Prayer

Learning to Pray – Day 2

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Your kingdom come, Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Matthew 6:10 ESV

Our first step in learning how to pray room begins by becoming God’s child, but the second only happens as we yield our will to His. When we pray your kingdom come and will be done it isn’t about who will win the next election or what laws will be declared constitutional by the courts. God is most interested in His kingdom coming in our own hearts.

Consider the life of Jesus who never sinned, acted from selfish motivations or asked others to do so. He always walked in perfect fellowship with His Father and yet on the night before He was crucified He prayed alone in a garden. He told His disciples to pray with Him because of the weight of His sorrow as He faced the cross.

Then Jesus prayed an astonishing prayer. He asked God to find another way if it were possible for Him to finish His mission on earth. If Jesus had to pray this how much more the rest of us! Even if we did everything right, and avoided breaking even one of God’s rules we still come up short until we are ready to yield our will to His. The old Hymn we learned to sing when we were young declared, “I surrender all” but practically speaking we should have sung, “I surrender some!” Nobody knows this better than Jesus so He includes this part of our prayer: “Your kingdom come, Your will be done”. He wants us to remember that every day we will need His help. And every day He is willing to answer!

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Prayer Lessons – Day One

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Prayer Lessons: Day One

Now Jesus was praying in a certain place and when He finished one of His disciples said to Him “ Lord teach us to pray… Luke 11:1 ESV

My step father was a concert clarinetist and when I was entering first grade he decided it was the perfect time for me to begin to learn to play. Lessons were every Saturday and I was expected to practice every day after school. Now I confess I never liked clarinet but the lessons taught me the discipline of music and later I fell in love with singing.

No one; not even my very strict step-dad expected me to just spontaneously begin playing one of Beethoven’s Symphonies for a while.

man performing on stage

Photo by Gabriel Santos Fotografia on Pexels.com

So why do we think that praying is any different? Jesus wasn’t angry that the disciples didn’t know how to pray. He welcomes us to ask Him to teach us and He began by teaching what we call The Lord’s Prayer.

Pray then like this: Our Father who is in heaven hallowed be your name. Matthew 6:9

Lesson one in prayer is that we can only begin as a child of God. Jesus didn’t tell us to pray to the creator of the earth; the king of heaven or the master of the universe. Jesus invited us to come as children. We must accept His invitation to join His family before we can pray as we should. And as a part of a family we say “Our Father” humbly accepting that we are a brother or sister to everyone who comes to Him by faith. Are you ready for your prayer lesson today?

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Confidence

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And this is the confidence that we have toward him, that if we ask anything according to his will he hears us. And if we know that he hears us in whatever we ask, we know that we have the requests that we have asked of him. 1 John 4:14-15

Once long ago when I worked for a tree company, we were sent to remove a large tree that had uprooted and fallen across a stream. The tricky part about getting it out of the water was that the main stem stretched over the water which was about 5 feet deep at that point. KIMG2127

So I boldly climbed up on the trunk; walked out on it with my chain saw and began cutting loose as much as I could. Finally all that was left was the largest part of the trunk which was supporting the weight of the tree against the bank. In theory, if I cut the weight from the remaining portion, the roots would pull the stump back into position. So as I began my final cut the crew foreman called over to me. “Are you sure you know what you’re doing?”

“No problem Mike. I’ve got confidence!” I boldly declared. A minute later suddenly the weight of the trunk dropped away, the roots holding me in place let go and I was tossed head over heels into the cold rushing steam. Miraculously I landing upright and unhurt chest deep in some of the coldest water I had ever been in. But my moment of joyful relief was immediately interrupted by Mike’s hysterical laughter.

“Oh I’ve got confidence! I’ve got confidence!” he shouted over and over.

In the hindsight gained by the passing of forty years I see clearly that the problem was not my lack of confidence but the one in whom I put my trust. But God is not like Me. He doesn’t miscalculate, nor thankfully does He laugh when make a mistake.  But instead when we put our confidence in Him we can trust  that He knows the right answer and that He will show us what to do. He is only waiting to see if we are ready to listen to Him and then we will find Him delighted to hear us and to answer our honest prayer.

 

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