Prayer

Loving enemies and praying for persecutors

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It will be a cold day in hell when.religious people heaven their leaders over the side and focus on what they profess.  They all want to take people back to some time when they evaluate their prospects as optimum, but “back” has always turned out to mean a right turn into conservatism, fundamentalism and outright fascist and tyrannical tendencies.  There is some value to primitive standards and policies, but a religion without a timeless platform is spinning its wheels   Christians say the big thing is love, but it is rare to see the unity that should result from love, and it is a slippery slope for one to  think that the so-called Golden Rule is any kind of elevated standard, because at best it is tit for tat and reciprocity.  In addition to being a cold day in hell it will also be a hot day at the North Pole when people commit themselves to loving the enemies and praying for the welfare of those who persecute them.

Talk is cheap

Even when the number of official demands from the religion comes down to five or  two elements we see massive failure across the religious spectrum, and those people who have given up on religion and are pursuing some kind of spirituality are equally stumbling and falling into ditches of their own making.  The cheapness of talk comes from the fact that most people are attracted to charismatic personalities, people who can speak well, all people who have written something..  you would never find sighted people crumbling out of any ditch because they are not bewitched by signs and wonders and miracles and prophecies and exorcisms. Religion and talk are cheap and will remain so until the world begins the chorus of “See how those Christians love one another”.  I detect that Jude, brother of Lord Yeshua and bishop James smelled the danger of cheap talk, little love and meaningless prayer.

These are grumblers, finding fault, following after their own lusts; they speak arrogantly, flattering people for the sake of gaining an advantage. (Jude 16, NASB)

Desperation in prayer goes off the rails

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When you listen to this prayer you will feel yourself saying “yes, yes” or the usual “amen”. You may notice how the prayer goes on to ask for things of the coming night and the next day.

While we surely have concerns about later today, tomorrow and the next year, it is not the way we are taught to pray. There is no need to try to cover all the bases of which we are aware in a prayer, and that is why the Lord taught his disciples to pray about today specifically in his instruction on prayer. Artificial intelligence can generate a meaningful prayer but can also profoundly overshoot by driving for perfection.

Less than thirty seconds

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The practice of prayer has deteriorated into the very things the Lord wanted us to avoid.  Empty repetitions and expressions aimed at the congregation instead of God are problematic.  When the Lord told his disciples, “Pray this way”,  he would have seen the lengthy and tiresome prayers people were offering and the ridiculous recitations and declarations people would offer up in the twenty first century.

Decree and Declare, Prayer and Prosperity

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Stick a pin in your decree and declare

It is a popular routine for people who, instead of talking to God in prayer, adopt the position of a preacher, announcing what is sure to be the result of prayer.  You are in a fortunate class if you have not heard someone decreeing and declaring things that every child of God possesses and declaring others to which no one has any right. Prosperity is the believer’s nickname because he stands totally and spiritually blessed, with no guarantee of gold, silver, employment, perfect physical health or exemption from common human troubles.  If believers choose to decree and declare instead of praying and believing we should not be surprised at the sound of balloons popping like clockwork.

It is telling that people asked to pray end up decreeing and declaring things for which the public has neither microscope nor telescope  to see and verify as granted. No Apostle of Jesus Christ or prophet of Yahweh ever ended a prayer with a decree and declare. Prayer is perfectly defined in the Old Testament and in the New Testament, so no one needs to redraft what effective prayer looks like. Back to the drawing board, please.

God did not authorize any eavesdropping on prayers by any agency for prayers to be fulfilled

We do not need anyone listening to our prayers and inventing the wheel by pretending to have insight into what God wants to accomplish in our lives.  The Lord Christ himself has assured us that our attitudes in prayer should include faith – assurance – that God hears us and confidence that God will not give us scorpions when we ask him for eggs.  In our current global distress with corona virus it is unimaginable that God has not heard the millions of people who have requested a specific end to the pandemic.  We should also be certain that speaking things into existence is a rare ability even among the royal priesthood.  Things we and our neighbours need and want should all be appearing day after day because God grants power and authority to his children to act as His Son does.

Decree’s terminology spaces

“Decree” in Job 22:28 (NASB, King James Version) means to cut, not speak.  The first time the term  appears in the Bible it means just that, cut or divide, and had nothing to do with talk.  “The king said, “Divide the living child in two, and give half to the one and half to the other.”  (1 Kings 3:25, NASB).  It comes again in verse 26 “Divide him”.  Aramaicic gazar in Daniel’s prophecy is also  CUT but 5 times refers to the activity of soothsayers.

The chances that Eliphaz is roasting Job with a soothsaying charge are high indeed.  The term from which the translators get decree, gazar, is prominently related to speaking in Daniel’s prophecy as soothsaying.  Otherwise gazar means cut, and an emer is clearly related to talking, but what does cutting (off) a saying have to do with establishing something? We can be sure that no-one in the Job speech cycles embraced the idea that human sayings make a thing happen.  This, however, is not what the DECREE AND DECLARE CREW is doing.  Man!  We would have no hospitals, no need for grocers and bankers, men and women to procreate.  We would all be single having miracle babies, and unemployed making tons of money.  Can believers also grow in grace and knowledge apart from due diligence? It is obvious that our prayer and work experience are the critical contributors to our growth.

Is “decree and declare” to be taken as God’s standard answer?

Perhaps few of us are recognizing that prayer involves listening as well.  Prayer is not monologue but dialogue.   If we know anything about God it should include his treasury of things to say to us.  I cannot imagine any child of God approaching his throne and not expecting timely help in the areas God has promised, and just plain love talk.  It is next to Impossible to speak with God and not hear his loving reassurance that everything we need is in place.  Impatience is as oil to water in the prayer exchange.  Timely ( eukairon )  help is an essential part of the Lord’s prayer service, and we surely cannot think that timely means anything beside God’s timing (Hebrews 4:16). If the declarers and decreers are on a power trip then we should expect to see things happen by fiat such as when God said in the beginning “let there be”. Is it sufficient to imagine that everything they decree and declare is happening just as spoken, despite evidence to the contrary week after week, month after month, and year after year? Do we not know how many seasons of prosperity, how many deliverances from bondage, how many triumphs over evil spirits, how many demons have been sent back to hell by decree and declaration? Of course we don’t!

Everything we need for life and godliness affirmed by promises

2) Grace and peace be multiplied to you in the knowledge of God and of Jesus our Lord; 3) seeing that His divine power has granted to us everything pertaining to life and godliness, through the true knowledge of Him who called us by His own glory and excellence.”

2 Peter 1:2-3, NASB

Expectations from divine words, written or otherwise, do not stray from the following.

  • teaching
  • reproof
  • correction
  • training in righteousness
  • adequate (complete)
  • equipped for every good work (2 Timothy 3:16-17, NASB)

For getting the gospel banner

There seems to be no lack of space for reinventing the wheel in handling God’s word.  What happens when people pray is not rocket science. People should expect answers in word and deed.  Maybe it is our public prayer model that is baldly broken,   Even when we pile up promises around specific prayer requests we more often than not have no evidence of the answer.  it seems more likely that we have forgotten that all things that flow from Christ’s intervention are shaped by the gospel, not by the law, and not through creation models of speaking things into existence. How much time does a church service have to invest in the kind of waiting for the answer that goes with private (the essential quality!) prayer?  We should be leaving the answers to prayer in God’s capable hands.  Our hurry to see the answer to prayer is inconsistent with confidence, faith, and familiarity with God’s intervening mercy and grace. Perhaps a new translation of Hebrews 4:16b, NASB will help “… so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need”, lest we keep thinking that decreeing and declaring is a thing to take to prayer meeting.

… receive mercy and find grace towards (εις) timely help

We receive mercy and we receive grace in the direction of God’s timely help, because God controls the timing of the help.

QOTD

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Question of the day

What does GOD do with requests for love, patience, faith (or any other SPIRIT-FRUIT)?

Everything pertaining to life and godliness: granted

Grace and peace be multiplied to you in the knowledge of God and of Jesus our Lord; seeing that His divine power has granted to us everything pertaining to life and godliness, through the true knowledge of Him who called us by His own glory and excellence. For by these He has granted to us His precious and magnificent promises, so that by them you may become partakers of the divine nature, having escaped the corruption that is in the world by lust.

2 Peter 1:2-4, NASB)

Willy-nilly consumer praying

“You lust and do not have; so you commit murder. You are envious and cannot obtain; so you fight and quarrel. You do not have because you do not ask. You ask and do not receive, because you ask with wrong motives, so that you may spend it on your pleasures.” (James 4:2-3, NASB)

That’s not a prayer

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You are likely to have received a forwarded message asking you to pray and forward to a specific number of contacts. Typically I ignore such messages with a “Thank you”. When the message comes from someone who is in a position of influence I have found it helpful to put a spotlight on the particulars of the so-called prayer campaign.

Here is the pitch

We are trying to form a thousand-person prayer group to pray for the children of this generation. We want to ask God to save them... (italics are mine).

This may look like targeted prayer, but it is just another example of the kind of thing a secondhand or copycat “exorcist” or “prayer warrior ” might want to do. In the book of Acts there is the narrative about the sons of a Jewish high priest who were going around the city of Ephesus using the Saviour’s name in what they hoped would be exorcism experiences. They made the mistake of using the phrase “I adjure you by Jesus whom Paul preaches.” (Acts 19:13, NASB)”. These men were rascals exploiting what they thought was an effective formula, namely, “in the name of”.

The rascal sons of Sceva were not even Christians, just as there many capitalist and fame-seeking imps posing as pastors and evangelists of the Church of Christ.

The sons of Sceva, like many people in our times, were unaware that simply saying “in Jesus’s name” cannot makeover things which are not in character with Jesus. People have the power to ask God for anything whatever but they had better remember that God has a will (and testament) for all humans, and he is not about to set that aside because 1000 or 2 persons make a case.

Save people by preaching the Gospel

Here is what the message says the children of this generation need to be saved from.

  • the negative side of the Internet…
  • games addiction
  • pornography
  • wrong relationships and influences
  • rebellion
  • lewdness
  • laziness
  • greed
  • ignorance of God’s presence
  • confusion
  • helplessness
  • anxiety
  • depression

There is a name for what God saves people from: sin.

If your view of sin is legalistic you are in the misguided majority. People are not saved because they stop certain behaviours, but when they believe that Christ died and rose from the dead.

Lost people need to be found by gospel workers

This 1000 man campaign has a list that does not include unbelief. It is incredibly daft to not know that people are in darkness – lost – until they believe. Saved people know that they could not have been made aware of salvation without God personally intervening. Noone gets saved without preaching. The campaign hopes to have an entire generation just turn around because of a 30 second prayer.

Here is the rationale and instructions

They do not realize that they are moving into a deep darkness slowly but surely. Please love and care for them by joining us in the next 30 seconds to PRAY aloud (or silently as you wish) for every child of every color in every country in the world today. Then take the next 30 seconds to forward this prayer to 10 of your friends whom you think will invest 1 minute of their lives to unite with us in this prayer.
Let’s us pray:

THANK YOU! Now please forward to 10 people so we keep this prayer alight for the hearts, minds and souls of our precious children!
Prayer Works because God Answers!!

Of course the children of this generation do not know they are lost condemned. Neither did we until Christ arrested us. God has demonstrated his tender love for humanity. His hands are wounded for every human being IN SPITE OF ANYTHING THEY CAN BE ACCUSED OF DOING. The human race is in his care. We cannot put our neighbours in his care any more than we can interpret the Bible without reading it.

God answers, “you talking to me or performing for your peers?:

Our Father in Heaven, we place all the children everywhere in the world of all ages today into Your gentle but powerful hands. Please save them, have mercy on them and free them all from rebellion, lewdness, laziness and greed. May they be conscious of Your presence Lord Jesus as You take away all their confusion, hopelessness, anxiety and depression. Release Your supernatural faith, love, hope and peace in them. Heal all their broken hearts as You replace it with Your joy and strength to withstand all the temptations that come before them. Teach them how to yearn for righteousness and to detest lies and immorality. Preserve their innocence and keep their hearts pure! Save these children from every snare set up by Satan and the world that surrounds them. We claim victory for each child in the name of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen.”
🙏🙏🙏

I shudder to think that the message is the brainchild of a church leader. Claiming in prayer what we should be doing is as off the wall as are prayers to Mary and departed saints.

Follies of the sacred

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Praying can expose the gaps in growth as a child of God. Things we say in life’s most important conversation open the window to a courtyard of fear and misinformation. We want to know the name of the god who responds to a request for cleaning if God’s policy is to ignore a sinner’s (=believer’s) prayers. This is where people can end up if their understanding of prayer gets shaped by ancient sacred buildings.

People can get so caught up in symbols, signs, food, drink, rituals and regulations that they lose sight of reality.  The case can hardly be better made than with trying to make prayer conform to the tabernacle service.

The main problem is one of presence.  When exactly is the believer in God’s presence? Is there an outer court, a laver, a place for preliminaries to prayer?
A disturbing practice is followed by people who think they cannot speak to God or hear from him without first  becoming sinless. This is not becoming sinless by not sinning. It is BECOMING SINLESS BY PARDON which is where all Christians begin.

  • Who ever came up with that one is a raving genius of nonsense.
  • God has to hear or respond to sinners
  • The process for getting saved is “sinner calls on the Lord’s name”
  • The sinner (any believer) surely cannot ask the same God who “does not hear sinners” for a cleansing from all sin  so that one’s prayer can be heard.

I know who says that prayer, but who hears that prayer?

Israeli Passover shenanigans revealed

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Truth without justice is a specialty that has been around since we organized ourselves into clans and tribes with competing interests.   Even when the wise and powerful try to put in place the practice of remembering the means of escape from Egypt it eventually included recognition of the divine name and real estate. Two things were not included that would become essential for accepting the full counsel of Yahweh’s passover, the monarchy and the temple. When animal blood runs in Jerusalem as a national happening, requiring the approval of the modern state of Israel and the approval of a foreign power it is time to get the goods from the horse’s mouth.

We want to find ourselves a part of Moses’ grand contribution to fellowship with God, but order, sacrifice, and equity have become victims of rotten salesmanship.

Preparing to take a deeper dive

Accordingly, the Sanhedrin sent a request to President Trump and Prime Minister Netanyahu to be permitted to offer a sacrifice for the sake of the world and for the purpose of ending the pandemic.
“Mr. President, you and Mr. Netanyhu can immediately install the right values and laws for the entire human race and all of creation in this world by letting Israel obey the laws of the Torah of Israel which requires us to sacrifice the Passover lamb,” the request reads.

From https://pravoslavie.ru/129969.html

Since when does the Jewish people need permission from a foreign power to do anything. Setting aside the big lie of New Testament times that says “Jews were never in bondage” (sounds like “Britann rules the waves, Britons never shall be slaves”). In an attempt to wake what God has put to sleep some segments of Jewish society are planning to perform temple rituals on Passover, as if God was going to be impressed with ritual.

For I delight in loyalty rather than sacrifice, And in the knowledge of God rather than burnt offerings.

Hosea 6:6