Prayer

Some of us already know how to pray.  Many of us are insecure or uncomfortable in our prayer lives.

The apostles, steeped in their Judaic upbringing saw the Lord pray and asked Him, "Teach us to pray" in Luke 11 and Matthew 6.  The apostles knew what they were taught but observed the Lord in His prayer life.  They saw Him come back with the Glory and peace of the Almighty ever more upon His face and saw through all things that He had peace.  When Jesus prayed, His words had power.

The Lord taught the Disciple's prayer, often termed the Lord's prayer, in Luke 11 and Matthew 6.  Right before He taught the disciples in Matthew 6, he warns us that we should not contain our prayer life to simply these verses but instead view them as a model for prayer in our lives.  He warns us against continually repeating a prayer over and over again with little thought or understanding the meaning behind the words:  ⁷But when ye pray, use not vain repetitions, as the heathen do: for they think that they shall be heard for their much speaking.^{(Matthew 6)}

Keep in mind that meditation upon the words of the Disciple’s prayer or other verses in the Bible are different from vain repetition as meditation is conscious and deliberate.  Meditation requires quietness of our heart and going to a secret place within ourselves, even when we are in public places, in order to seek a deeper or fresh meaning of the word.  Likewise, when we continuously make repetitive heart-felt requests to the Lord, they are not vain and thoughtless.

Prayer is a sacred communication with the Lord.  It changes our focus off of ourselves and onto He that has all power and sovereignty over our lives, our situations and the world around us.  When we pray with honesty and confidence to the Lord, we seek to know Him better.  We develop a relationship with the Lord through prayer which will increase our faith and give us that peace and joy we seek in our lives and which can only come from Him for this type of peace does not come from the world.  It is peace amongst our situations which allow us through His strength to overcome just as He overcame the world.

Should our prayer life all be the same?  In that we pray, yes.  How we pray will be different just as God made our fingerprints, our dna, our personalities each unique so will our relationship or prayer-life with the Lord. 

If you’ve never prayed before, no matter what you are experiencing, cry out to Him openly and honestly.  He seeks a relationship – a dialog, a song, a moan, and sometimes it is just quiet and listening to Him as we sit as His feet.  Prayer life will change as your relationship changes.  Just as the Lord is alive, so will your prayer life grow, develop and mature.

Worry

I have been praying over worry. I know this sounds strange but I wanted to see worry from God's perspective. I know God does NOT want us to worry; I wanted to understand worry from God. Through these past few weeks, I have seen worry from different perspectives -- how to stop worrying, verses where God addresses worry, etc. but it wasn't until a friend asked me about the Law regarding food that God showed me something about worry that sunk into my soul deeply. I pray that this touches your heart and soul, too.

Please understand in this blog I am NOT prescribing any dietary restrictions. I simply trying to convey the symbolism for what these unclean animals represent, that being scavengers. God does not want us to be associated with scavengers or the act of scavenging.  God calls us to be a Holy people, a people set apart  choosing to stand on faith, trusting in God instead of worrying and giving into fear. 

In Deuteronomy chapter 14 and Leviticus chapter 11, God calls the unclean animals scavengers and told the people to avoid them.  God detests these scavengers.

When God's people came upon battles, God would often instruct them NOT to take anything from the possessions of the defeated (Deuteronomy 7:25, Joshua 18:18 and again with Saul). God does not want His people to scavenge through the defeated for their plunder. The victories belonged to the Lord and so did the plunder to do with as God pleased. He does not want His people, a holy people, to be scavengers.


Saul did not follow God's instructions in 1 Samuel 15 and did scavenge through the plunder of the fallen:

9But Saul and the people spared Agag, and the best of the sheep, and of the oxen, and of the fatlings, and the lambs, and all that was good, and would not utterly destroy them: but every thing that was vile and refuse, that they destroyed utterly. 10Then came the word of the LORD unto Samuel, saying, 11It repenteth me that I have set up Saul to be king: for he is turned back from following me, and hath not performed my commandments. And it grieved Samuel; and he cried unto the LORD all night.

This rebellion of Saul cost Saul as God rejected him as King over Israel because of this: “23For rebellion is as the sin of witchcraft, and stubbornness is as iniquity and idolatry. Because thou hast rejected the word of the LORD, he hath also rejected thee from being king.”

When we worry over something beyond our control, we scavenge over the issues. We are literally picking them apart, tearing through each individual detail. Not a pretty sight, is it? We are literally rebelling against God, stubbornly refusing to hand over the whole issue to God and trust him that He will take care of it. We are not called to be scavengers! We are called to do or learn something from the situation and leave the rest behind. We are called to cast our cares upon Him. We do this because we believe that God cares about us and our situations. And, He faithfully does! God will direct our paths while we stand faithing.

The word sanctification actually means something set aside to be made Holy (http://www.thefreedictionary.com/sanctification). So, dear children, we MUST learn to not worry. When we worry, it is a lack of faith and will diminish our hope. Worry does not build trust or relationship with the Lord.  Worry is fear and it represents a lack of faith.

We can trust God because the Lord is – not was, not will be – He is “I AM” which means He always will be. We can tell worry to stop because as long as God is on the throne, He is in control. And, He is, was, and always will be on the throne!  Amen!