SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 12/9/2020 9:09 AM
My Worship Time Focus:
PT-5 “The Protection of Prayer”
Bible Reading & Mediation 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. 14 “For if you forgive men their trespasses, your heavenly Father will
also forgive you.”
I
mentioned in our last SD that I would complete our study in the Lord’s Prayer
in this SD. At the end of this SD John
MacArthur has written a prayer, which is similar to what he ended his last
sermon on the Lord’s Prayer. I like what
this prayer says as it gives some direction on how I should pray. I have to caution myself not to just pray
this prayer in a similar way that Jesus cautioned how the Gentiles pray, not
understanding the meaning.
“The
Lord will hear your prayer because He cares about His own and will lose none,
no not one. He will never let you get
into a situation that is more than you can handle.
“The
prayer closes with a doxology: ‘For
Thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, for ever. Amen. You don’t dissect it. You just say it, think it, and offer it to
God.
There
is some evidence that Jesus didn’t ever say that. That’s why it is not included in some of the
versions of the Bible. Some manuscripts
have it and some do not, but I’ll tell you one thing—it’s true.
“It
seems a fitting climax. Some
commentators say it would have to have been included originally because the
Jews would never have closed a prayer on a negative note. Whether Jesus said it or not, it’s an echo of
1 Chronicles 29:11: ‘Thine, O Lord, is the greatness, and the power, and the
glory, and the victory, and the majesty: for all that is in the heaven and in
the earth is thine; thine is the kingdom, O Lord, and Thou art exalted as head
above all.’ And with that glorious
doxology, are right back to where we began with the first three petitions in
this prayer.
“What
have we learned from the Disciples’ Prayer?
That all we need is available to us.
God gets His rightful place in the first three petitions, and then our
needs are brought to Him and met in His wonderful, external supply.
“Father,
we echo this prayer in our hearts.
Deliver us from evil. Deliver us
frosin’s penalty, dominion, and guilt.
“Deliver
our wills from bondage, our judgments from perversion, our imaginations from
falsehood. Deliver our instincts from
sinful drifting.
“Deliver
our affections from what is earthly.
Deliver us from weakness that we may know the fulness of Your strength.
“Thank
You for this prayer. Your name be
hallowed, Your kingdom come, Your will be done.
“Continue
to give us abundantly our daily bread.
Help us to be forgiving others that we may know the promise that You’ll
never lead us into anything we can’t handle.
“Help
us meet the conditions to know the fulfillment of the inestimable promises of
this prayer, and to pray as we ought for Your glory, for Your’s is the kingdom,
and the power, and the glory forever.
Amen.
So
this ends our study of the Lord’s prayer and one of the things that I desired
to learn was how to pray effectively over what was going on in our country with
the phony election, and the thing that God taught me was that not everything
that happens is His will. I can’t imagine
God’s will is to have a President whose desire is to continue to kill innocent babies
in the womb, or to have people working with him that desire to kill old
people. God has plans that we don’t know
about and that are not in his will, but God is so wonderfully powerful that He
can cause all things to work together for His glory and for our good. That is how I can make sense of what goes on
in our world.
In
our next SD, Lord willing, we will begin to look at fasting.
12/9/2020 9:39 AM
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