Prayer

Dear Readers around the world! May God’s Peace be with each of you!

This week I am busy getting ready for a meeting of the Foreign Mission board which is going to be held here in my office in NH USA during the later parts of this week.
In preparation for this meeting, I am again reminded of the importance of prayer. I would respectfully request that each of you pray for this meeting. Many important decisions will be made that will affect our mission work in the coming months. We surely desire that this meeting would go according to God’s will, and that we as the Foreign Mission board, would be willing tools in His Kingdom, desiring to do His will.

Let’s look into scripture about prayer since we are on that topic today. First of all, we have that most perfect prayer that Jesus taught us. This is the Lord’s Prayer, with which we are all familiar I am sure. It is a most wonderful prayer which is found in Luke 11:2-4
And he said unto them, When ye pray, say, Our Father which art in heaven, Hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done, as in heaven, so in earth. 3Give us day by day our daily bread. 4And forgive us our sins; for we also forgive every one that is indebted to us. And lead us not into temptation; but deliver us from evil………….

At the very beginning of this prayer we see that Jesus said, OUR FATHER. This is wonderful. Jesus had the same Father as you and I. Also, you and I have the same Father. There is only one true Father of All. Together we worship this one true God, our Father. By praying Our Father, Jesus showed that He was true man as well true God.

Jesus truly knew the power of prayer. Very often in the Bible He exhorts us to pray. Jesus did not only exhort us to pray, He led by example. Do you remember that when after being with the multitudes He went apart and prayed? He prayed on the mountains, He prayed in the garden, He prayed for His friends, He prayed for those that were against Him. He prayed on the cross when He said, Father forgive them!

This is the kind of Jesus that we have! Jesus cares for us. Jesus led by example. Jesus knew when He was on earth that our (His and ours) Father was in heaven. He knew that when we pray the Lord’s prayer in our day, that OUR Father would still be in heaven all these many years later. Our Father is not leaving the throne of Heaven. He is always there waiting all of those that are covered by the blood of His Son Jesus to come home! He is always there watching over His children.

Let us never leave Our Father and the precious atoning work of our Lord Jesus Christ! Jesus goes on in our text to say Hallowed by thy Name! God’s name is Holy! God is Holy! Let us never forget that He is our Holy God. Many places in the bible testify of His Holiness! For instance: Leviticus 11:44-45
For I am the LORD your God: ye shall therefore sanctify yourselves, and ye shall be holy; for I am holy:
Isaiah 48:17
Thus saith the LORD, thy Redeemer, the Holy One of Israel; I am the LORD thy God which teacheth thee to profit, which leadeth thee by the way that thou shouldest go.

Our Holy God is also our Father. Even a natural father loves his children. This love is very small compared to how much our Heavenly Father loves us. He loves us so much that He sent His only Son Jesus to live here on earth so he could become acquainted with our grief, our fears, pain, temptations, and everything else that we experience in this life. He came here to earth to make atonement for our sins. Jesus came to fulfill all that we cannot fulfill. God sent Jesus to suffer, bleed, and die for our sins. The Good Shepherd gave up His life for His sheep. God’s son Jesus died on the cross of us! Payment for our sin was made in full!

What a Wonderful Father we have. What a wonderful Christ Jesus our Lord we have. Just in the first few words of the prayer that Jesus taught us, we cannot even come close to explaining all the could be said in this short letter. I suppose the reason for this is explained in John 21:25
And there are also many other things which Jesus did, the which, if they should be written every one, I suppose that even the world itself could not contain the books that should be written. Amen.

And Amen! May God be with you through another week!