Friday, February 17, 2006
Excellence in Prayer
Dear Friends,
Once God taught me that the elder/bishop’s primary duties are “prayer and the ministry of the Word,” it occurred to me that I must be excellent in both of these areas. What does it mean to be excellent at praying? (I was sure that I was NOT a very good prayor.) There are many valid answers to that question, but here is the one that seemed best to me: To pray well is to pray biblically.
If I needed to pray biblically, then I needed to find out how Jesus, the apostles, and other biblical characters prayed. The Bible records the prayers of many people, and I may in the course of time try to do an exhaustive study of these prayers. To get started, though, I just studied prayers in the New Testament.
As I did, God led my thinking about prayer in three directions:
1. For what or about what should we pray?
2. How should we pray?
3. What lifestyle helps us pray?
So, as I studied New Testament praying in search of these answer, here is the first thing I learned regarding what we should pray:
Prayers in the New Testament were predominantly about matters spiritual rather than matters physical.
I have found only one NT prayer about physical matters.
(3 John 1:2) Dear friend, I pray that you may enjoy good health and that all may go well with you, even as your soul is getting along well.
John did hope and pray that his people would prosper in matters of health and wealth.
BUT, out of many prayers in the New Testament, only this one mentions such concerns. Every other prayer is prayed for spiritual concerns.
The dear people in our churches generally do not understand or practice this. In a typical prayer meeting, or a time of "prayer requests" in small group sessions, our people can make long lists of people who are sick or facing surgery. They enjoy sharing these concerns with each other, and take comfort in praying for those who are hurting physically.
There is nothing wrong with this, praying that people will be healed, comforted, sustained financially, etc. BUT, if this kind of praying is the focus of your prayer meetings or of people's private prayer, then your people are not praying well or biblically.
Likewise, in our private prayers, it is very easy to pray for our own health and that of our family members. It is very easy to pray for God to keep our old cars running or help us pay our bills.
But these are not the matters that God intends to have before our minds in prayer. Instead, matters of spiritual health are to be our concern in prayer---our sins rather than our bills; our people's maturity rather than their surgery; our neighbors' souls rather than their bodies.
I’ll go into more detail in future articles, but the general answer to the question, “For what or about what should we pray?” is: We must pray about matters spiritual more than matters physical.
Love in Christ,
Jeff
Once God taught me that the elder/bishop’s primary duties are “prayer and the ministry of the Word,” it occurred to me that I must be excellent in both of these areas. What does it mean to be excellent at praying? (I was sure that I was NOT a very good prayor.) There are many valid answers to that question, but here is the one that seemed best to me: To pray well is to pray biblically.
If I needed to pray biblically, then I needed to find out how Jesus, the apostles, and other biblical characters prayed. The Bible records the prayers of many people, and I may in the course of time try to do an exhaustive study of these prayers. To get started, though, I just studied prayers in the New Testament.
As I did, God led my thinking about prayer in three directions:
1. For what or about what should we pray?
2. How should we pray?
3. What lifestyle helps us pray?
So, as I studied New Testament praying in search of these answer, here is the first thing I learned regarding what we should pray:
Prayers in the New Testament were predominantly about matters spiritual rather than matters physical.
I have found only one NT prayer about physical matters.
(3 John 1:2) Dear friend, I pray that you may enjoy good health and that all may go well with you, even as your soul is getting along well.
John did hope and pray that his people would prosper in matters of health and wealth.
BUT, out of many prayers in the New Testament, only this one mentions such concerns. Every other prayer is prayed for spiritual concerns.
The dear people in our churches generally do not understand or practice this. In a typical prayer meeting, or a time of "prayer requests" in small group sessions, our people can make long lists of people who are sick or facing surgery. They enjoy sharing these concerns with each other, and take comfort in praying for those who are hurting physically.
There is nothing wrong with this, praying that people will be healed, comforted, sustained financially, etc. BUT, if this kind of praying is the focus of your prayer meetings or of people's private prayer, then your people are not praying well or biblically.
Likewise, in our private prayers, it is very easy to pray for our own health and that of our family members. It is very easy to pray for God to keep our old cars running or help us pay our bills.
But these are not the matters that God intends to have before our minds in prayer. Instead, matters of spiritual health are to be our concern in prayer---our sins rather than our bills; our people's maturity rather than their surgery; our neighbors' souls rather than their bodies.
I’ll go into more detail in future articles, but the general answer to the question, “For what or about what should we pray?” is: We must pray about matters spiritual more than matters physical.
Love in Christ,
Jeff
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