Monday, April 11 - Jody

Today's reading from the Chronological OT/NT Reading Plan is: Joshua 16-18, Luke 11:1-28

Happy Monday Everyone! Today I'm going to focus on the New Testament reading. Actually on one specific part - Jesus' Teaching on Prayer. The last several days have been heavy as I've (and may others) been petitioning and praying for a very sick little boy. Conversations of how do I openly pray God's will in this situation when I (and everyone else) only want to pray to one end - miraculous healing. This passage and John MacArthurs sermons have come at a perfect time for me in this area. Coincidence? I don't think so.

² He said to them, “When you pray, say:
   “‘Father,^[a]
hallowed be your name,
your kingdom come.^[b]
3 Give us each day our daily bread.
⁴ Forgive us our sins,
   for we also forgive everyone who sins against us.^[c]
And lead us not into temptation.^[d]’”

I found some great thoughts from John MacArthur on this passage here.

We are familiar with prayer, we understand that God hears and answers prayer. We know the Bible says you have not because you ask not. It says pray without ceasing, pray at all times, in everything by prayer and supplication let your request be known to God. We understand all of that. But there's so much more to understand. Most people focus on how prayer works, not on what its purpose is. In fact, one person said that praying for most people is like sailors pumping because the ship leaks. Prayer is sort of a crisis operation, a sort of a last ditch approach. That's so wrong. And I think most people assume that prayer, and they're even taught this, that prayer is primarily for us. It's our way to cash in. It's our way to activate God. It's our way to get what we want. It's our way to put God in a place where He fulfills our desires, longings, dreams and ambitions. Of course that's wrong as well. Prayer is not for us, it is primarily for God. It is not for us to get what we want, it is for Him to display His glory through meeting our needs. Prayer really in the main is communion with the living God of the universe, really an unfathomable privilege, living our lives, as it were, in the constant awareness of God who is equally and perfectly aware of us. John Chrysostom, the early church father, wrote, "A monarch vested in glory is far less illustrious than a kneeling ennobled saint who is adorned by communion with his God." He says, "Consider how agust a privilege it is when angels are presence and archangels throng around, when cherubim and seraphim encircle with their blaze the throne of God, that a mortal may approach with unrestrained confidence and converse with heaven's dread sovereign. Oh what honor was ever conferred like this." Prayer is this incredible privilege of communing with God on behalf of His glory and bringing our wants insofar as they fit in to His glorious purpose.

Prayer is really coming into the presence of God to submit to His will. True prayer brings the mind into immediate contemplation of God's glory and true prayer should hold it there until the believer's soul is properly impressed. The object of all prayer is that God be glorified. We've been sort of laying out a key verse, John 14:13, "Whatever you ask in My name," Jesus said, "that will I do that the Father may be glorified." And that tells us the purpose of prayer. Jesus said in His highly priestly prayer in John 17, "I have glorified You on earth, now restore Me to the glory I had with You before the world began." Prayer is first and foremost a recognition of God's majestic glory and it is an act of submission to that glory. All petitions, all supplications, all passions, all requests, all needs are subject to God's glory. "Hallowed be Thy name, Thy Kingdom come, Thy will be done," it's about Your name, Your will, Your Kingdom, and then and only then is it, "Give us our daily bread, forgive us our trespasses, lead us not into temptation." The "us" follows the "You." In the first place, prayer is true, pure worship. It begins and ends and middles with worship. It starts with forgetting self. The first thing you do when you come to God in prayer, acknowledging Him as Father who cares about you and who has all the resources you need is to confess that the priority is not you but Him, because the first thing you say is, "Hallowed be Your name...Hallowed be Your name."

Petitioning God for our desires and yet praying the full realization of His will in the midst of a storm. Understanding that God's plan is that he be glorified. Period.

In another of John's sermons he addresses this concept of prayer further:

Now as I said last time, we know that God is holy and that God is all powerful and all wise, all knowing. We know that God is unchangeable. We know that God is absolutely sovereign, that God is in complete control of every circumstance, every detail. And He's working out His own plan perfectly. We know that and that raises the question, "Why do I pray? And if God's going to do what He's going to do, why should I pray and how would my prayer have any effect on that? And certainly I'm just going to get in and get out as quickly as I can since God's going to do what He's going to do anyway. I don't want to bother Him or interrupt Him with my little trivial prayers. How in the world am I to understand the role of my prayers?"
And I told you last time that although God has ordained the ends, He has also ordained the means. And the end is fixed and He uses the means to reach His end. And one of the means He uses to achieve His ends is our prayers. That's why, "The effective fervent prayer of a righteous man avails much." God determines who He will save from before the foundation of the world. He elects some to salvation, but He though choosing to save them, that is the end, the means is their faith and their repentance. And God has determined that we would be conformed to the image of Jesus Christ, that's the end. But the means is our obedience. God is determined to build His church, but the means is our service and our preaching of the gospel. God has determined that He will unify His church, the body of Christ. The means is the exercise of our spiritual gifts. God reaches His ends through His means and one of the means that God has given us is prayer. And as we pray, we are the means by which God achieves His ends.

In praying for this little boy I've been praying healing, praying for a miracle, petitioning that God will be more glorified in his healing than in any other outcome. Today I have learned that I am a part of His plan when I immerse myself in him. I am to sit right inside of his glory and worship. Worship that no matter what happens in any situation I am a means to the end HE determines. The healing of a boy, the healing of a family, the growth of a church, the conversion of a friend. Forgetting self and praying unceasingly as I worship my Father throughout each day. What a great place to be actually - don't you think?


Tomorrow's passage: Joshua 19-21, Luke 11:29-54