Monthly Archives: April 2023

THE LORD’S PRAYER – WHERE IS GOD?

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THE LORD’S PRAYER – WHERE IS GOD?

“Our Father in heaven…” Matthew 6:9

How difficult is it to talk to someone when we don’t know where He is? “Our Father in heaven…” we pray but where is heaven? For most of us heaven is “up there” but where – on another planet somewhere or in another galaxy or somewhere beyond the universe? This makes praying to a Father whom we can’t see and whose whereabouts we don’t know, much more complicated and unreal.

The God we address in prayer is unseen.  He is Spirit – John 4:24 and we cannot and must not try to create Him in our imagination. He has no physical form. We can know only Him by what He does and where He has been. We have to learn from God’s revealed truth about Himself what heaven really is.

There are Scriptures that indicate that heaven is not a geographical place but an unseen realm which is all around us but which we cannot see and only partially experience because we humans are flesh, imperfect and separated from that realm now. In Psalm 139:7, David cries, “Where can I go from Your Spirit? Where can I flee from your presence?” and Solomon lamented, “But will God really dwell on earth? The heavens, even the highest heaven, cannot contain you. How much less this temple I have built.” 1 Kings 8:27. According to Jeremiah 23:24, “’Do not I fill heaven and earth?’ declares the Lord” and the Apostle Paul confirmed, “In Him we live and move and have our being.” Acts 17:28.

There are times when the veil between flesh and spirit thins out momentarily and humans can see into the spirit world. Elisha and his servant Gehazi were surrounded by the Syrian army in Dothan. Gehazi cried out in fear because they were trapped and at their mercy until Elisha assured him, “Don’t be afraid. Those who are with us are more than those who are with them.” And Elisha prayed, “O Lord, open his eyes so he may see. Then the Lord opened the servant’s eyes, and he looked and saw the hills full of horses and chariots of fire all around Elisha.” 2 Kings 6:16, 17. The veil thinned just long enough for Gehazi to see with his eyes what Elisha saw by faith.

According to Genesis 2:7 God breathed into man the breath of life (His own ruach – breath, spirit) and man became a living being. Man, therefore, has in his lungs the very breath of God.

Just as we need to change our awareness from ourselves to God, we also need to change our awareness from God somewhere far away and inaccessible to a God who is as near to us as our breath. Prayer is therefore, first, becoming aware that I live in the environment of God. He is spirit, He fills the entire universe, and I am, therefore, immersed in His Presence like a fish in water.

THE LORD’S PRAYER – A PATTERN TO COPY

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THE LORD’S PRAYER – A PATTERN TO COPY

“This, then, is how you should pray: Our Father in heaven…” Matthew 6:9.

We have looked, first of all, at what prayer is not. It’s not about words or needs; it’s about awareness. Now we need to examine what prayer is.

As we are discovering, prayer is more about awareness than about asking. What we are asking comes into line with a greater awareness of God, who He is and what His focus, His heart and concerns are rather than ours.  Because it is natural for us to be absorbed with ourselves and our needs, it is necessary for us to have a pattern that shows us how God envisions prayer rather than what we think it is or should be.

Prayer is not unique to the Christian faith. It is an inborn need in every human being, no matter what god people believe in, worship, and serve. However, those who worship anything or anyone other than the true and living God are unsure of the attitude of that god towards them and do not know how to get his attention or how to please him. Our priority, therefore, is to identify who we are becoming aware of.

To train ourselves to become aware of God is not enough because “God” can be anything we have created for ourselves from our life experience, our environment, and the influence of other people. Since prayer is about changing our awareness, we must find out who this God is, not from our perspective but from what the Bible says. God is, first, our Father, our life-source, our Creator, the one who breathed His own life into us and to whom our spirits are fused by faith, through the Holy Spirit, so that we are one with Him. He is the one on whom we are dependant for life and everything that our life involves (2 Peter 1: 3ff).

He is the only true God, the one who described Himself as “gracious, compassionate, slow to anger and full of love and faithfulness, forgiving sin…” (Exodus 34:6) He is the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, and not to be confused with any other god. Hebrews 11:6 – Those who come to God must believe that He exists and that He rewards those who earnestly seek Him.

To address God as “Father” is to differentiate between Him and all other gods. Since we are His offspring, we are bound to Him by an unbreakable union. Our rebellion in Adam has broken our fellowship with the Father but not our connection with Him as His children. We cannot be “unborn” but we need to be “born again” into the realm where He reigns and where we have come back under submission to His rule.

To pray, “Our Father” is to become aware of the God in whom we live, and to whom we are fused by faith so that our lives are indissolubly joined to Him, our Source.

ROUND ONE – JESUS WINS

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ROUND ONE – JESUS WINS

“During the days of Jesus’ life on earth, He offered up prayers and petitions with loud cries and tears to the one who could save Him from death, and He was heard because of His reverent submission. Although He was a son, He learned obedience from what He suffered…” Hebrews 5:7, 8a.

There is a thread running through this whole episode. Satan was gunning for the unity between Jesus and the Father. He was trying to break the oneness between them so that he could create a new alliance, just as he did with Adam. If he could get Jesus on his side by manipulating Him into submission to his will, he would secure man’s position as lost and hell-bound forever. He would one-up God and be declared the winner, taking mankind into alienation from God forever.

God’s experiment with a free creature made in His image to be one with Him and to be the objects and recipients of His love, would have failed and, once again, God would have been left alone with no-one outside Himself to share His wealth and His life.

What an enormous responsibility rested on Jesus’ shoulders and what a prize for the winner! What was the pivot on which it all turned? Jesus was so steeped in God’s Word that it was not an experiment for Him to trust God. What He had to deal with was the subtlety of Satan’s lies. To Jesus, obedience to God’s Word was non-negotiable but He had to apply it to His situation with wisdom and truth. The ultimate choice was, “For me?” or “For God? Is this about me or is this about God?”

The same self-giving relationship that flowed in the Trinity before Jesus came to earth, flowed between the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit during His earthly life. Jesus was a vulnerable human being but, by trusting the Father’s Word, He was learning to be righteous in situations just like this. This was the first of many tests that qualified Him to be the perfect sacrifice by earning a righteousness that He could give to all who follow Him.

We often think that the verse I have quoted above refers to Jesus’ prayer in the Garden of Gethsemane and that His desire to be saved from death refers to His death on the cross. I think it is far more than that. He risked everything by becoming a man. He was born innocent but not righteous. Like Adam, He had to learn to be righteous through obedience to His Father. Adam lost his innocence early in his life because he chose his own will over God’s will. Jesus learned obedience and earned His righteousness by obeying and trusting the Father. Had He only once acted on His own initiative, He would have been as lost as Adam was. He was saved from eternal death by His submission to the Father and qualified to be our Saviour. We have a great Saviour!

PRAY UNTIL PEACE COMES

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PRAY UNTIL PEACE COMES

“Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God. And the peace of God which transcends all understanding will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.” Philippians 4:6, 7.

The peace of God is the referee in our hearts (Colossians 3:15), the faithful and accurate measure of the open channel between us and the Father. When our peace has been disturbed, we know that we are out of sync with Him. The question is, “How do we get back to having His peace rule in our hearts?”

Anxiety is a peace-destroyer and can show up in many guises; fear, insecurity, anger, and jealousy are all shades of anxiety at the heart of which is mistrust of God. Whatever the emotion, it is rooted in the unbelief which blocks the channel and disturbs our peace.

Paul’s prescription for restoring our peace begins with a “do not”. Anxiety is not something we can switch on and off like a light switch. Anxiety will only go when it is identified, its source uncovered, and it is replaced with peace since two opposite emotions cannot exist side-by-side in our hearts.

The first step to restoring peace is to acknowledge the anxiety that disturbed it in the first place. Until we allow ourselves to feel and acknowledge that anxiety, we will not be ready to admit our unbelief. Praying about an issue without uncovering the root of our anxiety will not be a solution nor will it receive an answer since the answer will be blocked by unbelief.

The second step is to recognise that our problem is not the issue but the fear that the issue has raised, for example, you have a financial deadline to meet and no money to meet it. You think that the lack of money is your problem. If you had the money to pay your debt, you would have no anxiety. However, the next time a similar situation happens, the anxiety will return which means that the anxiety has not been dealt with. It is still hanging around, waiting to surface again the next time a financial need arises.

The third step is to identify and admit that it is your unwillingness to trust God that triggered your anxiety. God’s peace is only in your heart when you trust in Him and it is His peace that lifts you above your circumstances so that, no matter what happens, His peace stands guard over your heart and shuts out the unwelcome intrusion of fear, anxiety, insecurity etc.

Paul concludes by telling us how to maintain that peace along the bumpy road of life’s adversities. Anxiety begins in the mind when we are uncertain of God’s love for us. To counteract that, we need to fill our minds with the truths that assure us of His love. Think on the good things with gratitude. Then He will stand guard over our hearts and champion us in every circumstance.

PEBBLES IN THE POND

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PEBBLES IN THE POND

“The prudent see danger and take refuge but the simple keep going and suffer for it.” Proverbs 27:12

I heard definitions of the wise and foolish person recently or, as above, the prudent and simple, which made sense to me.

A wise person is one who understands that all of life is connected. Whatever our choices, there are always results or consequences. Our present is connected to our past, and our future is connected to our present. But we are also connected to the people around us, family, friends, colleagues, acquaintances, and their choices also impact us in various ways. To be wise is to acknowledge our connectedness, and to live in a way that impacts positively, not negatively, on ourselves and others.

By contrast, the fool lives for himself, makes foolish decisions and doesn’t care how his choices impact on others. When things go wrong, he cops out, blames God or other people, and takes no responsibility for the mess he is in. Perhaps the greatest tragedy for the fool is that he does not learn from his mistakes. He simply goes on making the same mistakes over and over and messing up his own and other people’s lives in the process.

Take, for example, the married man or woman who keeps having affairs, knowing what it does to spouse and family and yet doing it anyway and never learning from the consequences. He or she keeps making the same choices but believes that the outcome will be different.

It’s a bit like dropping a pebble in a pond, making waves that move outward in ever-widening circles. The impact doesn’t stop with the first wave but eventually makes waves that cover the entire surface of the pond. So are our choices to do both good and evil.

This makes me think of the life of Moses. Despite the Pharaoh’s decree to throw all the Hebrew baby boys into the Nile, his mother chose to weave a little waterproof basket and put him in the Nile, not to drown but to be rescued by Pharaoh’s daughter.

That decision had a ripple effect – Moses grew up in the royal palace and had inside experience about being a son of Pharaoh. As an adult he made a bad choice – to kill an Egyptian – and had to flee the wrath of Pharaoh as a murderer. But his bad choice also had a good outcome – he learned to survive in the desert, which knowledge he made good use of as leader of God’s people later. Moses’ life unfolded, ripple by ripple, as he learned God’s ways, obeyed His commands, and eventually became the greatest of all Israel’s leaders, taking the people of God from slavery to freedom, from Egypt to Canaan and being the mediator of God’s covenant with His people.

His mother’s decision to save him was the pebble in the pond, and here we are today, being a part of the ripples that still go outward on this pond of life.