Tag: Prayer

PTTS: Ephesians 1:7-10

“In Him we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses, according to the riches of His grace which He lavished on us. In all wisdom and insight He made known to us the mystery of His will, according to His kind intention which He purposed in Him with a view to an administration suitable to the fullness of the times, that is, the summing up of all things in Christ, things in the heavens and things on the earth.”

Father, let me give praise to You for the work of Your Son, the Beloved.

My trespasses are numerous and severe against You. You would be just to condemn and punish me with the tortures of Hell. I cannot make any excuse for them. Your justice demands that these sins be punished.

By the ultimate sacrifice, Jesus has bore my sins through the riches of His grace. His blood was spilled to purchase the redemption of His people, the forgiveness of their sins. It not by the work of my hands that I claim such forgiveness, but simply by faith in His Gospel. Help me to cherish this fact…let me count this forgiveness as the greatest of all treasures.

Break my mind free from the bondage of looking at the temporal as if it is the eternal. Let me not treasure wealth or physical beauty. Do not let me find security in my bank account or my situations. Instead, let me see myself as rich, trusting Your Word and the promises it contains for those redeemed by the blood of Christ.

Help me to understand the depths of the grace lavished out upon the Church. Let me remember how the priests of the Old Covenant had to sacrifice blood again and again, yet it still could not atone for the sins of men. Let me remember the wrath of God that came to those who were not under the blood of the Passover. Let me appreciate my salvation, and the salvation that you have bestowed upon those believers whom I love in my family and in my church.

I give thanks to You for making known to me the mystery of Your will. I now understand that it is Your pleasure that all glory belongs to Jesus Christ. He is the purpose of all of history. He is the focus of all of the Scriptures. Whether on earth or in the heavens, it is His name that should be magnified and praised. As Your Word clearly states, Jesus Christ is the Head of the Church, and the glory of God is summed up in His person. May my thoughts and my words convey that wisdom.

Please restore the central focus of the glory of Christ to the churches to which we belong. Let our worship clearly center upon Jesus Christ instead of focusing on our worldly needs. Let our evangelism stress His righteousness instead of cheap grace. Let our Christian families and fellowship find satisfaction in discussing the majesty of our Savior instead of amusement and the tedious aspects of this world.

Men’s Fellowship – Prayer

This past Sunday evening, we met for our Men’s fellowship and experienced a time of challenge, of encouragement, and of repentance. Our thoughts were drawn to the subject of corporate prayer and we expressed our struggles, frustrations, and hopes regarding this important subject.

I am personally convinced that we have many pressures upon us that mold us into patterns of corporate prayer that are far from biblical. Even the best of the books and studies that we have used to help our prayer lives fail at some of the most basic levels. At the core of this is the assumption that the only thing that we care to pray about is our health, our finances, and our relationships…oh, and lest we forget the staple of all modern corporate prayer, travel mercies (forgive the sarcasm). Many of these books and studies try to show us that we are to pray for all of these things with the focus of bringing glory to God. This is an important point, but as I look to the teachings on prayer in the Scriptures I am left to wonder if there is an issue that lies deeper, at the heart of the things that we desire and the things that we do not.

There were certainly plenty of needs in biblical times. There was poverty in many of the places were the churches existed. There were broken families and relationships. There were illnesses and death. The mortality rate was about the same as today! There were accidents, disasters, social injustices, etc. All of these things were just as rampant then as they are now. But what was the focus of the prayers of the Church? Time and time again we see corporate prayer focused upon the unity of the Church, the edification of the Church, the need for wisdom in the Church, for the advancement of the Gospel as the Church continues to proclaim the Word of Life as it expands the dominion of the Lord Jesus as salvation goes forth. The Scriptures show forth the need to ask for God’s strength and provision for the Church through the power of the Holy Spirit and through faith in the risen Lord Jesus.

I am not saying that we should not be praying for material or physical needs. Pray for them all…spiritual, physical, relational. Any thing that urges you to depend upon God and ask of His good provision. We are commanded in the Scriptures to do so! But understand that as a believer, you are able to pray for these things without necessarily needing the help of others in prayer.

Now, if you have labored in prayer and the burden is heavy, if you need encouragement and you need to know that others are bearing the burden with you, by all means, bring it before another brother or sister in Christ. Ask your church to pray for you! But all too often, I think we have reached a point in which we ask others to pray for things that we ourselves are not truly burdened about. Or else, we ask thinking that the Lord will not answer our prayer alone, but that He is more apt to answer the prayers when others are asking Him.

My greatest concern is that there are so many of these requests that there is little emphasis placed upon praying for the earnest and dire needs of the Church. It is very indicting that we do not see sincere and dependent prayers of corporate repentance, corporate supplications, and biblical yearnings for the strength of the Church in the midst of a crooked and perverse generation.

Perhaps another hindrance to biblical corporate prayer is that we do not want to speak as if there is something wrong in our churches. In other words, if we are going to seek biblical corporate prayer, we will have to admit that we don’t have perfect unity, perfect desires, perfect people, and perfect ministries. It takes corporate humility and corporate repentance. We must not be afraid to admit that we need to grow in these areas. But let us take heart and see the things that the Scriptures call us to value and let us pray that those things take place in our midst!

I am thankful for the discussion that we had Sunday night, and I hope that it continues, no only as a discussion, but that it changes our corporate prayer life to be more biblical, more sincere, and more effectual for the glory of the Lord Jesus! May we pray that it is so.

PTTS: Ephesians 1:3-6

“Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ, just as He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world, that we would be holy and blameless before Him In love He predestined us to adoption as sons through Jesus Christ to Himself, according to the kind intention of His will, to the praise of the glory of His grace, which He freely bestowed on us in the Beloved.”

May all praise be to You, the great and mighty God, who alone has the power to bless His children. Sin and the forces of darkness may offer temporal things that seem to benefit me, but they are illusions; they are designed to distract me from the hope of glory to come and also to make me dissatisfied with the provision of Your perfect gifts. Grant that I may seek pleasure in You alone.

Selah.

What splendor!!! Through faith in the Gospel of Jesus Christ, I have been blessed with every blessing. May that thought sink into my heart…’every’ spiritual blessing! There is no good gift that I lack. Indeed, should I be discontent, should I think that God has forsaken me in any way, then I sin against His goodness and the promise of His Word.

Father, let me be a testimony to those around me of this great truth. Let my actions show that I have been blessed with every spiritual blessing. Let me not complain of my lot in life. Let me not show forth greed and lust for things that are contrary to the holiness of the Law of Christ. Forgive me for sinning in this manner and for giving the world another reason to think that the Christian faith is just another mere religious institution. Let me be convinced that nothing good will ever come from sin and that the perfect supply of blessing for every need in my life has been supplied by my Lord Jesus Christ.

Should I ever wonder how I am blessed in so great a measure, use Your Word to convince me. Let me know that as a believer in Christ, I have been chosen by You before the foundations of the world. As such, my assurance is secure. There is nothing I can fail to do to lose your love, for You have not chosen to bless me so richly based upon my own actions, but by Your sovereign grace. It is through this grace that I stand before you holy and blameless, for I have been united with Christ, the Holy One.

Let me know that I have been adopted as a son by You through the kindness of the will of Jesus Christ. Therefore, even with the Apostle Paul, I cry out with praise to You for Your glorious grace to me. Loose my tongue that I may sing and speak of Your glories. Glory to God for the every blessing bestowed upon all believers in the Gospel freely through the Beloved, Jesus our Lord!
Amen.

Introduction to the Praying Through the Scriptures Series

My purpose is to encourage you to model your prayers after the Scriptures. Not in a word-for-word manner, but in a manner that models prayers after the focus of the teachings in the Scriptures. These posts will focus on prayers that I have written that I believe reflect sound exegesis of the Scriptures. However, I will include some study notes upon the texts and also quotations of great works that I believe will stimulate you towards worship and godly meditation upon the Word of God.

I have penned these words to demonstrate how exciting our prayers should be, with the sad realization that my prayers are often dull and monotonous. So, to a great degree, I do this for myself.

May the Scriptures ignite our souls with the fire of divine fellowship with our Lord.

Study: 1 Peter 4:7-11

Last night we met and looked at 1 Peter 4:7-11. It was good to be together again on a Wednesday night…we have missed the last two weeks do to illnesses.

The text led us into a very honest discussion of the seriousness of this life. As the passage says, we are to be sound in judgment and sober minded for the sake of prayer, especially in light of our duty towards one another as fellow resident aliens in this world.

Therefore, we must exercise fervent love for one another. We must view our lives as critically important and use our speech and our deeds to build one another up, knowing that we should reflect the power and the glory of Christ through our conduct towards one another. Hence, the passage ends the exhortation to this godly conduct saying that our lives must glorify Jesus Christ in this manner to show forth the glory of His power and His dominion.

Let love therefore cover our sins. Let us not give up on one another. Let us not turn from one another, feeling betrayed, feeling as if others have failed us. As we discussed last night, such love is beautiful and it ought to be the desire of our heart to seek this godly love which will carry us forth while we are still pilgrims in this land.

This text has led me to consider the blessings in my life through those in the Church that have shown me and my family hospitality; who have served and ministered to us in our times of need and throughout our lives. May God be praised for the power of His Spirit in the Church!