John 17:9 – I am praying for them. I am not praying for the world but for those whom you have given me, for they are yours.

THEME OF THE DAY. PRAYER: UNDERSTANDING IT FROM GOD’s VIEW. If we were to do a survey of our private prayer lives, how would we rate the balance between how much time we give praying for ourselves and families against the time we give praying for other people? Would it be 90% self and 10% others? How about 50 – 50? Then, how about what amount of that time is spent praying for temporal physical things over eternal spiritual things?

Examining our prayer lives is healthy for a couple of reasons. First, to help us understand prayer from God’s point of view. Have we recently thought of prayer, not from our point of view, but God’s? I find it so easy to view my understanding of the Christian life, the Bible, and even God Himself from a skewed lens of my own presuppositions and understandings without giving a passage the labor of studying it in the context by breaking down every word, and comparing it with other scriptures. Here is a for instance; the passage of Jesus detailing the final judgment – Matthew 25:31-40. In this scripture, Jesus is giving us what He will do on Judgment Day; separating His sheep from pretend sheep or goats. And the determining factor is acts of kindness and sacrificial service. There are three positions people assume with this passage and only one is correct. First, is the crowd of “works salvation.” They cry out, “See, works salvation. Works matter. Jesus rewards people with heaven by their works.” I would agree partially. Works do matter not for salvation but because of salvation. We are not saved by works but saved to works. A Christian will always produce these type of actions. A second position is more a universal love position. This has merit and application but not the primary interpretation. We read of the Lord commending faithful and sacrificial acts of service to people. And every Christian must be doing this in their spheres of influence. Love acts. Love does this to all people, but the Lord is not separating His sheep from goats by universal acts of love. That leads to the third and correct application; Jesus recognizes His people as those lovingly giving service to HIS PEOPLE. He closes the passage with these words, “Truly, I say to you, as you did it to one of the least of these my brothers and sisters, you did it to me” (Matthew 25:40). I know that was lengthy, but it is vital to establish the ease with which we misinterpret and then misapply scriptures. And that takes us back to the topic . . . prayer. We are to examine our prayer lives to ensure we interpret prayer as God defined it and intends it to be in our lives. He sees it as the means of communication with Him; of knowing Him, of getting close to Him. Prayer is not primarily about lifting up a long grocery list of things for God to do, but to lift our hearts and minds to behold Him, and enjoy Him. Is that how we see prayer? If so, it would not be neglected, right?

The second reason to evaluate our prayer lives is to ensure it matches up with the scripture models and examples, particularly, that of our Lord Jesus. Do a study of Jesus’ prayer life in the Gospel of Luke. It will forever shape the way we pray. All through Jesus’ life and certainly in today’s scripture, we see such a focused attention on others. His prayer life was intercession. He prayed extensively and fervently for others. And His prayer life, like the Apostle Paul’s, was so spiritually focused. In fact, I am not sure we find one example of Jesus praying for a physical need. Nothing wrong with this for us. He told us to pray, “Give us this day our daily bread”, but the predominant direction prayer is to take is for spiritual needs and purposes. It has been said, “We are never more like Christ than when we are praying for others.” Think about that for a moment when we go to prayer.

We would do ourselves a great spiritual favor if in anything of the Christian life – reading the Word, understanding Church, practicing prayer and everything else, if we stopped and said, “What does God say about this?”, instead of acting upon our own understanding of what we think God says about this.

PRAYER: “Lord, help me to be like You in the ministry of praying for others far more than praying for myself.”

QUOTE: “Prayer is the most important thing the church and individual Christians do. It is the acid test of spiritual maturity.”