Becoming a man of God Experiencing Divine Intervention part two (ch. 6)

“Prayer is one vehicle through which we participate in what God is doing and wants to do in our world…God has sovereignly willed to be influenced by the prayers of his people.”

In this chapter the author continues the topic of praying that God’s will be done and applies it to three more significant categories.

The first is prayer for one’s church. He cautions his readers that God is not usually in the business of maintaining the status quo. Praying for God’s will to be done in our church may lead to change and may lead us out of our present comfort zone. In particular, he encourages his readers to pray for empowerment and protection for leadership and spiritual renewal for the congregation.

Next Beltz applies this prayer principle to prayer for one’s nation. He shares that it is his practice to prayer for God’s influence and intervention in the lives of national leaders. He also prays that God would heal the nation and bring spiritual renewal. Specific national issues that God brings to his attention are also matters of prayer.

Praying for the world is the last significant category about which the author prays for God’s will to be done. Anticipating that his readers might easily become overwhelmed with the breadth of things that could be prayed about, he urges that one select a series of global issues and peoples upon which to focus prayer.

From my perspective Beltz is right on to anticipate the feeling of being overwhelmed by all the issues one could pray about. Focusing on those church, national and global issues that are top of mind is more likely to lead to growith in our prayer life then trying to cover all the bases we could possibly think of.

Click here for this week’s assignment.

Previous post in the series

Raising boys

Raising boys, that is the topic of this post. I have three and let me say right out of the blocks that I am no expert. I have learned that each of my sons is not like the other: one loves guitar, another basketball and the third politics. So…I am learning…my approach to each one needs to be customized. With that I need help. Maybe you can relate.

An article entitled “How to Fix Boys” caught my attention. It is an interview with Leonard Sax, family physician and research pathologist in Maryland. Here are some quotes that caught my attention:

The six-year-old boy and the six-year-old girl differ from each other much more than an adult man and adult woman do. We all wind up in the same place: there’s very little difference in terms of adult men’s and women’s maturity, ability to sit still, how they learn. But there are huge differences in the ability of the average six-year-old girl and boy to sit still and be quiet.

Policies which ban children from playing with pretend swords or toy guns are not grounded in any research findings demonstrating that those policies accomplish anything good.

If you have such a son, who is very much engaged by competition and mastery, these games may pose a particular risk. They can be addictive, and I use that term speaking as a medical doctor: literally addictive.

The most startling change between teenage culture today and 30 years ago is the way more and more teenage boys have moved away from the courtship of girls. Online pornography has displaced the pursuit of real girls for a significant number of boys.

Dad has an important role to play, but boys have to see a lot of different men to have a healthy sense of what it means to be a man. They need a community of men, and we don’t provide that.

Look again at the last point. The church needs to be a place where boys find healthy role models. I would love to hear what your church is doing in this regard.