Church Bulletin – January 26, 2020

“I will praise You, O Lord my God, with all my heart, and I will glorify Your name forevermore”. Psalm 86:12

 From the very beginning, we approach prayer with a grave misconception. Our selfishness knows no bounds. We look upon Him as another means of gaining our own ends. We have a carnal nature, and when it can gain some advantage or be delivered from some great suffering or misfortune, it has no objections whatever to praying. On the contrary, then it, too, manifests a desire to pray which is nothing short of wonderful [astonishing]!

We should note well that the temptation to misuse prayer is native to us and comes, therefore, automatically to every believer. The sons of Zebedee came with their mother to Jesus one day and asked for the highest places of honor in the earthly kingdom, which was about to be established, as they thought. Their prayer was no doubt offered in all innocence and good faith. They were cousins of Jesus and had, together with Peter, already been given positions of preference in the intimate circle of Jesus’ friends. When the other apostles heard what the two had done, they became indignant.

But Jesus reacted in an entirely different way. He took very kindly and understandingly to the whole affair. He advised them of their fault and explained everything to them. Such a tender and fervent tone runs through the whole admonition and warms our very souls. It tells us what Jesus’ attitude is toward us when we come by families into His presence and ask Him to favour us in every possible way and avert from us all danger and all unpleasantness. He does not become angry with us as we might expect. He understands us, advises us of our mistakes, and tells us how we should pray.

This is what the Spirit of prayer undertakes to do every time we misuse prayer and ask for things for ourselves, for our own enjoyment. Lovingly and kindly, but firmly, He reminds us that this is not in accordance with the true meaning of prayer. He shows us that this is to pray amiss and points out our mistakes.

The purpose of prayer is to glorify the name of God. Prayer life has its own laws, as all the rest of life has. The fundamental law in prayer is this: Prayer is given and ordained for the purpose of glorifying God. Prayer is the appointed way of giving Jesus an opportunity to exercise His supernatural powers of salvation. And in so doing, He desires to make use of us. Through prayer we should give Jesus the opportunity of gaining access to our souls, our bodies, our homes, our neighbourhood’s, our countries, to the whole world, to the fellowship of believers, and to the unsaved. If we will make use of prayer, not to wrest from God advantages for ourselves or our dear ones, or to escape from tribulations and difficulties, but to call down upon ourselves and others those things which will glorify the name of God, then we shall see the strongest and boldest promises of the Bible about prayer fulfilled in our weak, little prayer life. Then we shall see such answers to prayer as we had never thought were possible.

It is written, “And this is the boldness which we have toward him, that, if we ask anything according to his will, he hears us. And if we know that he hears us, whatsoever we ask, we know that we have the petitions which we ask of him.” The apostle establishes the fact from his own prayer experience as well as that of his readers, that if we pray for anything according to the will of God, we already have what we pray for the moment we ask it. It is immediately sent from heaven on its way to us. We do not know exactly when it will arrive while we are asking for it, but those who have learned to know God through the Spirit of God have learned to leave this in His hands, and to live just as happily whether the answer arrives immediately or later.

By this time no doubt some of my sincere praying readers are feeling depressed. After what has been said so far, you are beginning to suspect that you have misunderstood and misused the sacred privilege of prayer altogether. You have in your daily prayer life been speaking with God about everything, greater as well as lesser things. You have even asked Him for most insignificant things. You are afraid that this is a misuse of prayer and that you should therefore cease at once.

No, my friend, you should by no means cease. On the contrary, you should pray God for still greater simplicity of mind in your daily conversation with Him. Pray that you may become so confidential with Him that you can speak with Him about everything in your daily life. That is what He desires. “In nothing be anxious; but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known unto God.”

God knows that it is in our daily lives that we most easily become anxious. He knows that our daily lives are made up of little things, not great things. Therefore, whether you pray for big things or little, say to God, “If it will glorify Thy name, then grant my prayer and help me. But if it will not glorify Thy name, then let me remain in my predicament, and give me power to glorify Thy name in the situation in which I find myself.” Only by praying in this way will we succeed in opening our hearts to Jesus. This will give Him the opportunity to exercise His power on our behalf, not only as He wills but also when He wills. – O. Hallesby

“Watch ye and pray, lest ye enter into temptation…” Mark 14:38

Most of us cannot quite understand how prayer can involve difficulty and anguish. Why should praying entail so much suffering? Why should our prayer life be a constantly flowing source of anguish?

If we will reflect but for a moment, we will, however, see that it really cannot be otherwise. If prayer is the central function of the new life of faith, the very heartbeat of our life in God, it is obvious that our prayer life must become the target against which Satan directs his best and most numerous darts. He understands better than we do what prayer means to ourselves and to others. That is why his chief attack is directed against our prayer life. If he can in one way or another weaken it, his prospects of stealing our life in God without us even noticing it are of the very best.

This is not only the most painless way of stealing from us our spiritual life, it is also the quietest way–the way which creates the least sensation. Satan desires above all to provide himself with servants who think that they are God’s children and who are even looked upon as children of God by others. For this reason, Satan mobilizes everything that he can commandeer in order to hinder our prayer. He has an excellent confederate in our own bosom: our old Adam. Our carnal nature is, according to the Scriptures and our own bitter experience, enmity against God. It realizes that it can expect nothing but mortification every time we really approach God in prayer.

It is important for us to bear this clearly in mind. By so doing, we will, in the first place, be able to account for something which we formerly could not understand, namely, the aversion to prayer which we feel more or less strongly from time to time. Our disinclination to pray should not make us anxious or bewildered. It should merely substantiate to us the old truth that the “flesh lusts against the spirit.” We shall have our carnal natures with us as long as we live here below, and we must endure the discomfort occasioned thereby.

We should deal with the unwillingness of our flesh in this respect in the same way as we deal with all the other sinful desires of our flesh. We should take it to God and lay it all before Him. And the blood of Jesus Christ will cleanse us from this sin as it does from all others.

The first and the decisive battle in connection with prayer is the conflict which arises when we are to make arrangements to be alone with God every day. If the battle is lost for any length of time at this point, the enemy has already won the first skirmish. But even though we do gain the victory at the threshold of our prayer chamber, our prayer-struggle is by no means over. Our enemies will pursue us deliberately into our very prayer rooms. And here our carnal natures and Satan will take up the battle anew, though from a somewhat different angle. Our carnal natures will be just as afraid of meeting God now as before we went into our prayer room. Now every effort will be concentrated upon making our prayer session as brief as possible, or upon distracting us so completely that we are not even now given an opportunity to be alone with God.

My friend, do you know anything about this battle? As you kneel to speak with your Lord, it seems as though everything you have to do appears vividly before your’s mind’s eye. You see especially how much there is to do, and how urgent it is that it be done, at least some of it. As these thoughts occur, you become more and more restless. You try to keep your thoughts collected and to speak with God, but you succeed only for a moment now and then. Your prayer hour becomes really the most restless hour of the day. To put it plainly, you feel as though the time you are spending on your knees is just that much time wasted. Then you stop praying. The enemy has won a very neat victory!

Here is where we are face-to-face with enemies who are vastly superior to us. And they will defeat us every time if we do not learn the true secret of prayer: to open our hearts to Jesus and give Him access to our needs. Prayer is for the helpless. Helplessness is not a hindrance, but an incentive to prayer. Our helplessness in connection with our restless thoughts and distracted minds will not be a hindrance to prayer when the Spirit has succeeded in teaching us the little, but important secret of prayer, that my helplessness is Jesus knocking at my heart’s door desiring to enter in and employ His power to relieve my distress. He has power over my restless thoughts. He can rebuke the storm in my soul and still its raging waters.

The only way in which we can gather and keep collected our distracted minds and our roaming thoughts is to centre them about Jesus Christ. By that I mean that we should let Christ lay hold of, attract, captivate and gather about Himself all our interests. Then our sessions of prayer will become real meetings with God. “And the peace of God, which passes all understanding, shall guard your hearts and your thoughts in Christ Jesus.” – O. Hallesby