My
Favorite Prayer
I once bought a new Bible and
highlighted every prayer in it, so I am
acquainted with the prayers contained in the Bible. I have also
been trained in several churches [not ekklesias] for service on their
prayer teams, so I am pretty well acquainted with the actual manner in
which church Christians pray. We typically pray for what we want,
and then we pray what we think we need to get what we want. We
hardly ever pray for what God knows that we need to accomplish His
calling for our individual life and other people's lives. In
short, we rely on our own understanding to accomplish our will, not
God's will and understanding. I would describe this as carnal
prayer.
To remedy this I joined prayed to
join Paul in being crucified with
Christ and nevertheless living, but no longer I, but Christ living in
me (Galatians 2:20). In addition I prayed the prayer of Paul
in Philippians 3:10-11:
Php 3:10-11
to know Him and the
power of His resurrection, and the fellowship of His sufferings, having
been conformed to His death, if somehow I may attain to a resurrection
out of the dead.
As a result, when I started to be set
free from my will and my
understanding through the power of Jesus' cross and death and
resurrection beginning to work in me, I came to the realization that
the Bible does contain the 'perfect prayer' for every situation.
It is 'hidden in plain sight' in Hebrews 13:20-21:
Heb 13:20-21 Now may the God of Peace who brought again from the
dead our Lord Jesus, the Great Shepherd of the Sheep, by the blood of
the eternal covenant, equip you with everything good that you may do
His will, working in us that which is pleasing in His sight, through
Jesus Christ, to Whom be glory forever and ever. Amen.
It is a wonderful prayer which relies
not on one's understanding of
what we need by on God's understanding. And it's goal is that we
may do His will, not our own will! The winning combination in my
opinion!
P.S.: I heartily agree with the
apostle Paul's humble
acknowledgment of his spiritual condition in the lines following
his chapter 3 verse 10-11 prayer shown above:
Php 3:12-15
Not that I already
received or already have been perfected, but I press on, if I also may
lay hold, inasmuch as I also was laid hold of by Christ Jesus.
Brothers, I do not count myself to have laid hold, but one thing I do,
forgetting the things behind, and stretching forward to those things
before, I press on after a mark for the prize of the high calling of
God in Christ Jesus. Then as many as are perfect, let us be of this
mind; and if you think anything differently, God will also reveal this
to you.
Has Jesus Christ laid hold of you,
dear reader? And have you
responded to His call to be all that you can be in Him to the glory of
God the Father?
If not, now is a great time to do so!!