Who are we? What are we meant to do? This question has been asked, most likely before written history . The Westminster Catechism answers the question this way:
We were created to walk with God in the .
Until we are born of Spirit we are separated from God and we are dead.
It is as we commune with God that our relationship with Christ is clarified. Each of us is either positively or negatively related to God. There is no other possibility. We are either born of the Spirit or separated from God in the flesh.
When we accept Jesus Christ of Nazareth, Ἰησοῦς Χριστός τοῦ Ναζωραίου, we are not just born anew of the Spirit, but we are adopted into the household of God.
Until we are adopted into God’s household, there is no life of prayer with YHWH (יהוה); there is no life. This is the foundation of prayer, the Spirit of God within us, a mystery and our hope of glory. I have wrestled with how to structure this series on prayer. The many ways prayer can be legitimately approached is evidenced by the sheer number of books on the subject. I have imagined several approaches, but until today I have not had peace about any one direction. Today I have settled on the tabernacle as a model for prayer, using its structure from camp, to altar, to laver, to shewbread, to lampstand, to altar of incense, to veil, to the Holy of Holies. Usually hen we say we love something or someone, we often mean that we love what we know about that person. The more we know God, the more completely we can love Him. To love God therefore, it is crucial that we have read the scriptures and meditated on God’s self revalation contained within the. The Bible will not fail in its purpose, which is to provide all we need for faith and practice. At the same time it is the leading, illumination, prompting, and prodding of the Spirit which allows us to be manifest as the hands and feet of Jesus (Yehoshua, Yahweh saves). By looking at our prayer, we have a window into our relationship with God. Public prayer gives a window through which to view our group’s relationship with God, and personal prayer provides a window through which our personal relationship to God can be seen and for our purposes evaluated. So prayer can be summed up in the phrase “prayer is communion with God; prayer is communication with God.” Prayer, according to this definition, applies to participants in all religions, from panantheism, with worshipers such as Walt Whitman, whose prayers take the form of lyric and metre, list and repetition, image and symbol, spoken to all in nature, to monotheism, with its prayer, ‘Our Father who is in heaven, Hallowed be Your name. Your kingdom come. Your will be done, On earth as it is in heaven.’ It is the blessing of God that we can even participate in the life of God at all; it is not of ourselves. So who are we to question or condemn our bother or sister, whose walk with God is varied from our own? God is sovereign, giving us the grace we need, in all situations. Every station of the tabernacle relates to our life in God, so rejoice and be glad wherever you are if you know your life is hidden in God.
As we walk with God there are signs to verify we are on the right path.
As you examine your conscience, if in any of these things you are going in the wrong way, you are most assuredly off the path. Kierkegaard’s focus is based on knowing oneself, knowing God’s will for his life, and knowing what one is to do. Knowing oneself and knowing God both flow from one and the same prayer/communion. Again we understand ourselves more completely as we reflect on our walk with God, our life of prayer. Reflecting on how we pray gives us a set of descriptors, which allow us to value that relationship. So I ask:
This is not meant as judgment. God’s desire is to commune with you. I have seen well-meaning Christians cause others to feel bad about how much or how well they pray. Prayer is about communion, a communion which begins now and culminates with the appearing of Christ. As John writes,
In that end there will be full disclosure, so to speak, but in the meantime we have prayer. May it move each of us to “glorify God, and fully to enjoy Him forever.” Finally, Prayer is not meant to change God, who is immutable, not of shifting shadow. Prayer is meant to change us. We are as shifting shadows, “14Yet you do not know what your life will be like tomorrow. You are just a vapor that appears for a little while and then vanishes away. ” Our life is in Jesus and there we have and will continue to have being. Keith and Melody Green hit the idea on the head, “Make My Life a Prayer” to you, which is our spiritual form of worship “Keith Green – Make My Life a Prayer” Written by Melody Green Make my life a prayer to you I wanna die and let you give
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