SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 12/6/2020 8:37 PM
My Worship Time Focus:
PT-2 “The Protection of Prayer”
Bible Reading & Meditation Reference: Matthew 6:13-14
Message of the verses: “13 And do not lead
us into temptation, But deliver us from the evil one. For Yours is the kingdom
and the power and the glory forever. Amen.”
We
continue with the quotations from John MacArthur’s book “Jesus’ Pattern of
Prayer.”
“I
realize that trials do a perfecting work and also that God does not tempt me,
so I am faced with a paradox not unlike the one in Matthew 5 (rejoice when you’re
persecuted) and Matthew 10 (flee persecuting).
“Are
we supposed to stand there and rejoice, or run?
There is a sense in which we run from persecution, but when it catches
us we can know joy in the midst of it.
Even our dear Lord said, ‘Father, let this cup pass from Me’ (Mark
14:36). There was something in His
humanness that did not want that suffering.
Yet He endured the cross for the joy that was set before Him (Hebrews
12:2).
“I
pray this because I know I am a sinner, because I sense my debt and have gone
through the pain of confession so many times.
I am battered and bruised by a fallen world around me that continues to
bump me. So I ask, ‘God, deliver me from
these things.’ But I accept the fact
that such struggles strengthen me.
“I
don’t know about you, but I have to set a watchman over my eyes, another over my
ears, another over my tongue. I have to
be careful where I go and what I see and whom I talk to (and about what)
because I don’t trust myself. And when I
get into a trying situation, I rush into the presence of God like the sentry
who doesn’t fight the enemy himself but runs to tell the commander. I retreat to the presence of God and I say, ‘I
will be overwhelmed unless You come to my aid.’
“The
kingdom child realizes that he lives in a fallen world that pounds against him
with temptations he can never resist in his own humanness.
“The natural world is fallen. Men face volcanoes, earthquakes, fires,
floods, pestilence, accidents, disease and death.
“The intellectual world is fallen. Man’s judgments are partial and unfair. He careens on in the chaos of relativistic
thinking to an inevitable destruction.
Propelled by his own bias, logic is ruled by pride. Intellects are ruled by lust. Material gain
makes liars out of me. There is a
constant colliding of human opinions.
“The emotional world is fallen. Grief and care and anxiety rule. The inability to handle attitudes shrivels
man’s spirit. His soul is chafed by the
rubbing together of life with life. Envy
stings him, hate embitters him, greed eats away at him.
“His
affections are misplaced. His love is
trampled. His confidence is
betrayed. Rich, he steps on the poor. Poor, he seeks to dethrone the rich. Prisons and hospitals and mental institutions
mark the moral and emotional upheaval of man.
“The spiritual world is the darkest and
thickest blackness of all. Man is out of
harmony with God. The machinery is
visibly out of gear. He’s running out of
‘sync’ with God’s divine plan. Evil
tendencies dominate man from his tainted fallen ancestry. He may want to do right, but he feels pulled
down by some irresistible gravity of evil.
“It
is a fallen world. It isn’t bad enough
that the flesh is fallen, but Satan is also relentlessly attacking. We live in this knowledge, praying, ‘And lead
us not into temptation.’ We sin because
we are tempted internally by our lusts, and externally by the enticements of
Satan. When lust conceives it brings
forth sin. And sin results in death.
“How
does Satan tempt us? Through the lust of the eyes, the lust of the flesh, and
the pride of life. Those do not proceed
from the Father. God’s desire is that we
watch and pray and do not enter into temptation.”
With
that we will end this SD.
12/6/2020 9:02 PM
No comments:
Post a Comment