Tag Archives: pray

Pray For Me

Bible Study, , , ,

PRAY FOR ME

 

“So after I have completed this task and have made sure that they have received this contribution, I will go to Spain and visit you on the way. I know that when I come to you, I will come in the full measure of the blessing of Christ.” Romans 15: 28, 29.

Paul related his plans with such confidence! It sounds so easy, as though he would hop on a plane in Jerusalem and disembark in Rome before catching another flight to Spain a few days later. But that was not the case. He was talking about many weeks of travel, by sea, catching a ride wherever he could on primitive and precarious cargo vessels, and over land, mostly on foot through difficult terrain full of perils.

But he had a desire and a plan and he was determined to see it through. He was aware that he had a mission to fulfill – to carry the blessing of the message about Christ wherever he went. He had a deposit of the truth within him. It was his duty to give it away to people everywhere and to share the blessings of Jesus as far and wide as he possibly could.

“I urge you, brothers and sisters, by our Lord Jesus Christ and by the love of the Spirit, to join me in my struggle by praying to God for me. Pray that I may be kept safe from the unbelievers in Judea and that the contribution I take to Jerusalem may be favourably received by the Lord’s people there, so that I may come to you with joy, by God’s will, and in your company be refreshed. The God of peace be with you all.” Romans 15:30-33.

At the same time, Paul was no stoic. He was well aware of the dangers that awaited him in Jerusalem. If he was hated and persecuted by his unbelieving countrymen in Europe and Asia Minor, how much more was his life in danger in his own land? The Jewish leaders, some of whom had been part of the campaign against Jesus, were there and they would not tolerate his presence because his reputation would have gone before him. He was their erstwhile ally turned traitor, and they would make every effort to get rid of him when he put his foot on home soil.

He urged his fellow believers in Rome to pray for his safety and for the success of his undertaking to deliver the gift of the believers in Macedonia and Achaia. Would they receive the gift since it had come from Gentiles? What if his mission was in vain because of the deep-seated prejudice of his Jewish friends? These were issues that troubled Paul. He needed the prayer partnership of fellow believers wherever he could garner their support, and he was not too proud or independent to ask for their help.

Apostle though he was, Paul was also aware of his humanity and his vulnerability. He was no brazen macho, powering his way around the empire as though he were invincible. Life was a struggle for him. He was in the middle of warfare on two fronts.

There was a relentless enemy all around him, seeking his destruction through every means possible. He was an enemy of unbelieving Jews who were scattered throughout the empire and he was an enemy of the state because he refused to kowtow to Caesar’s demand to be worshipped as a god. He proclaimed Jesus as Lord wherever he went and gathered a following in every city and town where he preached.

There was also a relentless enemy within, his own sinful nature which had to be subdued by submitting to and obeying his Lord in spite of the fears and insecurities that constantly assailed him.  He felt the weight of responsibility for all the churches on his shoulders. He was driven to preach, write and go to every corner of the empire to make Christ known and to nurture the believers with his knowledge of the truth.

He needed the support of fellow believers and he was not afraid to ask for it. It was comforting for him to know that he was not alone in this great enterprise; that though they could not go with him, they could be with him through their love and prayers. In a hostile world, the church was his refuge and his fellow believers his covering as he ventured forth from the safety of their company to fulfill his mission to the world.

Acknowledgement

Scripture taken from THE HOLY BIBLE, NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION®, NIV® Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.® Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.

 

Less Is More

Christian Life, , ,

LESS IS MORE

“In the same say, the Spirit helps us in our weakness. We do not know what we ought to pray for, but the Spirit Himself intercedes for us through wordless groans. And He who searches our hearts knows the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for God’s people in accordance with the will of God.” Romans 8.26-27.

Prayer is a mystery, isn’t it?

Prayer is simple and yet complicated. It is the interaction between the Father and His child but, at the same time, it is God’s way of ruling the earth. He gave the mandate to the first pair to manage the earth for Him. That mandate has never been withdrawn, even though man changed allegiance in the Garden of Eden. Ever since then, human beings have been exploiting and destroying the earth rather than caring for it.

People who reject God in favour of some deity they have created or some god someone else has created and persuaded them to follow, still believe that they need to “pray”.  How else can they get the attention of their god? But does their god hear? Does their god respond? What are they asking? What is the purpose of their prayers?

As I said, God and His children communicate through an activity called “prayer”. It needs no rituals or accessories to get our God’s attention. He is as near to us as our breath. Contrary to the idea that He is in “heaven”, wherever that is, He is Immanuel – God with us. In actual fact, He is even nearer that that. He is in us! By His Spirit, who is also God, He has taken up residence in our spirits and He represents the Father and the Son within us. He speaks to us and He speaks for us.

Have you ever been in a situation so terrible that you felt absolutely helpless? You didn’t even know what to pray. All you could do was to turn to God, cry out His name and groan or weep. Your only prayer was, “Oh God!” or “Jesus, help!” That was also prayer. The Holy Spirit was right there, in the situation with you, taking your wordless groaning and interpreting it to the Father as a request.

The Holy Spirit has many roles in our hearts. We have already talked about His role as the Spirit of sonship. Without Him we could never understand who we are nor could we utter the cry, “My Abba!” We would never have the assurance that we are God’s children and we would never be able to put to death the fleshly appetites that pull us away from God.

His role as Intercessor is without parallel in any man-made religion. He acts from within us to the Father as the interpreter of our groans. It is not as though the Father does not know what our hearts are saying at a time of deep distress. That would make the Him less that God because there would be things He does not know. However, the Father and the Spirit are in such close communion that they interact on the most intimate level in their love for and participation in the lives of their people.

Not only does the Holy Spirit intercede for us but He does it in a way that communicates His feelings for us. He transfers our groans – the only way we can communicate the depth of our distress – to the Father with groans of His own. Our groans are the language of emotional pain which God knows and speaks and, in His compassionate love, answers.

“During that long period, the king of Egypt died. The Israelites groaned in their slavery and cried out, and their cry for help went up to God. God heard their groaning and He remembered His covenant with Abraham, with Isaac and with Jacob. So God looked on the Israelites and was concerned about them.” Exodus 2:23-25.

God always responds to our groans. They are sweet music in His ears because they tell Him that we need Him. As a Father, He wants to be wanted. Like little children who want to be independent, we try to fix the things we break.  In our foolish and immature independence, we make things worse until all we can do is groan and cry out to God for help.

The pathway to maturity for believers in Jesus, strangely enough, is not to become more independent but to become more helpless, like a new-born baby at its mother’s breast.

Acknowledgement

THE HOLY BIBLE, NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION®, NIV® Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.® Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.

 

The Lord Is One

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THE LORD IS ONE 

“‘My prayer is not for them alone. I pray also for those who will believe in me through their message, that all of them may be one, Father, just as you are in me and I am in you. May they also be in us so that the world may believe that you have sent me.

“I have given them the glory that you gave me, so that they may be one as we are one — I in them and you in me — so that they may be brought to complete unity. Then the world will know that you sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me.'” John 17:20-23 NIV.

This is the third of Jesus’ requests — for unity in His body throughout the ages. Why was unity so important to Jesus?

“Then God said, ‘Let us make man in our image, in our likeness so that they may rule…’ So God created mankind in His image, in the image of God He created them; male and female He created them.” Genesis 1:26a, 27 NIV.

Theologians have many ideas about what the image of God means — a moral being; self-conscious and self-determining; able to know and have fellowship with Him etc. Although these are all valid expressions of the image of God, there is one overriding characteristic that makes human beings uniquely created in His image. He created us to be one with Him and with one another so that we perfectly reflect Him in the world.

The Hebrew “creed” (Deuteronomy 6:4) or Shema which they repeated over and over every day, and which a Hebrew child learned at his mother’s breast, states: “Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one.”

Misunderstood, this statement has caused confusion because “one” is understood to mean one in number rather than one in unity in diversity.

“Reading here that God is one, most Jews for centuries have ruled out the possibility that Jesus could be the Son of God, on the same divine plane as the Father…”

“The Hebrew word translated one in Deuteronomy 6:4 is echad. Its meanings include the number one but also has such associated meanings as “one and the same,” “as one man, together [unified],” “each, every,” “one after another” and “first [in sequence or importance]” (Brown, Driver and Briggs, A Hebrew and English Lexicon of the Old Testament, 1951, page 25). It can also be rendered “alone” as the New Revised Standard Version translates it here (William Holladay, A Concise Hebrew and Aramaic Lexicon of the Old Testament, 1972, page 9).The exact meaning is best determined by the context.”

(http://www.ucg.org/booklet/who-god/how-god-one/lord-our-god-one/)

Although “God is one” could mean “first in priority” or “alone”, Jesus gave substance to the New Testament truth that He and the Father are one in mind and heart, in essence and purpose, although two distinct persons. It was God’s original intention to create an entire universe that functioned as a unit to express the nature of the Godhead.

Marriage, according to Genesis 2:24, the most intimate of human relationships, was to mirror that oneness between a husband and wife. “That is why a man leaves his father and mother and is united to his wife, and they become one flesh,” because humans have the capacity to be one by choice and behaviour. The Bible is full on examples of the unity that mirrors the nature of God.

Adam’s disobedience disrupted the unity between God and man and in the entire cosmos, but God intervened through Jesus to reconcile everything to Himself and to restore the entire creation to the unity He established in the beginning.

“For God was pleased to have all His fulness dwell in Him, and through Him to reconcile to Himself all things, whether things on earth or things in heaven, by making peace through His blood shed on the cross.” Colossians 1:19, 20 NIV.

Unity between believers is a miracle that only God can create, but it is up to us to maintain that unity (Ephesians 43) by submitting ourselves to one another out of reverence for Christ (Ephesians 5:21).

Will Jesus’ prayer be answered? Most certainly because God has promised that what He began He will complete, but we must partner with Him to see the dream of Jesus being fulfilled.

You Are The Answer

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YOU ARE THE ANSWER

“Later the Master selected seventy and sent them ahead of Him in pairs to every town and place where He intended to go. He gave them this charge: ‘What a huge harvest! And how few the harvest hands. So on your knees; ask the God of the Harvest to send harvest hands.’

“‘On your way! But be careful — this is hazardous work. You’re like lambs in a wolf pack. Travel light; comb and toothbrush and no extra baggage. Don’t loiter and make small talk with everyone you meet along the way.'” Luke 10:1-4 (The Message).

This sounds like a typical missionary prayer meeting, doesn’t it? But does God really sit around waiting for us ask Him to send missionaries out to the “mission field”? Why would Jesus send them ahead of Him and then promptly tell them to pray that God would send people out? Was it to boost the number of workers or was it some kind of preparation for their own hearts?

Who were these people that Jesus sent ahead of Him? Seventy people? Where did they come from and what connection did they have with Him? Since He was always thronged with people, there must have been those who regularly followed Him although they were not part of the inner group. He must have recognised them and got used to seeing their faces in the crowd. Perhaps He even spent time with them in the late afternoon after He had dismissed the crowd.

Whatever their relationship with Him, when He needed people to prepare the way for Him, they were there and they were available to do what He asked them to do. It was to them, not to His regular disciples that He gave these detailed instructions including to pray for reinforcements.

Since they were the answer to their own prayers, was this Jesus’ way of developing a mind-set in them which gave them a better understanding of what their role was to be in the kingdom of God? Although He had twelve men who were constantly with Him and who were His recognised disciples, it did not mean that others were excluded. It also did not mean that others were of less importance and value to Him than the Twelve.

The instructions He gave this wider group were almost the same as those He had given to the Twelve when He sent them out on their first preaching tour. By involving these people He was teaching them that He was not the head of an exclusive club. The kingdom of God belongs to anyone who is willing to come under His authority and do what He tells them; and so is the mandate to open the doors of God’s kingdom to whoever will receive it.

Jesus is encouraging us to realise that we don’t have to sit around waiting for a special invitation to be part of God’s kingdom or to invite others to come under His yoke. When we become the answer to our own prayers instead of sitting around waiting for someone else to respond, we have finally caught on to what is in God’s heart. It’s for everyone to participate in and for everyone to share.

Whether we stay at home or take the message to the ends of the earth is not the most important issue. What really matters is that we share the blessing of being in the kingdom of God by the way we live it out and by the way we speak about it in the most natural way possible. Wherever we are and wherever we go, there are people needing to hear about a life of freedom and joy under Jesus’ yoke.

The next important fact for these recruits was to know that they were only the forerunners wherever they went, preparing the way; Jesus would follow, revealing who He was to the people who had seen and heard His followers. We’re not in this alone. Jesus may no longer be here in person but His representative, the Holy Spirit is with us, in us and ahead of us to do the inner work of convincing those whose hearts are hungry, that Jesus is the Son of God.

So, let’s ask what we can do. Let’s be the answer to our own prayers, shall we?

How To Destroy Your Enemy!

Christian Life, , ,

HOW TO DESTROY YOUR ENEMY!

“‘To you who are ready for the truth, I say this: Love you enemies. Let them bring out the best in you, not the worst. When someone gives you a hard time, respond with the energies of prayer for that person. If someone slaps you in the face, stand there and take it. If someone grabs your shirt, gift-wrap your best coat and make a present of it. If someone takes unfair advantage of you, use the occasion to practice the servant life. No more tit-for-tat stuff. Live generously.'” Luke 6:27-30 (The Message).

“What are you saying, Jesus? You can’t be serious!”

Oh, but He was. If you want to know what power is, this is real power. There is no true power in retaliation. It only takes a bit of physical or emotional energy to hit back when someone hurts or offends you. But what kind of power does it take to absorb the blows and respond with kindness and generosity? It takes power over one’s own self not to give back blow for blow.

But it takes far more than sheer will-power to stop oneself from hitting back. That is a perfectly natural reaction coming from a human point of view, but Jesus was talking about an attitude that is far more than what comes out of our fallen human nature. He was talking about a changed disposition that comes from a completely different perspective.

What will it take to change us from reacting to responding? Jesus told Nicodemus in John 3 that, to “see” and enter the kingdom of God will take the equivalent of going back to the beginning of our life and starting over again with a new nature. That is impossible in the natural, as Nicodemus discovered, but God can do it through His power at work in our spirits.

Paul speaks of this supernatural event as “being raised from the dead” — a spiritual resurrection that is like waking up to a new realm where we understand everything from God’s point of view.

God is not a tit-for-tat God. He treats us according to who He is, not according to the way we speak or behave. That’s the way His rule operates. Human parents would understand this. If your son misbehaves, he is still you son, no matter what. A good parent will address the behaviour, not bully or disown the child because he has behaved badly.

When we were born from above, God gave us the potential and the power to respond to situations out of who we are in Christ, not out of who we were in Adam. And He gives us opportunities to show the ones who offend us what He is like by absorbing the wrongdoing and not adding to it by retaliating.

But it’s even more than that. Jesus said that it’s not about non-retaliation. It’s about actively responding with generosity. That’s how God treats us. The best way to “destroy” your enemy is not to beat him up or kill him but to make him your friend. He will cease to exist as an enemy and come alongside you instead of standing against you.

What kind of perspective can change our attitude towards the ones we perceive as enemies? There are two things that have helped me see things from God’s point of view. Firstly, God wants us to treat everyone with dignity because we have all been created in His image. To dish out cruelty to another human being is to treat God with the same attitude. Who would want to do that?

Secondly, people’s words and behaviour reveal who they are, not who I am. I don’t have to mirror who they are by retaliating. I want to mirror who God is by offering kindness and generosity for unkindness and meanness. Absorbing the blows will stop them right there and offer your enemy the opportunity to change his mind as well.

Have you tried it? You can, with God’s grace.