RickJW

It is important for us, as sinners, to have the knowledge that "Christ died for the ungodly" to hang on to and to fuel our belief in the salvation granted by the grace of God. According to Romans 5:8, "God commandeth his love towards us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.", we certainly were not at our best. The lesson text says "Jesus died for our sins when we were at our worst.", and that for the most part, we are now better behaved. Since scripture is God-breathed, infallible truth, we know that the sacrifice of Christ took our place on the cross, and the deserved sentence of eternal death and torture of sinners. We are now, gifted with justification by the grace of God, based only upon our having faith in God, and our assurance of this comes from the fact that if God could forgive those that tortured and killed his only son, he certainly could forgive us our sins.

For Hezekiah to die at this time, would have left Israel in a state of turmoil. Sennacherib was waiting with his Assyrian army, ready to attack. There was no clear successor to the throne of Israel, should Hezekiah die. For him to die without a son would break the Davidic line promised by God, which would then mean that God would have broken his promise to David.

"Our Father, who art in heaven" - and - "O LORD, God of Israel, enthroned between the cherubim, you alone are God over all the kingdoms of the earth. You have made heaven and earth." Both of these opening sentences of prayer, praise God, and acknowledge his soverign rule over all creation. It is important that we recognize God's authority over us, and indeed, all of creation, as God rejoices that we realize His position, and our position as well. Since we are taught in scripture to pray this way, it is expected of us, if we are to expect God to answer us.

The suffering and tribulations that God sends our way are certainly causes to rejoice! In these, God gives us the strength to overcome our trials. Perseverance is important in secular and christian, especially, prayer, life. We may often need to try more than once to succeed at a project or to accomplish something. The Olympic atheletes are excellent examples of perseverance, with the many hours of practice that they put in. Tried character is strong character. By being tested over and over, we learn what character traits are good to develop. Doing the righteous thing becomes habit for us, and we may also learn the distasteful result of doing the un-righteous thing! Hope is guiding our vision towards the future, and hope grows more solid as we find fulfillment of God's promises to us along the paths of our lives.

Abraham was justified by God, that is to say, considered righteous, based on his faith in God. God alone has the power to test faith, as He did when he demanded that Abram sacrifice his son. This was a great show of faith in God. Since Abraham's faith was counted as righteousness, he would be spared from eternal torment, and was graced with a seat next to the Lord in heaven. We have been granted the same opportunity, although it is a very few, if any of us, that will be tested as Abram was. Faith leads to justification for us, just as it did for Abram. To be justified means that we, while we cannot possibly live the righteous life that Christ did, by our faith in God and our assent to the substitutionary sacrifice of the Son of God for us, we are treated as if we did live that righteous of a life.

The fact that Hezekiah spreads out the message from Sennacherib before the Lord, shows his faith and belief in God. He shows God that the message speaks more against God than against Hezekiah. Hezekiah has always had faith in the Lord, and here demonstrates that while he is temporarily the leader of God's people, they are God's people, not his. This leadership is granted by God, and allows Hezekiah to serve God, and His people; it is not a giving of the people and their lives to Hezekiah to do with as he will. We can apply this lesson to our lives as we realize that everything we have is a gift of God. Everything that happens in our lives comes from the will of God, although we can 'change His mind' by prayer, if we truly live in His Spirit. If we start to give ourselves credit for our accomplishments and successes, we will soon be putting ourselves ahead of God, and if we start granting ourselves rewards here in our earthly existance, that will be our reward, fleeting and gone when we die, rather than waiting for our eternal reward in heaven.

The giving of praise and the giving of 'stuff' - be it presents for friends and relatives, or to charity - are tied hand-in-hand. This is a point of Christianity that I need to work on! I have never been a 'big' giver, of either praise or presents. While I 'did my part', giving a percentage of my earnings each paycheck to the United Way, while I was working, and throwing come change to the bell-ringers at Christmas time, it was no where near the gifts I lavished on myself. Praise, also, has been hard to come by from me. That was probably my downfall in my work life as a manager - although I did try to thank each employee at the end of the day, or when they turned in a project to me. I was doing the minimum in both cases, coasting by. And coasting down-hill. Now, out of work, and married for the second time, and again being what I thought was generous, I am going through a hard correction. While I was blindly, scornfully going about being what I thought was a good-guy, a great husband for my wife - I did not respond to her telling me that I really needed to get a job besides helping her in her restaurant. Now my retirement has been spent, the economy in our town is being especially hard-hit, and I think I have hit rock-bottom. Probably not - there is always another rung below the one we are one. The bright spot is that I have started learning about Jesus, praying, and going to church, and even more better, is that I have really been examining myself, and changing things. So, as possessiveness hinders our giving of gifts and praise, the lack of giving praise go God, of course, hinders our worship. In a very real sense, all our possessions belong to God. It is He that leads us into good jobs that enable us to make money and buy things. It is He that makes things happen, whether it be engineers designing slick cars, hot tech gadgets, cooks making delicious food. Any thing, every thing, every person, comes from God - so all our possessions are on loan from Him. This lesson, I have to say, has been a great reality-check for me! Thank you Lord, and thank you Dr. Ralph!

It is well to refer to Scripture when praising God. While we may have many personal things to thank God for, we also need to recognize His greatness. The Psalms are a wonderful source when we are looking to express thoughts of exaltation to our Father. I'm not saying that we can 'throw a dart' at the Bible and pray what ever passage comes up, but we should be thoughtful and meditate as we come across passages where David, and the others, praise God. Think of what quality of God is being praised, try to get your mind around just what it means to be omnipresent, for example. More than that, think of what it means to be able to converse, whenever you want, with the one and only onmipresent being. What a tremendous gift that is! Praise like this is found at the end of the Lord's prayer (though it is disputed whether Christ actually included the phrase) - "For thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, forever."

Praise exalts, or 'lifts up' God in our hearts and spirit by putting us in a right frame of reference with Him. By praising Him, we focus ourselves on His greatness, power, mercy and lovingkindness. By doing this, we recognize and admit that we are helpless with out our Father. The ways in which we praise Him show our spirit and maturity (or lack thereof) as Christians.

We 'bless' God by hallowing His name, as in the Lord's Prayer. This means that we live in His spirit, leading a Christ-like life, by loving God with all our heart, mind, spirit, and strength. Every fiber of our being, every molecule, every atom is to be dedicated to service in the Lord's name. We humans have our free-will, with which to bless God, or not. He has blessed us with the ability to choose the narrow or the wide gate. We need to make the choice, actively, and prayer-fully, to enter through that narrow gate and stay the course of righteousness. Prayers that do not include praise for God, are prayers that do not fit with what we are taught in the Bible. God wants us to recognize all that He has provided for us, it is part of our obligation in spreading the good news. Prayers that do not include praise are like the demands of spoiled children, who are focused on themselves and their immediate wants. This type of prayer is answered, of that we can be sure - though the answer may be quite different from what was asked!!

To have a broken heart and spirit is to be truly repentent for our sins. The words David chose for his confession show, by use of the different synonymns for sin: rebellion, twistedness, missing the way, and wickedness, that he recognizes the root cause of his sins and that he is truly repentent, heart-broken that the has done things that his Lord had specifically told His people were against his will and outside acceptable behavior. It is essential that we feel this way in our prayers for pardon, else we are just professing faith, without really feeling the Holy Spirit within us. It is a sacrifice on our part to feel this way, in that we are putting the Lord before our selfish desires. We, as natural men (and women), have a hard time allowing our hearts and spirits to be broken, and certainly in admitting that we have a broken heart or spirit. We still feel that we know what is best for us, and that we can get those things on our own.

Is it possible to have a pure heart? Yes, but... Man's innate sinful nature means that he is not born with a pure heart, only Jesus came into the world pure and sin-free. For any one of us to have a pure heart requires that we be born again in Jesus. God will give us a clean, pure heart only when we have truly confessed faith in the Trinity, and belief in the substitutionary sacrifice of the Son. Our part, then, is to have faith, and to work, through prayer, to have that faith increased to the point where we become born again.

David does not minimize, nor maximize, his sins, but rather acknowledges the naturally sinful condition of man, and so, he also is sinful. The words that he uses for his sin confess the root sins that he is guilty of. We sometime treat the symptoms of a physical disease, rather than the cause: this is what David would have been doing if he had said: "God, I have committed adultery and murder", but, by confessing rebellion, twistedness, missing the way, and wickedness, he is confessing the root causes of his sins. While God could forgive him the adultery and murder, without removing the rebelliousness from David's inner self, he would be prone to sin again. In all prayer, God wants for us to be specific. To be specific in our prayers of confession, requires that we dig down into our being, as David has done, and recognize what causes us to sin. In answering this question, I have learned a great deal. I have been diligent to pray each day, asking forgivness for specific sins. When I first read through this prayer, I said to myself, but he did not tell God that he committed adultery and murder. Upon reading Dr. Ralph's explanation of the synonymns used in the original Hebrew, the 'light went on'. While I feel I need to remember the specific sins of my past, and confess them in prayer, I also need to dig down into the next layers, to discover the root causes of those sins. Thank you, Dr. Ralph!!

Very simply, a prayer for pardon requires the faith that God can indeed pardon sin. David had great faith in the Lord, strengthened over time by his experiences. We can today build that kind of faith by conquering cities and giants of our own, with the help of God. Through constant, or at least, regular, prayer, we build our relationship with God. When we use a mix of praise and petition, with a humble attitude, God will answer us.

Abraham asks God if he will save Sodom from destruction several times, each time with a lesser number of righteous people. Each time God says that he will not destroy the city. The thing that Abraham is getting at, is that he wants to save Lot, his nephew. Persistance is necessary sometimes, I think, because God wants to be sure that we really do want what we are asking. He is teaching us that we need to want the things we ask Him for with all our being. I am in a period of 'praying through' right now. I am asking God for forgivness for my sins, and to free me from sinful desires. Often times I feel a connection form, but sometimes it does not happen. Either way, I feel good after my prayers, for I am searching my self, and learning about myself as well as about God. I want one day to feel what it is like to be born-again, and I do feel like that will come, given time.

Yes, I think that boldness in prayer pleases God, if it is tempered with humility. It shows Him that we believe in the power of prayer, and the love that God has for us. As I am learning more and more about God and prayer, I find that I am learning even more about myself. I believe that this is pleasing to God, as I turn my prayers from requests for things for myself, to centering more on praising God, and helping me become a better Christian.

Abraham asked God several times if He would save Sodom from destruction if there were certain numbers of righteous persons living there. Each time he begs permission from God: "Now that I have been so bold as to speak to the LORD, though I am nothing but dust and ashes..." Abraham here recognizes that he is being bold, and humbles himself as but dust and ashes. Each time Abraham ratchets down the number of righteous, he reinforces his humility, alternating between confessing his boldness and pleading that the Lord not be angered with him. God delights in our prayers, if they are according to his will. He wants us to petition Him for our wants and needs, and to be specific as to what those are. If we are going to be bold in our requests, we must be humble in our attitude before Him. Abraham's prayer demonstrates perfect balance between the bold requests, and expressions of humility.

Abraham appeals to God, to save his righteous nephew, Lot, from destruction along with the sinful city of Sodom. Abraham has faith that God is just, and therefore He would not harm any righteous person when he destroys the hopelessly sinful. Abraham knows that God will not destroy the righteous with the wicked "That be far from ye to do".

Prayer can change God's mind, if the change is consistent with God's character and overall plan. As stated in the lesson, the example I liked was of the rocket on a mission to the moon, and the course corrections made along the way. I think God works in this way, with a general plan, having boundaries to stay within, but not controlling things down to the second or atom. God answers all prayer. If we ask for something outside the bounds of his will, we will find out that our request cannot be granted. If we ask over and over, persistently, God will show us that our request is not what we really need or want.

If we do not correctly understand determinism and predestination, as related to God and his plan, we may develop a defeatist attitude in our prayer-life (and in our regular life as well!). As I have read elsewhere, the immutability of God refers to his overall plan for us: much like a space rocket may be sent to Mars, and may need course adjustments along the way, so God is free to make changes along the way to the fulfillment of his plans. I would call a belief that our prayers make no difference to God, in a word, incorrect. There are too many examples in Scripture that teach us otherwise.

When we pray, we should emulate the way Moses prayer of intercession appeals to God, His mercy, and His reputation. We can do this by studying the Bible, and using the things we learn in our prayers. The logical grounds that Moses used were that to destroy Israel now would show God to be vengeful, the nations that He freed the Israelites from would see this destruction of the people as a defeat for God, that He was able to get the people out of captivity in Egypt, but could not get them to follow him into the promised land. By "praying the promises of God", we learn what those promises are. We take the time to meditate on them, and consider just what they mean to us. We will also get feedback from God, letting us know if we are in agreement with God as to what his promises were. Learning the Bible is learning God's word and his will, or intentions for us. We are told in Scripture to pray for things that are within God's will, and we must study Scripture to truly know God's will.

What had the people done that was so bad: While Moses was up on Mount Sinai, the people grew impatient, maybe thinking that Moses had deserted them. They persuaded Aaron to make them a god to worship, in direct disobedience to the second commandment. How can a loving God be so angry? As Israel has done time and time again, they had fallen into sin, with their golden calf. Love can at times be expressed as anger, though it does need to be a controlled anger. A father may become angry at an unruly child, who is behaving in a way that could be dangerous to himself of others around him. It is out of love that he may take the child aside and punish him. Of course, we pray that the father observes limits and does not over do this punishment. Is God's sentence to destroy israel and raise up a new nation justified? No, and I think God recognized this partly on His own, and partly because of Moses power of prayerful persuasion.

We need to ask God for forgivness every day, every time we pray, because we need it. It is man's nature to be sinful, no one is ever completely without sin. The line we are focusing on today is: "and forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors", in which we are taking 'debt' to be symbolic of sin in general (although I have a problem thinking that people 'sin' against me, in my humbleness I believe that people sin against God, not against each other. The wrong done person to person is not in the same category as wrongs we do against God.). In this line we are asking God to forgive sins against us 'as' we forgive those who have done us wrong - 'as' or 'in the same way', so, as pointed out in the lesson, this is somewhat of a 'trick' line, where we may wind up praying against our selves, if we are not truly forgiving those who wrong us.

Many people will shy away from asking any one for help - other people, as well as God. I feel that this is because they do not want to feel indebted to anyone. While many of us may be able to get by in life without help from other people, it is impossible to do so with out God. Do people seek to be independent of God? I think that those that try to live independently from God simply do not believe in God, or at least do not believe with any depth or knowledge. Thus, people may try to live independently, or think that they are living independently, from God, but He is always with us, and knows our every thought and deed. We need to ask every day for our daily bread. It is what we are taught in Scripture, it is part of what Jesus taught when a disciple asked Him to 'Teach us to pray'. Notice the request is not to teach us how to pray, but, teach us to pray. We have seen you pray, Jesus, and as we are supposed to be like you, we need you to teach us to pray. Prayer lets God know that we are thinking of Him, that we praise Him and appreciate all that he has done for us. By asking God for our daily bread, we are humbling ourselves before the Lord, admitting that we cannot provide for ourselves without His help.

By asking that God's kingdom come, we are asking the Lord to help people, including ourselves, to live by his will. His kingdom is a spiritual kingdom, it exists within his children, those who believe that Jesus Christ was sacrificed as substitutionary atonement for all of man's sins. We ask that His will be done on earth in this prayer, which was given to the disciples, to remind us that we should not pray only for ourselves, but for all of mankind. This was a prayer made to teach the disciples to pray, and so contains the elements of a prayer that could meet God's will. It is prayers that are within God's will, or His boundaries, that are answered. We should live by the example of this prayer, as humble servants, as Christ did. We should look to the betterment of those around us first. Offer help to the down-trodden, give alms for the poor, and not store up earthly treasures for ourselves.