Posts Tagged prayer
Keep praying for our schools.
I, not so long ago posted an article on praying for schools. I would just like to remind everyone how important this is. As we come near to the end of another term, put a local school on your prayer list.
Pray for:
- Teachers and support staff
- Pupils
- Head Teachers/managers
- Local education authorities
- Any Christian teams that go into schools
- And, most importantly, that Christ be proclaimed.
We have to remember that teaching Christianity in our schools is under a real threat (Humanist society)
for more info visit School prayer network (UK)
What’s the difference between praying to Jesus and praying to the Father in the name of Jesus?
When we pray, do we pray to the Father, the Son, the Holy Spirit or is it a mixture of all 3 in one? I had never really put much thought into this until reading John pipers response to the question:
What’s the difference between praying to Jesus and praying to the Father in the name of Jesus?
Of course we pray to the Father through the Son by the power of the Holy Spirit, but don’t we also talk to Jesus, thanking Him and praising Him. I like how John puts it, below is Johns answer.
“The difference is whom you’re talking to. And I think it is both right and inevitable to pray to all members of the Trinity.
Having said that, I think it is normal, because of the way Jesus says it, to talk to the Father in the name of the Son. Because Jesus says, “Whatever you ask the Father in my name, I will give it to you.”
That’s the pattern that Jesus seemed to set up: “My Father is the great giver. I am the mediator between you and my Father. I have died to pay for all the answers to prayer that you will ever get.”
Therefore, the normal way to think about coming to God in order to receive blessing is coming by the Spirit, through the Son, to the Father. That’s just normal.
We should know how the Spirit works to stir us up to pray, how the Son works to purchase all the answers to prayer, and how the Father works as the great originator and giver of all things. And it’s good to know that, because they did it that way together.
The Trinity worked together to make answers to prayer possible. But once you know that, that they all teamed up to do this for you, you can’t not thank them! You can’t not say to Jesus, “Thank you for dying for me!” You can’t not sing to him.
I was just singing this morning a song (the chorus is, “No merit of my own His anger to suppress…”—that one) and it is sung about “him,” and I sang it once that way. And then I just said, “I’m going to see if this works with ‘you’ instead of ‘him.’ I want to sing to you!” So I sang to Jesus this morning.
And I think the Father was pleased and the Son was pleased. And I think the Spirit was especially pleased, because he was sent into the world to magnify the Son.
When I say “inevitable,” I think the saved heart so loves what the Spirit did, what the Son did, and what the Father did that he can’t not not tell them.”
Watch the video of John Piper here
Work, Work, Work and glorifying God
Well, that’s another hard shift over, a few nice days off now. Talking of work and hard shifts, it reminded me of the Fall.
“Because you have listened to the voice of your wife and have eaten of the tree
of which I commanded you, ‘You shall not eat of it,’ cursed is the ground because of you;
in pain you shall eat of it all the days of your life; thorns and thistles it shall bring forth for you;
and you shall eat the plants of the field. By the sweat of your face
you shall eat bread, till you return to the ground, for out of it you were taken;
for you are dust, and to dust you shall return.” Genesis 3:17-19 (ESV).
Now I totally understand, why, when the alarm clock goes of in the morning a feeling of depression sinks in….. with the thought of here we go again…. work, work ,work!!! Luckily it isn’t that bad, but the serious side to this is the effect of sin in every part of life.
God had warned man not to eat the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil (Gen 2:16-17). We know what happened next, they did exactly the opposite of what was expected, they ate the fruit of the tree. They would die, but God in His mercy postponed it. It is by God’s grace that we all still walk around and breath. The punishment was hard toil as the ground would not so easily offer up food to eat.
This, is why we don’t like work too much, although work is good for you , it’s just that it is not going to be easy.
As Christians, we should carry out our work in a way that glorifies God, in fact everything we do should glorify God. Its took me a long time to realize that Glorifying God includes my work… so at the moment to my own shame.. its a work in progress.
I was watching a program on UCB, I can not for the life of me remember what it was called, but a couple of guys were explaining how they pray for their work place/colleagues and bosses (yes, even their boss), they would pray while walking in corridors in the offices etc. I felt convicted at that point. So now I have written out a plan for ‘work prayer’ before work at/in and around work, that God’s sovereign presence will be felt and that His name be glorified in my own work place. So starting from my next shift, that is my plan.
Pray for Schools
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Now that the summer holidays are nearly over and all the schools are starting to go back, we should be thinking of praying for our schools.
Following on from yesterday, praying for those in political power, I remembered, that St Ninians (Church of Scotland) are seeking from within their congregation, people to pray for local schools.
Again, if all the body of our Lord Jesus were to do this daily, possibly in groups, with each group dedicated to praying for a particular school, think of the change within our schools this would create. I came across a website dedicated for this purpose, schoolsprayernetwork
The Schools Prayer Network exists to stimulate and encourage committed Christian prayer for every school in the UK, and to provide a means of communication and support for those concerned
Pray for Schools
Christians are so good at being activists that we sometimes forget the simple importance and power of prayer. Committing to pray regularly for your local school is a very effective way of getting involved and offering support. Forming or joining a local prayer group makes that commitment easier, providing you with the joy and encouragement of meeting with others and sharing answers to prayer.Schools are generally very happy to know that they are being supported in this way. You could contact the Head to let him or her know about the group, and ask if there are specific prayer requests. Some prayer groups meet on school premises, others at the local church. You are likely to find support among Christian parents, teachers, governors, pupils and local church members. (From Transforminglives.org.uk)
If your church has not got anything like this organized, why don’t you suggest it, or get some of your friends from church and start doing it yourselves.
The ‘State’ we are in!
I have been reading, D Martin Lloyd Jones’ book ‘Sanctified through the truth’. On pg 13,14 and 15 he starts to talk about the Christian and the state, I have typed it out below as it is well worth the reading:
“The function of the state are of necessity good because the state has been appointed by God; let us never forget that…”
“The state is not human contrivance, it is not man who conceived the idea of the state and law, it is God who ordained it. God has ordained the bounds and the habitation of every nation; God has called the magistrates and the powers that be, and put them into being. I can say, therefore, that as God has organised the state, indeed all the states of the world, it is the business of all to see to it that the state does its work properly. And one of the duties of the state is, therefore, to see that God’s name is honoured and glorified…”
“It is therefore the business of the Christian, as a citizen of the state, to see that all that is done … for if God has decreed that the state is the way in which the world should be governed, Christian people should be concerned to see that it is done in the right and true way.”
“But you will see at once that the purpose of all this is simply to set a limit on sin and to the results of sin and wrong doing.”
In light of this, how do we see our own Governments/leaders? It made me think about all sorts of things politically, I am quite politically minded as it is, but what got me was, do I pray enough for our leaders, do we pray enough for our leaders either individually or as a corporate Christian body? Or is it the occasional side though… “oh, well I’m praying, so I might as well pray for some leaders”, many a time I have been like that.
What a difference it would make if we all prayed everyday, every week for our political leaders, both individual and in the Church. Not just praying but also speaking out. Satan must be loving the whole ‘tolerance’ attitude, it doesn’t matter about other religions as Satan himself knows they are false, he just wants to keep Christians quiet!