PRAYER

PRAYER

Psalm 116:1-2 (KJV)
¹ I love the LORD, because he hath heard my voice and my supplications.
² Because he hath inclined his ear unto me, therefore will I call upon him as long as I live.

The Psalmist is saying that He loves the Lord as a response to the interaction God has shown to His prayers.  Once we have prayed and God interacts with our request; we will be spoiled to say with the Psalmist, “therefore will I call upon him as long as I live.”

Prayer enables and equips us to do the work of God.  Prayer enables us to face things that are perplexing and regretful to face.  Prayer brings us into God’s world and God’s world into ours.

After years of hearing the Word of God we can with our intellect believe that God exist; with prayer to God we are taking the extra step of expressing that belief.  After all, it is not normal to speak to anything or anyone that we do not believe is there.

A child of God that does not pray is missing what the Father of heaven has desired the most from His children.  Prayer brings us into fellowship with our heavenly Father.  Prayer to our heavenly Father is the most basic activity that establishes sensitivity, affection, and the loving awareness that our heavenly Father is as real as an embrace with another human being.

Our heavenly Father is invisible to us; therefore, prayer is the vital connection connecting us to Father God.  Although we cannot see Him, in prayer He is real and present.

Many times in life we as the children of Israel have lived out our lives unaware of His presence, doing whatever we have chosen to do without any regards to His heart or pleasure.  As a result, we find ourselves captive to the things we have wasted our passions on.

This was the case as they found themselves taken from their homeland to be strangers and foreigners beholden to the Persians in Babylonian captivity, and even though their carnal passions had driven them there; Father God extended His love by saying this to them:

Jeremiah 29:11-14 (KJV)
¹¹ For I know the thoughts that I think toward you, saith the LORD, thoughts of peace, and not of evil, to give you an expected end.
¹² Then shall ye call upon me, and ye shall go and pray unto me, and I will hearken unto you.
¹³ And ye shall seek me, and find me, when ye shall search for me with all your heart.
¹⁴ And I will be found of you, saith the LORD: and I will turn away your captivity, and I will gather you from all the nations, and from all the places whither I have driven you, saith the LORD; and I will bring you again into the place whence I caused you to be carried away captive.

Prayer is what God has chosen to bring us into His favor.  As we call upon Him in prayer, Father God will begin to move both heaven and earth to set us free from the entanglements we have gotten ourselves into with our misplaced passions.

Hebrews 11:6 declares this: “But without faith it is impossible to please him: for he that cometh to God must believe that he is, and that he is a rewarder of them that diligently seek him.”

Faith is important, however, faith is not all inclusive to what moves the heart of God towards us.  We can believe that He is, but we also must diligently seek him; prayer is the tool God has given us to seek Him.  “Then shall ye call upon me, and ye shall go and pray unto me, and I will hearken unto you.  And ye shall seek me, and find me, when ye shall search for me with all your heart” (Jeremiah 29:12-13).

Abraham in the scripture is known as the father of faith.  Even Abraham knew that thinking things by faith was not enough to bring our thoughts into being as evidenced in Romans 4:17.  “(As it is written, I have made thee a father of many nations,) before him whom he believed, even God, who quickeneth the dead, and calleth those things which be not as though they were.”

Once again, taking the faith we have in God and expressing that faith in prayer creates an interaction that demands a response.  In the beginning, God said, let there be light and light came into being.  In the Hebrew tongue, when God said let there be light, it was both a command and an invitation, or command as an invitation.

In other words, God was inviting the light to come into being as an interaction to His request.  Likewise, when we pray to God, it too is an invitation; we are inviting God to enter into our world as an interaction to our request.

This is why Abraham’s faith worked for Him.  He called out those things that were not as though they were with an expectation of interaction.  God expected the light to respond and we too must believe that God will respond.

¹ I love the LORD, because he hath heard my voice and my supplications.
² Because he hath inclined his ear unto me, therefore will I call upon him as long as I live.

LOVE A SURE SIGN OF LIFE

LOVE A SURE SIGN OF LIFE

1John 3:11-16

11  For this is the message that ye heard from the beginning, that we should love one another.

12  Not as Cain, who was of that wicked one, and slew his brother. And wherefore slew he him? Because his own works were evil, and his brother's righteous.

13  Marvel not, my brethren, if the world hate you.

14  We know that we have passed from death unto life, because we love the brethren. He that loveth not his brother abideth in death.

15  Whosoever hateth his brother is a murderer: and ye know that no murderer hath eternal life abiding in him.

16  Hereby perceive we the love of God, because he laid down his life for us: and we ought to lay down our lives for the brethren.

          This is the seventh time the beginning is mentioned in this letter written by John.  As we have said before, how we start with God determines the depth we are willing to go with God.  Consequently, no matter where we wind up with God; our beginning will always follow us to whatever extent we may go (Luke 14:28-30).

          In our society today people enter into marriage with the idea that if it does not work; we can start over again with someone else.  We must understand, anytime we enter a relationship with the idea that it may not work already sets the pace for failure. This is one of the reasons why divorce is so prevalent among us.

          This mentality has also crept into the church of our day; many come to God with a non-commitment in the beginning.  In other words, I am here as long as things go my way or as long as I can act independently with my own choices. 

         The fact is, love demands ownership.  To love and to be loved is to expect demands and to have the heart to court those demands.  We cannot enter into relationships with the idea that we are independent of responsibility to the relationship and expect that the relationship will last.

          Love is not independently its own entity working as a tool to control others; on the contrary, love extends itself with the hope of being received as it is given that it might cultivate relationship in the freedom of interactions. This is expressed in the creation as God said, “Let there be Light.”  In the Hebrew language, this word “let” is both a command and an invitation (the very first spoken word recorded in scripture). 

God being love extended Himself by allowing the light to be light as a response to His request in the command. The command was His desire to see light be.  Therefore, when light came into being love was happening; light was responding to God’s invitation.  Therefore, the creation becomes relational in the act of love. 

You see, love can effect the emotions but cannot be determined by emotion; love is a choice and is responsible to those choices.  Love is reciprocal; it is both giving and receiving.  Therefore, love takes commitment to work as it is designed to work.

          In the beginning of time God made the choice to love us.  He was and is committed to that choice.  God is love – it is in His being to love because He is love.  When He chose to love us He manifested His commitment to that choice by preordaining His journey to the cross before the world was formed, before He actually created us as recorded in Ephesians 1:3-6        “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who hath blessed us with all spiritual blessings in heavenly places in Christ: According as he hath chosen us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and without blame before him in love: Having predestinated us unto the adoption of children by Jesus Christ to himself, according to the good pleasure of his will,  To the praise of the glory of his grace, wherein he hath made us accepted in the beloved. In whom we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins, according to the riches of his grace; To the praise of the glory of his grace, wherein he hath made us accepted in the beloved.” 
"But God commendeth his love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. Much more then, being now justified by his blood, we shall be saved from wrath through him. For if, when we were enemies, we were reconciled to God by the death of his Son, much more, being reconciled, we shall be saved by his life" (Romans 5:8-10).

          Before we had fallen to sin He had already predestined us in Christ to be redeemed by His blood that was to be shed on the cross (2Peter 3:9).  This is love in its purest form; God chose to love knowing we would fail Him. 

          Now, that is commitment.  God committed Himself to love us before He created us.  This is why Salvation is an invitation of love.  God made His move in love towards us before we came into being; what makes that love reciprocal is when we choose to love Him back by letting Him own us and by letting Him set the demands of love in our response to Him.

          This thought is validated by 1Corinthians 6:19-20 “…know ye not that your body is the temple of the Holy Ghost which is in you, which ye have of God, and ye are not your own? For ye are bought with a price: therefore glorify God in your body, and in your spirit, which are God's.”

          You see, we love God because He first loved us as recorded in 1John 4:19 “We love him, because he first loved us.”   God being love has already made His move.  He sent us His son Jesus to redeem us from our sins so that we can be committed to Him in love.

          We have got to get this in our spirit and in our understanding; to love God is to become responsible to His ownership, to be responsible to the demands that His love calls for.  This is not God controlling us; this is us choosing to love God, choosing to respond to His love.

          Bringing this understanding into our text will enlarge our understanding of the text.  The message we hear from the beginning is that we love one another.  The same way that God has loved us in the beginning is the way we should love others.

          What His love has done for us is what our love should do for others.  We must also choose to love others with the same preordained commitment, and that is, we choose to love them knowing that they will fail us.  We must already have it in our mind that we will lay our lives down for their advantage in the relationship we have chosen to enter with them as evidenced in verse 16 of our text, “Hereby perceive we the love of God, because he laid down his life for us: and we ought to lay down our lives for the brethren.”

          This is why it is not about what others deserve in our relationship with them; it is about our actions, it is about our actions in the relationship.  God did not give us what we deserved when He decided to love us, when He decided to enter into relationship with us He acted out His love towards us by laying His life down for us as evidenced in John 15:12-13 “This is my commandment, That ye love one another, as I have loved you. Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends.”

Love gave us the power to love God back and love will give others the power to love us back.  When we stop giving people what they are giving us; when we decide that it is not as much about what they deserve as it is about “our actions” is when we take the initiative to love.  Love sets the boundaries for freedom; love opens the flood gates of empowerment.

Are we getting the picture?  Love is not some flimsy loose emotion of lust in sexual encounters; love is denying oneself at the expense of hope, the hope that one will choose to love us back.  Love is not the demand that others bow down and become slaves (John 15:15).  Love is a sacrifice on our part that can only be reprieved when it is love coming back at us in respect for the sacrifice we have made. 
"Except a corn of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abideth alone: but if it die, it bringeth forth much fruit" (John 12:24). The greatest way to solve the aloneness issues we may have is in the willingness to die to our self preservation's; being willing to be over our disappointments before they even begin. Is this not the love God gave us in His death?

The highest expression of love is a self-sacrifice that spares not life itself.  This is why God sent Abraham on his journey to sacrifice Isaac; not that God wanted Abraham to kill His son but that Abraham would have a revelation of the sacrifice love serves.  God wanted Abraham and us to know the sacrifice He gave to love us; the invitation of love He has offered to us. 

2Timothy1:7-10 declares this to us: “For God hath not given us the spirit of fear; but of power, and of love, and of a sound mind. Be not thou therefore ashamed of the testimony of our Lord, nor of me his prisoner: but be thou partaker of the afflictions of the gospel according to the power of God;  Who hath saved us, and called us with an holy calling, not according to our works, but according to his own purpose and grace, which was given us in Christ Jesus before the world began,  But is now made manifest by the appearing of our Saviour Jesus Christ, who hath abolished death, and hath brought life and immortality to light through the gospel:”

 

            John 17:20-26

Neither pray I for these alone, but for them also which shall believe on me through their word;
21  That they all may be one; as thou, Father, art in me, and I in thee, that they also may be one in us: that the world may believe that thou hast sent me.
22  And the glory which thou gavest me I have given them; that they may be one, even as we are one:
23  I in them, and thou in me, that they may be made perfect in one; and that the world may know that thou hast sent me, and hast loved them, as thou hast loved me.
24  Father, I will that they also, whom thou hast given me, be with me where I am; that they may behold my glory, which thou hast given me: for thou lovedst me before the foundation of the world.
25  O righteous Father, the world hath not known thee: but I have known thee, and these have known that thou hast sent me.
26  And I have declared unto them thy name, and will declare it: that the love wherewith thou hast loved me may be in them, and I in them.
 

John 3:35

35    The Father loveth the Son, and hath given all things into his hand.

John 5:20

For the Father loveth the Son, and showeth him all things that himself doeth: and he will show him greater works than these, that ye may marvel.