Pray always!
Paul’s thoughts in writing continue to to prayer, and the fact that Paul not only gives thanks to God for the church but asks God for all manner of things as well. The chances are that Paul did not know a great deal about the church in terms of detail, yet he still recognised the power of prayer and submitted his best to God. We here find two challenges for our daily lives. The first is similar to that which we have just seen, that in thinking of our Christian brothers and sisters, whether close or distant, we must offer them to the Lord in genuine heartfelt prayer. The second however is a great deal more difficult to comprehend. It is in praying for people that I often realise how little it is I actually know them, and particularly if we begin to pray for those whom we really do know very little about, how should we pray? The answer, I feel, comes in three parts, each relating to one person of the Trinity. In relation to the Father we must remember who is in complete control of the situation and who knows more than we could ever know about whomever we are praying for. We therefore can always rely on a simple ‘provide them with all they need, help them where they are struggling, Your will be done’ prayer due to the fact that we can rest assured that God knows best! In relation to the Son we can follow his example and pray prayers over our brothers and sisters by following the pattern of the Lord’s Prayer. By taking each line we can reflect it onto the target of our prayer and go into as much detail as we are able based on our limited knowledge. This is an excellent and faith-building way to pray as we know that we are praying as Jesus would! Finally in relation to the Spirit we can always rely on him to enable us to pray better prayers; the same Spirit that lives in us lives in whoever we are praying for and therefore by praying in his power we can often know a far greater intimacy to those we are praying for than we would do any other way. By asking the Holy Spirit to speak to us we can often gain insight into situations of which we know absolutely nothing. In addition to this by pressing into spiritual gifts we can often prayer in far more power. For example, by praying in tongues one can pray confidently that we are praying the right things, even when we have no idea what to pray! And by prophesying we can hear what to pray for in particular situations. It is my opinion that by trusting in God and praying with this trinitarian pattern we will pray in more power and see more results than any other way!
Created about 4 years ago
