A Perspective on Prayer

January 5, 2013

“In this manner, therefore, pray:

Our Father in heaven,
Hallowed be Your name.
Your kingdom come.
Your will be done
On earth as it is in heaven.
Give us this day our daily bread.
And forgive us our debts,
As we forgive our debtors.
And do not lead us into temptation,
But deliver us from the evil one.
For Yours is the kingdom and the power
And the glory forever.  Amen.”      (Matthew 6: 8-13)

Make the observation with the help of the bold type that this disciple’s prayer/instruction teaches that we should begin our prayers with what we might call a ‘providential perspective.’

This is expressed in three petitions: Your name, Your kingdom and Your will.  Before we get to “Give us” we are to bring into our perspective Who God is, as He is revealed in all His names.  Then we are to focus on the fact that He is our King and we are His subjects.

When we understand that He is our King, we know His will must be done on earth through us even as it is done perfectly in heaven, all day long every day.

Many think prayer is coming into the presence of God with a shopping list and sending God on errands for us.  But here Jesus is teaching that prayer is reporting for duty to our King that He might give us our orders for the day.

We are to end our prayers with a providential benediction. The essence of the providential benediction is that since the power to answer our prayers will always come from God, the glory and the result (the Kingdom) will always belong to God.  James tells us we sometimes “pray amiss.” The difference between praying amiss and praying a hit can be this perspective on prayer.

3 Comments | Uncategorized | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Dick Woodward

Oneness

April 25, 2012

“Is Christ divided?”   (1 Corinthians 1:13)

 In the great prayer our Lord prayed for His Church (John 17), Jesus asked His Father, not once but five times, that we all might be one.  In light of that great prayer priority of our Lord, is it not an evidence of the work of the evil one when we consider all the “sects and insects and isms and spasms” that say they are His true Church today?

The risen, living Christ can be known by His followers today.  One of the favorite ways the authors of the New Testament identify the authentic followers of Jesus is when they refer to them as being “in Christ.”  When His Church in Corinth was hopelessly divided the Apostle Paul asked that church a very appropriate question: “Is Christ divided?”

If thinking people really track with the authors of the New Testament would they not think it strange if people profess to be in Christ and then cannot agree on anything?  There is, however, a supernatural oneness or agreement among people who are truly in Christ today.

Many decades ago when African American believers were petitioning white churches in the southern part of our country to integrate I discovered that it didn’t matter whether the people in my church were born in northern or southern United States.  What mattered in my congregation was whether or not they were born again.  Christ does not feel more than one way about civil rights.  Neither will we if we are born again and in Christ.

Paul concludes the second chapter of his first letter to the Corinthians by claiming that we have the mind of Christ.  If we in fact do have the mind of Christ we will agree.

1 Comment | Uncategorized | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Dick Woodward