SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 11/13/2019
9:54 AM
My Worship Time Focus: PT-2 “The
Manner of Prayer”
Bible Reading & Meditation Reference: Eph. 6:18
Message of the
verse: “With
all prayer and petition pray at all times in the Spirit, and with this in view,
be on the alert with all perseverance and petition for all the saints,”
I suppose that not all believers are
consistent in their prayers to the Lord unless something happens to them or to
a loved one, and then they will pray intently, specifically, and
persistently. Paul tells Timothy that he
is praying for him both night and day, and I have noticed that in some of the
Psalms that I am teaching that praying in the night hours is something the
Psalmists do.
I have to agree with John MacArthur
who states that most problems that believers have are spiritual problems, so
that is where we as believers will spend much of our time praying about. Paul, in this section we have been looking at
writes about the need to have our spiritual armor on, and so that will protect
us from the spiritual things that are going on in our lives, and then he moves
into how we are to pray for those spiritual issues. Paul’s context in this section on prayer is
to pray for spiritual protection as spiritual warfare is his subject here. John MacArthur writes “Our deepest prayers
for our spouse, our children, our brothers and sisters, our fellow church
members, our pastor, our missionaries, and all others would be that they win
the spiritual battle against Satan.
Examining the prayers of Paul throughout his epistles yields the insight
that he prayed for the spiritual well-being of the people of God.” Examples of Paul’s prayers can be found in 1
Cor. 1:4-7; Phil. 1:9-11; Col. 1:9-11; 2Thes. 1:11-12.
In MacArthur’s commentary he quotes
something from an older saint that he prayed to God:
“O Lord, in prayer I launch far out into the eternal world, and on that
broad ocean my soul triumphs over all evils and on the shores of
mortality. Time, with its amusements and
cruel disappointments, never appears so inconsiderate as then. In prayer, O God, I see myself as
nothing. I find my heart going after
Thee with intensity, and I long with vehement thirst to live with Thee. Blessed
be the strong winds of the Spirit that speed me on my way to the New
Jerusalem. In prayer all things here
below vanish and nothing seems important but holiness of heart and the
salvation of others. In prayer all my
worldly cares and fears and anxieties disappear and are as little in
significance as a puff of wind. In
prayer my soul inwardly exalts with thoughts of what Thou are doing for Thy
church, and I long that Thou shouldst get Thyself a great name from sinners
returning to Thee. In prayer I am lifted
above the frowns and flatteries of life to taste the heavenly joys. Entering into the eternal world I can give
myself to Thee with all my heart forever.
In prayer I can place all my concerns in Thy hands to be entirely at Thy
disposal, having no will or interest of my own.
In prayer I can intercede for my friends, ministers, sinners, the
church, Thy kingdom, with greatest freedom and brightest hope as a son to his
Father and as a lover to his beloved.
And so, O God, help me to pray always and never cease.”
Lord willing we will have three more SD’s from the book of
Ephesians. We began 13 months ago this
day and I can say that there have been many blessings that I have received from
this very difficult study. I received
four commentaries from Grace To You yesterday on the book of Matthew. The study of Matthew is something that I look
forward to as it will cover once again the life of our Lord while on earth. It has been many years since I studied this
first of the gospels, and so I look forward to that study which will begin in a
few days, Lord willing.
Today’s short quotation from “Love in Action” is from Job 11:6:
Know
therefore that God exacts from you less than your iniquity deserves.
Job 11:6
11/13/2019 10:31 AM
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