Psalm 24,
Luke 18:1-14
Are you happy with your name? Is it meaningful for you? We carry the name of our FATHER; if you are called “Christian”, you should be known as such and reflect Jesus to everybody around.
The name identifies the person and as a person- God is not a thing. At the bush, Moses asked “what is your name?” (Ex 3:14). In a polytheistic setting he needed to know, “Are you the same God who helped me?” Then the name respects the nature – God called Himself “I AM”. The Israelites wrote this as “Yahweh”, but did not pronounce it, but said it as LORD, which is how our Bibles print it.
The Lord’s prayer starts with God, our Father. Are we consciously addressing GOD? Do we deliberately make contact when we pray? Are we reverently addressing GOD? Do not rush into His presence! Or is your prayer just sounds?
Remember who He is, the unique Lord! Appreciate the king of the universe. Make sure that you seek only the LORD, and not rely on anything else.
So in our prayer we ask that God be hallowed; this is not a common word, we should pray with understanding! It does not mean “hollowed”, a God at all defective, but “Holy”, which means, among other things, “wholly”. Remember that secret sins spoil prayer, lack of commitment spoils prayer – our prayer to be effective must be “whole”.
Then we approach God in holiness - there is no other way, except through Jesus, for we must have our sins forgiven to stand before a holy God.
Then we approach God by holiness. We need to make the connection! The only way to do this is to be filled by the HOLY Spirit to bond us to God.
Then when we pray to make his name more holy, we want this to be done by many other people – we pray “thy kingdom come”. This prayer means evangelism, and of course evangelism is effected through prayer.
Finally, Listen! Prayer is two-way. It is communication. So take time not just to enter prayer, but afterwards to hear him, perhaps through his Word.
God has opened his side for us so we can pray - Have we?
No comments:
Post a Comment