Prayer | AGW MINISTRIES

Defeating the Enemy Through Prayer

November 13, 2018June 10, 2016 by Mark Ballenger

My three year old son has an adversary. She’s redheaded, immature, easily excitable, really fun, slobbery, and super annoying when she wants to play. His adversary also happens to be our golden retriever, Lois.

In typical first born fashion, my son wants to be in charge, and Lois is an easy target. “Lois, get off my toys! Lois, stop hitting me with your tail! Lois, stop barking! Lois, stop breathing on me!” The funny thing is Lois doesn’t pay attention to him at all. She just keeps doing what she’s doing as though he isn’t shouting at the top of his lungs right in her unimpressed face.

It’s not that she doesn’t understand him; I think she finds pleasure in doing the opposite of what he says. When he yells “Move!” she stares past him, just wagging her tail like she’s enjoying herself at the beach. Or if he screams, “Stay!” she suddenly has the urge to slowly mosey somewhere else with that dull, blank, drooping jowls, older dog look . . . “Yeah, right kid.”

Why Pray If God Is Sovereign?

August 26, 2018June 4, 2016 by Mark Ballenger

When we begin to learn about God’s sovereignty, the temptation is to turn into the “frozen chosen” who use God’s power as an excuse to be lazy. If God is in total control of everything, why pray at all?

Certainly this is a multi layered question that could be talked about endlessly in the theological classroom. The more pressing concern is when the idea of God’s sovereignty hinders your prayer life in a very negatively practical way. This is not what God wants.

So to answer the question, “Why pray if God is Sovereign?”, perhaps a counter question will help us see the Bible’s answer: “Why would you pray if God wasn’t sovereign?”

Our Prayers Reflect What We Believe About God

July 15, 2018May 28, 2016 by Mark Ballenger

By God’s grace I have had the opportunity to do missionary work in Liberia, West Africa. During my time there I had the privilege of visiting a lot of orphanages, some on a weekly basis.

I saw hundreds of orphan children. Babies, toddlers, children, teenagers. Some well fed, some not so well fed. Some with beds to sleep in and roofs over their heads, some without. Some of these orphans were in the city, some were way out in the African bush. Some were healthy and loved to play, some were crippled and lame.

I remember one boy named Francis. He was probably around fourteen, but he didn’t know his true birth date because his parents died when he was young and no one was there to share the details of his early life, a common problem amongst orphan children. Francis was a free spirit and did not like the rules and expectations of an orphanage, so he lived in a shipping container in the port, wheeling and dealing with the sailors to provide food for himself. Just from talking to all the sailors from different countries he had learned multiple languages: English, Russian, Ukrainian, French . . . Francis could speak them all. He was a genius.

The Secret to Not Losing Heart

August 30, 2018May 27, 2016 by Mark Ballenger

Luke 18:1 glory of God mark ballenger — Luke 18:1

I like to over complicate things. Let’s go back into my childhood. Let’s take a deep look into my thinking process. Let’s analyze every word this person said to me. Na, Jesus says. Let’s just start with prayer.

As I was going through seminary and pursuing a Master’s Degree in pastoral counseling, I was taught a principle I believe Jesus practiced, “Complicated problems don’t always require complicated solutions.”

Praying About Your Prayers

April 15, 2016 by Mark Ballenger

Before my wife and I were married, we dated long distance for over a year. We would drive eight hours to see each other around every two weeks, but of course we wanted to connect more than that. Phone conversations were the next best thing.

Looking back, perhaps one of the best foundations to our marriage was that year of dating where we were forced to connect with one another through conversation. As humans, having conversations is essential to building deep relationships. The same is true with our walk with God.

As Christians, we all know we should pray more than we do and talk with God as his word instructs us to. But how can we pray more? Being disciplined and just deciding in your heart to pray more is certainly not the worst thing you can do. But perhaps there’s a better way.

The Bible explains that before we will truly have the desire to seek God we must ask God for that desire. To have a passionate prayer life, we must pray to God for a passionate pray life.

Prayer Changes Me Most

August 24, 2016April 14, 2016 by Mark Ballenger

I pray because I can’t help myself. I pray because I’m helpless. I pray because the need flows out of me all the time- waking and sleeping. It doesn’t change God- it changes me.-C.S. Lewis

And I will do whatever you ask in my name, so that the Father may be glorified in the Son.-John 14:13

Before going to college, I took a year off and headed to West Africa. I was volunteering with a Christian organization called Mercy Ships in the country of Liberia. Mercy Ships is a floating hospital that travels up and down the west coast of Africa to provide healthcare for the poorest of the poor.

I had left the States in hopes of a deeper relationship with Jesus. This was my hail-Mary pass, my attempt to push in all my chips, my last desperate stab at knowing God like never before. If I don’t experience him out here, I figured, then I probably never will. You see, I knew I was a Christian, but I also knew I wasn’t a very good one. Chronic sins plagued my life and I knew if ever I was to experience the freedom of God I longed for and read about in the lives of his saints, I had to do something drastic.

It was going pretty well. I was working faithfully in the ship’s kitchen to help feed the crew, serving in local orphanages on my days off, and spending a ton of time reading in the ship’s library due to the dullness of life spent docked in a port. But after three months, things were starting to get really stale. The awe-factor of being in a third-world country was wearing off, routine was setting in, and although I was no longer stuck in a sinful lifestyle like I was back home, I had yet to experience God the way I had hoped.

The Danger of Christian Complacency

February 19, 2016 by Mark Ballenger

One of the greatest dangers in the Christian life is complacency. Contentment in Christ is to be sought after and celebrated. Complacency in Christ, however, is very different.

Christian contentment means that no matter what happens, you are fully satisfied in Jesus. Christian complacency means that no matter what happens, you are fully self-satisfied with your current personal effort in pursuing Christ.

How to Use Discernment

January 17, 2019January 30, 2016 by Mark Ballenger

Key Bible Verses: Matthew 18:15-17, Galatians 6:1, Romans 16:17, Romans 14:4

One of the defining marks of a true Christian is a disdain and discernment for sin. When the Holy Spirit enters our hearts and as we grow in our walk with Jesus, we become more discerning to the sins both in us and in others. This is a great gift that benefits a heart seeking after God, but with each gift we receive comes a temptation to use it wrongly. So how do we use our discernment according to the Bible?

How to Use Discernment the Right Way

Discernment over sin should, of course, primarily be used to aid the believer in confessing and repenting of their own rebellion. For how are we to help others see clearly if we ourselves still have planks of sin in our own eyes (Matthew 7:1-5).

Purity Equals Power in Prayer

December 6, 2015 by Mark Ballenger

Prayer Purity Power — 1 Peter 4:7, 1 Peter 3:7, James 5:16 (NIV), Psalm 66:18

God’s grace is a free gift which we cannot earn or lose due to our own actions. God saves, justifies, blesses, and loves us all because of his undeserved grace. And yet, it seems our obedience and personal effort to be pure are directly related to our spiritual power, especially in prayer. Here are three facts about the biblical connection between prayer and purity.

Impurity Cannot Steal Our Salvation, But It Does Hinder Our Power in Prayer

Sin does not cancel the grace of God. However, sin hinders are experience of God’s grace. When we become a Christian and then we sin, we will never be in jeopardy of losing our salvation. Once we are truly brought into the family of God, there is nothing that can separate us from the love of God (Romans 8:38-39). If, however, we forsake God in word or deed to such a degree that it shows we are not saved, this simply means we were never truly saved to begin with. It does not mean we lost our salvation since this is impossible according to Scripture.

What Should I Do When I Am Struggling to Pray?

May 10, 2016November 20, 2015 by Mark Ballenger

Struggling to pray? All true Christians want to pray more than they do. But all Christians, if they are being honest, go through seasons where praying is a challenge. To help overcome this barrier to prayer, it helps to ask, “How did Jesus pray?”

By studying Jesus prayer time in the Garden of Gethsemane (Matthew 26:36-46, Mark 14:32-42, Luke 22:39-46), we can discover at least four practical things Jesus did in prayer.