God Is Still In The Healing Business

(Exodus 15:26)

One of the most frequent prayer requests I get each day here at Liveprayer is for physical healing. I spoke yesterday about how we must not take our good health for granted, but I realize many of you who read this Devotional are not in good health. You have every kind of challenge in that area of your life imaginable. Of course the first question most ask is why. Why me? There is no sure answer to that question. In some cases, part of the problem can be traced to poor dietary habits. In some cases it might have been abuse to your body with tobacco products, alcohol, or drugs. But in most cases there are no real answers. It is at those moments when there are more questions than answers, that we MUST make our faith real and look to the Lord.

I want each one of you that is reading this Devotional to know that I have set aside 6pm until midnight on Wednesday January 31st as a time of prayer for those who need a healing touch from the Lord. It might be for you, or for a family member, or possibly a friend. Simply email me at bkeller@liveprayer.com the name of the person or persons who need God's healing touch, so that I can call their name before God next Wednesday. I have no special powers. I do not even know you or the person whose name(s) you will send. But, I do know the One who is ALL POWERFUL. I know the One who DOES know that person better than they know themselves. I know that my Bible says that Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today, and forever. That wonderful truth literally means that the same Jesus you read of in the bible healing people, is the EXACT SAME Jesus who is alive and healing people today!!!!! What a marvelous truth!!!

I love you, and I care about you so much. Take advantage of this opportunity today to email me the name of the one or ones that you want me to pray for this coming Wednesday. I will be fasting several days prior and am expecting incredible testimonies of God's healing power in the bodies of many. The only question today is do you have the faith? In the bible, as Jesus healed people, almost in every case He would say, "go, your FAITH has made you whole". You see my friend, there is nothing magical about emailing me a name or anything magical about the prayers I will lift up. However, that email so I can lift up those names is a point of contact for your faith. Just like the hem of Christ's garment was not magical, the woman with the issue of blood reached out and touched it, BY FAITH, and was made whole. It was the point of contact for her faith.

May you take that step of faith today, email me the name of the person or persons that you want me to pray for.

Taking Our Health For Granted

(Proverbs 4:20-22)

As I drove to the office early this morning, for some reason I began thinking how good I felt physically, how full of strength and energy I felt, free of any aches and pains. My mind quickly started thinking first of all about those who do not have this wonderful blessing each day, all of those I hear from daily who are struggling, battling different infirmities in their bodies, dealing with pain all the time. I than began thinking about how fortunate I have been all of my life to enjoy wonderful health. Despite the minor colds we all get, some various sports injuries, for the most part I have lived my life in wonderful health. What a gift I squandered for many years. I have spoken in the past about being in the best shape possible, watching what we eat and not putting harmful things into our bodies, all so we can enjoy optimum health to be able to serve our God. So many years God blessed me with perfect health, and I used many of those years to "do my own thing", not using this blessing for His glory.

As soon as I got into the office, I spent some time in prayer thanking God for this wonderful blessing of good health, and He clearly spoke to me about this message you are reading. For those in good health, especially those young adults who have not had to deal with problems in this area of your life, DON'T SQUANDER THIS TIME! God has given you a wonderful blessing to be able to live each day in good health, free from pain, to be able to concentrate on your service to Him. This is a gift not to be taken for granted! We have a responsibility not to abuse God's blessings, and one blessing we often abuse is our good health. We live each day like we will always have good health. We live each day like it is our right to have good health. My friend, it is a BLESSING from God to have good health.

In the last 10 years of ministry, I have been in many hospital rooms. God originally created man not to die. Physical death became a byproduct of man's sin in the Garden of Eden. Sickness and disease became part of man's world. When you look at how complicated our physical bodies are, how intricate we are made, when you factor in the wear and tear of daily life, add to that how some people have abused their bodies with alcohol, drugs, and tobacco, it is actually amazing we last as long as we do. With all of the things that can go wrong, it is simply amazing we work as long as we do. Ultimately, all of our bodies will break down in some way; we cannot escape that no matter how advanced modern medicine has become. We need to be thankful daily for the good health God gives us. It is one of the greatest blessings we have. There is an old saying, that you can't put a price on good health. There are many people who have accumulated much wealth in this world. Yet, without the good health to enjoy it, what have they really accomplished? That is another reason why the temporary things of this world have no real meaning.

I love you and care about you so much. Know that I am praying for you today to NEVER forget the blessing of good health. We never know how long that will last, so don't squander the blessing. God has given us this life to serve and glorify Him. Our health is a tool we use to do that. Make it count! For those who are reading this who are struggling in this area, know you are in my prayers. Tomorrow's Devotional will be about struggling with health issues, and I will be setting aside a special time of prayer and fasting next week for your healing. Look for tomorrow's Devotional for the details on that. The word until tomorrow is God is able!

God's Word

(Hebrews 4:12)

God's Word is a book of instructions, NOT suggestions. The bulk of the prayer requests we deal with each day here at Liveprayer are a direct result of people not taking the inspired words of the Bible seriously, not applying those words to their daily lives. God gave us those precious words so that we could live an abundant, fruitful life. He gave us those precious words so that we wouldn't have to guess as to what we should do when we face different situations in our life. We read the words, but do we make them part of our life? Far too often we read the Bible with a filter, taking in those things we want and disregarding the rest. Unfortunately, it doesn't work that way. We have to take the WHOLE counsel of God and not cherry-pick those things that fit into what we want to do.

Much of this problem I have to lay at the feet of my brothers and sisters in full-time service to the Lord. Having preached in over 500 churches of every denominational, racial, and ethical make-up you can imagine, one of the things I know to be true is this. Those men and women of God who preach the unadulterated Word of God, challenge their people to believe ALL of the Bible, challenge them that ALL of the Bible is true, are those fellowships where God is moving in a significant way in the lives of the people. In the last 40 years, the liberal seminaries and bible colleges that turn out so many of our pastors have downplayed the importance of the Bible. Many have even questioned the inspiration and inerrancy of God's Word. My friend, let me share this with you today. If the Bible is not the inspired, inerrant Word of God, then as Paul said, we are the most foolish of men and all that we believe is in vain. Knowing that many of those who read this Devotional each day are pastors, let me challenge my brothers and sisters today that we MUST never allow people to compromise or minimize the Word of God, and ALL of the Bible is applicable to their lives. It is NOT a choice that we have to choose what we want to follow and what we want to ignore.

I do love you so very much and care deeply about your life. So much of the pain and heartache we face in this life is traced back to our failure to take all of the Bible seriously. We gloss over and ignore those parts that we are uncomfortable with. We minimize the significance of those passages that are opposed to what we want to do. Satan is the great justifier. He will ALWAYS help you to justify why this doesn't pertain to you, or that this passage doesn't really mean that, or that this only applied to people in the time the Bible was written, and on, and on, and on. Trust me, you can always find an excuse to ignore what God is saying to you. But my friend, you do that to your own peril. It is so much easier if we just accept what God is saying to us, rather than trying to fight Him each step of the way. Again, like most things, it boils down to pride. It really boils down to His will versus our will. We pray let Thy will be done, but than we live let OUR will be done! As I say often, if we do it God's way it works; if we do it our way, it never does. God has laid out His way in the Bible, we don't have to guess. We simply have to be obedient.

Know that I will be praying for you today. God has so much for your life. A perfect plan. A plan of good. He wants you to know the abundance this life can offer, the peace, the joy, all of the blessings this life offers. The key is, are you willing to lay down your life and follow Him? Are you willing to not only say, Thy will not my will, but than live it? Will you accept ALL the Bible is God's Word, not just the parts you like and are comfortable with? I will pray today that you will open your heart to the truth, the absolute truth of God's precious Word, that you will start today to not only read the Bible each day,but accept that God is speaking to you through it. It is not a book of God's suggestions, but a book of His commandments on how we are to live this life. May you be richly blessed today, as you open your heart to the truth that God loved you enough to give you this wonderful blueprint on how to live this life to be all He created each one of us to be!

When We Fall Short

(Romans 3:23)

Today’s Devotional is meant to encourage you, despite the fact we all sin and fall short of God’s glory. The key here is not if we sin, but when we sin. What is our response to be? I love you, and care about you so much. One of the tricks of the enemy is to use your sin against you–to tell you that you are no good. You are not worth of God’s love and grace. Let me share this with you. On that point he is right. We are not worthy. But because of Christ, WE BECOME WORTHY! You see, when you know Christ as your savior, it is not your unrighteousness that God sees, but it is the righteousness of Christ. In Romans chapter 3, this issue is looked at from the stand point of Christians having a free pass to sin. No! It is because of His love and mercy we work NOT to sin. You see, when you recognize what God has done for you, the natural response is not to run to sin, but to run from sin.

None of us are immune from sin. That is why God gives us His special promise in 1 John 1:9. It tells us if we will confess our sins, He will forgive us and cleanse us from all unrighteousness. That is to be our response when we fall short. Humility. Sorrow. Coming to the Lord with a contrite heart asking for forgiveness. The goal then is to trust His Word, know He has forgiven us, and move on. You see, we are no good to God when we allow our sin to strangle us, to paralyze us. The enemy loves to use our sin against us, to hold it over our head. But the Bible says that when God forgives us, He not only forgives, but forgets. If God forgets, then we need to as well.

We try our best each day. We are all faced with the temptations of this world. We are all faced with the traps the enemy lays for us. From time to time we ALL fall into sin. It is important not that we sin, but how we handle the sin. Running from God is a natural response, but the wrong one. Running TO God is what He expects of us. All we do by running from God is compound the problems. We quit reading the Word, quit praying, quit going to church. All of that then makes us even bigger targets for the enemy, and we ultimately fall deeper into sin. The key is to have the guts to say “I sinned.” Go to God and ask forgiveness. Deal with whatever the consequences are of your sin, because there are always consequences. Move forward.

Part of the key to living a victorious life for Christ is handling our failures. Not letting our failures compound themselves. I will pray for you today, to really look at how you handle it when you sin. We all do from time to time, and having a game plan to accept our failure, and get back on the battlefield is critical. The key point today my friend is not if we fall short, but when we fall short, what is our response going to be. Go to 1 John 1:9, and then move forward. God has much for you to do. He has a great plan for your life. The quicker you get beyond your failures, the quicker He can use you and allow that special plan to unfold.

Staying Connected

(John 8:12)

Living many years in Chicago, and being a huge fan of
the Bulls basketball team during their incredible string
of NBA championships, it was a special treat to watch Michael Jordan
perform his magic on the court. In the early years of his career, Michael
did many incredible feats that almost defied gravity. While he became well
known for the spectacular, most people forget that Michael had mastered the
basics...dribbling, passing, moving without the ball. The basics were the
foundation from which he was then able to do the more spectacular, and the
bedrock of his game. Our walk with Christ is similar in the sense that it
is the basics of our relationship that we must be cognizant of each day,
thus becoming the foundation of our Christian experience. Just like it is
not realistic to expect someone who never played much basketball to do a 360
slam dunk, people with little or no contact with the Lord each day have
unrealistic expectations about their Christian experience.

Let me give you one fact to start with that I want you to pay very close
attention to. THE ONLY THING THAT YOU WILL TAKE FROM THIS LIFE INTO
ETERNITY IS YOUR PERSONAL RELATIONSHIP WITH CHRIST. Think about this for a
minute. We spend so much of our life focused on education, career, making
money, family, friends, hobbies....we devote practically all of our time and
energy in these areas...yet in that twinkle of an eye when your life is over
and you pass into eternity, the ONLY thing that you will take with you is
your personal relationship with the Lord. I am not trying in any way to
diminish those things I listed, since it is part of the human experience we
all share. What I am saying is that we need to make sure that we take time
each day to nurture and grow our relationship with the Lord, since it is
something we will experience for eternity.

How do we do this? Stay connected. It goes back to the basics. We need to
take time each day to pray and read the Word. We need to be in a local church
where we have fellowship with other believers, are spiritually fed, and have
opportunities to serve the Lord. When people have sin in their life, the
first thing they do is quit reading the bible, quit praying, and quit going to church.
Why? Because we really are no different than our father Adam. Remember in
the Garden of Eden after he sinned, he was hiding from God. That is what
we do, we "hide" from God. That is the time we need God the most!!!!! That
is how satan tricks you into falling even deeper into sin, by
"disconnecting" from the Lord.

I will be praying for you today because I really do love you and care about
you. I will be praying for you to refocus on the basics, to stay connected
each day with the Lord. The quickest way to defeat sin in your life is to
get immediately reconnected to God, confess your sins, repent, and get back
into that intimate daily relationship with Him that will help you from
falling. He loves you and will never leave you nor forsake you. It is His
desire to have intimate contact each day with His children. Since that is
the only thing we will take from this life into the everlasting, shouldn't
that be our desire as well?

The Blessing

(Deuteronomy 23:5)

I have been often asked why I always sign my emails BLESSINGS and mention BLESSINGS near the end of my Devotional each day. My friend, there is power in the blessing of God. There is great power in the blessing of God. I could do an entire month’s teaching on the power of the blessing but for today’s purpose, let me insure you that having the blessing of God upon every aspect of your life is exactly where each of His children want to be. We talk lightly about being blessed and take it for granted, but trust me, you know when the blessing of God is upon your life!

God blesses us in so many ways. He blesses our health. Anyone who is sick or battles an illness will attest that the greatest blessing of all is good health. He blesses our finances. You may think He has not but do you know how many things that could go wrong don’t? Often, His blessings come to us in the form of protection from things NOT happening. An example is the transmission on your car. Not having that go out to me is a $500 blessing. He blesses our homes. The number one reason many homes are in turmoil is that they do not have the blessing of God present. Why? Because God is not honored in that home. In a home that honors God, there are daily blessings again mostly taken for granted like peace, safety, and harmony. These are just some major examples of how God blesses His children.

How to get God’s blessings? Simple. Follow Him. Commit your life to Him. God cannot and will not bless disobedience. That is why I stress so often doing it His way and not your way. Doing it your way voids you from the blessing. You do not want to live and cannot live any kind of decent life without His blessings but you have to be willing to sacrifice in order to get the blessing. It has to be a human sacrifice. It has to be YOU totally and unconditionally surrendered to His will.

I love you, care about you, and pray for you daily. Let this word today sink in. It is critical to living the victorious life we all strive to live to have God’s blessings. It is critical to living the abundant life we all seek and God promised to have His blessings. You see, He knew if you followed Him, did it His way, it would be a richly abundant life because His blessings would reside with you in every area. Today is the day to stop living apart from His blessings and start living under His blessings. I will be praying today that you make it a priority to follow Him in every area of your life and live under His blessings at all times.

Pray For Leadership

(1 Peter 2:13, Romans 13:1)

The inauguration of our 43rd President, George W. Bush. The Bible clearly tells us that we are to pray for those God puts in leadership over us. It is the sovereign will of God that allows men to rise to power. Don't forget, at the time theses words were being written under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, Rome was in power, and the leaders of that day were involved in the persecution and killing of Christians, simply for giving their ultimate allegiance to King Jesus as opposed to Caesar. Does that mean God allowed Stalin, Hitler, and all others throughout history to rise to power. The answer is yes. Why? Like in many things, we may never know for sure. The Word says in Isaiah 55:8 that God's thoughts, God's ways are not ours and we can't even comprehend them. Nowhere in my Bible does it say God has to tell us everything. It is in these cases when our faith must be real, and we must trust and accept God for who He is in our life.

Because of the unprecedented events that occurred after the November 7th election and the natural division in people's political views, there are many who are not happy to see George W. Bush become our new President. Over the past 8 years, there have been many, many in our country who have not been happy to see Bill Clinton as our President. The fact remains, from Washington, to Clinton, and now to Bush, God has sovereignly allowed those men to rise to become the leader of our great nation. Because of that fact and our Biblical mandate to pray for our leaders, I want you to take a few minutes this day and pray for the presidency of George W. Bush. Above all, pray that he will be a leader after God's own heart, not following the polls and focus groups, but the Holy Spirit of the living God, not making decisions based on political pressure, but on prayer, to be all God intends him to be as the 43rd President of the United States of America.

Even though the Presidency is the most visible and powerful political office, all throughout our great nation there are elected officials in national, state, and local government, people who have chosen to serve their fellow citizens by holding public office. They, too, have been placed in office by God, and require our prayers. It is a trust they have been given, and while we may not always agree with their politics, we can fulfill our God-given responsibility to pray for them.

I love you and care about you so much. We are so fortunate that we live in a nation where we can freely serve God. So many places in the world this is not possible. We must never take this freedom for granted, and must take advantage of the opportunity the Lord has given us to serve Him and share His hope and love with the world. For the next 4 years, George W. Bush will be our President. Take time each day in your prayers to remember him and the awesome responsibility God has given him to lead this nation. The study of the end times is very subjective and open to much debate since it is yet to happen. But I can guarantee you one thing. God has raised this nation up in these last days to be a beacon of light to the world, to be a tool He will use in bringing in the final harvests. We are part of God's plan. He has blessed us to live in these exciting last days, in the freedom to really make a difference in bringing people into the Kingdom of God. Let our nation and let each one of us individually never lose sight of this opportunity. God bless George W. Bush, God bless the United States, and God bless each one of us as we all respond to the call of God.