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January 19 - February 28, 2025
The greatest tragedy in life is the prayers that go unanswered simply because they go unasked.
They went forth and preached every where, the Lord … confirming the word with signs following. MARK 16:20 KJV
God is honored when we act as if He is going to answer our prayers!
Don’t just pray about your dream; act on it. Act as if God is going to deliver on His promise.
This isn’t some “name it, claim it” scheme. If it’s not in the will of God, if it’s not for the glory of God, it’s a waste of time, energy, and money. But if the dream is ordained by God, then that $85 step of faith honors God. And God will honor your $85 faith. Think of it as a down payment on your dream.
If you want to see God move, make a move.
“Speak to the earth, and it will teach you.” JOB 12:8
And one God-idea is worth more than a thousand good ideas.
Good ideas are good, but only God-ideas change the course of history.
At some point in our lives, the best we can do isn’t good enough. Our best solutions, ideas, and efforts aren’t good enough. That’s when we need to hit our knees and trust God to do what only God can do. After all, prayer is the difference between the best you can do and the best God can do. And that’s a big difference!
The modern mystic A. W. Tozer believed that a low view of God13 is the cause of a hundred lesser evils, but a high view of God is the solution to ten thousand temporal problems.
But in order to regain a godly perspective on your problems, you must answer this question: Are my problems bigger than God, or is God bigger than my problems?
Until we come to the conviction that God’s grace and God’s power know no limits, we will draw small prayer circles. But once we embrace the omnipotence of God, we’ll draw ever-enlarging circles around our God-given, God-sized dreams.
One God-idea is worth more than a thousand good ideas.
We take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ. 2 CORINTHIANS 10:5
This verse is not just about capturing sinful thoughts and getting them out of our minds; it’s also about capturing creative thoughts and keeping them in our minds. It means stewarding every word, thought, impression, and revelation inspired by the Spirit of God.
Never underestimate the power of a single prayer.
“This woman is driving me crazy.” LUKE 18:5 NLT
The common denominator in each of these stories is crazy faith. People took desperate measures to get to God, and God honored them for it.
Bold prayers honor God and God honors bold prayers.
Devote yourselves to prayer, being watchful and thankful. COLOSSIANS 4:2
Prayer is the difference between seeing with our physical eyes and seeing with our spiritual eyes. Prayer gives us a God’s-eye view. It heightens our awareness and gives us a sixth sense that enables us to perceive spiritual realities that are beyond our five senses.
Prayer turns us into first-class noticers. It helps us see what God wants us to notice. The more you pray, the more you notice; the less you pray, the less you notice.
When you pray for someone or something, it creates a category in your reticular activating system. You start noticing anything related to those prayers. Have you ever noticed that when you pray, coincidences happen? And when you don’t, they don’t. It’s more than coincidence; it’s providence. Prayer creates divine opportunities. But prayer also sanctifies the reticular activating system and enables you to see the God-ordained opportunities that are all around you all the time. And once you see them, you have to seize them.
Prayer is not a monologue; it’s a dialogue. We speak to God with everything from words to groans to thoughts. And God speaks to us through dreams, desires, promptings, impressions, and ideas.
Some things cannot be perceived with the five senses; they can only be conceived by the Holy Spirit. Some things cannot be deduced via deductive reasoning; they can only be imagined by the Holy Spirit. Some things cannot be learned by logic; they can only be revealed by the Holy Spirit.
The revelation of the Spirit gives us extrasensory perception, in the truest sense of that phrase. He helps us see the invisible and hear the inaudible. But that sixth sense has to be cultivated, much like our five senses do. Our spiritual vision develops much like our physical vision does.
prayer is the key to perception. Before our spiritual eyes are opened, the world is only thirteen inches in diameter. It’s like living in a low-definition, two-dimensional world. Then the Holy Spirit gives us depth perception. He opens our eyes to see the ordinary miracles that surround us, the ordinary miracles that are us. It’s like our spiritual cataracts are removed to reveal a reality that was always there. Like Jacob, we come to the ultimate realization: “Surely the LORD16 is in this place, and I was not aware of it.”
We don’t see the world as it is; we see the world as we are.
“If you have faith as small as a mustard seed …” MATTHEW 17:20
Faith is what keeps those dreams alive, even when it seems as though they are dead and buried.
A little faith goes a long way; in fact, a little faith will last an eternity.
In a moment of revelation, the circle maker realized that praying is planting. Each prayer is like a seed that gets planted in the ground. It disappears for a season, but it eventually bears fruit that blesses future generations. In fact, our prayers bear fruit forever.
We need the patience of the planter. We need the foresight of the farmer. We need the mind-set of the sower.
We worry far too much about outcomes instead of focusing on inputs. We cannot make things grow. Period. All we can do is plant and water. But if we plant20 and water, God promises to give the increase.
If you sow kindness, you will reap kindness. If you sow generosity, you will reap generosity. If you sow love, you will reap love.
Keep praying, keep obeying, keep giving, keep loving, keep serving. And if you keep sowing the right seeds, the harvest of blessing will come in God’s time, in God’s way!
If we do the little things like they are big things, then God will do the big things like they are little things.
One day at about three in the afternoon he had a vision. ACTS 10:3
Today could be the day that God answers the prayer, performs the miracle, or keeps the promise!
But if we are going to experience a miracle one day, we need to pray every day. Too many people pray like they are playing the lottery. Prayer is more like an investment account. Every deposit accumulates compound interest. And one day, if we keep making deposits every day, it will pay dividends beyond our wildest imagination.
Don’t let fear dictate your decisions. Letting your budget determine your vision is backward. Faith is letting your vision determine your budget. And if your vision is God-given, it will most definitely be beyond your ability and beyond your resources. Why? Because then God will get all of the glory! And I promise you this: the God who gives the vision is the same God who makes provision.
It’s tough to discern between wishful thinking and prayerful promptings, but I was about 90 percent sure it was the Holy Spirit who put that promise in my heart. I had no idea how God would do it, but I knew I needed to circle that promise in prayer.
God listens more to our hearts than our words. And what God loves more than anything else is childlike faith. It’s our childlike faith, not our theological vocabulary, that moves the heart of our heavenly Father. It’s simple childlike trust. It’s the bedrock belief that God is bigger than our problem, bigger than our mistake, bigger than our dream.
The God we pray to exists outside of the four space-time dimensions He created, and maybe we should pray that way!
God can accomplish more in one day than you can accomplish in a lifetime.
“Say to this mountain, ‘Move from here to there,’ and it will move.” MATTHEW 17:20
And that is how our enemy operates. He prowls around22 like a roaring lion. But the important word is like. He’s an imposter. Jesus is the Lion23 of the tribe of Judah. And when He roars, everything is shaken. All authority under heaven and on earth is His. And we are His children.
If God is for us,24 who can be against us?
The one who is in you25 is greater than the one who is in the world.
