National Day of Prayer
You’re on a need-to-know basis.

We need-to-know that every good and lasting blessing comes from God. When we try to find our blessing in the gods of money, power, fame, drugs, sex, etc., we are under the lordship of that to which we submit ourselves. The ultimate result of this is the destruction of the individual or a nation.

May we take time on the National Day of Prayer, May 3, to return to God from whom all blessings flow and acknowledge Him as Lord.

2012 NATIONAL PRAYER - Dr. David Jeremiah – NDP Honorary Chairman
Heavenly Father,
Every good gift and perfect gift comes from You. You are a faithful God and Your mercy endures forever. You have promised to bless the nation that trusts in You. Our currency proclaims “In God We Trust,” but in our culture we are far from You.
In the words of the prophet Daniel, “We have sinned and committed iniquity, we have done wickedly and rebelled, even by departing from Your precepts and Your judgments.”
We come before You once more, seeking Your forgiveness and mercy.
You, O God, are our only hope… Hear our prayer and, for Your honor’s sake, shine Your face upon this nation. Give our leaders the desire to seek Your wisdom and the courage to follow Your guidance… and watch over the men and women of our armed forces as they sacrifice for the cause of freedom.
We give You thanks for all You have done for us, and we earnestly pray that You will help us become, once again, a nation whose God is the Lord.
In the name of Your Son, and our Savior, we pray this prayer. Amen

You’re on a need-to-know basis.

When we contemplate the sun rising every morning or the seasons changing during the year, it is easy to say that God sure is on the job. He sure is trustworthy, or we can rely on Him. When it comes to personal matters are we just as confident?

When Abraham and Sarah were promised by God that they would have a child, even in there old age, were they confident that it would take place? Sarah even laughed as if God were telling a little joke. When their confidence wavered, and they tried to produce an heir by way of a proxy, it didn't negate the fact that God had made a promise, and when God makes a promise, it will come to pass. The Bible is full of God saying what will take place, and we are on a need-to-know basis that He is always reliable.

This same reliability comes into play with what His Son Jesus said about being crucified and rising from the dead. To some that is even harder to handle than having a baby when your bio-clock has popped the main spring. Like Sarah and Abraham, just because it seems almost impossible to some, it doesn't make it any less possible when it comes to God. If producing a child from two has-beens was reliable and happened, it would only seems right to believe all His promises, like when Jesus said, "I am the resurrection and the life; he who believes in Me will live even if he dies, and everyone who lives and believes in Me will never die. Do you believe this?" John 11: 25, 26 NASB.

Do you believe the sun will come up tomorrow?

We need-to-know to rely on the One we need-to-know.

God is Understanding

You’re on a need-to-know basis.

When we say we are understanding, we often mean that we are sympathetic to someone's plight, but we don't understand the situation completely without being that person. On the other hand, God being God, understands us completely. He made us.

When we make something, like a pie, we know the ingredients and the proportions and how long it is to bake and whether to serve it warm or with ice cream. How much more God understands us. In Psalms, the writer says God knows we are "but dirt," or as stated in "The Message," mud.  Now that is humbling, but it is not a excuse for how we live.

God also made us in His image, according to the Bible, and breathed life into that clump of mud. Isn't it nice to know that there is more to us than earth and water?

As a child we made mud pies for others or maybe to toss around. That was what we were able to do, but as an adult we can bless others so much more as God has given each one of us special abilities.

It should excite us to know that we have a purpose here beyond the mud puddle. The main purpose is to love God with all our hearts, mind, and strength. We are also to love our neighbors. Here is where our abilities come into play.

Now may our need-to-know become a desire-to-live for God and others. Let's make a pie and share it today and not to just toss the mud around.

God is Love

Please take some time today, Good Friday, and reflect on the love God has for us which was demonstrated by the sacrifice of His Son Jesus, dying on the cross for the sins of the world. Oh, how He loves you and me.

God is Compassionate

 

You’re on a need-to-know basis.

A Thesaurus would sight compassionate as a concern for the victims -
sympathetic, empathetic, understanding, caring, solicitous, sensitive, warm, loving; merciful, lenient, tolerant, considerate, kind, humane, charitable, bighearted...., and we need-to-know that that is God.

God has compassion for those who are lost and is sympathetic to our situations. We are like dumb sheep for which God is empathetic, and understanding. God certainly shows caring in the way He continually invites us back up on the hill where we belong and is sensitive to our poor choices. I could go on and on putting into sentences all the words that describe God’s compassion, but I’d run out of room.

The Bible says that the Son of Man, Jesus, came to this big pasture called earth because of the great compassion He has for all us dumb sheep.

Rejoice! He did this so we wouldn’t have to wander forever. It’s great when the need-to-know becomes the know-to-need to be saved because we are lost. “Wool” you come to the Savior?

God is Purposeful

You’re on a need-to-know basis.

God designs with purpose. For example, plants provide food, beauty, and oxygen into the air for us to breath. It seems that everything has it’s purpose if we have the ability to understand it - even people.

We might think that our purpose is to hop about, like the lamb in this cartoon, and just seek out what ever pleasure is to our liking. Pleasure is good, and God even created it, but it is hardly our purpose.

Jesus said that the whole of God’s Word can be condensed down to a simple need-to-know thought. That is, to love God with all of our heart, soul, mind, and strength and He added to that: to love our neighbor as ourselves. This is the purpose for which we exist and once we choose to follow it, we can have purpose with the greatest pleasure resulting in an abundant life which brings honor to God, the great purpose giver.

One may think it is impossible to live this way perfectly. You’re right! That is why God purposed His Son, Jesus who can cleanse us from those imperfections (sins) so that we can continue on with the purpose for our lives.

It’s great when us sheep know our purpose, but just watch out for the wolves! They have their purpose too.

God is Boundless

 

You’re on a need-to-know basis.

It’s a great challenge to picture God.

The moment we try to picture Him is the moment we can’t, and if we think we have done it, we are naturally going to come up way short. Let’s face it. We are just limited human beings, and it is impossible to have a total picture of our boundless God.

In the Bible, the greatest commandment is to love God with all your heart, soul, and mind. It would be a lot easier if we had a good picture of this object of our love? Well, in the same book Jesus said, “Anyone who has seen me has seen the Father.” (John 14:9b) So, in order to get a good picture of God, the Father, we just need to read about Jesus. The tough part is trying to put that picture on a canvas for all to see, but when we ask Jesus into our lives, it can be done because we become the canvas.

Now we have all we need-to-know for a making a great picture!