How to pray the Lord's prayer part 2
by: lebooa
Total views: 101
Word Count: 6771
““Therefore I exhort first of all that supplications, prayers, intercessions, and giving thanks be made for all men,
for kings and all who are in authority, that we may lead a quiet and peaceable life in all godliness and reverence.
For this is good and acceptable in the sight of God our savior,
Who desires all men to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth.”
THE STUCTURE OF THE LORD’S PRAYER
“Our Father in heaven,
Hallowed be Your name.
Your Kingdom come
Your will be done.
On earth as it is in heaven.
Give us this day our daily bread.
And forgive us our debts,
As we forgive our debtors.
And do not lead us into temptation,
But deliver us from the evil one.
For Yours is the kingdom and the power
And the glory forever. Amen.”
Matthew 6:9-13
THE STRUCTURE OF THE LORD’S PRAYER
CONTENTS
1. PROCLAMATION
2. INTRODUCTION
3. YOUR WILL BE DONE
4. OUR DAILY BREAD
5. FORGIVE OUR DEBTS
6. DELIVER US FROM THE EVIL ONE
7. THE KINGDOM, POWER AND THE GLORY
8. SUMMARY
THE STRUCTURE OF THE LORD’S PRAYER.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in any form or transmitted in any way without the prior written permission of the publisher. The only exception is brief quotations in printed reviews.
Unless otherwise noted, all scripture quotations are taken from the Good News Bible, Today’s English Version, Bible Society of South Africa. Copyright@ third South African edition 1993 published by the Bible Society of South Africa.
All royalties for this book have been assigned to Joseph Morakile Lebooa Ministries.
PO Box 5510. The Reeds
Pretoria, South Africa
Tel: +2712 6545496
Cell: +083 209 1037
Copyright 2001 by Joseph Lebooa
All rights reserved
THE STRUCTURE OF THE LORD’S PRAYER
Welcome to this program “Today with Joseph Lebooa. The theme of our program is “harvest time”, “ke nako ya kotulo”. We invite you this Sunday morning to join us with your sickle. We are busy winning souls for Christ by leading people to Jesus Christ the savior. Jesus Christ Himself had the following to say about the harvest.
“ The harvest truly is great, but the laborers are few; therefore pray the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into His harvest.”
Remember that in Mark 16:15-16 Jesus Christ issued the great commission to all that believe, He said
“Go into all the world and preach the gospel to every creature.
He who believes and is baptized will be saved but he who does not believe will be condemned.”
Our ministry is driven and motivated by this commission.
Today as usual we shall resume our study with a proclamation of the word of God. Our proclamation this time comes from the book of Romans 8: 26-27 and it reads thus:
1. PROCLAMATION
“ Likewise the spirit also helps in our weaknesses. For we do not know what we should pray for as we ought, but the Spirit Himself makes intercession for us with groanings which cannot be uttered.
Now He who searches the hearts knows what the mind of the Spirit is, because He makes intercession for the saints according to the will of God.”
2. INTRODUCTION
Last week we started the study of the Lords Prayer. We explained how the Lords Prayer could be divided into eight different components for the purposes of study and we started and completed the study of three of those elements. Today we intend to study and complete the five remaining elements. In last week study we concluded the following about the Lords Prayer.
1. The Lord’s Prayer is a manner of prayer, a structure and format in attitude and subject.
2. The only way you can qualify to pray the Lord’s Prayer is if you pray it in the name of Jesus
3. Without Jesus the Lord’s Prayer will not produce results
4. To hallow God is to respect Him exceedingly because of His Holiness.
5. To hallow God requires thanking God, Praising Him and worshipping Him.
6. To bring forth God’s kingdom we need to pray
7. There are two kingdoms out there at war and you and me are all in the middle of that war.
8. Our war is not physical or carnal but mighty in in power to the removing of strong holds.
9. Our weapons of war are spiritual
10. This war is taking place in the heavenlies.
3. YOUR WILL BE DONE
The forth sentence of the Lord’s Prayer states
“Your will be done. On earth as it is in heaven.” Matthew 6: 10
The above passage of scripture tells us that the entire will of God is done in heaven and that God’s objective right now is to ensure that His will is also done on earth. Remember we said last week that Satan is the prince of the earth because he took the dominion from Adam in the Garden of Eden.
The will of God is basically the subject of the Bible and sometimes this is referred to as the promise or the commandments of God. Some experts tell us that the Bible contains more that 30 000 such promises / will / commandments of God. The above scripture is basically saying that God wants the more than 30 000 wills or promises be done on earth as they are done in heaven. If these wills could be done on earth as it is in heaven we could say that indeed the kingdom of God has come upon us.
Today we are not going to go through each one of the 30 000 odd wills otherwise it would not be possible to finish this study in a very long time. We are going to be very selective and choose only three scriptures which will elaborate God’s will for your prayer, these scriptures will emphasis the importance and impact of the Lord’s prayer. Let us start with a passage from the book of Timothy 2:1-4.
“Therefore I exhort first of all that supplications, prayers, intercessions, and giving thanks be made for all men,
for kings and all who are in authority, that we may lead a quiet and peaceable life in all godliness and reverence.
For this is good and acceptable in the sight of God our savior,
Who desires all men to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth.”
The above scripture reflects the will of God for prayer in our lives. The apostle Paul is saying that when we pray the first thing that we ought to pray for is for all men. In other words, when we pray it is unscriptural to start your prayer with your own personal requests and petitions. The right thing to do is to pray for all men. The scripture also shows us the order in which we ought to pray for all men. First for Kings and all who are in authority.
If we take the case of South Africa, which is not a monarchy, the equivalent of a king would be the president of the Republic of South Africa, which is His Excellency Mr. Thabo Mbeki. In Swaziland we could be talking of King Moswati and in Zimbabwe we could be talking of President Robert Mugabe. So God is saying that as a priority He requires that when you pray the very first thing you need to pray for is for the kings.
The second thing you are required to pray for is for all those who are in authority. In our country when you talk about all those who are in authority you are talking about the cabinet ministers, the parliament members, the premiership and all the provincial government structures right up to the municipal structures. It is only after you pray for these institutions that you are free to pray for any other thing you want.
This means that any Christian who does not start their prayers by first praying for the kings and for those who are in authority are actually delinquent Christians who are in bridge of the will of God. The almighty God expects you to respect His will even in prayer and He is not committed to answer your prayers if you do not pray according to His will.
Let me ask you my brother and sister, when last did you consciously pray for the government of South Africa, or for the government of Zimbabwe, Swaziland or Lesotho Just to chose a few. When last did you pray for President Thabo Mbeki, President Robert Mugabe or King Moswati? Are you aware that God expects you to pray for your president every time you pray? Are you aware that God expects you to pray for the cabinet ministers and the rest of the governing authorities when you pray? If you are a South African the expectation is that you pray for President Thabo Mbeki and if you are a Zimbabwean the expectation is that you pray for His Excellency President Robert Mugabe.
God expects us to pray for both the kings and the governing authorities so that we may live a quiet and peaceable life in all godliness and reverence. This means that if all Christians are praying for kings and governing authorities then there should be peace and quietness in our country and in our respective communities. If there is no peace and quietness in our country and communities it can only mean that the Christians are not doing their job, which is to pray. Do you have peace and quietness in this country? Do you have peace and quietness in your community and in your neighborhood? Can you walk any street of your community anytime of the day and night alone and still be safe?
You see, what I need you to understand is that Good governance is the will of God and therefore by praying for kings and authorities what you are doing is praying for good governance. God wants you to pray for good governance because when peace and quietness prevails, the church can do its function and men can be saved. God wants all men to be saved and for this to happen it is important that there be peace and tranquility so that the job of the church is unhindered. God appoints all governments good or bad and therefore He expects you as a Christian to serve those governments by subjugating yourself under their rule. One way of doing this is through prayer. The following scripture illustrates this point.
“ Let every soul be subject to the governing authorities. For there is no authority except from God, and the authorities that exist are appointed by God.
Therefore whoever resist the authority resist the ordinance of God, and those who resist will bring judgment on themselves.
For rulers are not a terror to good works, but to evil. Do you want to be unafraid of the authority? Do what is good, and you will have praise from the same.” ROMANS 13: 1-3
The above scripture puts a full stop to what I have been saying. God appoints all governments and no government can exist without His approval. The government of South Africa was appointed by God, the government of the United States was appointed by God, the government of Lesotho was appointed by God and the government of Zimbabwe was appointed by God. All governments are appointed by God and therefore He wants you to pray every time for good governance.
So if there is no good Governance in a country or in a community, or if there is no peace and quietness in a country, who takes the blame? Whose fault is it when a country finds itself entangled in crime and violence? Whose fault is it when a country finds itself in civil strife and war? The answer is very obvious and I hope that all my listeners have guessed right. The Christians are to blame. Blame it on the Christians. You see, when the Christians forget that they are Christians and start to oppose and criticize the ruling government of the day instead of praying for good governance, then you will have strife and civil war.
The Christians are to blame because if they pray for good governance, God will give them good governance but if they stop praying or pray selfishly then strife and violence will creep in. Today it is common for the media and the opposition parties in most countries to oppose and criticize the government of the day, the government that is wholly appointed by God. What is worse is that many Christians have also joined with such forces and find themselves criticizing a godly and often an anointed institution.
This ministry (jlm ministry) is here to tell you that as a Christian you have no business criticizing an anointed institution of God, if you spend the same amount of time you use to criticize government in praying for the same government there would be by now an abundance of peace. Remember your mission as a Christian in this regard is not to criticize but rather to pray for peace and quietness in all godliness and reverence.
Our second example in scripture to illustrate the will of God for your prayer is based on a good relationship between husband and wife in an ordained Christian family. God will answer our prayers if these prayers are in accordance with His will. In the case of a family the Bible has the following to say:
“Husbands, likewise, dwell with them with understanding, giving honor to the wife, as to the weaker vessel, and as being heirs together of the grace of life, that your prayers may not be hindered.” 1 Peter 3:7
The Bible is saying that we need to be careful as husbands to treat our wives with understanding and to give them honor as the weaker vessels so that our prayers should not be hindered. You see, some people still need to be made to understand that wives are the weaker vessels and because of that we need to treat them with honor. For those men who beat up their wives or who ill-treat their wives by not providing for them it is important to know that God will not answer your prayers.
God demands that men should love their wives and that wives should be loyal to their husbands. However, what happens today is that we have some funny breed of men who demand that women should love and also be loyal to them at the same time and who behave as though they are some slave masters. Some men are not happy with their wives been loyal to them and therefore demand both love and loyalty.
The reason why some families never get out of troubles in life is because the husband does not honor the wife. On the other hand, the reason why God answers prayers of some people is because the husband honors and respects his wife. There are some men out there who do nothing except to honor and respect their wives and God blesses them. Some of those men you see driving big cars, … it is not because of them that they drive those cars but because of their women. A very popular and secular quote says “Behind every successful man there is a woman” As Christians, I prefer us to say that “behind every successful family there is the Almighty God.”
One last aspect about honor is that you cannot hide it. You see, to honor someone you are going to have to show it, Honor is visible and generous and there is no such thing as secret honor. If you want you can have secret respect for someone but with honor some of us are going to have to see with our eyes. Brothers, do you really honor your wife? Do your neighbors know that you honor your wife or all they hear all the time is her cries of anguish? What have you done for her that you can boast of in public?
One last example I have chosen to illustrate the will of God for prayer comes from the book of Romans 8: 26-27 and it reads thus:
“ Likewise the spirit also helps in our weaknesses. For we do not know what we should pray for as we ought, but the Spirit Himself makes intercession for us with groanings which cannot be uttered.
Now He who searches the hearts knows what the mind of the Spirit is, because He makes intercession for the saints according to the will of God.”
God is basically saying that even though we may be eager to pray in accordance with His will, we have an inherent weakness as human beings and that is because we do not know what we should pray for as we ought. We may be aware that we need to pray, we may be willing to pray, we may even know why we ought to pray but very often we do not know what we should pray for and how to pray for it. So God wants us to regularly make use of His Holy Spirit when we pray because the Holy Spirit helps us in our weakness and makes intercession for us, the Bible says He makes intercession for us with groanings, which cannot be uttered.
To pray in the power of the Holy Spirit is to allow the Holy Spirit to pray on your behalf and through you. This is where the baptism in the Holy Spirit becomes relevant because if you are baptized in the Holy Spirit with the evidence of speaking in tongues, then you have the Holy Spirit at your disposal and at any time to help you to pray in accordance with the will of God and in accordance with your real needs.
So next time you pray and say “ Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven”, you will be committing yourself to do God’s will in accordance with His word written in the Bible. God takes you seriously at what you say and my advise to you is that if you do not mean it then don’t say it. You see, a lot of people say a lot of things that they don’t mean but if you are going to be making promises to God you better be serious because God will hold you accountable for your words. Jesus has already warned us that we are going to account for each and every word we have ever uttered with our mouths.
If you are going to pray the Lords prayer and in the process you intend to make use of the sentence that says “Your kingdom come on earth as it is in heaven” then, you are going to have to stop criticizing the governing authorities, you are going to have to pray regularly for His Excellency President Thabo Mbeki and his governing structures. You will be obliged to subjugate yourself and render service to the government of the day. You will respect and honor your wife whether you understand it or not and finally, at some point you will need to be baptized in the Holy Spirit so that you can make your prayer effective by praying in the power of God and through God.
4. OUR DAILY BREAD
The fifth sentence of the Lord’s Prayer says:
“ Give us this day our daily bread.” Matthew 6:11
This is a very interesting sentence because it is a petition or a supplication, which is very specific especially about when the bread is required and, the type of bread required. It is also important to take note that this petition to God does not actually ask or plead with God to give us bread but is actually an instruction or almost a commandment issued to God the almighty. The petition specifically instructs God to provide today and not yesterday or tomorrow. The emphasis here is that if you can qualify to reach this point in the Lord’s Prayer then you are virtually entitled to make demands to God the almighty.
In other words, if you are the Son of God and you hallow Him by thanking, praising and worshipping Him and you pray for His Kingdom to come, then you can literally give God an instruction to provide for your needs like any son could demand His parents to provide for his needs. Another important thing to note from the above scripture is that the provision is required today; a son does not have to worry about tomorrow because tomorrow is the responsibility of the Father. The important thing is that if your son does the right things today, he will also do the right things tomorrow. No one wants his son worrying about tomorrow when today carries its own challenges. What Jesus is telling us is basically that we have no business worrying about tomorrow because tomorrow belongs to the Father.
One final observation about the above scripture is that the provision of God is called the daily bread. In other words a son should expect God to provide the bread daily. This expectation requires faith because if we were not sure that God would provide the daily bread then instead we would ask for the weekly bread or the monthly bread just in case God failed to pitch up the next day with the bread. Jesus tells us to ask today for the bread of this very day, in other words, we need to ask today for today’s portion of every day’s bread. This means that there will be bread every day the only thing is that we should only ask for today’s portion of that bread.
This is a very significant part of Jesus’ teaching because in principle Jesus is saying that we should not be selfish and greedy by hording bread, which we would still receive tomorrow. Jesus requires that we should have enough faith to believe that the Father will turn up tomorrow again with tomorrows bread. Some people are used to asking God more than what they need and the problem with that is that when God gives you more than what you need then you will not have any more need for God until what He gave you is finished. In the Lord’s Prayer Jesus is literally saying that you will have to pray every single day for your needs. God requires it that way. If you don’t have a reason to pray daily for your needs, then it means that you are hording something because God has designed you in such a way that you will have needs daily. Hoarding is a sin.
Remember that the prayer says “give us this day our daily bread”. The only way to satisfy that sentence is that each and every day you need to instruct God to give you your daily bread. If you do not instruct God daily for your daily portion of bread it can only mean that you are either starving or you are hoarding. Brothers and sisters when last did you ask God for anything? Do you realize that God expects you to ask Him for something every day? Are you aware that it is unscriptural to pass a single day without asking God for anything? You see, you may decide that you do not want to disturb God but let me tell you something; God expects you to disturb and engage with Him every day. To not give God your petitions and supplications every day is just not acceptable.
One last and important thing to take note of is that when Jesus talks about the bread, He is referring to all your needs, this could be asking God to heal you of your sickness, to give you protection from your enemies, to provide for you financial needs, to get you a job or even to get you a promotion in your current job.
A very good example that God can provide bread every day reliably is the case of the Israelites when they left Egypt and after they had miraculously crossed the Red Sea. For 40 years God turned up each time with manna and some meat without fail. These guys had something equivalent to a Mac Donald double burger every day for 40 years and there was no single day that God did not turn up. They had a rock with them from which they could drink water. This is amazing stuff, where would you in a desert expect to drink water from a rock? A rock is the least of things you would search water from. Their clothes and shoes did not rot for 40 years and none of them got sick. Praise God!
A scriptural example to show you that God answers prayer if prayed correctly is in the book of Johan. The delinquent prophet Jonah spend three days in the stomach of a fish at the bottom of an ocean because of His disobedience to God but in order for him to come out alive from the fish he had to pray. The interesting thing is that he first had to pray the correct way before God instructed the fish to spit him out in the seashores. If you look at Jonah’s prayer which is in Jonah 2:1-9 you will realize that as he prayed from verse 1 till verse 6 God did not do anything I think essentially because he was waffling, but from verse seven till verse 9 He started to pray correctly, He thanked God and praised Him and that caused God to move on his behalf when He instructed the fish to spit him out. Can you imagine the amount of faith required to thank and praise God form the stomach of a fish with all those gastric juices deep down the bottom of the ocean.
Some of you are like the silly prophet Johan and are presently struggling for survival in the stomach of a fish in a deep ocean bottom because of your disobedience to the word of God but if you prayed the Lord’s Prayer the correct way and instructed God in a polite manner to take you out of the deep, God would do so with the twinkling of an eye. Some people could be liberated from their misery today, this day and forever if you would put your trust in God and fulfill the requirements of the Lord’s Prayer in your life.
Another example proving that God answers prayers that are correctly prayed can be found in the book of Acts 16:25 Where Silas and the apostle Paul were arrested, beaten and put into prison in a place called Philippi. At midnight on that day Paul and Silas were praying and singing hymns to God, and the prisoners were listening to them and the Bible says that:
“Suddenly there was a great earthquake, so that the foundations of the prison were shaken; and immediately all the doors were opened and everyone’s chains were loosed”
The keeper of the prison wanted to kill himself but Paul stopped him and assured him that no one would run away. Eventually what happened is that on the very same night the keeper of the prison and his household Got saved. The following day Paul and Silas were released from prison by the authorities. The above scripture tell us that prayer can remove your shackles and chains, it can open closed doors and it can turn your captors into your liberators. Prayer can save the unsaved and can teach the untaught and touch the untouched.
So when you tell God to give you today your daily bread, this is the only place and time when you are allowed to ask God for anything you want. You can ask God to heal you; you can ask him to give you money, employment, and promotion at work, friends, you can ask Him for a wife or a husband. It is in this place and time that you can tell God to pay your electricity bill, your Edgar’s and Fochini bill and your house bond. You cannot ask for this anywhere else in the Lord’s Prayer except at this point. At this point in your prayer God becomes your provider or the Lord Jireh and it is at this point that God may be willing to spoil you to the maximum. It is at this point that Jesus says to you:
“ … Ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you.” Luke 11:9
Brothers and Sisters, do you have needs and desires that you would like to satisfy in your life? Is that house bond and that car loan of yours still a heavy burden in your life? Don’t you sometimes feel like taking a vacation to Honolulu? Do you want to afford the education of your children? Do you want to have peace and protection in your life, do you want to bid it farewell to sickness and diseases? Well, if your answer is yes to all the above questions! Then you have to pray the Lord’s Prayer correctly, you have to pray the Lord’s Prayer in accordance with the will of God.
How long do you spend praying in any single day? Do you think that a one-minute prayer can satisfy all these requirements for the Lord’s Prayer that we have mentioned in this study in a day? Do you realize that if you will meet God’s requirements for prayer you will need to systematically set aside enough time for prayer in your life? God wants you to pray with boldness, and with the confidence that you have received what you prayed for even before you receive it. This will require a proper and less casual relationship with God. This will require that God be your Father and you be His son.
1. FORGIVE OUR DEBTS
In one of our previous studies we already dealt thoroughly with the subject of forgiveness and therefore I will not dwell much on this matter today. However, one thing I think people need to know is that God expects you to ask for the forgiveness of your sins every time you pray. If you pray and do not ask for forgiveness, then you are not praying in the will of God. Secondly, God expects you to forgive the sins of those who have trespassed against you every time you pray. In other words, it is unscriptural to pray without forgiving those who have wronged you.
God only forgives you in the measure that you forgive others, if you do not forgive others; God also will not forgive you of your sins. This means that you are the only one who can determine whether God forgives your sins or not and how much of your sins He forgives. If you want all your sins forgiven then you have to forgive all those that have trespassed against you. This includes your very self, you must also forgive yourself. Some people are capable of forgiving every other person except themselves. To not forgive yourself is as good as not forgiving others. God will not forgive you if you also do not forgive yourself.
You may have committed fatal mistakes in the past like destroying some valuable property belonging to someone you hold in high esteem, you may have raped someone in your past and now truly have regrets about it, you may have murdered your dearest neighbour or even committed abortion in the past and now this has come to haunt you. You may have ill-treated even robed entire communities and nations through segregation and discrimination, you may have abandoned your children and your family and you may have been involved with burglary, hijackings, kidnappings and mob violence and now you do not want to forgive yourself for what you did in your previous life.
Un-forgiveness gives birth to hatred and bitterness and both of these are sins in the eyes of God. If you have un-forgiveness the word of God cannot be planted in your heart because bitterness and hatred hardens your heart and therefore you will always struggle to have faith in your life. The word of God cannot be planted in a hardened heart in the same way that a seed cannot be planted in hard soil. If you cannot have faith, then you cannot please Him and if you cannot please God then you cannot glorify Him.
God created you for His pleasure i.e. to please Him (Revelations 4:11) and if you cannot please Him you are failing to do precisely what God created you for. To not please God is to fall short of His glory. Therefore, no matter what you did in the past, unless you can forgive yourself, God will not forgive you.
The apostle Paul himself had a bad history prior to following Christ; he had made it his profession to persecute, to maim and to kill Christians. He was there when Stephen was stoned to death and even when he came to a face-to-face encounter with the resurrected Christ, he was on a journey to arrest and destroy Christians. But as soon as he repented and accepted the Lord Jesus Christ he forgave himself, he could not have been effective in his ministry had he not forgiven himself. God forgives you in the measure that you forgive others and that word “others”, includes you.
Did you know that if you do not forgive others you are not allowed to take part in the holy sacrament in church? Did you know that taking part in the holy sacrament without having forgiven others could be the reason why doctors cant find out what is wrong with you? Did you know that some are sick and others have already died because they partook in the holy sacrament without having forgiven others. Are you aware that if you eat of the bread and drink of the cup in the holy sacrament without forgiving those that have trespassed against you, you are bringing a curse upon yourself? Let us look at the scripture that explains this matter. This we can find in 1Corinthians 11: 27-29
“Therefore whoever eats this bread or drinks this cup of the Lord in an unworthy manner will be guilty of the body and blood of the Lord.
But let a man examine himself, and so let him eat of the bread and drink of the cup.
For he who eats and drinks in an unworthy manner eats and drinks judgement to himself, not discerning the Lord’s body.
For this reason many are weak and sick amongst you, and many sleep.”
Simply said a person who cannot forgive cannot be a true follower of Christ. Brother and sister, are you perhaps weak? Are you sick in your body? Are you willing to die because you don’t want to forgive? And one last question, are you aware that the above scripture accuses you of the body and blood of Jesus Christ? The scripture accuses you of murdering Christ on the cross. Do you want to be an accomplice to Christ’s murder?
One final point about forgiveness is that when you forgive someone for their trespasses you must also forget that they trespassed against you. Some people think that it is not possible to forget, in fact it is most common to hear people say that I will forgive but will not forget. You see, what you need to understand is that if the devil cannot stop you from forgiving, he will try to make sure that you do not forget.
Not to forget is to fall into the devil’s trap and eventually if you do not forget you will soon remember not to forgive. Not to forget is to file the trespass in a different folder and to archive it for future reference. It is like banking the mistakes of others with the option of punishing them when it suites you. It is like holding an ace card for someone, like hiding dirt under your carpet. You see, when you have dirt under your carpet, you know that the dirt is there and it will keep on bothering you all the time. Not to forget is to keep in your possession someone’s garbage and dirty rags and sooner or later the garbage will start to rot and smell all over you.
The way God deals with your trespasses and sins when He forgives you is that He blots out your sins. In other words He erases them and therefore they cease to exist. If you erase something written in a light pencil in your exercise book it cannot come back again to your book, whatever you erase is gone and the next time you take a look at your book you cannot see it no more. To forgive is to never again deal with the same trespass, there may be new other trespassed coming your way but this one that you forgave is blotted out. This you can find in the book of Isaiah 43: 25 and it reads thus:
“ I, even I, am He who blots out your transgressions for my own sake;”
Notice that the reason God blots out your transgressions is for His own sake. God does not want to carry your trash all the time.
The devil may try to bring to you from time to time a picture of the trespass but because you blotted it out, you cannot remember and it will not matter. No matter how much the devil tries to remind you, it will be in vain because you have blotted out the trespass. The Lord’s Prayer requires that when you forgive those that have trespassed against you, you must also forget their trespasses. If you cannot forget their trespasses, you will not be able to avoid having to feel bitter and to hate those that have trespassed against you. Remember that the person who has trespassed against you is your brother or your sister (and very often your beloved one) and the Bible says that he who hates his brother is a murderer: This you can find in 1 John 3:15
“Whoever hates his brother is a murderer,”
The Bible also says that he who hates his brother whom he can see with his naked eyes cannot love God whom he cant see with his eyes (find scripture)
2. DELIVER US FROM THE EVIL ONE
One very important thing that we must realize is that we have victory over the devil only through the blood of the lamb and through the word of our testimony. Without Jesus it is impossible to register victory over the devil. You see, the devil is an angel, a former archangel of God and in general he is of a physical strength that is much superior to yours as an individual. So the only way we can fight him and defeat him is through Jesus Christ.
The Bible tells us that if we obey God’s commandments He will create a hedge around us such that the devil will not be able to penetrate. The idea of a hedge is interesting because it means that God will put a fence of protection around us, which will keep the devil out of reach. Psalm 91 explains precisely the kind of protection God will accord us. It reads thus:
“He who dwells in the secret place of the most high
Shall abide under the shadow of the all mighty.
I will say of the Lord, He is my refuge and my fortress;
My God, in Him I will trust.
Surely He shall deliver you from the snare of the fowler
And from the perilous pestilence.
He shall cover you with His feathers,
And under His wings you shall take refuge;
His truth shall be your shield and buckler.
You shall not be afraid of the terror by Night,
Nor of the arrow that flies by day,
Nor of the pestilence that walks in darkness,
Nor of the destruction that lays waste at noonday.”
Brother and sisters, the above scripture basically says that there is terror by night, the arrow that flies by day, the pestilence or sickness that walks in darkness and the destruction by noonday. This means that the devil is laying traps for you all the time and if you do not abide in Jesus there is no way you will escape from the devils package.
When we pray the Lord’s Prayer, we need to ask God to put this hedge of protection around us because without it the devils trap will catch us.
SUMMARY
1. To pray for God’s will to come requires that we pray for all men, first for the kings and for those who are in authority.
2. God’s will also requires that each man should not only respect their wives but also that they should honor them
3. We have an inherent weakness as human beings because we do not know how to pray and therefore the Holy Spirit makes intercession on our behalf.
4. God demands that we pray daily and ask Him for our daily bread
5. We need to ask only for today’s provision and not tomorrows or next week’s provisions.
6. We need God’s hedge of protection in our lives
7. This hedge of protection we can only access and maintain through prayer and communication with the Father.
www.TheWritersOnline.com
(Read or Write Your Way to Big Success)
About the Author
Rating: Not yet rated