Weather Report From Heaven: Sunny and bright, with an abundance of light and lots of singing and rejoicing.
Scripture – “This, then, is how you should pray: ‘Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name, your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. Give us today our daily bread. And forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one”- Matthew 6:9-13.
Thought of the day- When you pray, are you really praying or are you just complaining? The Pastor asked that question and my heart skipped a beat. How many times, if I was being really truthful with myself, did my prayers resemble a list of complaints. Was I coming before the Lord in “prayer” but in actuality I was more like a petulant child, demanding my way, my will and my comfort be done? Unfortunately, many times the answer for me was yes! But at least I am aware now and I have repented of these horrible posturings before the Lord and He has heard my pleas and forgiven me. I can now try to pray in the way Jesus commanded His followers in Matthew 6:9-13 above. We need to be the ones praying for His will to be done “on earth as it is in Heaven.” We need to be partners with him in bringing heaven to earth by forgiving others who have sinned against us, by being grateful for our daily bread and by being aware of our need for His protection to keep us from being overwhelmed by our temptations!.
We need to realize we are not God of our lives, but we are to follow the One true God. How many times do we get this wrong? So many times I act like I’m in control, and whether subconsciously or consciously I play God in my life. This always leads to bad outcomes as I don’t have the wisdom and discernment to guide my life boat safely around all the obstacles and storms of life without crashing. Did you play God of your life? We need Him to lead us always. He knows best. When we pray for our comfort, many times God may rather want us to pray for our obedience and to follow His will even if that pulls us out of our comfort zones. He may be asking us to be strong enough to be willing to be inconvenienced to follow Him. There is often a cost to following Jesus. The cost is always worth it and our prayers should acknowledge that fact. If we don’t know what or how to pray that is quite OK. Jesus wants our prayers to be authentic. He can provide us with the right words to pray if we are willing to simply submit our will to Him. A good verse to fall back on in these cases is Romans 8:26 which says, “In the same way, the Spirit helps us in our weakness. We do not know what we ought to pray for, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us through wordless groans.” Let’s make our prayer lives more powerful and better aligned with God’s will by coming before Him not with a list of complaints, but with a Servant’s Heart and a basket full of gratitude. He will always honor us when we choose faith over fear!
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