How To Do It All

This is the Truth Network. Encouraging Prayer. God offers an open invitation for His people to talk with Him at any time about anything. On Encouraging Prayer, Dr. James Banks, author of the bestselling Prayers for Prodigals and many other books on prayer, provides weekly biblical insight to help you learn to love to pray. And now, here's James. Wow, what a title for today's talk, James.

How to Do It All. Where are we going with this one? I know, I know, it sounds a little ambitious, right? But what we're doing is abbreviating Paul's phrase from 1 Corinthians 10, 31, whatever you do, do it all for the glory of God.

That's what we're talking about. How can we do it all for the glory of God? Not that I've mastered that by any means, but, you know, what we want is a way to go about things so that our work is better, more skillful, more inspired, more helpful because of Him, you know? More everything simply because we're not doing it in our own strength, we're doing it in His.

Oh, that sounds good to me. Yeah, I know, right? And that's where prayer comes in. That makes sense because if you're inviting God into everything you're doing and you're trying to please Him in it, right? He is going to help you. Yeah, he really will, but that's the challenging thing.

How do you do that? I think a lot of that comes down to really praying in the moment. I mean, don't you like letting God in, staying in close conversation with Him and all that? Yeah, yeah. And this applies in so many areas.

If you think about it, the possibilities are just endless. You know, I think we've talked about this before. You want that mechanic who's working on your car to be praying at the same time that he's working, you know, to be doing it for God, because then he's going to be doing his best.

He's going to make sure that all of those lug nuts on your wheels are tightened down well, you know? Or what about the neurosurgeon or the brain surgeon? I mean, just think about all the areas that this applies to. Oh, man, I'll tell you. Hopefully, you know, we're working on more and more and more.

I know that's one of my big ambitions in 2025. Yeah, yeah. And I, you know, a great example of this in history is one of my favorite musicians, Johann Sebastian Bach. And, you know, I, I just love his, you think of his sheep may safely graze.

I think that one was played at my wedding. And, you know, there's, there's another Jesus joy of man's desiring. It's just a, just a beautiful piece. And it actually shows Bach's heart. Bach was a devout Christian. And when he wrote his music, he wanted to do so for the glory of God. So when he'd write a musical score, at the beginning of the score, sometimes he'd write JJ, which is Latin for Jesu Juva, you know, help Jesus in other words. And then at the end, he'd write SDG, which is Soli Deo Gloria, to God be the glory.

And, you know, he writes these inspired pieces. And actually, the German name of Jesus joy of man's desiring is Jesu meine Freude, which is literally Jesus, my joy. And I think that's a good kind of place to jump in on this to realize there's just joy in being with God. Sometimes there's joy in trying to do the things that we do for him. And I, you know, I know that that can sound maybe a little goody two shoes, because we kind of go through a correction there, right? I mean, because we're fighting that battle of doing everything in our own strength.

But the more we surrender to him, and the more we give ourselves over to him in the moment, the more of his joy that will naturally flow in, right? Darrell Bock Oh, I'll tell you, you know, one of my favorite examples is, you know, most people would know the Christian group, the King and Country, right, of King and Country. They're from Australia.

They're the small bone brothers. And, you know, sometimes I get so lucky, I get interviews from really well known folks like that. And one of the things I love to ask folks like that is, tell me about your creative process. How does that exactly work when you're, you know, writing a worship song for God? You know, what does that, how does that feel like?

And he says, you know, and they're working on them together. And I can't tell you which brother was which, but I can tell you what they said was that you would be, you know, playing around with the keybones or playing around with a lyric, and all of a sudden, the perfect one chooses you. And you know it did not come from you, because you wouldn't possibly think of that melody or you wouldn't possibly think of that lyric, but you realize, wow, I was just given a gift. And then once you're within the gift and you're working within the gift, then God and you work together on filling out the details. It's like he gives you the gift of the original thought, but then you enjoy the journey of writing it together. And I'm sure for Bach, it was the same kind of thing. And as soon as they said it, I knew that, you know, when I was doing show notes or that kind of thing, writing a sermon, that's exactly what that feels like, right, James?

Yeah, it really is. I mean, I think about, you know, when I wrote prayers for prodigals, and there were some times where a scripture verse would just kind of flow in that I didn't know that I knew. And it's like, wait a minute, where did that come from? You know, and recently in writing peace through prayer, there was just a sense of God's peace. It's like, go this way, you know, take this step. And when we let him into the creative process, there's, there's nothing better, but you have to listen, you know, and, you know, there's trial and error, but he really is there.

And that's where we want to go. And again, this just applies to so much of life. If we go there more and more and more, we will be blessed and the people we serve will be blessed as well. And so even in prayer, think about that, right?

Like praying absolutely with him. So this would be a good opportunity to do that. So go ahead, James, thank you, Lord, Jesus, thank you for this whole concept that we've talked about today, that we can experience these things with you, that you flip these genius ideas and that we could recognize them in whatever our field of work may be, or even working with our own families or whatever the situation may be. Lord, help us to truly search out you as we go into everything that we do for your glory and, and, and whet our appetites for that.

So we'll think about it more and more this year. And Lord, again, I thank you for the many times we've done it, help us to do it some more. In Jesus' name I pray. Amen. You can hear more from Pastor James by visiting his website, jamesbanks.org, or by visiting Peace Church in Durham, North Carolina. May God bless you and encourage you as you pray. This is the Truth Network.