PRAYING PRAYERS

PRAYING PRAYERS The amazing thing about prayer, is that nearly everyone does it – but hardly anyone thinks they do it well. If you visit any Christian bookstore you will notice that the largest display of books is about prayer. And it’s not just Christian bookstores where you’ll find books on prayer. Regular bookstores also sell a wide range of books on prayer (even if they do classify them as books on ‘meditation’!). One of the most frequently searched questions on Google is, “How to pray” (which then points enquirers to over 2.3 billion web pages answering their question). But in all of human history – and two thousand years before anyone but one had ever heard of Google – there was just One person who was supremely qualified to answer this question. And fortunately for those of us who really want to know the answer to this question (without having to peruse more than 2.3 billion web pages!) He gave us the answer.

¶ Now Jesus was praying in a certain place, and when He finished, one of His disciples said to Him, “Lord, teach us to pray, as John taught his disciples.”
Luke 11:1

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WHAT IS PRAYER?

Put simply, prayer is talking to God. It can be done by speaking audibly to God. It can be done silently. It can be done in writing. For those who do not understand what prayer is, it is – at least what they think is – a way to make God do what they want. While it is true that we can submit our requests to God in prayer (Phil. 4:6), true prayer actually begins by submitting ourselves to God first (Rom. 12:1). The person who begins to pray by telling God what to do is bound to be disappointed with God when they eventually discover that it is God who wants to tell them what to do! Perhaps this is why “unanswered prayers” is offered as one of the main reasons why atheists do not believe in God (even though it reveals the gravitational pull on every human soul to seek and connect with God).

Prayer is a mystery. Why does the all-powerful Supreme Being invite us, His creatures, to have direct access to Him through prayer? This is astounding! But even more astounding is that He invites us to share in His government over our world through prayer to Him! Notice the opening lines of the Lord’s Prayer:

Pray then like this:
“Our Father in heaven,
hallowed be Your name.
Your kingdom come,
Your will be done,
on earth as it is in heaven.
Matthew 6:9-10

It is almost like the parent who has not only provided their growing child with a comfortable bedroom in a comfortable family home that they can call (and to some extent, make – by their decorations and furnishings) their own, who then must ask their child for permission to enter. Even after they have told their child to tidy their room, the parent still enters after their child has left for school and does the last of the tidying up that their child didn’t notice (and still doesn’t even afterwards). There are times of course, when the child may be overwhelmed by the task to tidy their room. In those moments they may call out to their father, “Can you help me?” I sometimes see this as being like our prayers to God. He has given us our lives; He has given us our world; He has told us to keep them tidy; and, there are times when it is just too overwhelming to do it. It is in these times that we call out to Him for help. And just as our earthly parents love to help their children, our heavenly Father loves to help His children who call out to Him for help. 

Our prayers express our trust in God. When we pray to God we are acknowledging our dependence upon Him. The highest prayers we can pray sound very similar to the highest prayers ever prayed which were recorded by the Gospel writers, Matthew (Matt. 26:39) and Luke, who recorded what Christ prayed just prior to Him entering into His suffering for the sins of the world:

[Jesus knelt down] saying, “Father, if you are willing, remove this cup from Me. Nevertheless, not My will, but Yours, be done.”
Luke 22:42

This is the greatest example of a prayer ever prayed. It models exactly what prayer is about – 

1. surrender to God “not My will” (this is the essence of worship); 
2. trust in God “but Your will be done”;
3. talking to God “Father…”; and 
4. then submitting a request to God “remove this cup [of suffering] from Me.”

 

HOW NOT TO PRAY

Jesus taught His followers how not to pray. 

¶ “And when you pray, you must not be like the hypocrites. For they love to stand and pray in the synagogues and at the street corners, that they may be seen by others. Truly, I say to you, they have received their reward. But when you pray, go into your room and shut the door and pray to your Father who is in secret. And your Father who sees in secret will reward you.¶ “And when you pray, do not heap up empty phrases as the Gentiles do, for they think that they will be heard for their many words.
Matthew 6:5-7

Praying is talking to our heavenly Father. It is not done merely to impress others. Jesus called this type of praying hypocritical. It is not a matter of having the right words, more words, long words, or even many words. Our praying should come from our hearts to God. Because praying is firstly an act of our surrender to God, we do not pray with a tone of telling God what He must do or how He is to do it. When we pray, we are not talking to the devil or any evil spirit – we keep addressing our heavenly Father when we pray. And when we are praying we are addressing the Only One who declares and decrees what will be, therefore we do not declare to the air what things must happen or how they are to happen.

 

PRAYING LIKE JESUS

Jesus spent time by Himself and prayed for certain people. This is remarkable. Jesus told Peter that He had been praying for him that his faith would not fail and that after he had been restored he would be able to strengthen his fellow disciples (Luke 22:32). How much more then, should we be praying for one another? When Jesus reached the tomb of His dead friend Lazarus, His praying for this moment had all been done. Thus, His prayer before raising Lazarus from dead was remarkably short:

So they took away the stone. And Jesus lifted up His eyes and said, “Father, I thank you that You have heard Me. I knew that You always hear Me, but I said this on account of the people standing around, that they may believe that You sent Me.”When He had said these things, He cried out with a loud voice, “Lazarus, come out.” The man who had died came out, his hands and feet bound with linen strips, and his face wrapped with a cloth. Jesus said to them, “Unbind him, and let him go.”
John 11:41-44

It’s also amazing to me that as well as Jesus praying for Peter – and each of His other disciples (John 17:9-11) – He also prayed for all future believers yet-to-be-born!

¶ “I do not ask for these only, but also for those who will believe in Me through their word, that they may all be one, just as You, Father, are in Me, and I in You, that they also may be in us, so that the world may believe that You have sent Me.
John 12:20-21

This tells me that I can pray for my great great great grand-children who are yet to be born to love God and walk after Him with all their heart. It also tells me that I can pray for our church family who, in two or three or four hundred years time, will be a witness to their community just as we are being a witness to ours now.

And He said to them, “The harvest is plentiful, but the labourers are few. Therefore pray earnestly to the Lord of the harvest to send out labourers into His harvest.
Luke 10:2

Jesus often spent time on His own praying (Luke 5:16; 6:12; 9:18; 11:1; 22:41). He prayed for the will of God to be done and taught His disciples to do the same (Matt. 6:10). Perhaps this may mean that praying to God does something profound to us in the process. Quite possibly, praying for God’s will to be accomplished in the earth transforms our hearts and minds to be conformed to God’s will in the process. If this is the case then it might be worth our while examining the prayers that were prayed in the Bible – particularly by Jesus and His apostles as recorded in the New Testament epistles. By praying these prayers we may also become conformed to them and discover two beautiful things. Firstly, our hearts enter a rest with our Saviour even in the midst of any turmoil we may be encountering. This is what we see Jesus doing in Gethsemane on the night He was betrayed. Secondly, our souls find peace with God as we openly and transparently commune our petitions to Him and ask our Daddy to join us in our moments of overwhelming mess to help us to clean up what we could never manage on our own. This is why we should pray these prayers. Let’s pray.

Your Pastor,

Andrew

Let me know what you think below in the comment section and feel free to share this someone who might benefit from this Pastor’s Desk.

Trifling Is Not Trifling

HAVE WE LOST OUR SENSE OF THE SACRED?

In the West, unlike the East, we suffer the enormous disadvantage of living in a culture largely unfamiliar with the sacred. Added to this, there has arisen an understanding among contemporary Christians that there is no warrant for making any distinction between ‘the holy’ and ‘secular’. But rather than regarding everything as holy it has tended to mean that everything which was once holy is now regarded as ordinary (‘secular’). This then leads to certain sacred rituals of Christianity being trifled with (treated as less important than they are).  When this happens, the Christ-instituted rituals of Christianity are misrepresented and therefore misunderstood, which in turn, diminishes people’s vision of God’s glory. Let’s rethink rituals.

¶ And on that day there shall be inscribed on the bells of the horses, “Holy to the LORD.” And the pots in the house of the LORD shall be as the bowls before the altar. And every pot in Jerusalem and Judah shall be holy to the LORD of hosts, so that all who sacrifice may come and take of them and boil the meat of the sacrifice in them. And there shall no longer be a trader in the house of the LORD of hosts on that day.
Zechariah 14:20-21

RITUALS OR SACRAMENTS OR ORDINANCES?

Rituals can be lifeless. Especially when they are not understood. All of the rituals of Christianity are opulently rich in meaning. Some traditions of the Church refer to these rituals as sacraments. The word ‘sacrament’ comes from the Latin word for mystery, “sacer”. It has generally come to mean the outward expression of an inner grace. That is, by performing the ritual, God’s grace is mediated to its participants. The traditions of the Church which have regarded certain Christian rituals as sacraments have necessarily required that those who minister them are consecrated to do so. These people are known as priests. The belief that some people can be consecrated as priests and then minister the sacraments is known as sacerdotalism. 

The Reformers, beginning with Martin Luther (1483-1546) in 1517, began to raise objections to the idea of sacerdotalism. Initially, these Reformers merely de-classified some of the 7 sacraments (Baptism, Confirmation or Chrismation, Eucharist, Penance, Anointing of the Sick, Holy Orders, and Matrimony) down to just 4 (Baptism, Communion, Holy Orders, and Matrimony). Then these 4 were reduced to 3 (Baptism, Communion, and Matrimony), and ultimately to just two (Baptism, and, Matrimony). From this point, Communion became regarded as as Ordinance rather than as a Sacrament by most Protestants. 

It was the Swiss Reformer, Ulrich Zwingli, who first challenged the notion of Communion (“the Eucharist“) as a sacrament. He argued that it was not a sacrament because the elements were merely representationsof the Lord’s body and blood. This was different to the Roman Catholic position which taught that the elements (which they call accidents) are mystically transformed into the actual body and blood of Christ. This view is known as Transubstantiation. It also disagreed with Martin Luther’s modified position about Communion. Luther also disagreed with the Roman Catholic position but taught that Christ was with the elements of Communion. This Lutheran view is known as Consubstantiation. John Calvin disagreed with Zwingli and argued that the Communion elements were more than mere representation of Christ’s body and blood, but he too disagreed with the Roman Catholic and views. He coined the expression Ordinanceand taught that the Communion should only be administered by an authorised  (‘ordained’) minister.

Many Protestants now hold to a Neo-Zwinglian view of Communion. They regard the elements of Communion as typifying the body and blood of Christ but having deep significance for all who partake. While not considering it to be a ‘Sacrament’ (which in itself imparts some grace to the participant) they do consider it to be mysterious. They argue that the emblems (or “elements”) of the Holy Communion were consecrated by Christ. The act of sharing and then consuming these elements was also consecrated by Christ. The  significance of both the nature of the elements (unleavened bread typifying the sinless body of Christ, and the unfermented wine typifying the uncorrupted life of Christ) and how they are shared and consumed (the pieces of bread being broken from one unleavened loaf typifying that the participants are one in Christ, and the wine coming from one source typifying that there is only one Saviour). The mystery of this rite (or, ritual) is that if it is done in an unappreciative manner, there can be grave consequences (note the Apostle’s reminder to the Corinthians about this in First Corinthians 11). The celebration of Holy Communion is therefore a sacred moment.

¶ Now I commend you because you remember me in everything and maintain the traditions even as I delivered them to you.
First Corinthians 11:2

The word ‘sacred’ means set apart from the ordinary. It is distinct from ‘secular’ which means ordinary, common (even though most understand ‘secular’ to mean irreligious or non-religious). In this sense, Holy Communion is sacred. Its occasion, its elements, its means of sharing together, and what it typifies, are not to be trifled with. Dr. Sproul’s rebuke to his young theological student was therefore not the rankings of some out-of-touch theological dinosaur. The mystery 0f Holy Communion transcends time and culture. When Jesus said, “take eat” He was intersecting the present. When He said “in remembrance of Me” He was intersecting the past. Then when He said, “until I come”, He was intersecting the future. Thus, the practice of Holy Communion has past, present, and future implications. It speaks of what the Lord Jesus has done (by saving us), is doing among us (by knitting us together into a body of believers who experience supernatural unity in Christ with our fellow brothers and sisters, which requires “discerning” each time we partake, refer to 1Cor. 11:27) and will do when we all experience the fullness of our salvation in the eternal state which the Book of Revelation described as a glorious ‘supper’ together in Heaven. This is why it is extremely inappropriate for non-believers or non-covenantal-believers (those who believe in Christ and the Gospel, but have not sealed their covenantal relationship with Christ through the waters of believers’ baptism). This is why none of my children were permitted to partake in Holy Communion until they had entered into the covenantal waters of baptism. It’s also the reason we take Holy Communion out of our monthly Guest Service.

 ¶ For I received from the Lord what I also delivered to you, that the Lord Jesus on the night when he was betrayed took bread, and when he had given thanks, he broke it, and said, “This is my body, which is for you. Do this in remembrance of me.” In the same way also he took the cup, after supper, saying, “This cup is the new covenant in my blood. Do this, as often as you drink it, in remembrance of me.” For as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death until he comes.
First Corinthians 11:23-26

Water Baptism or Holy Communion does not save its participants from eternal damnation. But both of them typify aspects of the work of Christ with great precision. This is why neither should be trivialized or trifled with. Time prevents me from elaborating on the third of ordinances, Holy Matrimony, and discussing its rich typifying of what it means to follow Christ and become one with Him.  But if more believers did understand this, they might appreciate why the Enemy is so keen to undermine it in the eyes of the world.

Pastor Andrew Corbett

B.C. -AETAS DOMINI- A.D.

B.C. < JESUS CHRIST > A.D.

Jesus Christ has time.

Luke 22:19 And he took bread, and when he had given thanks, he broke it and gave it to them, saying, "This is my body, which is given for you. Do this in remembrance of me."

As we prepare to celebrate this Christmas, we remember the Christmas Child who 'divided' time. We describe time as either being "B.C." (Before Christ) or "A.D." (Anno Domini). No other person in history has ever been similarly honoured. When Christ came, everything changed - including the way we refer to history. When Christ comes into a life today, everything changes still. It's not just History that has a B.C. and an A.D. point - it's every life who has turned to the only One who can divide the history of their lives into B.C. ("before I came to Christ") and A.D. ("After my Decision to follow Christ").

This Christmas is a celebration of the One who entered history and erases pasts. He did this for me. Before Christ found me I had done shameful things. When I came to Christ He erased my past, my "B.C.", and for that I will be eternally grateful! Since I have placed my life under the Lordship of Christ my future, my "A.D.", is now secured. There are times when my previous life of sin haunts me relentlessly. How could a Saviour who atoned for sins nearly two thousand years ago possibly forgive my sin which, at the time, I hadn't committed yet? But this Saviour is not just Anno Domini (Lord of the Year) He is Aetas Domini (Lord of Time). Jesus Christ literally has time.

There are some people who say that Jesus can only guess what the future holds - but that He may guess wrong. The technical term for this isOpen Theology. There are others who say that Jesus knows exactly what choices every personcould make and has chosen the pathway of collective choices that produces the best outcome. The technical term for this is Middle Knowledge. But the mystery saturating the pages of Scripture is that the Once-Christmas-Child is not merely a Guesser of the Future, but the Lord of the Future. But not just the Future, time. He is Aetas Domini!

The first Christmas was what all the past looked forward to. The first Christmas is what all today, and in the future will, look back to. It changed everything. It still does. When I shared this message last Sunday, a lady who had had many years living under Narcis Domini came to Christ and wanted the Aetas Domini to be her Domini. She wanted her life to move from B.C. to A.D.!

Ephesians 2:1-4aAnd you were dead in the trespasses and sins in which you once walked, following the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience— among whom we all once lived in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the body and the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, like the rest of mankind.
But God...

"I want my past to be B.C." she said. Her eyes said it all.Before Christ. Before Christ we were "dead in the trespasses and sins in which we once walked" wrote the seasoned Apostle. But then Christmas! And "all things have become new" (2Cor. 5:17). Does you life have a time-dividing point? Can you identify that era of your life which might be referred to as "B.C."? Everyone who lives in the Anno Domini (Year of the Lord) has a B.C.

The Christmas Child became the Christ, Aetas Domini, the Lord of Time. The One who could enter time and deal with the past in His present and atone for all in the future. On the night He was to be betrayed, He took bread, broke it, and uttered only what the Aetas Domini could decree-

* take and eat (The Present)

* do this in remembrance of Me (The Past)

* until I come (The Future)

The next time you are dogged by your past failures, mistakes, sins and trespasses, you have a Saviour who has erased these from your past. The next time you are anxious, you have a Saviour who is with you now! The next time your future looks uncertain you can walk into it with the One who is Lord of it!

Faced with a Throne he never wanted, a war he was ill-equipped for, and nation in collective anxiety about its future, King George went on radio and gave a stirring speech to the people of the British Empire on September 3rd, 1939 and then followed it up with a Christmas Day speech. How this reluctant King, who suffered with serious speech impediments and a dire lack of self-confidence, came to give this speech was the subject of the movie: The King's Speech.

[Sep. 3rd 1939] "In this grave hour, perhaps the most fateful in our history, I send to every household of my peoples, both at home and overseas, this message, spoken with the same depth of feeling for each one of you as if I were able to cross your threshold and speak to you myself...
But we can only do the right as we see the right, and reverently commit our cause to God. If one and all we keep resolutely faithful to it, ready for whatever service or sacrifice it may demand, then, with God's help, we shall prevail...
[Dec. 25th 1939] "I said to the man who stood at the Gate of the Year, 'Give me a light that I may tread safely into the unknown.' And he replied, 'Go out into the darkness, and put your hand into the Hand of God. That shall be better than light, and safer than a known way.'"
King George VI

Jesus has time. He has time to deal with our pasts. He has time to help us in our nows. He already knows our tomorrow, and has already ensured that no temptation/adversity will come our way that could overpower us! Yes, the Christ of Christmas has not just established Anno Domini, but has settled the matter of Who Rules Time. The first Christmas laid the foundation for Christ to be acknowledged as Aetas Domini.

Father, thank You for sending the Christmas Child as our Saviour. Thank You that our past is dealt with and our future is secure. As we look back, we give thanks. As we look forward, we worship. Help us, we pray to acknowledge that Jesus is merely the Author of Anno Domini, but He is truly Aetas Domini - Lord of All Time. Amen.

Eph. 3:21 to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, forever and ever. Amen.

Ps. Andrew