Often, when I hear people describing some difficulty in
their lives, I find myself organizing thoughts together into specific things
they could pray for. There are times when someone has expressed something very
painful and hopeless, and my mind is triggered with truths from God’s Book that
seem like a very comforting and hopeful way of presenting their situation to
Father in prayer, never denying where they are starting from, but directing
them into the blessings of prayer.
For a while now I have found myself focusing on praying as
big as possible. We often limit our prayers to things we can imagine, confining
our requests to people-sized descriptions. We end up praying fairly small
requests, asking God to do nothing more than give someone a minor nudge here,
or a teeny bit of encouragement there, or a bit of help to carry on with
whatever mundane and wearisome situation they are going through.
However, when we pray big, seeking to remain true to God and
his Book, there are so many things we could ask Father to do in the God-sized
variety. These would be prayers and requests described in impossibly hopeful
ways, but based on what God is capable of doing, in accord with all he has
spoken, trusting him to perform whatever is good and pleasing in his sight.
My primary aim is to encourage all of us to fellowship with
other disciples of Jesus Christ in order to help each other formulate our
prayers into God-sized expectations. I would love to encourage us all to think
in God-sized ways, letting the words of Christ dwell in us so richly that we
are consistently asking for the very things he has promised in his Book. But I
would also love to see us developing relationships with one another where we
could ask other believers for help in thinking our prayers into fellowship with
the mind of Christ, and then uniting to pray for those things that would most
magnify the glory of God’s grace in his ongoing work of building his church.
One of the areas of greatest difficulty in our praying is
asking God to do things in our lives that are profoundly contradictory to the
way people have treated us. We easily become so satisfied with just making do
that we don’t realize Father has told us things about his work that ought to
stir up our hearts to pray for huge and wonderful things to happen for us and
our congregations.
I do not for one minute mean this in the unbiblical notions
people fabricate by cutting-and-pasting bits of Scripture together into mangled
statements that are no longer something God has spoken. I do not believe we can
pick-and-choose what Scriptures we add together to make it appear God’s Book
endorses something we want to do, or a relationship we want to have, or a purchase
we want to make, or a dream we want to fulfill.
In all of what I share I mean to pray what God has taught us
is his will for his church and his people, and the quality of life he can and
will give to a congregation that seeks his will above their own. We are given
so many promises from God, descriptions of his plans and purposes, and every
day we spend fellowship with God in his word opens our hearts to something he
has written that could be turned into a hope-filled expression of faith to
submit our hearts to things far greater than any collection of human beings
could accomplish.
At the moment, as I pray my way through the last chapter of
the book of Hebrews, I am feeding my soul on this verse, “Through him then let us continually offer up a
sacrifice of praise to God, that is, the fruit of lips that acknowledge his
name.”[1] Now, imagine that someone is struggling with depression, or
discouragement, or hopelessness, or worthlessness, and their struggle seems well-nigh
impossible for them to overcome, and the best they can pray is that Father
would just help them get through the day, and we know that just isn’t a big
enough prayer and we would like to help them pray something bigger than they
can imagine at the time. And what if we have learned to read God’s word as Father’s
daily ministry to our souls, and so we know there is something in what he is
teaching us that must surely apply to what we are to expect for this brother or
sister in Christ? How would we help them pray according to God’s will for his
children?
Before I went downstairs to pray about
these things I had typed out a suggested way of praying through this Scripture.
However, during my prayer time I had such a wonderful and uplifting time simply
holding the Scripture before me and praying about what I was reading that I
suddenly concluded that writing out a prayer was too restrictive on what might
happen if we let the Scripture speak for itself.
With that in mind, consider how you would pray if you prayed
“through him then”, rather than
through any of your God-limited thoughts and feelings. What do you know about Jesus
as your Lord, and Savior, and Redeemer, and Intercessor, and Great High Priest,
that would affect how you prayed to the Father as his beloved child coming to him
through Firstborn Brother? Just start talking to Father about how you are
coming to him through Jesus, and through all Jesus has done, and all the
promises of what Jesus will still do for us in this lifetime, and what he will
complete when we see him as he is, and watch your heart take hold of the
glorious truths of God simply because the word of God is leading you to do so.
Then talk to God about what it would be like if you were
free to “continually offer up a sacrifice
of praise to God”, without any hindrance or restriction from a wounded soul
or a self-protective sark.[2]
Don’t imagine God-limiting things about how this could not happen because of
things that have happened to you (that is your sark talking anyway), but ask
God to make this so real that you would not only feel yourself filled with
praise to God, particularly because you are coming to him through Jesus, not
through yourself, but that this praise would be continuous and constant in your
life.
Consider in prayer, just talking to Father about whatever is
going on within you as you humble yourself before the words he has given, how
you would love to acknowledge his name to all your negative circumstances, all
your wrong beliefs, all your fear-based limitations, and, instead of endlessly
rehearsing all your bad experiences and failures, you would love to constantly
acknowledge the name of the Living God over all you are, all you have, all you
are going through, and all you could do and be in Jesus’ name.
One of my favorite ways of helping myself and others put
Scripture into prayer has been to consider things the apostles prayed for the
churches, and follow their example in asking for things that we know are
according to the will of God. Here is one that regularly helps me turn anything
I am facing into a prayer of faith:
For this reason I bow my knees before the Father, from whom every family in heaven and on earth is named, that according to the riches of his glory he may grant you to be strengthened with power through his Spirit in your inner being, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith—that you, being rooted and grounded in love, may have strength to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled with all the fullness of God.[3]
There is so much in here that will help us put words to our
own prayers, but one part of this prayer that has often helped me pray for much
more than my sarky thoughts would imagine is the expression, “according to the riches of his glory”. So
often, when I have felt tempted to limit my prayers to my complaints of
hopelessness, or the ignorance of my sark, the simple consideration that I am
to pray according to the riches of Father’s glory has lifted my prayers into
things I wouldn’t otherwise have considered.
If we could help each other with this, sitting down with
this prayer before us, and start asking for the same things as brother Paul, asking
to the measure of the riches of God’s glory, we would find ourselves asking for
things that uplift us in the asking even before we see an answer to our
prayers. Except, of course, wouldn’t that already be Father answering our
prayers even as we pray?
I could go on with the way Jesus’ announcement of his
ministry in Luke 4 gives so many high and lofty prayer requests we can and
should pray for, and all the more the more impossible things appear to us. And,
although I believe all of us could experience this ourselves in our own private
prayer times with God (as happened for me again this morning), I urge us to
consider what we could share with other believers if we would ask for help when
we need it, and offer help when others can’t see anything better than some
painful and discouraging situation staring them in the face.
And, if we can’t even imagine helping someone put lofty and
uplifting expressions to their prayers… ASK! Ask God to help you come to him
even when you are feeling quite unsure of what to do, and that he will bless
you as you begin praying anyway (that is part of praying in faith), and help
you to consider things to pray that even at the moment you begin praying you
still can’t imagine. If we ask God to teach us to pray, and then pray whatever
Scriptures he has set before us that day, he will absolutely most certainly answer
according to his good, pleasing, and acceptable will.[4]
© 2017 Monte Vigh ~ Box 517,
Merritt, BC, V1K 1B8 ~ in2freedom@gmail.com
Unless otherwise noted,
Scriptures are from the English Standard Version (The Holy Bible, English
Standard Version Copyright © 2001 by Crossway Bibles, a division of Good
News Publishers.)
[1]
Hebrews 13:15
[2]
Remember that “sark” is simply my preferred way of referring to the flesh since
“sarx” is the Greek word that is translated “flesh” in our English Bibles. I
also clarify that I’m not saying that we should avoid God when our souls are
wounded, or our sarks are feeling especially self-protective. I simply mean
that we are asking God to give us this experience of continually offering up
our sacrifice of praise to him.
[3]
Ephesians 3:14-19
[4]
Romans 12:2
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