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Author Topic: Prayer, the language of Heaven
Eden
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BecauseHElives said:

“Eden, is this the scripture you are talking about?.....

But when ye pray, use not vain repetitions, as the heathen do: for they think that they shall be heard for their much speaking. Matthew 6:7

Yeshua was referring to the Pagan, not the Pharisees.

But when ye pray, use not vain repetitions, as the heathen do: for they think that they shall be heard for their much speaking. Matthew 6:7

The Greek text of Matthew 6:7 are translated precisely correct (use not vain repetitions) (do not babble) as the heathen, pagans do.

Long prayers are not condemned, but vain, needless, and superstitious ones.”

Eden here:

Thanks for pointing out that Jesus was speaking about the heathen and NOT about the Pharisees when Jesus said that we should not pray using vain repititions, as the heathen do… I probably WAS thinking about the Pharisees instead of the heathen.

However, may I ask, who were these HEATHEN then that Jesus had in mind? Assuming that Jesus said this in Judah or in Galilee, WHO were these heathen that Jesus had in mind so that it would make sense to the Jews in Judah and the Galileans in Galilee?

Any ideas?

With love for and of the church,
Eden

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becauseHElives
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Yeshua is not a subject to be studied!

He is a Person with Whom we need to become acquainted.

The only way you really get to know somebody is by spending time with them.

A baby learn to speak the language of his/her parents by listening to them speak.

It is no different in the spirit!

--------------------
Strive to enter in at the strait gate:for many, I say unto you will seek to enter in, and shall not be able. ( Luke 13:24 )

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yahsway
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What a friend we have in Jesus
All our sins and griefs to bare
What a priviledge to carry
Everything to God in prayer

Oh what peace we often forfiet
Oh what needless pain we bare
All because we do not carry
Everything to God in prayer

Prayer is relationship with God and with Jesus.
If Jesus is our mediator between us and the Father, then prayer is very important.

There are many people who read the scriptures but do not have that relationship with Jesus and with God. And there are many who will say to Jesus "have we not worked wonders in Your name, casting out demons in Your name, prophesied in Your name?" And Jesus says to them, "I never KNEW you, depart from Me you who practice lawlessness."

A good example of prayer being relationship is found all thru out the book of Psalms.

Reading Gods word can be transfiguring in that it is food for the believer or daily bread if you will.

But who is it that provided/provides that food for us? Do we KNOW HIM? or better asked, Does He KNOW us?

We read the scriptures and can learn about Him and about the Father, but learning about Him and Knowing Him are 2 different things.

We can learn from the scriptures what God the Father and Jesus expects of us as believers, but Learning and Doing them are 2 different things.

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becauseHElives
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Matthew Henry Commentary

Matthew: 6:5-8 It is taken for granted that all who are disciples of Christ pray. You may as soon find a living man that does not breathe, as a living Christian that does not pray. If prayerless, then graceless.

The Scribes and Pharisees were guilty of vain-glory. Wanting to be seen of men, Jesus said verily they have their reward; if in so great a matter as is between us and God, when we are at prayer, we can look to so poor a thing as the praise of men, it is just that it should be all our reward. Yet there is not a secret, sudden breathing after God, but he observes it. It is called a reward, but it is of grace, not of debt; what merit can there be in begging? If he does not give his people what they ask, it is because he knows they do not need it, and that it is not for their good. So far is God from being wrought upon by the length or words of our prayers, that the most powerful intercessions are those which are made with groanings that cannot be uttered. Let us well study what is shown of the frame of mind in which our prayers should be offered, and learn daily from Christ how to pray.

quote:
Eden,
Jesus also said NOT to OVERpray things, like the Pharisees did,

Eden, is this the scripture you are talking about?.....

But when ye pray, use not vain repetitions, as the heathen do: for they think that they shall be heard for their much speaking. Matthew 6:7

Yeshua was referring to the Pagan, not the Pharisees.

But when ye pray, use not vain repetitions, as the heathen do: for they think that they shall be heard for their much speaking. Matthew 6:7

The Greek text of Matthew 6:7 are translated precisely correct (use not vain repetitions) (do not babble) as the heathen, pagans do.

Long prayers are not condemned, but vain, needless, and superstitious ones.

Wesley Matthew : 6:7 Use not vain repetitions - To repeat any words without meaning them, is certainly a vain repetition. Therefore we should be extremely careful in all our prayers to mean what we say; and to say only what we mean from the bottom of our hearts. The vain and heathenish repetitions which we are here warned against, are most dangerous, and yet very common; which is a principal cause why so many, who still profess religion, are a disgrace to it. Indeed all the words in the world are not equivalent to one holy desire. And the very best prayers are but vain repetitions, if they are not the language of the heart.

In Yeshua’s own words we read in Matthew 26: 39-44 that he himself repeated prayers.

Verse 44 reads "So he left them and went away once more and prayed a third time, saying the self same thing."

The same is true in Luke I8:9-14, where the original Greek text uses the imperfect tense meaning that the tax collector "kept beating his breast and saying,’ Have mercy on me O Lord, a sinner'".

If one wants just to look at the Bible only and take it literally, then one might say it is useless to pray at all, since our Lord says in following verse 8 of Mt. Chapter 6 that "Your Father knows what you're going to say before you even ask him."

However, two parables Jesus gives us to illustrate that persistence and repetitious prayer can be just the right approach.
Luke 11:5-13

"Which of you who has a friend will go to him at midnight and say to him, 'Friend, lend me three loaves; for a friend of mine has arrived on a journey, and I have nothing to set before him'; and he will answer from within, 'Do not bother me; the door is now shut, and my children are with me in bed; I cannot get up and give you anything.'? I tell you, though he will not get up and give him anything because he is his friend, yet because of his importunity he will rise and give him whatever he needs."

Luke 18:2-5
"In a certain city there was a judge who neither feared God or regarded man; and there was a widow in that city who kept coming to him and saying, 'Vindicate me against my adversary. For a while he refused; but afterward he said to himself, 'Though I neither fear God nor regard men, yet because this widow bothers me , I will vindicate her, or she will wear me out by her continual coming."

. This is not "vain" repetition, certainly not the vain repetition condemned by Our Lord. In fact no prayer is vain, no matter how often repeated, if it is sincere, for Christ Himself engaged in repetitious prayers in the Garden of Gethsemane.

Furthermore, we are told in the Apocalypse (Revelations) 4:8 that the angels in Heaven never cease repeating, night and day, the canticle: "Holy, Holy, Holy, Lord God Almighty, who was, and who is, and who is to come."

--------------------
Strive to enter in at the strait gate:for many, I say unto you will seek to enter in, and shall not be able. ( Luke 13:24 )

Posts: 4578 | From: Southeast Texas | Registered: Jun 2002  |  IP: Logged | Report this post to a Moderator
Eden
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Hi, BecauseHElives. You said:

“Prayer

There's nothing more transfiguring than prayer. People often ask, "Why do you insist on prayer so much?" The answer is very simple - because Jesus did.”

Eden here:

Prayer after salvation, or access to the Holy Spirit, probably IS the most transfiguring part for a person, but probably reading the Word is equally transfiguring, and reading the Word is perhaps even more transfiguring than prayer.

But we are told to pray and put our petitions and praises before God also, and the Holy Spirit groans on our behalf when we ourselves don’t know what we SHOULD be praying for, and the Lord Jesus intercedes for us from heaven, so a lot of very important parts are happening BESIDES personal prayer which are also very important parts of our life after salvation processes.

So, becauseHElives, you said:

Hi, BecauseHElives. You said:

“Prayer

There's nothing more transfiguring than prayer. People often ask, "Why do you insist on prayer so much?" The answer is very simple - because Jesus did.”

Jesus also said NOT to OVERpray things, like the Pharisees did, thinking they'd be heard "for their much praying". God also wants quiet, trustful children who are not talking all the time but at peace with their environment.

Be blessed,
Eden

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becauseHElives
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Prayer

There's nothing more transfiguring than prayer. People often ask, "Why do you insist on prayer so much?" The answer is very simple - because Jesus did. You could change the title of the Gospel according to St. Luke to the Gospel of Prayer. It's the prayer life of Jesus. The other evangelists say that Jesus was in the Jordan and the Spirit descended on Him as a dove - Luke says it was while He was praying that the Spirit descended on Him. The other evangelists say that Jesus chose 12 disciples - Luke says it was after He spent a night in prayer that He chose 12 disciples. The other evangelists say that Jesus died on a cross - Luke says that even when He was dying Jesus was praying for those who persecuted Him. The other evangelists say Jesus went on a mount and He was transfigured - Luke says it was while He was praying that He was transfigured. There's nothing more transfiguring than prayer.

The Scriptures say that the disciples went to bed, but Jesus went to pray - as was His custom. It was His custom to pray. Now Jesus was the Son of God - He was definitely anointed for His ministry. If Jesus needed all that time in prayer; don't you and I need time in prayer? If Jesus needed it in every crisis, don't you and I need it in every crisis?

The story goes that a group of tourists visiting a picturesque village saw an old man sitting by a fence. In a rather patronizing way, one of the visitors asked, "Were any great men born in this village?" Without looking up the old man replied, "No, only babies." The greatest men were once babies. The greatest saints were once toddlers in the things of the Spirit.

C. H. Spurgeon was converted at the age of 16 and began preaching in London at the age of 19. When he was 27, they built him a tabernacle seating 6,000 which he packed twice on Sundays - that's 12,000- and once on Thursday nights. How? He waited on God. He got alone with God. He studied... and he prayed.

Desperate Prayer
God makes all His best people in loneliness. Do you know what the secret of praying is? Praying in secret. "But you, when you pray, go into your inner room, and when you have shut your door..." (Matt. 6.6) You can't show off when the door's shut and nobody's there. You can't display your gifts. You can impress others, but you can't impress God.

I Samuel 1:1-15 gives an account of the yearly trip Elkanah and his wife, Hannah, made to Shiloh to worship and sacrifice to the Lord. During this time, Hannah had been distressed that she was not able to bear a son for her husband. This passage of Scripture gives quite a descriptive account of her time in prayer concerning the barrenness of her womb. It says that Hannah wept. More than this, she wept until she was sore. She poured out her soul before the Lord. Her heart was grieving; she was bitter of soul, provoked, and of a sorrowful spirit.

Now that's a pretty good list of afflictions - sorrow, hardship, and everything else that came upon this woman. But the key to the whole situation is that she was a praying woman. In verse 20 it says that she reaped her reward. "And it came about in due time, after Hannah had conceived, that she gave birth to a son; and she named him Samuel, saying, 'Because I have asked him of the Lord.'"

Now I say very often - and people don't like it - that God doesn't answer prayer. He answers desperate prayer! Your prayer life denotes how much you depend on your own ability, and how much you really believe in your heart when you sing, "Nothing in my hands I bring, simply to Thy cross I cling..." The more self-confidence you have, the less you pray. The less self-confidence you have, the more you have to pray.

What does the Scripture say? It says that God takes the lowly, the things that are not. Paul says in I Corinthians 1:28 that God takes the things that are not to bring to nothing the things that are, so that no flesh should glory in His presence. We need a bunch of "are nots" today.

The Language Of The Poor
Prayer is the language of the poor. Over and over again David, the King of Israel, says, "Incline Thine ear,0 Lord, and answer me; for I am afflicted and needy." (Psalm 86:1) And do you remember that one of the greatest psalms he wrote says, "This poor man cried and the Lord heard him..." (Psalm 34:6)

The apostle Paul overwhelms me with his spirituality, his pedigree, his colossal intellect. Yet he says that he's very conscious that when he's weak, he is strong. He was always trying to prove to himself and to others that he was a nobody.

True prayer is a two-way communication. I speak to God and God speaks to me. I don't know how the Spirit makes communication - or why God needs me to pray - but that's how God works.

"Get Up And Pray!"
One day I was at a conference with Dr. V. Raymond Edman of Wheaton College, one of the greatest Christian educators in this country. He told us of an experience he had while he was in Ecuador as a missionary. He hadn't been there long before he was sick and dying. He was so near death that they had already dug his grave. He had great beads of sweat on his brow and there was a death rattle in his throat. But suddenly he sat straight up in bed and said to his wife, "Bring me my clothes!" Nobody knew what had happened.

Many years later he was retelling the story in Boston. Afterward, a little old lady with a small, dog-eared, beaten-up book, approached him and asked, "What day did you say you were dying? What time was it in Ecuador? What time would it be in Boston?" When he answered her, her wrinkled face lit up. Pointing to her book, she said, "There it is, you see? At 2 a.m. God said to get up and pray - the devil's trying to kill Raymond Edman in Ecuador." And she'd gotten up and prayed.

Duncan Campbell told the story of hearing a farmer in his field who was praying. He was praying about Greece. Afterward, he asked him why he was praying. The man said, "I don't know. I had a burden in the spirit and God said, 'You pray, there's someone in Greece that is in a bad situation.' I prayed until I got a release." Two or three years later the farmer was in a meeting listening to a missionary. The man described a time when he was working in Greece. He had been in serious trouble. The time? Two or three years ago. The men compared notes and discovered that it was the very same day that God had burdened a farmer, on a little island off the coast of Scotland, to pray for a man in Greece whose name he didn't even know.

It may seem the Lord gives you strange things. I don't care. If the Lord tells you something, carry on with what the Lord tells you.

"Who Shall Ascend To The Hill Of The Lord?"
There's another experience Duncan Campbell told about when he was working in Scotland.

"I couldn't preach," he said. "I couldn't get through to God. The heavens were solid. It was as though there was a 10 ft. ceiling of steel." So he quit trying to preach. He asked a young man named John Cameron to pray. The boy stood up and said, "What's the use of praying if we're not right with God?" He quoted the 24th Psalm, "Who may ascend into the hill of the Lord?"

You can't approach God unless your hands are clean, which means your relationships with others are clean and your heart is clean. "Who may ascend into the hill of the Lord? He who has clean hands and a pure heart (Psalm 24:3-4)

After the boy recited Psalm 24 he began to pray. He prayed 10, 15, 20 minutes. Then he suddenly said, "Excuse me, Lord, while I resist the devil." He turned around and began to tell the devil where to go and how to get there. He fought for all he was worth. You talk about having on the armor of God and resisting the devil! When he finished resisting the devil, he finished his prayer. He prayed for 45 minutes! When he finished praying it was just as though God had pulled a little switch in heaven. The Spirit of God came down on that church, that community, on the dance hall at the other end of town, and the tavern on this end of town. Revival was born in that prayer!

At the end of Malachi it says, "And the Lord, whom you seek, will suddenly (that's the word I like, suddenly) come to His temple." (Malachi 3:1) Remember what it says about the shepherds? They were watching their flocks by night when suddenly there was the sound of the heavenly host. Do you remember a bunch of men that had been waiting in the upper room? Suddenly the Holy Spirit came on them in that room.

There's a date in history that I love very much. It was Wednesday, August 13, 1737. A little group of people in Moravia were waiting in a prayer meeting. At 11:00 suddenly the Holy Spirit came. Do you know what happened? The prayer meeting that began at 11:00 lasted 100 years! That's right. That prayer room was not empty for a century! It's the longest prayer among men and women that I know of. Even children six and seven years old travailed in prayer for countries the names of which they couldn't even spell

Why We Don't Have Revival
In an old town in Ireland they'll show you with reverence a place where four young men met night after night after night praying for revival. In Wales, there's a place in the hills where three or four young men only 18 or 19 years old met and prayed night after night. They wouldn't let God go; they would not take no for an answer. As far as humanly possible they prayed a revival into birth. If you're thinking of revival at your church without any inconvenience, forget it. Revival costs a lot.

I can give you one simple reason why we don't have revival in America. Because we're content to live without it. We're not seeking God we're seeking miracles, we're seeking big crusades, we're seeking blessings. In Numbers 11, Moses said to God, "You're asking me to carry a burden I can't handle. Do something or kill me!" Do you love America enough to say, "God, send revival or kill me"? Do you think it's time we changed Patrick Henry's prayer from, "Give me liberty or give me death," to "Give me revival or let me die"?

In the 3Oth chapter of Genesis, Rachael goes to Jacob and throws herself down in despair. She says, "Give me children or else I die." Are you willing to throw yourself down before God to seek the spiritual birth of spiritual children in our country?

People say, "I'm filled with the Holy Spirit." If the coming of the Spirit didn't revolutionize your prayer life, you'd better check on it. I'm not so sure you got what God wanted you to get.

We've said that prayer changes things. No! Prayer doesn't change things. Prayer changes people and they change things. We all want Gabriel to do the job. God says do it yourself - with My sufficiency and My strength.

We need to get like this woman, Hannah. What did she do? She wept, she was grieved, she said she had a complaint, she fasted - and she prayed.

Jesus, the anointed of God, made prayer His custom. Paul, with his background and intellect, depended on prayer because he said he was weak. David, the king, called himself a poor man and cried to the Lord. Hannah prayed for a son and gave birth to a prophet. The prayers of a handful of young men sparked revival.

There's nothing more transfiguring than prayer.

By Leonard Ravenhill

COPYRIGHT/REPRODUCTION LIMITATIONS: This data file is the sole property of Leonard Ravenhill. It may not be altered or edited in any way. It may be reproduced only in its entirety for circulation as "freeware," without charge. All reproductions of this data file must contain the copyright notice (i.e., "Copyright (C)1994 by Leonard Ravenhill, Lindale, Texas"). This data file may not be used without the permission of Leonard Ravenhill for resale or the enhancement of any other product sold. This includes all of its content with the exception of a few brief quotations. Please give the following source credit: Copyright (C)1994 by Leonard Ravenhill, Lindale, Texas - http://www.ravenhill.org/

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Strive to enter in at the strait gate:for many, I say unto you will seek to enter in, and shall not be able. ( Luke 13:24 )

Posts: 4578 | From: Southeast Texas | Registered: Jun 2002  |  IP: Logged | Report this post to a Moderator


 
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