In this prayer, Paul tells us that he
thinks expectantly of what he prays because the one he prays to is, “the God of our Lord Jesus Christ,” the
very person who has saved and redeemed us from sin at such great expense. And
he is, “the Father of glory”, who is
himself the reason that anything is glorious at all. To such a person we can
express our hearts to him in the full expectation that anything we pray
according to his will he will answer.[2]
This reminded me that Paul’s next prayer in
Ephesians is addressed to, “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…”[3]
If we pray that he would act “according
to the riches of his glory”, the fact that he has the glory of “the Father” who is the source of
everything gives us faith-building cause to not only expect him to answer us,
but to answer in the perfection of fatherliness.
Suddenly this hit me the way Jesus taught
us to begin our prayers, by addressing God as, “Our Father in heaven”.[4]
Again, the fact that he is a “Father”
to us as his beloved children, and that he is the Father “in heaven” instead of like fathers on earth, and that this perfect
Father is “our” Father, all call us
to expect him to do in our lives the very things we pray according to Jesus’
teaching on prayer.
LESSON: our
prayers rise out of our beliefs regarding the one to whom we pray. Wrong
beliefs about God demoralize our attempts to pray; true beliefs about God
encourage us in our efforts to pray.
FREEDOM ISSUE: any struggle to pray is a revelation of things we do and do not
believe about God. Likely there are things we do believe that are not true, and
things we do not believe that are true. Addressing our faith-issues with God
will automatically fix a lot of our issues with prayer.
APPLICATION:
as anything comes up that you have difficulty bringing to God in prayer for any
reason at all, ask God to reveal to your mind what you believe about him that
is hindering your prayers. Whatever comes up is likely the best thing to talk
to God about in order to get to know him as your Father better than you have
ever known him before.
EXPECTATION:
as God shows us wrong beliefs about him that hinder our prayers, he will lead
us into another hike through the Beatitudinal Valley.[5]
Here we will first admit to our poverty of spirit in how we know him (or do not
know him) as revealed. We may then find ourselves mourning specific things
about what we have gone through that have shaped our wrong beliefs about him. We
will next come to that place of meekness where we know we can’t fix ourselves
but can see that Father is at work to put us back together again. And then we
will find ourselves hungering and thirsting to know him in his fatherliness in
such a way that makes prayer the most simple and natural thing to do as we talk
to him about everything.[6]
This is all coming up as I prepare to teach
on, agape “is not irritable or resentful”.[7]
It makes me wonder how much irritation and resentment tell us about our wrong
beliefs about our Father in heaven. Feel free to let me know what he reveals
about this when you ask him.
Email: in2freedom@gmail.com
Unless otherwise noted, Scriptures are from the
English Standard Version (The Holy Bible, English Standard Version. ESV® Text
Edition: 2016. Copyright © 2001 by Crossway Bibles, a publishing ministry of
Good News Publishers.)
[1] Ephesians 1:17
[2] Which is, of course, what God says in his book in I John 5:14-15,
along with many other places.
[3] Ephesians 3:14-16
[4] Matthew 6:9
[5] This is my affectionate way of describing the wonderful gift of
grace revealed in Jesus’ teaching on “the Beatitudes” at the beginning of his
Sermon on the Mount. The Beatitudes are described in Matthew 5:1-12, and the
Sermon on the Mount is shared with us in Matthew 5:1-7:29.
[6] These four blessings of transformation are only the first half of
the Beatitudinal Valley, what I call the “downside” because it leads us down
into the true condition of our soul where we call out to God for what he alone
can do. As we attach to God in these Beatitudinal changes, and, in this case,
come to trust him more profoundly in prayer, we continue on the upside of the Beatitudinal
Valley where we become the merciful people whose hearts are made pure in our
single-minded devotion to seeking first the kingdom and righteousness of God.
We are transformed into peacemakers who are so earnest in our desire that
everyone we know come to have peace with God that we are even willing to face
persecution and hardship for the sake of the kingdom, and even for the sake of
our enemies who need to become brothers in Christ.
[7] I Corinthians 13:5. Our home church has been working through I Corinthians
13 for a while with special attention on I Corinthians 13:4-7 where Paul
describes what agape-love is like. The whole chapter is I Corinthians 13:1-13.
The first section explains what we are like without this agape-love, and the
last section shows the supremacy of agape-love over everything else. Both are
to motivate us to look at verses 4-7 with a hunger and thirst to do what Paul
summarizes in the first verse of the next chapter: “Pursue love, and earnestly desire the spiritual gifts…” (I
Corinthians 14:1). Agape-love should cover everything we do (I Peter 4:8), and
whatever spiritual gifts we have received will give us the best ways of
expressing agape-love in our ministry to others.
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