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About the Book
"100 Ways to Simplify Your Life" by Joyce Meyer offers practical advice on how to simplify and improve various aspects of your life, covering topics such as relationships, decision-making, time management, and stress reduction. The book provides easy-to-follow tips and strategies to help readers navigate the complexities of modern life and find more peace and fulfillment.
Oral Roberts
Granville Oral Roberts was born January 24, 1918 in Pontotoc County, near Ada, in Oklahoma. His parents were deeply religious. His father was a farmer who also preached the gospel and established Pentecostal Holiness churches. His mother regularly prayed for the sick and led people to Christ. While she was still pregnant, Robert's mother committed Oral to God's service. Even though Oral had a very strong stutter his mother would tell him that one day God would heal his tongue and he would speak to multitudes.
The Roberts family was desperately poor. When Roberts was 16 he moved away from home, hoping for a better life. He rejected God and his upbringing. He started living a wild life and his health collapsed. Roberts had contracted tuberculosis. He returned home and eventually dropped to 120 pounds. He was a walking skeleton. God spoke to his older sister, Jewel, and told her that He was going to heal Oral. During this same time Oral turned his heart back to God and gave his life to Christ. A traveling healing evangelist named George Moncey came to Ada and held meetings in a tent. Oral's elder brother was touched when he saw friends of his healed in the meeting. He decided that he should get Oral and bring him to be healed. On the way to the meeting God spoke to Oral and said "Son, I'm going to heal you and you are to take my healing power to your generation. You are to build me a University and build it on My authority and the Holy Spirit." Once at the meeting Oral waited until the very end. He was too sick to get up and receive prayer, and so had to wait for Moncey to come to him. At 11:00 at night his parents lifted him so he could stand. When Moncey prayed for him the power of God hit him and he was instantly healed. Not only that but every bit of his stutter was gone!
After Roberts was healed he began to travel the evangelistic circuit. He met and married Evelyn Lutman, a school teacher from the same Holiness Pentecostal background as Roberts. They had their first child Rebecca and then the entire family began traveling as ministers. In 1942 they left the evangelistic field for a while and Roberts became a pastor. He also returned to college to further his education. While a pastor he prayed for a church member whose foot was crushed. The foot was instantly healed. God continued to speak to Roberts about his call to the multitudes. God called him to an unusual fast. Roberts was to read the four gospels and the book of Acts three times consecutively, while on his knees, for thirty days. God began to reveal Jesus as the healer in a new way. God also began to give Roberts dreams where he would see people's needs as God saw them. God called him to hold a healing meeting in his town. A woman was dramatically healed, several people were saved and Roberts' ministry changed overnight.
Roberts resigned his church in 1947 and began an itinerant ministry. Notable healings began to occur. One man tried to shoot Roberts. God used the story to bring him media attention, which expanded his ministry very quickly. Roberts felt called to purchase a tent and take his evangelistic ministry to larger cities. His first tent held 3,000 but he quickly exchanged it for a tent that held 12,000. In July 1948 The Oral Roberts Evangelistic Association was established. Oral began traveling continuously throughout the United States. Like many of his Pentecostal brethren Roberts held inter-racial meetings. This brought him a lot of negative attention from groups who didn't like his stand. He even received death threats for not holding segregated meetings. In 1956 Roberts was invited to Australia. He held meetings in Sydney and Melbourne. In Melbourne there were outright physical attacks and destructive gangs. He was literally driven out of the city for praying for the sick. Often when people discuss the healing revival of the 1950s Oral Roberts and William Branham are listed as the most widely recognized leaders of the movement. Others came along side and many emulated them, but they were the most widely recognized personalities.
Roberts was a man who understood and used the media for his benefit. Roberts began publishing a magazine almost immediately upon starting his ministry. He grasped the power of radio and television. In 1954 Roberts began filming his crusades. He began playing his sermons on radio and then airing the crusade tapes during evening television prime time. Unfortunately there is some evidence that healing meetings were scripted ahead of time, and not all healings were genuine. People began writing to the Ministry headquarters by the thousands. They were accepting Christ as their savior after seeing a person healed on TV. By 1957 the ministry was receiving 1,000 letters a day and he was getting thousands of phone calls. He established a round the clock prayer team to answer calls and pray for people who contacted the ministry. In 1957 Roberts claimed 1,000,000 salvations. Between 1947 and 1968 Roberts conducted over 300 major Crusades. Money was flowing into the organization at an unprecedented rate.
In the late 1950s the healing movement was waning and ministries were under attack for their lack of financial accountability. Roberts began to move on the vision God gave him to build a University. It was chartered in 1963 and became open to students in 1965. Roberts was having a significant national impact in the late 1950s and early 1960s. For several years his named appeared in the Top 100 list of the nation's most respected people. Although Roberts continued to hold healing meetings his focus shifted to the University and the television programs.
The 1970s and 80s brought many crises to the Roberts family. Their daughter Rebecca and son-in-law Marshall were killed in a plane crash. Their son Ronnie struggled with depression after serving in Vietnam and also declaring himself gay. He grew despondent after losing his job and committed suicide. Richard Roberts got a divorce. After Richard remarried he and his wife lost a new born son within two days. Roberts began teaching a doctrine of "seed faith" where he claimed that if you gave to his ministry then God would pay you back in multiplied ways. The television ministry received heavy criticism for the constant requests for money. The Roberts were living an extravagance lifestyle while many of their supporters were not wealthy. Financial questions were raised in how Roberts used University endowment funds to purchase personal homes and cars.
In 1977 Roberts had a vision to build a hospital where people not only received care but received healing prayer. It was to be called City of Faith. Roberts put his heart and soul into the project, believing that God would build it as He had the University. The hospital struggled along and Roberts called his followers to give to the project, believing he had a vision from God to raise the money. Roberts even claimed twice that if money didn't come in that Jesus would "take him home." The hospital was built, but never succeeded financially, and finally closed in 1989. Financial giving was plummeting for both the Oral Roberts Evangelistic Association and Oral Roberts University.
Roberts retired in 1993, at the age of 75. Roberts, with his wife Evelyn, moved to California to live near the coast. Evelyn died in May 2005. Although Roberts influence waned after the problems of the 1970s and 1980s, he was still recognized for his pioneering work on the "sawdust trail", television evangelism, and building a Christian University. He often appeared on religious broadcasting networks as a recognized leader in the healing movement of the last half century. He died December 15, 2009 at the age of 91.
Oral Roberts' legacy is a mixed one. Roberts brought the truth of God's healing to the public in a way that few others accomplished in his lifetime. His financial and personal issues and increasingly extravagant claims eventually brought his ministry into disrepute. The University he established continued to have financial crises under the leadership of his son Richard Roberts. It was only after Richard stepped down in 2009 and new leadership took over the University that it stabilized financially. The University is no longer connected to the Oral Roberts Evangelistic Association.
Talking Back to God - How His Promises Provoke Our Prayers
It is one of the most audacious, and awe-inspiring, moments in all of Scripture. In the wake of Israel’s shocking rebellion against God — blatantly violating the covenant God just made with them — Moses humbly dares to mediate between God and his people. At the climax of his intercession, and his careful yet determined dialogue with the living God, Moses makes what is perhaps the greatest, and most perceptive, petition a creature can of his Creator. And it is, after all, a prayer — a modest yet bold request, made by man, to God Almighty: “Please show me your glory.” That this is, in some sense, a special moment is plain. We do not stand in Moses’s sandals. We are not prophets called to mediate a covenant, nor do we live under that Sinai pact. Yet Moses’s prayer still functions as a model for the godly after him. It will not be the last prayer in Scripture for a sight of God’s glory, and rightly do the faithful echo it today. What might we who are in Christ learn about our own prayers from the amazing sequence of Moses’s pressing into God in Exodus 32–33? Can and Will God Forgive? Before wrestling with the prayer itself, we need to first acknowledge Moses’s haunting question: Could and would God forgive the people such a horrific breach of the covenant? Moses was not yet sure. He heard stories of his forefathers, encountered God at the bush, and witnessed the plagues in Egypt and the rescue in the Red Sea. Moses knew a powerful God who had delivered his people, but would he also forgive them? At first, it looked like he wouldn’t. When God first informed Moses, on the mountain, that the people had “corrupted themselves,” by making and worshiping a golden calf (32:7–8), God had said, “Let me alone, that my wrath may burn hot against them and I may consume them. . .” (32:10). As Moses began to plead that God withhold destruction, it was far from clear that any relationship of peace could be fully restored. God did relent of immediately consuming the people (32:14), yet the covenant remained broken. Although Moses went down the mountain, confronted the people in their rebellion, burnt the calf, disciplined the people (32:15–20), and oversaw the purging of the three thousand who led in the rebellion (32:21–29), Moses knew this did not restore what lay shattered. The next day, he returned to meet God on the mountain. What drives Moses’s sequence of prayer in Exodus 33 is the question he begins to ask in 32:32: Can and will Yahweh forgive? Will God restore the relationship, and dwell among them, after they had worshiped the golden calf? And as we will see, God draws prayer out of Moses, and then moves to answer Moses’s question, in a way far more powerful, and memorable, than if there had not been an unfolding, developing, deepening relationship with God. Moses, Teach Us to Pray Exodus 33 begins with God declaring to the people that even though he will give them the land promised to their forefathers, God himself will not go up among them (33:3). They mourn this “disastrous word.” They want him, not just the promised land. They humble themselves before God, taking off their ornaments “from Mount Horeb onward” (33:6). Even though the people heard this disastrous word, however, Moses continues to enjoy remarkable favor with God. In a tent pitched far off from the camp, God speaks with Moses (33:9), and verse 11 comments: “Thus the Lord used to speak to Moses face to face, as a man speaks to his friend.” This sets the scene for Moses’s remarkable intercessory prayer in 33:12–18. “In prayer, we respond to God. . . . First, we hear his voice in Scripture; then we access his ear in prayer.” Observe, then, at least three lessons Christians today might take from Moses’s otherwise inimitable prayer. 1. Prayer responds to God. The living God takes the initiative. He first announced to Moses the people’s breach of the covenant (32:7–10). And he revealed his enduring favor on Moses, prompting the prophet to reply. So too for us. We don’t just “dial up” God in prayer when we so wish. First, he speaks, as he has revealed himself in his world, and in his word, and in his Son, the Word. In prayer, we respond to him in light of his revelation to us. First, we hear his voice in Scripture; then we access his ear in prayer. We pray in light of what he has promised. 2. Prayer pleads God’s reputation and glory. When God announces to Moses the peoples’ sin, and the intention to destroy them and start over with him, Moses’s reflex is to lean into God’s own reputation. This is a good reflex. “Why should the Egyptians say, ‘With evil intent did he bring them out, to kill them in the mountains and to consume them from the face of the earth’?” (Exodus 21:12). Moses prays for God to turn from righteous anger and relent “from this disaster against your people,” for God’s own name’s sake. Moses does not plea the people’s worth — or their humanity, made in God’s image — but God’s choice and word. He chose them as his people. “At the bottom of prayer to a God like ours is our longing for his face, not merely the provisions of his hand.” Today we are in good company to pray for God’s own reputation in the world, and to take notice of, and pray, God’s own promises back to him. God loves for his people to pray in light of what he’s said to us, to make our pleas in response to his promises. And praying for his glory not only concerns God’s reputation in the world, but also, and most significantly, our own knowing and enjoying him. At the bottom of prayer to such a God is our longing for his face, not merely the provisions of his hand. 3. Prayer can be incremental and sequential. We might even call Moses’s prayer “dialogical.” It is striking how relational his process and sequence of prayer is in these chapters. At the heart of the “dialogue,” reverent as it is, is whose people the Israelites are, a topic God introduces and draws Moses into. First, to Moses, God calls them, after their sin, “your people, whom you brought up out of the land of Egypt” (32:7). Then God introduces the surprising tension of his ongoing favor on Moses. God will consume the people and “make a great nation” of Moses (32:9–10). This favor, combined with calling the nation “your people,” presents Moses an invitation to reply in prayer. Moses asks to know more about this God — “please show me now your ways” (33:13) — to discern whether God will forgive his stiff-necked nation. And Moses meekly, but importantly, appends this to this first plea: “Consider too that this nation is your people.” God answers positively, though briefly: “My presence will go with you, and I will give you rest” (33:14). The short reply invites Moses to press in further, for the sake of the people. His “me” moves to “us.” He pleads for “I and your people”; then again “we . . . I and your people.” Moses identifies himself with the people, asking that God’s favor on him extend to them. Prayer, by human persons to the living and personal God, is far more than transactional. It is relational, and often incremental, with measured, humble boldness. God leads us, like Moses, into prayer. We make our requests. He answers in time. We learn more of him, which leads us to ask to see more of him. ‘Show Me Your Glory’ Moses’s prayerful dialogue with God has become more and more daring — slowly, one incremental plea at a time: Don’t consume your people (32:11–13). Please forgive your people (32:31–32). Show me your ways (33:13). Count the people with me in my favor with you (33:15–16). And now, most boldly, “Please show me your glory” (33:18). This short but daring plea will be Moses’s last. He will not speak again until 34:9, when he finally completes the plea for forgiveness he left unfinished in 32:32. In Exodus 33:19, God begins to respond: I will make all my goodness pass before you and will proclaim before you my name ‘The Lord.’ And I will be gracious to whom I will be gracious, and will show mercy on whom I will show mercy. (Exodus 33:19) Moses receives his full answer, however, a chapter later in Exodus 34:7 with another revelation: The Lord passed before him and proclaimed, “The Lord, the Lord, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness, keeping steadfast love for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin. (Exodus 34:6–7). The driving question has been answered, and so Moses bows in worship and prays with confidence, “O Lord, please let the Lord go in the midst of us . . . and pardon our iniquity and our sin . . .” (34:9). Having prayed, and seen the glory in God’s declarations about his character, his goodness, his mercy, his grace, Moses is confident that God will grant forgiveness and renew the covenant. Christ, Our Moses For Christians today, any Moses-like leveraging of God’s favor we know to be firmly grounded in his favor on Christ. More significant than our echoes and imitations of Moses is the fulfillment of his intercession, and final mediation for God’s people, in Jesus. We may indeed glean some categories and concepts from Moses’s prayers. Yet, as we come in Christ to Exodus 32–33, we identify not only with the prophet, but with the people. They are “stiff-necked.” Rebellious. Deserving of divine justice. Desperate for mercy and grace. But in Christ, we have one far greater than Moses who intercedes for us, leveraging his own perfect favor with God on our behalf. Jesus, our great high priest, “has passed through the heavens,” and calls us to “draw near with confidence to the throne of grace, [to] receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need” (Hebrews 4:14, 16). And he does so not only as new-covenant mediator and intercessor, but also as the very one in whose face we see the glory of God. What was unique in ancient Israel — speaking to God “as a man speaks to his friend” — is offered to all who are in Christ. God now invites us to come to him as Father, and to come to Christ as husband — the deepest and nearest of human relationships — not to make requests, get what we want, pivot, and go back to life apart from him, but to come closer, and nearer, through prayer, and discover again and again that he himself, in Christ, is the great reward.
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