20 For where two or three gather together as my followers, I am there among them.”

Matthew 18:19,20

There are 2 important things here:

1) There must be an agreement from at least 2 people. When you live in community with other believers you have people around that can agree with you in prayer. That is why small groups and accountability is important.

2) There must be a gathering together in Jesus Name. There’s something powerful when people get together. Some call it synergy, others call it chemistry. I think God calls it His design. Jesus says that when we come together in His name, He is there with us. If He is there with us, we can have the confidence that He will hear us.

There is more to this second part that I think we miss. A lot of times we will give the verbal “I’ll be praying for you,” but we never join them in prayer. We isolate our prayers to ourselves and on our own time. I’ve been thinking about this a lot the last couple of days. There have been many times that I’ll tell someone I’ll be praying for them on that day, or when they go into surgery. I’ll stick a reminder in my calendar and when that time comes, I’ll go to God on their behalf.

But, is Jesus saying that our prayers are more productive, when I “gather” with that person to pray with them? Instead of being the lone-ranger and sending the prayer on my own, should I take the extra step and call that person and agree with them together. Should I make the decision to take the time to drive to the hospital and pray with them and agree together before they go into surgery?

I’m beginning to see that this passage has more meaning to it than what I have practiced. 

What step do you need to take to agree together with someone in the name of Jesus? When you do, He’ll meet you there!

Jesus is clear on one thing: If you want to be forgiven, you must forgive. This is a complicated subject. At what point have you forgiven someone? I think that to answer that question we have to look at how God has forgiven us.

• We didn’t have to earn God’s forgiveness.
• God doesn’t bring up our past once He’s forgiven us.
• God deals with us through Jesus’ righteousness. In other Word’s, God sees us through His Son’s purity.

Our forgiveness is contingent upon our ability to forgive those who hurt us.

I have been putting this post off because it is a tough one for me to practice. Fasting is not a popular thing. And some manuscripts don’t include this in this passage so there is a debate as to whether fasting is part of this or not.

Jesus said that the disciples didn’t have enough faith. But if they did have faith, nothing would be impossible. So how do we live with type of faith. No one can put a formula to faith. There are some connections that need to be made though:

Faith is fueled by prayer and God’s Word.
Prayer combined with fasting is powerful.

When we give up, we grow up. When we give something that we need such as food, our faith grows. If something isn’t growing, it’s dying. We must constantly be “feeding” faith through prayer, the Word of God and fasting. Faith needs prayer; prayer needs fasting.

Andrew Murray writes this, “Prayer is the one hand with which we grasp the invisible; fasting, the other, with which we let loose and cast away the visible. In nothing is man more closely connected with the world of sense than in his need for food, with which man was tempted and fell in Paradise.” (With Christ in the School of Prayer: p. 74)

 25But when you are praying, first forgive anyone you are holding a grudge against, so that your Father in heaven will forgive your sins, too. “

Mark 11:22

“The power to believe a promise depends entirely on faith in the Promiser.” (Andrew Murray, “With Christ in the School of Prayer,” p.66)

At the core of any promise is “Trust.” The promise is only as valid as the trust one can put in the person that delivered the promise.  To believe that God can truly deliver on what He promises is faith. To trust that God is true to His Word is the only thing we need to receive what we ask for.

When we pray with faith, we are telling God that we believe He is who He says He is and He can do what He says He can do. 

It’s simple. Believe He is and that He can do!

There is a catch to this. A loop-hole of sorts. It’s the clause of unforgiveness. If we are keeping ourselves from forgiving someone, then God will hold back His forgiveness on us. When we hold grudges against someone, God holds back His grace from us. 

So when you pray, forgive. Remove the grudges from your heart. It doesn’t mean that you need to pick up the phone and tell that person you forgive them. It does mean treating them as if they never wronged you. That’s the way Jesus forgave us. He treats us as if we have no sin. 

 

Mark 10:51

This is a complex teaching: Tell God what you want Him to do for you.

God does know what we need before we ask for it, however, as displayed in this story with the blind man, He wants to hear us voice those requests to Him.

What requests have you not audibly voiced to God because you know He already knows about it?

Jesus told us several times that we are to pray. He frequently showed us how to pray, but rarely did he mention what we are to pray for.

This is interesting to me: We aren’t to pray for the lost, that’s already taken care of. We are to pray for Christians to join the ranks of the many and get involved in the work of spreading the Gospel. We are to pray that disciples of Christ get the Spirit of Christ and show the love of Christ.

In the parable of the lost sheep, the shepherd leaves the 99 to seek and rescue the one that is lost. I don’t hear any prayer for the lost sheep to return. I don’t see the shepherd pacing back-and-forth asking God to put it in the sheep’s heart to return. I see a shepherd take action and go after the sheep.

Too often we pray that our lost loved one’s, friends and coworkers would find the love of God, but never take an active role apart from our prayers in pursuing them with that love.

I am the guiltiest of all in this. “God bring that person to the knowledge that you are their Savior!” That prayer is great and I don’t think that God turns a deaf ear to those prayers. But I’m also shying away from showing that person the love of Christ.

A prayer for the church to raise up “laborers” is a prayer “for Your Kingdom come.”

A prayer for “laborers” is a prayer for the lost.

Andrew Murray says this: “How little Christians really feel and mourn the need of laborers in the fields of the world so white to the harvest. And how little they believe that our labor-supply depends on prayer, that prayer will really provide ‘as many as he needeth.’ ” (p.53)

He later states two reasons why we don’t pray for laborers:

1. We miss the compassion of Jesus.
   Time after time, we see Jesus moved with compassion as He looks on the crowds. To be His disciple, to be Christlike, is to have compassion for people. (Matt. 9:36; 14:14) If you are not compassionate, is it too far across the line to say you are not Christlike?
    
2. We don’t believe that prayer will bring definite results

My prayers are changing, starting now. How about your’s?

One of the things I am grateful for in my dad is that there are a lot of good traits that I have gotten from him. My dad is a big giver. I am not as big a giver as my he, but I do enjoy giving. My dad is full of mercy. That spirit of mercy has transferred on to all of his children. Parents pass along their personalities down to their children. My mom is very creative and each of my brother and sisters each have a different creative gift. I pray that my mom’s ability to pray and her hunger for God is something that I catch.

All of this to say my parents are a gift from God. Just as they are a gift to me, I consider the good traits that they have exemplified and that I have received as gifts to me.

God has given us the gift of the Holy Spirit to pass along His character and His traits to His children. The Holy Spirit is a gift we are to ask for, why?

Because it is the Holy Spirit who brings comfort. He brings a Spirit of adoption. He is the Spirit of Truth. Andrew Murray says He is the Spirit of prayer through whom we speak to the Father. He is the Spirit of Holiness (which without, no one will see God). He is the Spirit of Power. Holy Spirit develops in us the fruits of the Spirit: Love, Joy, Peace, Patience, Kindness, Goodness, Faithfulness, Gentleness and self-control (by the way, I am able to recite those fruits to this day because of my mom). It is the Holy Spirit that directs us and it is the Holy Spirit that helps us find the will of God.

To live the abundant life God has called us to, we must ask God for His Spirit. There is a reason that God promised it to His children, and there is a Power that His children live in when they ask God for this Gift.

Remember: Ask and you will receive.

“And even when you ask, you don’t get it because your motives are all wrong—you want only what will give you pleasure.” James 4:3

This is the second time Jesus addresses prayer. The first time, He revealed that God is not the God of our Fathers, as much as He can be God our Father and that when we pray in secret, He will reward us openly. Now Jesus comes saying that we can be assured that our prayers are heard and they will be answered.

There is no words that say “we might get it answered.” Or most likely “it won’t happen.” This is tough for me because I have prayed many times and have many unanswered prayers. I remember praying day and night for my Grandpa who was dying of Parkinson’s disease and as I would help take care of him, begging God to heal his body here on earth. That never came. Harvey McDonald did receive his healing several years ago when he went to his Heavenly home.

Jesus tells us to do three things:
ASK,
SEEK,
KNOCK.

According to James (seen above) we must ask with the right motives. Ill motives keep prayers unanswered. But, still it amazes me that in this passage, Jesus says this with an “unconditional” context. No small print or asterisks or footnotes to be seen.

Asking implies that we need something. So we are to ask God for what we need.

Seek… What or whom are we seeking. Could this be seeking for answers? Or even God Himself? Or by finding God do we find the answers we are seeking?

Knock. I see a room with a door and God is in this room. When we knock, He lets us in to be with Him. Simple stuff. But yet complex. Or do we make it complex… I’m going to try to keep this simple. It seems that’s the way God wants it to be.

“Keep on asking, and you will receive what you ask for.”

Simple.

Are you making your prayers too complicated?

Jesus gives us a great model to prayer in Matthew 6. Here Jesus says that our prayers should be like this. Remember that Jesus is the first person in history to reveal Jesus as a Father. In the Old Testament, it was the God of our Fathers and Jesus brings a new insight that God is our Father.

We need to start off our prayers talking about God to Him, instead of hitting the timer and then starting at the top of our list and off we go. The order is reversed here. Instead of starting with us and our needs, we start off focusing on the Father and honoring His name.

“Come and set up your kingdom, so that everyone on earth will obey you, as you are obeyed in heaven.” Matthew 6:10

God is a King. After all, he has a kingdom, and if we are to pray to Him as a Father, then that makes us King’s kids. If we are His kids then part of this kingdom is ours. The irony is that even though we are King’s kids, we live in a world dominated by sin. So our prayers should be for God’s love to be made known in those we meet everyday so that God’s kingdom can grow.

“Give us our food for today.” Matthew 6:11

Simple truth that we should ask for what we need today. Don’t worry about tomorrow. It’s okay to pray for what we need. Notice that this is the shortest part of this prayer. Ironic isn’t it? If you’re like me, it’s what I spend the most time on.

“Forgive us for doing wrong, as we forgive others.”Matthew 6:12

We need to remember that we are only forgiven as we forgive. We must never lose the art of asking for forgiveness.

“Keep us from being tempted and protect us from evil.”Matthew 6:13

We might be kids of a sinless God, but that doesn’t mean that we won’t sin again. Here we see the need to pray that we are kept from sinning. (1 Corinthians 10:13)

Summing it up:
Focus on God and who He is and What He is. Then, ask God for what we need today, for His forgiveness, and for His protection from sin.

K… I can do that.

When you pray, what do you spend most of your time asking God for?