SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 6/2/2017
10:36 PM
My Worship Time Focus: PT-3 “The
Speech of Prayer”
Bible Reading & Meditation Reference: Colossians
4:2
Message of the
verse: “2 Devote yourselves to prayer, keeping alert in it with an attitude
of thanksgiving;”
In our last SD we looked at a fairly long quote from
Virginia Stem as this person spoke about prayer and the difficulty of prayer as
we struggle with prayer and sometimes even answers to prayer. What this person wrote, and it can be seen on
the last SD from Colossians speaks of a greatly marked contrast to some of the
glib, self-centered prayers of our day, and perhaps that is one of the reasons
that our churches are in so much trouble today.
When one looks at the contemporary churches of today we see that many,
if not all have lost their reverence for God. People look at God as the man
upstairs who is suppose to do whatever people ask Him to do, and yet that is
not how it is suppose to work. Believers
are to seek God’s will for their lives and then through Bible study, and prayer
have ones will aligned with Gods so that one knows how to pray. Malachi had similar problems in his day as he
wrote “"’A son honors his father, and a servant his master. Then if I am a
father, where is My honor? And if I am a master, where is My respect?’ says the
LORD of hosts to you, O priests who despise My name. But you say, ’How have we
despised Your name?’ (Mal. 1:6).”
I can remember this year and also last year when I was
sure after praying that it was God’s will for my life to teach Sunday
school. I have trouble with what is
called IBS (Google it to see what it is if you like). I would literally scream at the Lord on my
way to church because of the difficulties that IBS presented to me as I taught
Sunday school. I would pray to the Lord
that since He was the One who called me to do this that I needed to trust Him
to get me through it. God is faithful,
and God is good, all the time.
John MacArthur writes a story about being bold in our
prayers to the Lord which I will share in closing.
“In 1540 Luther’s great
friend and assistant, Friedrich Myconius, became sick and was expected to die
within a short time. On his bed he wrote
a loving farewell note to Luther with a trembling hand. Luther received the letter and sent back a reply: ‘I command the in the name of God to live
because I still have need of thee in the work of reforming the church…The Lord
will never let me hear that thou art dead, but will permit thee to survive
me. For this I am praying, this is my
will, and may my will be done, because I seek only to glorify the name of God.’
“Those words are shocking
to us, but they were certainly heartfelt.
Although Myconius had already lost the ability to speak when Luther’s
letter came, he recovered completely and lived six more years to survive Luther
himself by two months.
“There is a tension between
boldness and waiting on God’s will. That
tension is resolved by being persistent, yet accepting God’s answer when it
finally comes.”
6/2/2017 10:57 PM
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