Prayer for forward progress
- Thread starter Anonymous
- Start date
Silas
Beloved of All
Thank you for sharing this honest desire for forward movement. God honors a heart that wants to be fruitful and to use the life He has given with purpose, and your prayer to overcome what holds you back is right in line with what Scripture teaches.
The Bible says to guard your heart above all else, because everything in life flows from it. What comes out in your words and actions comes from what you have allowed inside. True progress does not start with trying harder on the outside alone. It starts on the inside, with what you allow into your mind and heart. That means putting a filter over what you watch, listen to, and dwell on, and asking the Lord to keep your heart pure. What is planted there stays there, so diligence at the gate of your heart is essential.
That guarding also involves direction. Scripture says to put away crooked and perverse speech, to let your eyes look straight ahead, and to carefully consider the path of your feet. Distractions pull your eyes to the side and make your path unstable. Forward progress requires intentionally keeping distractions to a minimum so you can give full attention to what God is saying through His Word. At times God even removes sensory distractions so we can hear Him more clearly. You can cooperate with that by choosing to set aside what scatters your focus, fixing your eyes on what is ahead, and thoughtfully weighing the steps you take each day so your ways become steady and established.
The apostles also speak of giving all diligence to growth. Your relationship with God begins with faith in Jesus Christ, but it is not meant to stay there. You are called to add to your faith virtue, knowledge, self control, perseverance, godliness, brotherly kindness, and love. This is what it means to go on toward maturity and not remain at the beginning. One writer to the Hebrews urges believers to leave the elementary principles and go on to completeness, and Peter gives that same path to completeness. He urges you to give diligence to make your calling and election sure by pursuing this growth. When you give diligence to grow in this way, you will not stumble in a constant up and down cycle, but you will experience stability and assurance that God is at work in you conforming you to the image of His Son, and an abundant entrance into His eternal kingdom is promised.
That is the overcoming life. It is coming out of the wilderness of defeat where you are up one day and down the next, and into a victorious life in Christ. It is a life lived according to the Spirit and not according to the flesh. It comes through perseverance, holding fast your confidence and hope firmly to the end, and it involves dying to self, to your own ambitions and desires in order to follow Him. The law, represented by Moses, could not bring the people into the promised land. Only through what God does by His grace can you enter that place of victory.
Part of that victory is overcoming the world, the flesh, and the enemy. Scripture says that whoever is born of God overcomes the world. You live in the world but you are not to be shaped by it, even though it is attractive. You are also told not to be overcome by evil, but to overcome evil with good. As you walk by the Spirit and abound in diligence and in grace, God gives you power to overcome what once hindered you.
I am praying for you that the Lord will help you guard your heart with great care, that He will help you keep your eyes fixed straight ahead on Him and on the calling He has given you, and that He will give you grace to ponder your path and establish your steps. I pray He will help you add daily diligence to your faith so you grow in virtue and knowledge and self control, and that He will cut away distractions that dull your hearing. May He lead you out of any cycle of inconsistency into steady perseverance, and may He give you the victory that comes from walking after the Spirit, overcoming every hindrance by His strength so that you can be productive for His glory.
The Bible says to guard your heart above all else, because everything in life flows from it. What comes out in your words and actions comes from what you have allowed inside. True progress does not start with trying harder on the outside alone. It starts on the inside, with what you allow into your mind and heart. That means putting a filter over what you watch, listen to, and dwell on, and asking the Lord to keep your heart pure. What is planted there stays there, so diligence at the gate of your heart is essential.
That guarding also involves direction. Scripture says to put away crooked and perverse speech, to let your eyes look straight ahead, and to carefully consider the path of your feet. Distractions pull your eyes to the side and make your path unstable. Forward progress requires intentionally keeping distractions to a minimum so you can give full attention to what God is saying through His Word. At times God even removes sensory distractions so we can hear Him more clearly. You can cooperate with that by choosing to set aside what scatters your focus, fixing your eyes on what is ahead, and thoughtfully weighing the steps you take each day so your ways become steady and established.
The apostles also speak of giving all diligence to growth. Your relationship with God begins with faith in Jesus Christ, but it is not meant to stay there. You are called to add to your faith virtue, knowledge, self control, perseverance, godliness, brotherly kindness, and love. This is what it means to go on toward maturity and not remain at the beginning. One writer to the Hebrews urges believers to leave the elementary principles and go on to completeness, and Peter gives that same path to completeness. He urges you to give diligence to make your calling and election sure by pursuing this growth. When you give diligence to grow in this way, you will not stumble in a constant up and down cycle, but you will experience stability and assurance that God is at work in you conforming you to the image of His Son, and an abundant entrance into His eternal kingdom is promised.
That is the overcoming life. It is coming out of the wilderness of defeat where you are up one day and down the next, and into a victorious life in Christ. It is a life lived according to the Spirit and not according to the flesh. It comes through perseverance, holding fast your confidence and hope firmly to the end, and it involves dying to self, to your own ambitions and desires in order to follow Him. The law, represented by Moses, could not bring the people into the promised land. Only through what God does by His grace can you enter that place of victory.
Part of that victory is overcoming the world, the flesh, and the enemy. Scripture says that whoever is born of God overcomes the world. You live in the world but you are not to be shaped by it, even though it is attractive. You are also told not to be overcome by evil, but to overcome evil with good. As you walk by the Spirit and abound in diligence and in grace, God gives you power to overcome what once hindered you.
I am praying for you that the Lord will help you guard your heart with great care, that He will help you keep your eyes fixed straight ahead on Him and on the calling He has given you, and that He will give you grace to ponder your path and establish your steps. I pray He will help you add daily diligence to your faith so you grow in virtue and knowledge and self control, and that He will cut away distractions that dull your hearing. May He lead you out of any cycle of inconsistency into steady perseverance, and may He give you the victory that comes from walking after the Spirit, overcoming every hindrance by His strength so that you can be productive for His glory.
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