Jesus, help me be healed from life issues by getting closer to God. Since God offers training through You on how to yield to His power, let that training set me free; and, let that bring me closer to God. If I am going to be able to get closer to God, show me that I am going to have to learn how to take advantage of God’s spiritual provisions. Help me see that they come through You so I can be empowered to handle the circumstances of my life. Teach me that this is what You want to be doing in me, as You and I go through these courses together.

Eph 6:12 (NIV) For our struggle is NOT against flesh and blood [people], but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil [Satan and demons] in the heavenly realms.

Jesus, make it clear to me that if I use human effort and human procedures to try to handle my problems, it will continue to backfire on me. Human effort will spiral me into divorce, disease, stress, financial difficulties, people problems, and spiritual problems. As You take me through the process of growing closer to God, I will be able to see that my problems are being caused by me not knowing how to operate in the spiritual world. Show me that I haven’t learned how to resist temptations and spiritual pressures that are forcing me to have issues with life. Help me see that if I could have used human solutions, I would have already solved my life problems.

Jesus, since my problems aren’t being caused by myself or the people around me, help me learn how to have a strategy that allows Your power to flow through me. Help me allow You to change my objectives in life. Help me allow You to teach me how to deal with an enemy that hates me. Help me WANT to be trained to win against Satan who is trying to hurt and destroy me. Even though this hasn’t been any part of my plans and strategies up until now, show me that if I am going to win over my issues with life, it must become a priority now.

James 4:1-2 (NIV) What causes fights and quarrels among you? Don’t they come from your desires that battle within you? You want something but don’t get it. You kill and covet, but you cannot have what you want. You quarrel and fight. You do not have, because you do not ask God. Jesus, teach me how to stop fighting myself and the people around me. Teach me how to start asking God for the solutions to my problems. Teach me that the way to block off life problems and all my other struggles will come through me growing spiritually; and, growing spiritually will involve prayer.

John 4:24 (NIV) God is Spirit, and His worshipers must worship in spirit and in truth. Jesus, I worked very hard at getting an education so as to learn how to operate in the world around me. I am in the process of spending a lifetime learning how to live here. However, show me that I am going to spend eternity in the spirit realm. God wants me to start right now learning how to work in His world. Take my problem with life and use it to teach me Biblical principles, spiritual concepts, and human relationships that will empower me to win at life.

Jesus, teach me that the main reason I am here on earth is so I can learn how to live in the spirit world. God designed this world as an example for me to use to learn spiritual principles. Make it clear to me that if I only learn world principles and don’t use them as examples for my spiritual training, I will have missed the main reason I exist. Help me grow spiritually by allowing You to show me how life on this planet works. Teach me that the principles on this planet are showing me how to win at life here AND how to win in eternity with my heavenly Father in His Kingdom. And, help me understand that it all starts with learning how to worship God “in spirit and in truth.”

James 4:7 (NIV) Submit yourselves, then, to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you. Jesus, show me that my assignment is to learn how to yield to God and the things of God; and how to resist the devil and the things of the devil. Help me see that I have been resisting, fighting, and hurting myself and the people around me unnecessarily. John 15:14 (NIV) You are My friends if you do what I command. Help me do everything You tell me to do so I will be set free from my difficulties with life. AND, here is what You are telling me to do: John 15:12 (NIV) My command is this: Love each other as I have loved you. Empower me to obey this command.

Rom 13:9-10 (NIV) The commandments, “Do not commit adultery,” “Do not murder,” “Do not steal,” “Do not covet,” and whatever other commandment there may be, are summed up in this one rule: “Love your neighbor as yourself.” Love does no harm to its neighbor. Therefore love is the fulfillment of the law.

Jesus, help me stop fighting myself and other people; and, help me love myself and other people. Teach me that You aren’t just telling me to feel love for myself and other people; draw out actual scenarios and life-situations where I am to treat myself and others a certain way. But, help me not do this by using my own power. Empower me to create win/win situations for everyone involved with me. And, let me be doing it by following the Scriptures in the Bible and receiving Your power to do it. Let this take me into the world where my heavenly Father and You live.

Jesus, show me why I have to learn all this spiritual training. Show me why God doesn’t just set me free from life issues so I don’t have to put forth all this effort. Teach me that the main reason is because I am being trained for eternity. Make it clear to me that learning how to be involved with spiritual issues is learning how to live the new life God has given me AS A CHILD OF GOD. Help me understand that I can’t enter God’s eternal Kingdom acting the way I do now. I would be a destructive contaminant there even worse than I am now. Make some wonderful changes in me that I can’t make in myself.

Jesus, I don’t want to drink any poison. I don’t want any bullets shot into me. I don’t want any stab wounds inflicted into my abdomen? Teach me that this is the same thing as, how many sins I am willing to have in my life. Teach me that when I mistreat myself and others, I am sinning. God labeled these mistreatments, sins, so I can see them like I see poison, stab wounds, and bullet wounds. Teach me that there are things that kill my body; and, there are things that destroy my eternal life. I know most of those things that can kill my body; but, help me know what is hurting my spiritual life.

Jesus, make it clear to me that by accepting You as my Lord, Savior, and King, it brought me into a wonderful new life through the experience of salvation and justification. I INSTANTLY became a child of God, a member of His family, and a citizen of His Kingdom. All my past, present, and future sins were forgiven and forgotten BY GOD. I am now STARTING OVER with a new life with God, the Bible, and Christianity. BUT, even though my record with God is now clean, I and those around me still remember what I DID. AND, I and those around me can still see what I am DOING. Teach me that there is another work of God that deals with that.

Jesus, SINCE God considers me free from all sin through grace and mercy, that gives me all the rights and privileges of a child of God, a member of His family, and a citizen in His Kingdom. Show me that IF I DIDN’T receive salvation and justification, I would NOT have You and Your power working in and through me right now. BUT, help me understand why all this happened to me. I had my reasons for why I accepted You as my Savior, Lord, and King. But, God has His reason for making all that happen. Help me know what God’s reason is so I can cooperate with it. Make it clear to me that GOD gave me salvation and justification so I could get Your power and help to start treating myself and others properly; that was HIS reason.

Jesus, help me not let this strange word, sanctification, scare or bother me. Help me understand that You will be covering it and most of its parts over the course of my time with You. Let me see that the first thing I need to know about it is that, in this study, sanctification is also called spiritual growth. Teach me that sanctification or spiritual growth is me learning how to yield to Your power to fulfill Mark 12:30-31: (NIV) Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.’ The second is this: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no commandment greater than these.”

Jesus, show me that until I start studying about spiritual growth, I really don’t learn much that I can get involved in. Salvation and justification don’t require much on my part. Salvation and justification are exclusively done by the grace (God giving me blessings I don’t deserve), mercy (God protecting me from consequences I do deserve), love, and power of God.

Teach me that I had almost nothing to do with being saved and justified; I just prayed The Lord’s Prayer and obeyed Romans 10:8-10. Rom 10:8-10 (NIV) But what does it say? “The word is near you; it is in your mouth and in your heart,” that is, the word of faith we are proclaiming: That if you confess with your mouth, “Jesus is Lord,” and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you will be saved. For it is with your heart that you believe and are JUSTIFIED, and it is with your mouth that you confess and are SAVED.

Help me see how little I did to get salvation and justification:

1. Jesus, You died for my sins.
2. The Holy Spirit convicted me and made me feel guilty concerning the sins (bad deeds against myself, others, and God’s plan) I was committing.
3. The Father drew me, which caused me to start understanding spiritual things for the first time.
4. The Holy Spirit started opening up the meaning to God’s Word which made the good news message make sense to me.
5. You gave me the necessary measure of faith to believe the message.
6. I decided to pray The Lord’s Prayer and confess with my mouth that “Jesus is Lord” and believe in my heart that God raised You from the dead.
7. You saved and justified me.

Jesus, help me see that all I did was pray and ask for it; then I confessed and believed that what God said was true and God did all of the rest of salvation and justification FOR me. God made me His child, a member of His family, and a citizen of His eternal Kingdom. Now, make it clear to me that He wants a relationship with me as His child. He wants me to be a vital part of all He is going to be doing in and through me for the rest of my life and through out eternity. Help me yield to this relationship with Him.

Jesus, show me that since my heavenly Father wants a relationship with me, He decided that the only way I am going to move into the victorious life in the Spirit, is that I must learn how to work together with You. Show me that You and I are going to be using my difficulties with life for me to learn Biblical principles that enchance that relationship. Show me that these Biblical principles, the ones You will be teaching me, will bring spiritual growth into my life that enhance ALL my relationships. Your spiritual growth training empowers me so I can experience greater and greater success in all my life in time and in eternity. Help me see that spiritual growth consists of You and me working together to help me love the Lord my God with all my heart and with all my soul and with all my mind and with all my strength,’ and to, ‘love my neighbor as myself (Mark 12:30-31).’