Pray Some More!

When we last talked, we were discussing the teaching that Jesus gave His disciples regarding prayer. We looked at the first two parts of that teaching, now let’s look at the rest.

The next thing that Jesus says to His followers is that they need to pray for their needs. First, He addresses the physical needs by telling them to ask for their daily bread. Notice that the emphasis is on daily bread. We are to ask God for the things we need today.

This point is illustrated in the account of the children of Israel as they walked through the desert for 40 years. Each day they were to collect enough “mana” for that day. If they tried to collect more and save it for the next day, it would rot and they wouldn’t be able to use it. But God provided for them each and every day. There wasn’t anything that they wanted for. It was enough for the day.

In the same way, God is calling us to pray not for what we need tomorrow, but what we need today. We can only be given what is necessary for today. Pray then that way.

He then addresses their spiritual needs, which is by far more important. He addresses them by telling them to confess their sins, and to seek forgiveness. They are to receive forgiveness in the same way they grant forgiveness. In the passage in Matthew, Jesus follows this up by telling them if they refuse to forgive those who have sinned against them, they shouldn’t expect God to forgive them.

This is a hard teaching because we see God as an all loving God (and He is). But He is also a just God and He will not allow us to go free if we are unwilling to set others free, too.

Prayer is important because we have needs. And God wants to meet each of these needs. Each day we should be praying that God will forgive us our sins because we sin each day. We need the physical needs of the day (food, shelter, etc.) and God is willing to grant us those things if we are willing to ask Him for them.

So how has your prayer life been the past couple of days? We’ll see you in church on Sunday!

A Time of Prayer

“It is no more possible to be a Christian without praying than it is to be alive without breathing.” Martin Luther King, Jr. said this, and I believe he’s right. Prayer to the Christ-follower is as essential as breathing. We cannot go for long holding our breath. In fact, the Guinness World Record for holding one’s breath is 18 minutes and 32.59 seconds (check it out here, if you don’t believe me).

Now some of us seem to think that we can go a lot longer without praying to God. Sometimes days and days at a time. But the truth of the matter is that without the life-giving “oxygen” of prayer, we will die in a hurry.

This week, I want to lead you on a search for what the Scriptures teach us about prayer. Let’s start with the prayer that Jesus taught His disciples to pray. You’ll find the text of this prayer in two places. Matthew 6:10-13 and again in Luke 11:1-4. These are two different times that Jesus teaches the same lesson (as a side, it’s nice to know that disciples had to be taught things more than once, too!).

As we look at these two lessons, Jesus always starts by making sure we address God as “Our Father who is holy.” We must remember that God our Father is holy. He is a holy God, who desires to have a relationship with those He created (that’s you and me). But in order for us to have a relationship with Him, we need to come to Him in holiness as well.

So how does that happen? It can only happen when we have a relationship with Jesus. Through our relationship with Jesus, we are given Christ’s righteousness. When we have Christ’s righteousness, we are then holy…not because we are holy, but because HE (Jesus) is holy. So we can come to a holy God on the basis of what Jesus has already done.

He next teaches them to pray for the Kingdom of God to come. In the Matthew passage, He also adds the idea of asking for God’s will to be done on this earth as it is in heaven. The idea is that we need to ask God to have His will and His way in all that we do. When God’s Kingdom is evident on earth, His followers will be doing the things He wants them to do.

We’ll talk more about what the Lord teaches us about prayer tomorrow, but for now, why not spend some time in prayer and ask the Lord to help you be holy, and live according to His will.

And we’ll see you on Sunday!