Category: Prayer

Do you find yourself to shun certain people who don’t please you or get in your way because they are like the speck in your eyes? Do you feel justified and empowered by not forgiving certain unfair things or unjust enemies so that you can keep your dignity? You are not alone.

The Bible tells a story about God calling a man, Jonah, to preach to Nineveh, the capital city of Assyria, because the people were very wicked. Jonah hated the idea because Assyria was the great enemy of his country. Jonah didn’t want to do it and he ran away from God. But God was merciful to reveal Jonah’s sinful motivation so that he repented and dealt with his own sinful motivation. (refer to Jonah 1-4)

What is his sinful motivation?

Jon Bloom wrote: “Self-pity is our sinful, selfish response to something not going the way we think it should.”

Self-pity builds a wall around us to avoid being hurt by other people. It exposes our pride, low self-esteem, self-indulgence, self-righteousness under the disguise of self-protection. Self-pity gives birth to sorrow, shame, fear, depression, gossip, judging, and bitterness, etc. Like all other sins which were like landmines on the way of life, self-pity is a sin needed to be removed before it destroys our life.

What can we do? Once we find ourselves stepping on the landmine of self-pity, cry out for help. Jonah repented his sin to God and was saved. We also can come to Jesus Christ for deliverance because He has crucified our sins on the cross and defused the crisis of death threat.

The Bible says: “Give me aid against the enemy, for the help of man is worthless.” (Psalm 108:12)

Sin is our enemy. The help of man including self-guided improvement is useless. Sin can only be overcome with Jesus Christ’ blood on the cross.

So I pray: Lord, God, please reveal any sins within us because they are life-threating to our souls. Then, please give us confessing hearts to come to Jesus Christ and acknowledge His sacrifice on the cross, which has overcome the death of our sins. With God, we will gain the victory and You will trample down our enemies of sins and devil.

People who don’t believe Jesus Christ might think that the God in Christianity was like a tyrant who cruelly commanded people to follow his rule for his own benefit and didn’t tolerate any gray area outside of his absolute truth.

When we live in another country which speak different language, it’s necessary that we learn their language and culture to communicate with the people there. For our safety and benefit, we also want to obey the law executed by the government from traffic rule to filing tax report, etc.

Therefore, before jumping to the conclusion about the God in Christianity from humans’ perspective, why not ask God to give us His perspective to understand the reason that He expects humans to know Him and communicate with Him?

The Bible says: “If you call out for insight, if you cry aloud for understanding, if you look for it as for silver and search for it as for hidden treasure, then you will understand the fear of the Lord and find the knowledge of God. For the Lord gives wisdom.” (Proverbs 2:3-6a, NIV)

The result of knowing this God is that “Then you will understand what is right and just and fair—every good path. For wisdom will enter your heart, and knowledge will be pleasant to your soul.” (Proverbs 2:9-10, NIV)

Is it contrary to what you thought about a god who wants you to blindly obey him like religious fanatics under hypnosis or programmed robots without free will?

Open the Bible and read it with a heart of looking for answers to your questions. God wants to tell you many good things about your life and His love for you.

So I pray: Lord, God, please forgive us that we often look for treasure in the world, but not in Your words in the Bible. But You promise to lead us to know You when we accept Your words, store up Your commands within us, turn our ears to Your wisdom and search for understanding with all our hearts. Please give us your supernatural perspective to see the grand majestic heavenly view of God in Your words in the Bible.

Is cancer bad? A psychiatry doctor in Taiwan, who is also influenced by the New Age Seth Material believes that cancer brings a good opportunity of examining a person’s spiritual status. From his clinical counseling with patients, he discovered that many patients derive cancers from their long-term suppressed emotional and broken spiritual problems. And he argues that it’s more important for patients to build up a healthy spiritual life than merely recovering from cancer because when the cancer relapses, the patients may be dreadful for going through the painful process again.

This doctor also thinks humans may have more peace facing the end of their life if they believe that souls still exist without the dead physical bodies rather than vanishing in the universe. He thinks that even a soul going to hell is still better than disappearing.

This is a fallacy of distraction. If the hell is not a horrible place for a soul, why did Jesus Christ need to die on the cross to save the souls from going to hell? And why should we care about whether our soul still exist or not after death? And who is Jesus Christ? He is a real man in the history and there are hundreds of prophesies about Him that He came to fulfill (see the following link).

This doctor said that he seems to touch the God of destiny and sees the blueprint of Wisdom behind a soul through counseling his patients. But without further asking who this God is, he still hasn’t seen the true God.

So I pray: Lord, God, no one can come to You unless You draw us. Please be merciful to us and open our eyes to see Your fingerprint is everywhere in the history and our lives.

353 prophesies fulfilled in Jesus Christ http://www.accordingtothescriptures.org/prophecy/353prophecies.html

A young person asks me to pray for him for knowing if he is walking on the right path of God. I am glad he has a heart to ask God for direction. I remembered the verse from the Bible: “Make me know Your ways, O, Lord; teach me Your paths.” (Proverbs 25:4). But before I said these words to him, I quietly prayed in my heart to ask God what He wants to tell him. Then, I heard myself asking him the question:

“If God does show you the way He plans for you, but it may not be your own way, are you willing to obey it because you know He always gives you the best for you, even though you cannot see it now?”

The young man admitted it’s tough because he hasn’t really trusted God that deeply.

“I understand. It’s not easy to trust God without knowing Him intimately. Therefore, God sometimes allows us to do things in our own way until we are at our wit’s end. Then we start to willfully surrender and follow His way and He will definitely show us His best way for satisfying us and glorifying Himself.”

It takes time to know God closely and then trust Him, just like knowing any friend. Before running out of our life, Today, could be the day you start to come to Jesus Christ and be His friend.

So I pray: Lord, God, thank You for patiently waiting for us to surrender to You. But before it’s too late in our life, it’s time for us to stop doing evil things and quit thinking evil thoughts. Please help us develop the deep trust in Jesus Christ so that we want to obey You. And thank You for showing us Your tender love and for being always ready to forgive us whenever we turn to You and confess our sins.

Have you ever wondered if you are making the right choice for your life? How can you be sure you will not regret for making that choice?

Someone said that you just make the choice based on your best judgment at that moment and don’t need to regret because you have done your best. This philosophy turns each decision of your life to a gambling. You seem to be your own master to decide everything, but actually you just leave your life to be tossed by the unknown probability. This is not called freedom. This is self-deception.

The Bible says, “Submit to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you. Come near to God and He will come near to you.” (James 4:7-8). God is not a controlling tyrant. On the contrary, He is love so that He wants to set you free from gambling on your life. But the devil wants you to feel proud of being your own master, so that you would not come to God. The result is you hinder yourself from walking with God and getting the best of your life.

So I pray: Lord, forgive us to be self-reliant and self-righteousness. We often think our efforts make us deserve all the good things in our lives, but forget it’s all because you give us life in the beginning so that we can work hard. Today, Lord, we come to you with gratitude and ask you to purge us of pride and submit to You with humility.

Do you have a joyful song singing in your soul, even in the midst of trouble? Do you lift up your head to see the sky in awe and reverence? Do you feel thankful for being given life? Do you enjoy the freedom of stopping doing what you know it’s not good for yourself? Do you feel secure and protected when dreadful disasters happen?

I grew up in a culture surrounding with darkness: man-made idols worshiping, ghost stories, brutal images on media, and national history of hatred and prejudice, etc. Without knowing a way out, I lived in constant fear of people and worldly crisis, as well as anxiety of losing control of own life and failing on social expectation. No matter how many virtues I reflected on and tried to improve myself, there’s a guilt not able to be wiped out. The guilt induces condemnation, first condemning others, then condemning self, which generates bitterness and then cynicism.

A soul-broken person carries such self-destructive bomb that eventually explodes to kill self and hurt others. The firing distance ranges from inside of the family, marriage, and to the society.

However, genuine salvation of Jesus Christ is a life-changing experience. “If anyone is in Christ, he is a new creature; the old things passed away; behold, new things have come” (2 Corinthians 5:17) The bomb wrapped on self was removed and replaced with a fountain of joy when one receives Jesus Christ as his/her Savior and the Lord of his/her life. Since then, I can sing a joyful song in my soul. I am set free to be my authentic self, and granted the peace of living in the uncertainty with hope and gratitude to the God of the universe.

So I pray: All the earth, shout for joy to the Lord. Worship the Lord with gladness; come before Him with joyful songs. Know that the Lord is God. It is He who made us, and we are His; we are His people, the sheep of His pasture. Enter His gates with thanksgiving, and His courts with praise; give thanks to Him and praise His name. For the Lord is good and His love endures forever; His faithfulness continues through all generations. (Psalms 100) Lord, thank you for putting a new song in my heart.

Do we limit our lives to being as only humans of flesh, bounded by life-long accomplishment, by race, by nationality, or by social status? Can we see our value beyond the mortality? If humans have no spirit and soul, what is the difference between a human corpse and a piece of dead meat on the cutting board?

So we should ask: Who gives each human a spirit and soul? The Bible says, “The spirit of man is the lamp of the Lord, searching all the innermost parts of the belly.” (Proverbs 20:27) All humans are given conscience to tell good or evil. However, contrary to animals, humans can suppress their conscience by their pride or prejudice, which are called sins that numb our conscience. The danger of sins turns our hearts hard like a rock, senseless to the pain of soul. Consequently, we lose the desire to look beyond our limitation to the God, our life-giver.

That’s why people feel desperate and doomed while facing the insecurity in pain. That’s why people seek to end their life in “dignity” while they consider having all the fatal pain and dysfunctional body as shame. Therefore, they proclaim they have right to deserve a mercy killing (or Physician-Assisted Suicide, Euthanasia, medical killing) for escaping the pain and hopelessness. Nevertheless, they are offending God, who gives them life, by downgrading the value of humans to mere animals.

Without pain, we don’t know we are in bleeding danger. The inner pain of desiring the human dignity should lead us to seek help for getting healed, not for the body, but for the soul. Jesus Christ is the way for you to come to the God, our Creator, for a conscience-restored soul.

So I pray: God, you are holy and merciful. You want to make Your children holy as royal priests ruling over the earth. We praise Your great and awesome name for your splendid wonder and Your almighty work. May Your salvation come upon the people who need Your mercy.

Be still. The Holy One is here.

Be still. For the presence of the Lord is here.

Be still. For the glory of Lord is shining all around.

Be still. For the power of the Lord is moving in this place. He comes to cleanse and heal.

Many years ago, I visited a Taiwanese friend in Taipei, who studied in the same graduate school with me in New York City. She told me how she became a Christian. At the last time we saw each other in NYC, I prayed with her before I left for Minnesota. “You said I am a Christian after I prayed with you.” She told me. “I did?” I totally forgot what I said to her.

I remembered I answered her questions with my limited knowledge of Bible during the year working in the school campus. But her faith is God’s work, not mine. I only happened to be the messenger to tell her the good news at that moment. And God gave her the faith to receive Jesus Christ as her Savior.

Later, she told me her story of faith, which amazed me. Right after she became a Christian, she traveled in Puerto Rico by herself. She didn’t speak Spanish but she had a pure faith to the Heavenly Father and believed He would guide her safely. In Puerto Rico, for several times, when she was not sure where to go next, there’s always a person showing up in the corner and pointed her the direction. After she graduated, she gave up the opportunity in USA and decided to go back to Taiwan for desiring to share the gospel with her whole household.

When she waved goodbye to me after our meeting in Taiwan, I saw her as my dear sister and my heart was so touched by God’s love. We could be stranger or even enemy in this world, but God chose us for each other to love each other by adopting us to His family. And He fills His own love to our hearts so that we can love each other.

So I pray: Lord, You come to cleanse our sins and heal the wounds in our hearts. Your power is moving in this land. Thank You for the work of salvation has been done. Thank You for healing and restoring our lives to the original beautiful status. Thank You for patiently waiting for us to grow in our faith. Therefore, we resolve to strengthen our feeble arms and weak knees. We take action on sinning no more for making level paths for our feet. So that the lame may not be disabled, but rather healed. (refer to Hebrews 12:12-13)

Be still: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eQWurJbhMhI

What is justice? I recently interviewed a judge and asked him this question. He cannot give me the definition. He only said that different judges may have different opinion about individual case. Therefore, he applies his experiences from the past to do his best in the judgement.

The Bible says, “Righteousness and justice are the foundation of His throne. Fire goes before Him and consumes His foes on every side.” (Psalms 97:2b-3). However, for God guards the lives of His faithful ones and delivers them from the hand of the wicked, Christians can rejoice in Him, who reigns the whole universe.

I read the book called “Surviving Hitler: A boy in the Nazi death camps”, which is about the Jewish young man survived in the Nazi concentration camp through holding the hope of seeing his family someday and having God’s grace from other people’s help. After the war was over, he ran out of the cell in great excitement and told other prisoners the good news. Some people didn’t dare to believe the freedom finally came to them. But when they saw all the German soldiers left, they were overjoyed.

Are you still in your own prison of the evil darkness? Jesus Christ has come to set the people who believe in Him free. God is just but He also has great mercy. That’s why God sent Jesus Christ to come to the world for bringing the good news of freedom, peace and joy established in His Kingdom. He wants to give mercy to the people who know they are suffering in the darkness. He wants to set them free.

Jesus Christ is the good news for the people who need to see there’s a heavenly hope in depression, painful illness, handicap or coma; there’s joy in Jesus Christ to persevere the believers to the eternal life. Come to Him. Our God reigns. Praise His name!

So I pray for my neighbors to desert the evil taste and come to love the truth and justice. I pray God reigns in their household and the neighborhood.

Right after I finished the writing, I sang the song, “Shine, Jesus. Shine” and worshiped the Lord. With the full armor of Spirit, I set out to pray in my neighborhood. The witch across the street stood tall. I firstly passed by that house, with my song playing on from my phone, I sang and prayed:

Jesus Christ’ name is lifted up high. Jesus Christ reigns in this land and neighborhood. Shine through the darkness, Jesus. Reveal the sins, selfishness, bondage, darkness and destroy them in Your Truth and Light. Shine, Jesus. Send out Your Word to the land and let there be light.

While I prayed, a white butterfly flied close to me and lingered by my side. So I prayed: May the Holy Spirit come down to the neighborhood and fill the hearts of people.

Bring them out of darkness into light, out of death into life.

The rain started to fall and I thought it’s time to go home. When I walked close to my house and saw the witch across the street has bent down from the waist after my walking-and-praying around 20 minutes. It seemed an encouragement from God’s victory. So, I went back to walk to the nearby Jewish tabernacle and prayed: May Jesus Christ flood the land and the congregation with His mercy and grace. Open their eyes to see Jesus Christ as their Savior and the Lord.

The rain stopped for a while and started again. But I felt the need to go farther and I had the song play while I passed by the houses. I prayed: Jesus Christ is victorious. He reigns. All the knees will bow down to Him because His name has been exalted higher than any names in the heaven, on the earth and under the earth by the almighty God.

I went home after one hour and gave all the glory to God.