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Did Jim Bakker Say That God Can’t Hear Prayers Through a Mask?

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Well… Someone could possible imagine Jim Bakker saying:

“How can you go to church and pray when you’re wearing a mask? Do you think God can hear your prayers through a mask?” —- Televangelist Jim Bakker

Which is a quote from a now deleted tweet (poor guy), which according to snopes, is itself quoting a satire website thebiznews.org… which from the looks of it appears to be The Babylon Bee for the other side of the force.

So thats a lot of quotes from quotes there.

Whats my point?

Can we please be careful over the information we all share? This isn’t a “Twitter thing” at all, but its about the information we all share with each other. (Be it on Twitter, WhatsApp prayer groups, Church Facebook groups, etc)

Can I suggest one thing to combat misinformation like this?

If it sounds crazy too good to be true, google it.

If it sounds crazy bad – or just crazy, google it.

And obviously, if you see The Sofa share something. Feel free to tweet him about it. Nicely….

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Psalm 10

For the righteous Lord loves justice. The virtuous will see his face

Psalm 11:7 New Living Translation

Can you think of a time when you’ve felt truly helpless? We live in such a comfortable part of the world that sometimes it’s easy to forget how hard life can really be. Yet we have all had difficult times and certainly will face more when we don’t know what to do or where to turn. It might the loss of a loved one, financial struggles, health concerns, redundancy, it might be that you can’t make the progress you want to, the list could go on and on.

Bear Grylls famously describes his faith as his backbone. I like this analogy, without our backbones we’d have little to define us as human beings. We physically would look a mess and we’d be incapable of most things we take for granted day to day. If our faith in God is our backbone then without it we know we’re not very capable at all. There’s a few things we can manage on our own, but probably not very well. We’re helpless!

But there’s good news, God knows the hope of the helpless and he hears us and comforts us. We know from our jounrey through the Psalms to date that God is stronger than we know and is willing to act with and for us. HE knows what we need for the best and he will provide.

Prayer

Dear God thank you that you know our hope. That you hear our cries and want to comfort us. Help us to put ourselves aside, come to the full realisation that without you, we’re nothing. But with you, we have everything. Amen.

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How Christians Can Deal With A Traffic Jam

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Unless you either avoid road transport, or only travel over night, there’s a chance you’ve found yourself in a traffic jam.

If you’ve gone anywhere during a bank holiday weekend in Devon or Cornwall, theres a chance you’re still in one.

So how should a Christian life relate to being stuck in a traffic jam?

Here are a few ideas*:

  1. Before you leave, proudly put up your “Bless off” bumper sticker. (With thanks to Midfaith crises for the idea)
  2. Put the windows down. Get that Christian music on LOUD.
  3. When the cars come to a stop, take a walk amongst the cars, putting your emergency stash of gospel tracts into peoples open windows. Trust in God that you’re not going to get ran over.
  4. Point at the person in the car next to you. Pray in tongues. Loudly. While pointing at them. With your eyes open. Wide.
  5. Grab your emergency wireless mic, tune in your car radio, turn it up, stand on the stage (your cars roof), and proudly share your testimony.
  6. Take out your acoustic guitar, sing praise music while walking up and down the the traffic jam.
  7. Send bluetooth messages to nearby phones, offering prayer and Christian counselling to all who request it.
  8. Take out your wine and sandwiches, start a communion amongst your car and the cars around you. Change the subject if anyone talks about drinking and driving.
  9. Shout that traffic jams violate your Christian rights (because Jesus wasn’t in one), and that you should be allowed to get through.

Any others?

*I also don’t recommend doing any of these. Mostly because you might die.