Do your prayers sound like this? “Dear Heavenly Father, bless me Lord, oh bless me! Bless my health, bless my job, bless my relationships, bless me Lord. Bless me Lord, oh bless me, bless me when I go out and bless me when I come in, bless me when I sneeze, and bless me after I sneeze. Bless me even before I sneeze and bless those around me that they too may be a blessing to me in my time of need.  Fulfill your blessed plan for my blessed life in Jesus name Amen!   P.S. Lord, Did I mention please bless me?”.  Have you ever prayed that prayer before? If you’re a Christian in today’s society than I’m going to guess you probably don’t pray it as much as you should. I mean, I’m just assuming you’re struggling in this area because based on the number of bestselling Christian books and the endless amount of sermons we watch on YouTube telling us we need to pray for God to bless us, I’m just assuming we don’t do this very well. I guess we still haven’t mastered the prayer of Jabez right? You know the guy in the Old Testament who prayed for God to give him wealth and enlarge his territory.  So God answered his prayer and he became very wealthy and now throughout the decades, Christians are being discipled in a plethora of workshops across our nation, so we can achieve the same kind of success Jabez experienced and be truly happy. You know, name it claim it but disguised in different ways. After all even though there’s no proof, they tell us Jesus was rich too, so why wouldn’t He want us to be wealthy?  God wants to give us bigger cars, bigger homes, bigger boats, bigger sofas so that we can watch Netflix on our bigger plasma TVs. We need to remind ourselves of this daily as we spend time with our Savior reading a five minute devotional on how we can draw close to Jesus, and live our best life now. So the next time we need to park our car at the grocery store, God will give us that front row spot. Never mind that maybe an elderly person or a single mother with four kids could use it, we’re highly favored by God, so let’s adjust our crowns and go for it. Isn’t it great we live in a country with values that are centered around the teachings of Christ? I love how the sixty seventh book of our Bible, the book of Thomas Jefferson focuses on our rights and teaches us not to deny them but to fight for them and teaches us to pursue happiness and the American dream at all costs. This is what makes our nation great. Hey, it’s the economy stupid! Go for the gusto, get your slice of the Americana! Just memorize some verses, go to church once a week, listen to a guy preach, sing some songs, put some change in a bucket, and Jesus will bless us. While during the week God is placed on hold unless we need Him and picking up our cross daily is just a gold chain we hang around our necks. Ah, the Christian life in western civilization, isn’t it dandy? Oh, we mean well but the Christ we’re advertising on our T-shirts is not even close to reality. When Christ is spelled out in our lives, everything is lowercase except the letter “I” in Christ. News flash, we are special but we’re not that special people and we get so upset when others don’t treat us kindly or don’t acknowledge our posts about our kids on Facebook.  How could they not give me a heart emoji for that post? We then get offended so easily if someone just looks at us the wrong way or is rude to us and we let this ruin our whole  day. Yet the early disciples were rejected, thrown in prison, stoned to death, crucified upside down and martyred for Christ. You won’t find that chapter in the “Seven Habits of Highly Successful Christians”.  I mean where’s the fun in that?  But we complain a lot at the slightest discomfort and wonder where’s God? Why isn’t He moving in our country? We blame our politicians, we blame the party we didn’t vote for, we champion the ideas of our talk show radio hosts and listen to them like they’re ordained prophets of God but all they do is make us complain and get us even angrier about the problems of this nation. If we’re truly filled with the Spirit we won’t be complaining, we will be thanking and worshiping God but instead we’re more filled with our agenda and everything else is the problem, not us. We seem to have a long list of solutions too like more gun laws, a bigger wall, need prayer in schools, parents need to be parents, less violence in video games, and Hollywood needs to clean up their act. But perhaps the solution is, instead of more prayer in schools maybe we need more prayer in us. Instead of building walls perhaps we need to build bridges and connect with our neighbors and actually get to know their names. Maybe the change starts with us on our knees and instead of my will be done perhaps more of His will be done. Instead of my kingdom come, His kingdom come. Perhaps the solution is for us to pray less for ourselves and more for others while trusting God that others will be interceding for our needs instead. After all, God did tell us to pray “give us our daily bread”, “deliver us from temptation“. He didn’t say “give me my daily bread”,  He said “give us this daily bread.” The Lord’s prayer is not “me” based but others based. We are taught to  intercede for the needs of others and pray for the will of God on earth as it is in heaven. My wife interceded for my marriage when I had given up on it, my mom interceded for my wife when her heart was hardened to me but because of their prayers and others that faithfully prayed for our marriage, God did the unthinkable and now is restoring what the locusts have eaten. Hard words to swallow, I know. This cup of coffee is a little hot but blow on it, it’ll cool and soon you’ll be able to finish it. We all need to drink this cup even myself. It is a reminder and wake up call for me too. I fall short of interceding for others, I too capitalize the “I” in Christ and I don’t even talk to my neighbors. This is something I need to hear myself. Now this is not to say it’s a sin to be happy, be rich, get involved in politics, or even pray for our individual needs. It’s not a sin to listen to talk radio, read a Christian book or ask God to grow our business. There is a time and place for prayers like Jabez but sometimes we can go too far and put too much emphasis on Christ being centered around us.   All I’m saying is where’s our priorities? Can we move from a “me” centric Christianity influenced by this Western Culture? I believe we can. First, we must be aware of it, second, we must repent of it and third, we must allow God’s Spirit to enable us to live this out. May God forgive us, help us to center our lives around Christ so that whether we are rich or poor, in a season of happiness or sorrow, we are thankful, standing fast in our priorities, Christ first, others second and us last. May we seek first His kingdom and His righteousness and trust our needs to God. As we move forward this year, I pray we look for ways to be a blessing rather than receive a blessing. I pray we look for ways to outdo one another in love, through our service towards our fellow man and in our selfless prayers. When Christ is all we want and our only true desire is to bless others with Christ’s love, then the change we want to see in our world, will slowly begin to take shape one heart at a time.

Matthew 6:33
“But seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things will be provided for you.”

Galatians 2:20
“I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.”

1 John 1:7
“But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus, his Son, purifies us from all sin.”

Matthew 6:10
“your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.”