from California. O Lord, listen to Your servant’s pleas for mercy and for Your own sake, make Your face shine upon California, which is a desperate state in need of Your Spirit now. (Based on Daniel 9:3-19)

Join with me on Tuesdays to fast and pray for California and the West Coast.

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January 7, 2019 · 12:20 pm

Politicians, False Prophets and Jesus (Part 3)

Global Warming

What always encourages me when I look at today’s issues is what God said to the prophet Isaiah –

Declaring the end from the beginning, and from ancient times things that are not yet done, saying, “My counsel shall stand, and I will do all My pleasure” (Isaiah 46:10 NKJV)

Now, consider His words for a moment, which He repeated here and here.

Therefore, if we agree with the Bible, we then must believe that the Creator of heaven and earth saw all of today’s fuss and worry about global warming before He created the world and mankind, right? Yet, even so, He still went ahead with His creation, confidant that His counsel (plans and purposes) would be more than enough to withstand every problem in the future.

What were/are God’s plans?

Then God said, “Let Us (Father, Son, Holy Spirit) make man in Our image, according to Our likeness [not physical, but a spiritual personality and moral likeness]; and let them have complete authority over the fish of the sea, the birds of the air, the cattle, and over the entire earth, and over everything that creeps and crawls on the earth.” (Genesis 1:26 AMP)

Notice that God gave authority to mankind over all the animals on the earth, but not over  the weather, the various climates throughout the earth or over the solar system. This means He kept all of these in His own hands, right?

If we have any doubts about who is in charge of weather, these should all be erased with the mentioning of one incident –

When Noah was 600 years old, on the seventeenth day of the second month, all the underground waters erupted from the earth, and the rain fell in mighty torrents from the sky. The rain continued to fall for forty days and forty nights. (Genesis 7:11-12 NLT)

A thousand years after the Great Flood, God made His covenant with Israel. He promised to give rain to the nation in its proper seasons so that Israel’s land would produce crops and its trees would bear fruit. These promises were  predicated on Israel following God and obeying His law.

But if Israel failed to follow Him or obey His law, God promised to withhold the rain from from falling on Israel.

Have you ever wondered why the Arabs and other nations didn’t take over the land of Israel before the Jews returned in significant numbers to it in the Twentieth Century?

Rabbi Kohen points out the land suffered an unprecedented, severe and inexplicable (by anything other than supernatural explanations) drought that lasted from the first century until the 20th – a period of 1,800 years coinciding with the forced dispersion of the Jews…

For 1,800 years, it hardly ever rained in Israel. This was the barren land discovered by Mark Twain. So-called “Palestine” was a wasteland – nobody lived there. There was no indigenous Arab population to speak of. It only came after the Jews came back…(Joseph Farah, WND, 11/21/2007)

Nobody wanted the land of Israel until the Jews came back because it was a wasteland. God then allowed rain to fall on Israel.

Okay? God is in charge of weather and climates. Period.

But what about Satan? Can he influence weather?

(Continued in Part 4…but if you want to read all of the parts to date, you can go here.)

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