CONTINUING THE PURPOSE OF PRAYER
Greetings in the name of Jesus:
One of the major problems that faced the Church from the beginning has always been staying true to the teachings of Christ. A big reason for that problem at first was the persecution of the church. The Apostles had to continuously stamp out fires of discontent that started with false teachings. You see God had not established a new form of Judaism but a whole new approach to our relationship with God that no longer required sacrifice to role back sin from the lives of mankind. Instead, it concentrated upon the direct communication between a man and God through a one time sacrifice for the original sin of Adam and Eve, and now gave men and women a chance to accept that forgiveness through the sacrifice of Jesus Christ. That new covenant from God was built around the concept of our ability to walk and talk with God just as Adam and Eve were able to originally do, but that meant that we had to have a way of doing that in a very spiritual way even though we remained in this physical body. Jesus introduced us to prayer and exactly how to use prayer in our communication with the Father.
Jesus taught us through His example of prayer found in Matthew 6:9-13 when He gave us the Lord's Prayer. When we look closely at the way that prayer is constructed we can find the exact reasons for prayer. " Our Father who art in Heaven hallowed be thy name" gives us the idea that each time we come to God we need to recognize Him for who He is and what His position is over us as His creation. " Your Kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in Heaven" gives us an idea of why the church prayed as it did in those early years. Even though they were being persecuted they did not pray that the persecution would be removed because they were praying first and foremost for God's will to be done more so than their own will. Once again we can go back to Acts 4:29 to see that from our last discussion on the purpose for prayer. The motivation for this kind of prayer was from Jesus own examples given in John 13:14 where Jesus spoke of the fact that because He had washed their feet they, in turn, should be willing to wash one another's feet. In other words, Christ was telling us to put others before ourselves.
This may bring up our own personal motive today for our prayers because God definitely has a motive for teaching us about prayer. John 4:23 tells us that God's intent was for us to worship Him in Spirit and in truth because God is Spirit. John 3:5-8 tells us that we cannot physically worship Him in the ways we once did because just as we were born into this physical world when we came to this life; when we came to Christ and accepted salvation we were born again of the Spirit of God and so now we must worship Him in Spirit. In order for us to be able to communicate with God effectively, and that means by our prayers going through the Spirit of God to the Father.
it must be done through the Holy Spirit.
There are several other reasons for prayer. Among those is that He loves us and wants to provide for us through prayer and the development of a right kind of attitude toward our relationship with Him. Matthew 7:7 tells us to ask for is in His will, Matthew 26:41 that we should pray and watch so that we will not be tempted and fooled, Luke 18:1 we should pray and never give up. Our whole Spiritual life is wrapped up in prayer, and so it is something that we should be keenly aware of needing and being done right in our life. May you richly bless God through your life in Him.
THE UNWORTHY SERVANT
One of the major problems that faced the Church from the beginning has always been staying true to the teachings of Christ. A big reason for that problem at first was the persecution of the church. The Apostles had to continuously stamp out fires of discontent that started with false teachings. You see God had not established a new form of Judaism but a whole new approach to our relationship with God that no longer required sacrifice to role back sin from the lives of mankind. Instead, it concentrated upon the direct communication between a man and God through a one time sacrifice for the original sin of Adam and Eve, and now gave men and women a chance to accept that forgiveness through the sacrifice of Jesus Christ. That new covenant from God was built around the concept of our ability to walk and talk with God just as Adam and Eve were able to originally do, but that meant that we had to have a way of doing that in a very spiritual way even though we remained in this physical body. Jesus introduced us to prayer and exactly how to use prayer in our communication with the Father.
Jesus taught us through His example of prayer found in Matthew 6:9-13 when He gave us the Lord's Prayer. When we look closely at the way that prayer is constructed we can find the exact reasons for prayer. " Our Father who art in Heaven hallowed be thy name" gives us the idea that each time we come to God we need to recognize Him for who He is and what His position is over us as His creation. " Your Kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in Heaven" gives us an idea of why the church prayed as it did in those early years. Even though they were being persecuted they did not pray that the persecution would be removed because they were praying first and foremost for God's will to be done more so than their own will. Once again we can go back to Acts 4:29 to see that from our last discussion on the purpose for prayer. The motivation for this kind of prayer was from Jesus own examples given in John 13:14 where Jesus spoke of the fact that because He had washed their feet they, in turn, should be willing to wash one another's feet. In other words, Christ was telling us to put others before ourselves.
This may bring up our own personal motive today for our prayers because God definitely has a motive for teaching us about prayer. John 4:23 tells us that God's intent was for us to worship Him in Spirit and in truth because God is Spirit. John 3:5-8 tells us that we cannot physically worship Him in the ways we once did because just as we were born into this physical world when we came to this life; when we came to Christ and accepted salvation we were born again of the Spirit of God and so now we must worship Him in Spirit. In order for us to be able to communicate with God effectively, and that means by our prayers going through the Spirit of God to the Father.
There are several other reasons for prayer. Among those is that He loves us and wants to provide for us through prayer and the development of a right kind of attitude toward our relationship with Him. Matthew 7:7 tells us to ask for is in His will, Matthew 26:41 that we should pray and watch so that we will not be tempted and fooled, Luke 18:1 we should pray and never give up. Our whole Spiritual life is wrapped up in prayer, and so it is something that we should be keenly aware of needing and being done right in our life. May you richly bless God through your life in Him.
THE UNWORTHY SERVANT
Comments
Post a Comment