Pursuing Jesus when you are discouraged emotionally

About a week ago I was in a hit and run car accident with my daughter in the back seat. We both are fine, but my car was totaled. Having gone through the process of dealing with the insurance and the like we are now moving ahead. Due to the nature of my ministry it is time to find a used car to replace the last one.

For some people the idea of shopping for a car would be fun. I am not even close to being a car guy. The whole process feels a lot like walking through a maze with a lot of dead ends. I am hoping that every phone call, Google search, and visit to a dealership is leading me toward my new to me car.

To be honest this whole process is an emotionally exhausting event at times. It can be discouraging to be on a journey and not there yet. Since I know very little about cars I wonder if the effort will be worth it.

This reminds me of the blind man on the road to Jericho in Luke 18. He hears that Jesus is coming by and begins to cry out for him. The people around him just tell him to be quiet. This blind man doesn’t know if his crying out will even be worth it. Will Jesus hear him? Even if Jesus does hear him is He going to stop? And then what will happen?

But the blind man doesn’t let the crowd shut him down. It actually says that, “He cried out all the more…” (18:39). He didn’t let the discouragement keep him back but tried even harder. And that crying out changed his life. Not only could he now see, but he was able to follow Jesus and worship God.

We can easily get discouraged in our pursuit of God. Whether the discouragement comes from outside or maybe even from within ourselves. Sometimes we need to be like like David and talk to ourselves, “Bless the Lord, O my soul” (Psalm 103:1). Inside or out discouragement must never stop us from pursuing Jesus.

[tweetthis]Inside or out discouragement must never stop us from pursuing Jesus.[/tweetthis]

Jesus is worth pushing through the discouragement. I may question the effort of pushing through the discouragement of looking for a car, but being with Jesus is worth the effort. My emotions, physical tiredness, discouragement from other people and any other reason must not keep us from seeking the greatest treasure we can ever find. Will you cry out for Jesus again today?

4 Steps To Making Your Own Top 10 Most Wanted Prayer List

One of my mentors and member of my ministry advisory council, Lee Grady, recently did a great article on 8 ways to recharge your prayer life. I particularly like his challenge to, “Be more specific.” Although the foundation of prayer is relationship; God loves to answer our prayers.

In my own personal prayer life God has been challenging me to learn in new ways the power of asking in prayer. One of the things that I am learning is that you can’t know that God has answered if you are not specific enough. Maybe this is why Jesus would ask people, “What do you want?”

In thinking about Lee’s challenge to be more specific my mind went to the FBI’s ten most wanted. For those outside the United States this is a list of ten criminals that are at the top of the list that one of our law enforcement agencies want to capture. What if you created a prayer top ten most wanted list for your own life?

In creating this fun list let me encourage you to:

Ask God what you should add to the list. If you start there a lot of crazy things will get eliminated right away. Also you might be surprised at what gets added to your list. God loves to give good gifts to his children. James tells us it is good to ask for wisdom. (1:8)

Check your motives. The book of James encourages us not pray with wrong motives so we can just spend it on our pleasure. (4:3) A good test for me is asking myself, “Will God get glory and joy in this answer?”

Look for areas where God is already at work. In the book Experiencing God, we are encouraged to look where God is at work and then get involved in it. This gives us clues of how to pray. It also often gets us involved in action. To paraphrase Mark Batterson, “Prayer turns into goals, and goals turn into prayer.”

[tweetthis]Prayer naturally turns into goals, and goals naturally turn into prayer.-Mark Batterson[/tweetthis]

Don’t be afraid to ask God to bless you. Because we have seen people take this asking to a weird place sometimes we are afraid to ask. But we sometimes go to the other extreme. This quote from Nate Ruch, the senior pastor of my home church, will help you: “If you can’t ask God to bless what you are doing then maybe you should be doing something else.”

[tweetthis]If you can’t ask God to bless what you are doing then maybe you should be doing something else.[/tweetthis]

Let me encourage you to take a childlike attitude with this and have some fun. God can always say, “No.” It is just a way to get you asking if this has been a struggle for you in the past. As an example here is my first draft of my ministry top 10 list between now and the end of 2017.

Top 10 most wanted prayer requests for Christ Connection by the end of 2017

In a little bit I am going to be releasing a post on creating your 10 most wanted prayer requests. This can be a personal list or a family prayer list. As an example I wanted to show you my first draft that I came up with for the ministry today:

  1. Cross 100,000 website views total
  2. Cross 25,000 YouTube views for channel total
  3. Over $2000 in one time gifts
  4. Over $1500 in book sales
  5. 8 New States Sponsored – ($400 new monthly support)
  6. Overseas partnership for speaking trips
  7. Finish and publish next book
  8. Cross 3000 Emails on Ministry List 
  9. 6 month prayer training for new sign ups to email list completed
  10. At least one super fun speaking opportunity (over 1000 people)