24th January 2024

24th January 2024


Pray (ACts)


Read - (1 John 3:21-24 focus v22)


Message (Alan Burke)


I remember as a wain playing of my parents and grandparents of each other because there was something I really really wanted but all my attempts, requests, pleading, pestering all fell on deaf ears and I’m still harbouring that disappointment decades later. Now I am a parent and I am able to look back and I know that my parents and grandparents loved me enough not to give into me because they knew me and knew that if they had given me what I wanted I wouldn’t be here today although that only eases the disappointment and does not take it away. I jest to an extent, I’m over it honest but I throw this out here as we come to these verse because we are told now that we have confidence before God and receive from him anything we ask because maybe it’s just me and that I’m not praying hard enough because there are many times my prayers seem to fall on deaf ears. Is it that I’m not praying hard enough or I’m not obeying his commands and living in a way that pleases him? 


You might be in the same boat you have things that you’ve come before the Lord with, you’ve longed to see the Lord work, you’ve brought your requests, your requests regarding a child who is ill, for those who you love who are lost, you’ve prayed for the Lord to take you out of the situation that you find yourself in, to intervene in a very real way and you’ve ended up feeling worse because the Lord it seems hasn’t answered and you’ve been left thinking maybe that the issue is you, you haven’t received that which you want, the longing of your heart, so is there something that is wrong with you, maybe the Lord doesn’t hear because of you. 


If that has ever been the case please know that the Lord hears the prayers of his children, those who are in Christ Jesus, he has lavished his love on us. How then do we understand what John is saying, well when it comes to scripture we need to let scripture interpret scripture, we cannot read this verse in isolation. This is in a sense the same promise that Jesus himself gave to the disciples (Jn 14:13-14). But we are not being taught that we can simply crack out a prayer like rubbing the genies lamp and asking genie to grant us our wish and it will be answered, rather there Jesus was teaching that we are to pray in Jesus name according to the will of God, his will, like when we pray in the Lord’s prayer, your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven, our prayers are answered in accordance with the will of God, according to his purposes. Just like Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane, when he prayed that the cup be taken from him speaking of the wrath of God he would face on the cross for us (Mk 14:36). 


In this prayer of Jesus we see the tension, the humanity of Jesus and the heart of the son, Jesus prayer is the result of an intense struggle in his humanity and deity, it is a prayer that Jesus prayed that if it was possible to fulfil the plans and purposes of God in another way, that that may be the case. Our Lord and saviour prayed to be spared from what lay ahead but he wasn’t. He went to the cross, the cup was not removed from him and he took the wrath of God for us. When we pray, we acknowledge God’s right to rule. Think to the Lord’s prayer, we pray Lord they will be done, we do not pray, “My will be done”; we pray, “Thy will be done.”


When we pray, and whatever we ask we receive from him but the confidence depends on whether what we are asking is within the will of God and that is hard. The truth is I do not know the reason why God has answered some of my prayers and not others. When I’ve prayed for someone to come to saving faith and they have not, when I’ve prayed for someone to be healed and there has been nothing. I’ve prayed for disobedient sinners to come to repentance and it hasn’t happened but I know that I do not understand the mysteries of God’s will or his ways and as a result I do not pray as I should. But I know that he is working all things according to the counsel of his will for his own glory and for the good of those who love him, and that we, as his people, are submitting to and trusting in the working of his providence. We come not as strangers before the Lord God but as his children through faith


Pray (acTS)


Sing


WSC
Q50 What is required in the second commandment?
The second commandment requireth the receiving, observing, and keeping pure and entire, all such religious worship and ordinances as God hath appointed in his Word. (Deut. 32:46, Matt. 28:20, Acts 2:42)
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