2019-02-22
Good Morning Dear Ones,
Last week, I began writing about prayer and can’t stress enough how important to our spiritual lives it is. Our God has made it His business to be available to us at any time of day or night, any day of the year. It all began when he promised to be present with the Jews when they were to begin their 40-year trek in the desert [DT 31: 6]. He has not left us or the believing Gentiles “in-grafted” into the cultured olive tree [metaphor of RO 11: 16-24]. He repeats His promise in PS 9: 9-10, “The Lord is a Refuge for the oppressed, a Place of safety in times of trouble. Those who know You, Lord, will trust You; You do not abandon anyone who comes to You.” PS 55: 17, “Morning, noon, and night my complaints and groans go up to Him, and He will hear my voice.” Inspired by God, the prophet, Jeremiah, in JER 29: 11-13, lets us know that the Father’s motives for us are positive and in our best eternal interests. Read this passage and take delight in God’s availability to us. When Daniel prayed for the people with persistence for 21 days, he saw the messenger angel, Gabriel, who allowed him to have a rare glimpse of the unseen spiritual warfare that goes on, in DN 10: 11-14 between evil and righteous angels, e.g. the evil angel prince of Persia and the archangel Michael-guardian over Israel, in a vision. He also tells Daniel that God esteems him. This is a lesson to all of us of the value of persistence in prayer. From this information, it is safe to assume God greatly values our prayers and listens to each one of them. Christ tells us to “ask, seek, and knock,” in MT 7: 7-8. In JN 14: 13-14 and again in JN 15: 7, Christ tells us He will do whatever we ask, if we ask of it in His name. One of our clearest lessons in how to pray comes with the Lord’s Prayer [MT 7: 9-13]. EPH 6: 18 tells us to let the Spirit lead our prayer, pray for all God’s people, and persist in our prayers. 1 THESS 5: 16-18 prompts us, in our lives in union with Christ, to be joyful always, always pray and be thankful in all circumstances. JAS 5: 15-16 reminds us that praying for the ill can have a beneficial effect. In 1 JN 5: 14-15, we are told that God always hears our prayers and will give us what we ask of Him, as along as it is in line with His will. Something mentioned throughout God’s “love letter to His children [Bible] as prayer is throughout is germane to our lives as believers in Christ and very much God’s will for us.
Having written all of this, we are often faced with trying to control the desires of the flesh. In continuing my presentation of supporting Scripture to the book of Colossians, it is essential to remind us all that we can’t totally control the fleshly desires of the flesh by ourselves. We need the supernatural intervention of the Lord. It is He, Who can help us to avoid temptation. MT 5: 3, “Blessed are those who know they are spiritually poor; the Kingdom of heaven belongs to them.” This is the first of the Beatitudes offered by Christ in His sermon on the mount. JN 15: 5 supports this notion. “I [Christ] am the Vine and you are the branches. Those who remain in Me, and I in them, will bear much fruit; for you can do nothing without Me.” We have learned from PS 86: 5, 7, and 15 very necessary reconnaissance from God in this matter of turning to Him. “You are good to us and forgiving, full of constant love for all who pray to You…I call to You in times of trouble, because You answer my prayers…But You, O Lord, are a merciful and loving God, always patient, always kind and faithful.” COL 1: 9-10, 13-14, 2: 2, 3: 9-11, 13-15 are all supported by the Scripture citations given here. The focus of our lives in Christ is given in COL 3: 1-4. These statements clarify the motivation to remain faithful to Christ.
PRAYER: O Lord, how dependent on You we must be! For us, this is learned behavior and a new attitude from that we had before Christ entered our lives. We are useless and helpless without You. PS 40: 1-3, “I waited patiently for the Lord’s help; then He listened to me and heart my cry. He pulled me out of a dangerous pit, out of the deadly quicksand. He set me safely on a Rock and made me secure. He taught me to sing a new song, a song of praise to our God. Many who see this will take warning and will put their trust in the Lord.” We are totally “transformed inwardly by the renewal of our mind” [RO 12: 2]. If my own experience with You is any teacher, we are no longer the same person we were in the time before Christ was in our lives. When we learn to seek You out, You hear our call, in prayer, and care deeply for us as we face the challenges, sorrows, and victories of our lives. We can take great comfort and freedom as we approach Your throne [EPH 3: 12]. Your word [the Bible] is Your love letter to us. It demonstrates how You listen to our prayers, give us wise advice, and share all Your knowledge with us. No human has ever loved us as You do. We thank and praise You always, in the holy/mighty name of Your Son, Jesus Christ. Amen.
NEXT WEEK: I’m commanded to take another look at COL 3: 1-4: 6 and to provide supporting Scriptures to it. That will be our subject for next week. In the meanwhile, I will share some of my own experience with prayer and my time with the Lord. Twenty years ago, I was a member of a huge congregation in MN with the same calling from the Lord that I have today. Because of my Jewish background, I’m called to share the richness of it in a Lutheran environment. The Lord wants me to share the connections between the OT and NT and the culture in which Christ was reared during His earthly incarnation. At that time, I had no prayer life, because I wasn’t convinced of the power and importance of prayer. But the Lord Jesus works in His own inimitable way to bring about the Father’s will. I was asked at that time to lead a prayer chain with over one hundred members. “Now what!” I thought to myself. The previous leader couldn’t write a correct English sentence. I knew I had to improve on that. I soon learned that we are never asked to do a task for the Lord, for which He doesn’t also equip us. I discovered that a daily list of prayer requests needed to be published. So, I began compiling that. As the congregation grew from 2500 members to 4400, the chunk this task took of my time also grew. I found myself dropping other things I loved to do in order to fulfill this task. In the course of this experience, I learned to write better English than ever before. I followed up on the requests and found many of them got answered. My faith in the importance of prayer also grew. My own prayer life became more active and dynamic. During that time, I faced economic and physical challenges that were eventually made better by my persisting in prayer. My overall faith in Christ gradually matured too. Eventually, I realized that the time-imbalance this task was presenting me was weighing me down. I prayed for relief! In Dec. ’13, God answered through my husband’s discovery of software the church could use to create a “prayer wall” accessible by the entire congregation, one which would enable them to post their own requests and praises to God. Suddenly, enough of my time was returned to me that I could once again return to my knitting, crochet, and study of Hebrew. God was allowing me to serve Him in a different way than I had been. The imbalance in my life was cured! Today, I lead a group of women who knit and crochet for charitable causes and to benefit my present congregation. Praise and thanks be to Him!
Grace Be With You Always,
Lynn
JS 24: 15
© Lynn Johnson 2018. All Rights Reserved.
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