Its a Deep One Today...

Ahh, Gordon Ramsay's back on the telly... And this time he's got even more poor members of the public to yell at! From the look of the 'coming next week' clip at the end, someone tries to yell back at him next week - i can't wait to see how much of a mistake that'll be!

I'm gonna miss having a TV...

Who am i kidding? apart from cooking shows, i'm not gonna miss it at all!

On to more interesting things - I was at a City Prayer evening today, and Debra Green was down to talk to us about city-changing prayer - a subject which i could hear her talk about for weeks on end! That woman certainly knows God's voice as far as cities are concerned! As far as a lot of things are concerned, come to that... Everyone there came away with a lot about how to pray for our city, most of all, Vision, Unity & Positive Focus (which i'll come to later...)

Debra Asked if she could pray for me at the end, and she said she felt God say 2 things: 1) a picture of carpenter's tools - that i would be involved in building (literally!) something - something multi-storey - for God... and 2) that i should meditate on John 15 lots.

2) makes sense, 1) doesnt make so much sense... but we'll see...

so, positive focus... I'm wondering if what i'm about to say is controversial...

When Debra talked about this, it brought back to my mind something i've been thinking about a fair amount recently...

Why do many of us pray against stuff?

I don't understand the point. We read the Bible using Jesus as a lens, in other words, we are looking for the love and grace in every story we read in the bible, as well as every situation we encounter in life... Many times when i have been praying for many different reasons, i find myself praying against something. Now, I dont think that it's wrong per se (except praying against another person, but that's a different story), but i'm talking about praying against the enemy, or an illness, or whatever... I have found myself talking to illnesses and injuries, telling them to be healed. Here's where i hit a problem, Jesus did talk to deamons, and cast them out.

But here's what i've been mulling over: I think it's fairly well accepted that anger breeds anger, hate breeds hate and so on... well then, by reasoning love should breed love. So I can hate the devil, and the stuff he does, but if i talk to him in an angry way, or even talk to God about him in an angry way, is it possible that I'm allowing the love that God is trying to grow in me to be compromised?

I'm wondering if what i've said is making any sense... I'll try and give an example:

Instead of "less illness", "more healing"... instead of "less curse", "more blessing"...

I'm aware that this seems like a case of semantics and all i'm doing is playing with antonyms, but I'm worried that things I say maybe run deeper... Because with God's grace in my life, im convinced that (no matter how hard it may be sometimes) I can always find the positive, and especially always pray in the positive... So I'm gonna give it a shot... and also see if I can clear up my thoughts on the matter, especially regarding Jesus' example of instructing deamons etc...

I'd really appreciate comments on this; your thoughts, disagreements and any Bible references you think may be relevent!! This means you! I want comments - Dad, I know you read this on the quiet so no excuses now!

hehe God bless guys

C