I’ve been absent for sometime, okay, a long time, and now it’s time to pick up where I left off in early December. The subject is the same: Prayer. The line of thought in today’s post is a reoccurring theme because we need to remind ourselves of the greatest purpose of private prayer time. To get a running start into my point for this post I’ll use a quote from my book: A Reason to Pray at Mountain. The mentor, Paul, says to Mark:
“He is also calling you to spend more time with Him … to KNOW Him, to know His heart. He doesn’t JUST want you to believe in Him, He wants you to know Him so that you will trust Him.”
Mark Terrell was learning that God wants to reveal Himself to Mark, as with each of God’s children. If the Spirit of God lives in you, it’s because He has chosen to reveal Himself to you. He is inviting you to know Him and walk with Him. The inviting comes from Him, and the ability to know and see Him comes from Him. It is all BY Him. Man cannot know God in his own abilities. It is impossible. You cannot know Him without divine revelation and understanding. Only the Spirit of God knows the heart of God and only He can teach our hearts the wondrous greatness of God while bonding us with God. If we try to find and learn of God on our own abilities and efforts we produce man-made religion with the stench of self-righteousness. But I digress. (It’s easy for preachers to get off on a rabbit trail, especially when the trail is full of heaven’s treasures.)
Do we grasp the magnitude of this privilege? What greater knowledge is there than knowing and walking with the living God? This is what Adam was privileged to do in the Garden, until … (nope, I’ll stay on this trail) … the fellowship with God was broken. In comes the 2nd Adam–Jesus Christ, who reconciled our relationship with our God. It is a privilege beyond the wisdom and comprehension of the unregenerate man. It is a gift of grace offered by God to His beloved ones.
Consider the promise of Jesus to His disciples,
John 16:25–27 — “These things I have spoken to you in figurative language; but the time is coming when I will no longer speak to you in figurative language, but I will tell you plainly about the Father. 26 In that day you will ask in My name, and I do not say to you that I shall pray the Father for you; 27 for the Father Himself loves you, because you have loved Me, and have believed that I came forth from God.
Did you catch the point, the promise in Jesus’ statement?
What are “these things” that Jesus had been speaking “in figurative language” to His disciples? It’s in verse 25:
“… I will tell you plainly about the Father.”
WOW! The context of the conversation between Jesus and His disciples is telling us that He will do this through the ministry of the Spirit of God. The Spirit of God wants to reveal God the Father to us.
Stick with the context and an often misunderstood scripture becomes clear. The context has not changed from verse 25 to verses 26 and 27. Are you with me? Jesus, telling us that the Spirit of God desires to reveal God the Father to us–His disciple–says within this conversation, with the context:
“… whatever you ask the Father in My name He will give you.”
Have you taken verses 26 and 27 out of context to mean something else? If so, put it back in its context. Any other use of this promise from Jesus is SHALLOW in comparison to what He is promising.
Here’s the BIG QUESTION:
In your times of private prayer, in times of reading, meditating, and in the study of the Scripture … in times of devotion to God the Father … do you ask to know the Father?
Rather than asking for things; asking for Him to change circumstances; Ask To Know Him. Ask the Holy Spirit to reveal the Father to you? Does it sounds rather simplistic? So simple in fact, most of us don’t include this in our time of “asking, seeking, and knocking.” The purpose of Christ is to make this all possible. He came to reconcile us back to God the Father, to bring us into intimate fellowship with our God and Maker. Yet too often we “ask, seek, and knock” for everything else. Our prayers are made up of both pious requests and selfish requests, and fail to include this promise? This is a request that we can make to the Father based on the promise of God the Son, made possible by the redemptive work of God the Son, and enabled by God the Spirit. Tell me, how sure is that promise? How good is that invitation?
A Wrap Up from Charles Spurgeon:
He who often thinks of God will have a larger mind than the man who simply plods around this narrow globe. Nothing will magnify the whole soul of man, as a devout, earnest, continued investigation of the great subject of the Deity.
Charles Spurgeon again:
Every believer understands that to know God is the highest and best form of knowledge; and this spiritual knowledge is a source of strength to the Christian. It strengthens his faith. Believers are constantly spoken of in the Scriptures as being persons who are enlightened and taught of the Lord; they are said to “have an unction from the Holy One,” and it is the Spirit’s peculiar office to lead them into all truth, and all this for the increase and the fostering of their faith. Knowledge strengthens love, as well as faith. Knowledge opens the door, and then through that door we see our Saviour. Or, to use another similitude, knowledge paints the portrait of Jesus, and when we see that portrait then we love him, we cannot love a Christ whom we do not know, at least, in some degree. If we know but little of the excellences of Jesus, what he has done for us, and what he is doing now, we cannot love him much; but the more we know him, the more we shall love him. Knowledge also strengthens hope. How can we hope for a thing if we do not know of its existence? Hope may be the telescope, but till we receive instruction, our ignorance stands in the front of the glass, and we can see nothing whatever; knowledge removes the interposing object, and when we look through the bright optic glass we discern the glory to be revealed, and anticipate it with joyous confidence. Knowledge supplies us reasons for patience. How shall we have patience unless we know something of the sympathy of Christ, and understand the good which is to come out of the correction which our heavenly Father sends us? Nor is there one single grace of the Christian which, under God, will not be fostered and brought to perfection by holy knowledge. How important, then, is it that we should grow not only in grace, but in the “knowledge” of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. (Spurgeon, C. H. (2006). Morning and evening: Daily readings (Complete and unabridged; New modern edition.). Peabody, MA: Hendrickson Publishers.)
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