My brother you and I and everyone else have been duped by religious men.
Yes, we've been told that we need to do many things to live this Christian life and we simply cannot.
What if I told you that God would like for you to just be yourself with Him? As if being yourself when you go to the grocery store, or being yourself when you sit down with your family to eat?
We act one way when we are supposedly in God's presence and another way when we deal with the world. We've been conditioned, so that when our expectation fails we feel alone and distraught. Then we turn to something else that makes us feel happy. If we were already just being normal with God in the first place by including Him in everything that we do and not being someone else when we are with Him in Church or doing "churchy" stuff, we wouldn't have to turn to something else to make us feel happy.
God is not a billion miles away, but our expectation of Him is. Our perception of this walk is a billion miles away.
God came to Adam at the cool of the day, once a day God came to him to fellowship. Today we don't have that cool of the day in which God shows up, we have Him 24/7 living in us day by day. I pray to Him when I go to the grocery store, when I go to the loo, when I am doing the dishes or working on my bike. He is constantly there. We've been conditioned to pray a certain time of the day to give Him "our time". All the time is His time because He is in us all the time.
The best thing to do brother is to turn off the news network. Back in the day when they didn't have the News Media, nobody got word about a catastrophe for several months depending on where they were. So it's not important that you know whats going on in the world. Many a man has shut himself away in a cave or a closet closed his ears to what the world is saying only to want to hear what the Spirit of the Lord is saying. Your not obligated to know what the world is vomiting out.
When praying for someone that you care for and your tearing down principalities and powers it takes a lot of dedication and determination to persevere, but you have to want it.
When your in doubt stop praying. Yes you heard me. Stop. You need to find out what you want from God. Once you know what you want, nothing will stop you from obtaining it. Then proceed to pray again and don't stop praying until you've obtained what your seeking. Your going to find roadblocks but they are set up there for your learning. They are set there by God to see what you are going to do with them. Are you going to run through a troop and leap over the wall, or sit down and wallow in your unbelief?
You have to know what you want. That is most important. Once you know, you'll be unstoppable.
As for heresies, you'll be surprised of what wrong teachings that we have embraced thinking that they are sound doctrine. I wouldn't worry too much about it, because when you pray prayers like, "teach me your ways Lord", or "search me Lord and see if they be any wicked way in me", if your willing He will show you those "ways" that are in you that are not His ways and again I say, if your willing (because many are not) He will remove it by giving you truth, and receiving truth is like swallowing an elephant pill. The other will fall away.
I think what your worried about the most D'Dom is being ready. You look at the world, you look at the state of the Church and you look at yourself and hope is slipping away, you feel despair and wonder if you'll make it.
Let me take you back to a world after Christ died and was resurrected. We see those days as Days of Glory and yet there was fear. Those disciples had just lost their only voice that had protected them from the angry world around them to a cloud.
They had to be careful how they went out in public lest they be nabbed by anyone that might have seen them with Jesus. The Roman world with it's grip in the region was very raw, the occupation being long and both Jew and Roman were very much at war with each other and the disciples was just another bag of problems to the Jews that they had to deal with if they were to be trouble.
Yes, Jesus was taken away and promises were given, but a few days of Him being gone, the fear would have settled back in as to what they planned to do next. They were told to stay in Jerusalem, that alone was tricky but they obeyed the command. When the day came that God came into that upper room, they came out changed men. With boldness and one accord, Peter preached a sermon. Before he was denying His Lord now he is preaching to thousands and having no fear of what could possibly happen next.
D'Dom, We need to be filled with the Holy Spirit, we need to walk out as changed men. Paul commands that we be filled all the time. We cannot walk in our own strength and expect things to continue on the way they are, we need His strength to overcome.
Long hours in prayer is a calling. Not everyone has that calling. The Apostles had that calling, other men and women as well down through the ages. But for the man who is married, it's a little bit more complicated. When your one flesh you can't just do what you want to, you have to ask one another for time to be alone. She or you may have a need to talk about some things and you want to pray but she needs to talk, you have to give her your time to have the talk and then you can pray. If you reverse it and press on to pray, your going to have trouble in the home. In order to put God first you have to love your wife.
