Lesson 5

1 Thessalonians 5:16-18 Matthew 7:7-11 Matthew 26:36-45

Prayer is the believer's supply line. The Bible is God's communication to us; prayer is our response to Him. From His Word we receive instructions and encouragement. From our prayers, He receives our thanks and our requests. Until the line of communication with God is open two ways, our relationship with Him will never be what it is intended to be.

"Pray without ceasing" does not mean that we are to pray non-stop 24 hours a day. The phrase literally says that prayer should be like a hacking cough. Anyone who has ever had a stiff winter cold knows that a hacking cough seems to be always right below the surface, ready to erupt.

We should pray to God throughout the day in the same way that we would talk with a close friend. When two people who know each other well work together, they start a conversation in the morning that lasts all day. The talk will not be continuous; there may be long periods of silence during which they may communicate with only looks or gestures. In the course of a day, their conversation may cover a hundred topics--politics, the meaning of life, what to have for lunch, the colors in a beautiful sunset.

When we finally realize that God is the best friend we have, our prayer life starts to take on this kind of flavor. We come to understand that there is nothing in our lives that we should not pray about. The more we listen to God by studying the Word, the better we understand His character; the better we understand His character, the more clearly we realize that there is nothing that we cannot rejoice in and give thanks about.

Communication is the key to a healthy relationship in the physical realm. Even so, our verbal exchanges with other people are never quite what we want them to be. Not one of us is able to fully express what we think or how we feel. Not one of us is able to fully understand or appreciate the thoughts and feelings that others try to explain to us. So in the physical realm there is always a certain amount of frustration and unfulfilment in relationships.

In the spiritual realm we have potential for clear and fulfilling communication, for both understanding and being understood. God's Word to us is perfect. Through the inspiration of the Holy Spirit it was perfectly communicated in exactly the form that we need. When we study, the Holy Spirit will enlighten the eyes of our heart so that we can understand what God is saying to us from this Passage on this day.

The apostle Paul subordinated everything in his life to one goal: "that I may know Him" (Phil 3:10). This greatest of all the apostles counted everything else in life as skor, "dung," compared to "the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord" (Phil, 3:8).

There is no higher knowledge in life than the knowledge of God. It is God’s desire that we understand Him and that this understanding give us the courage to conquer, as the heroes of Hebrews 11 conquered, by seeing Him who is unseen (Heb. 11:27). As we learn to concentrate our thoughts on the essence and the attributes of God rather than on ourselves and our circumstances, we gradually come to realize that we could not possibly ever have a problem that He cannot solve We begin to understand that werdo:not ah~iys have to know what God is doing; we only have to know that He knows what He is doing.

1. Sovereignty (Dan. 4:34-35). God’s divine will is above every will; He always has everything under control. He, as Creator, is king, ruler over alt His creation. He has assigned to every living thing its place in the universe and the scope of its freedom and authority. If we know this to be true, then we should be able in the midst of the most difficult circum stances, in the darkest times of our lives, to give thanks to Him. Only when we acknowledge His sovereignty and yield ourselves to it can we rest, knowing that we occupy the only safe place in the universe—the center of His will (Pss. 46:10, 97:1; 1 Cor. 15:25; Jude 25).
2. Righteousness (Ps. 145:17). God is absolute righteousness, perfect goodness. It is impossible for Him to do anything wrong. He is holy and free from sin or wrong, guiltless. He is absolutely righteous both In His person (James 1:17; 1 John 1 5) and in His ways (Rorn 3.25 26) He cannot look upon or have fellowship with that which is anything less than absolute righteousness. Because He is perfect and right, His plan is perfect and right. If we understand this, then we should realize that whatever He does or allows in our lives is perfect be cause It Is part of His perfect plan and His perfect person. If we know that He can never make a mistake with us, we can be thankful in all things (Gen. 18:25; Pss. 11:7, 71:24, 111:3; Jer. 23:6).
3. Justice (Deut. 32:4). God is absolutely just; it is impossible for Him to do anything unfair. By virtue of His being the Creator, God has the absolute right of authority over His creatures, He has given to man fair and righteous laws which every one of us has broken (Rom. 3:23). God’s righteousness demands that disobedience against His laws be punished. •God’s justice fulfilled that demand when God the Son on the cross took the punishment for all men’s sin and disobedience. Because of this, God is just (fair and right) to forgive anyone who accepts Christ’s provision. He is also just to condemn anyone who rejects His provision. God’s justice will see to it that everything that falls in line with His righteousness will be blessed and everything that does not will be cursed. Understanding God’s justice should not only give us the constant assurance that even if the world treats us unfairly, God never will, but it should also remind us that He—who is the only one who knows all the facts—will always discipline the unbelief of His children and reward the faith of His children in His perfect time (Matt. 5:45; 1 Pet. 1:17; James 3:17).
4. Love (1 John 4:8, 16). Agape, the love that is part of the essence of God, is nothing like the love that man produces. God’s love is part of His eternal Being and thus can never be increased, diminished, or changed. Long before God created anything, love existed among the three Persons of the Trinity. The love that God extends to man is an impersonal love in the sense that it is not based on the goodness or integrity of the person who is the object of love, but on the goodness and integrity of God. God does not love us because of who we are, but because of who He is. The love of God extended to man is not an emotion or a feeling. It is a divine passion for the ultimate good of men, It is not passive; it is active, It is not casual; it is sacrificial. God’s love is exemplified in John 3:16 and Romans 5:8 God Himself was the initiator He made the ultimate sacrifice not for those who were eager and ready to know and serve Him but for those in rebellion for enemies If we understand this love of God we know that no matter how lonely or isolated or forsaken we may feel God loves us If God is love then whatever happens to us is an expression of His love (Eph. 2:4; 1 John 3:1, 4:9, 16)
5. Eternal Life (1 Tim. 1:17) God always has existed and always wilt exist He is the source of all life He is not subject to time because He existed before time was and is in fact the inventor of time Therefore God always sees everything from the eternal perspective He always has our welfare in view not only for time but also for eternity If we understand this we can be thankful under any circumstances because we know absolutely that God is working for our eternal good (Ps. 111:3; Isa. 9:6; 2 Pet. 3:8)
6. Omniscience (1 John 3 20) All knowledge belongs to God He knows everything past, present and future everything actual and everything possible He also understands all things He has known and understood everything forever He cannot be confused or surprised. Nothing is news to God. If we understand that God is omniscient, then we will always know that a wisdom greater than our own is in control of circumstances and situations. We will always know where to go with our questions and problems (Job 42:2; Ps. 139:3; Rom. 8:27; Heb. 4:13).
7. Omnipotence (Rev. 19:6). God is infinitely, awesomely powerful. He is able to accomplish anything that He wills, but He never abuses His power and He never wills to accomplish anything contrary to His holy nature. If we understand this, then we need never doubt His ability to keep His promises, to answer our prayers, or to carry out His plan. We can be thankful in the face of our own weakness, because we know His strength (Gen. 18:14; Job 26:14; Ps. 62:11; Isa. 26:4; Col. 1:11).
8. Omnipresence (Jer. 23:24). God is always in all places. He fills the entire universe. This means He can see and hear everything all the time and is always present in every circumstance of our lives. Because God is omnipotent and omnipresent and independent of time, He always has time for everyone. He can give full attention to each of us as if we were the only person on earth. If we understand this, then we know with absolute certainty that we are never alone, never outside the sphere of His care (Ps. 139:3,7-10; Prov. 15:3).
9. Immutability (Heb. 13:8). God has never changed and will never change. He can neither increase nor decrease. His essence and attributes will always remain the same, no matter what. If we understand this, then we can rest in the fact that no matter how inconsistent or unstable or undependable we are, God will always be consistent, stable, dependable. When we feel like He no longer loves us or does not understand us or cannot help us, we can ignore our feelings because we know the fact of His immutability (Mat. 3:6; Heb. 1:12; James 1:17).
10. Veracity (Ps. 33:4). Because God is truth itself, He always acts in veracity ("devotion to the truth" or "truthfulness") and in faithfulness toward man. Because it is impossible for God to lie, we know that His every word to us is true. The Bible is God’s revelation of truth to man. We can always depend on His Word. If we know that God is true and that His Word is true, and if we claim His promises, then the essence of God will become a source of encouragement to us. We will be able to pray in faith, to pray without ceasing, and to pray with thanksgiving (Num. 23:19: Ps. 57:3;100:5; 119:160).

To help young people commit the essence of God to memory, Gary Horton, former Army Ranger and now a youth missionary, composed the following sentence. Each large letter is the first letter in one of the ten attributes of God.

Stop and

Remember

Jesus’

Love, then

Every

Obstacle will become an

Opportunity for you to drive

On

In

Victory

When we pray, the Holy Spirit will intercede on our behalf to the Father, expressing those things for which we cannot find words (Rom. 8:26). And, if we have stored Scripture in our hearts, the Spirit will be able to recall to our minds the words of God that we need at just the moment we need them. We have in the Christian way of life a perfect system. As long as we rely on the filling of the Holy Spirit, that system cannot fail.

It has been said that prayer is the gymnasium of the soul. The fourth-century church father Augustine said: "Pray as if everything depended on God, and then work as if everything depended on you." His dictum is a summary of the Lord's instructions to the disciples in Matthew 7.

The Lord gives three commands and three promises: If we C ask, God will answer; if we seek, we will find; if we knock, God will open the door.

God wants to answer prayer. To illustrate that point, Jesus uses the analogy of a hungry child asking his father for food. The child makes a request. The parent is evil, but out of that evil parent comes a good gift. Why? The parent loves the child and love can bring even from those who are evil, relative good.

Now think of God, who is absolute good. Why is it that we think that the God who is righteous, just, and perfect in every way would give us anything less than the best? How could we imagine that He would be less concerned and less gracious with us than we are with our children?

Each of the three promises Jesus makes in regard to prayer is conditional. Each is based on our obeying an imperative, a command from the Lord Himself.

Sometimes naming our requests to God is easy; sometimes it is impossible. In those times when we do not know what to say, God the Holy Spirit steps in to communicate for us (Rom. 8:26). He knows our need. He knows the proper request to make.

"Ask" here is in present tense, referring to continuous action in the present time. This means that we are to keep on asking; we are to be persistent. But when God answers, will we be listening?

When we ask, it should be because we want answers. If we really want answers, we must study. We should always listen for a correlation between the things we pray for and the things that God talks to us about from the Word. When we study, when we sit in Bible class, we should be alert to the fact that the information we are receiving may in fact be the answer to the things we have asked in prayer.

When we have made a request of God, we must maintain the spiritual desire to obtain the answer. Sometimes, after we pray, the situation we are praying about worsens; it begins to look impossible. God lets that happen often because He wants to know if we believe His promise and are going to follow through.

If we pray for someone else, do we really want that person to obtain what we have asked for? If so, are we willing to seek to fulfill that request ourselves? God does answer prayer, but He most often does it--like all of the other miraculous things He performs--through human flesh, through believers, the hands and feet of Jesus Christ on earth.

When we pray that someone else will be strengthened and then we do not go to strengthen that person, or write a letter, or make a phone call, then we have not sought and our prayer is lazy. When we pray that God will provide for a needy family and we do not give from our store of food or money, then we have not sought and our prayer is lazy. God may answer our prayer, but He will do it through someone else, and we will not be able to enter into the joy and reward of being part of the answer.

A person who wrestles in prayer will never be inactive in life. He will always be involved to the maximum, because he believes in the power of prayer and in the power of God. He believes that if he asks for something, God may choose to use him as the vessel for fulfilling his own prayer.

We knock in regard to pursuit. Do we pursue the fulfillment for what we have asked for and sought? We knock in the area of practical application. We keep knocking and knock more force fully. Why? Because we really want what we are asking for. Anything in life that comes without persistence is not worth very much.

All of us have probably at some point in life said, "The pain is so great I feel like I am dying. That is exactly how the Lord Jesus Christ felt on this night in the Garden of Gethsemane. He felt unspeakable grief and distress. What did He do in response to the feelings? He did two things that should be an example to us. First, He prayed about His own situation. Second, He asked other people to pray in His behalf.

Think about the fact that the Lord Jesus Christ Himself asked for prayer support. And after He had opened His heart to His friends and asked them to watch and pray for just a while, He went aside to talk to the Father Himself. When He returned to the disciples, He found them fervently praying. Is that what Matthew says? No. Three times Jesus went aside to pray, and three times He returned to find them sleeping.

When He first found them asleep, He warned them to pray for themselves, that they would not enter into temptation. But they didn't listen. And because Peter, James, and John did not wrestle in their prayer, their rest was soon to be interrupted. If we rest before we wrestle, we will never be rested enough.

When we cannot pray anything else, there are two prayers that are always right and always fitting and always honoring to God. One is Thank you" (Ps. 50:23; 1 Thess. 5:18; Eph. 5:20). The other is "Thy will be done" (Matt. 6:10, 26:39).

Prayer is like a lamp. We can turn it on and off, on and off, but if it is not plugged in to the power source, if it is not energized, nothing will happen. Every prayer we pray is either energized or it is not. When it is, we are letting loose an earthshaking power.

James 5:16 tells us that "the effective prayer of a righteous man can accomplish much." A better translation of that would be: "the energized prayer of any believer has great power." The word "effective" comes from energeo, the root of our word "energy;" it means "to energize." The word "accomplish" is ischuos, the strongest of five Greek words for power. It means "applied power, demonstrated power." God will demonstrate His power through the energized prayer of His children.

The "righteous man" is anyone who has been imputed with the righteousness of Jesus Christ. Because we are in Christ, we have access to God 24 hours a day for the rest of our lives (Heb. 4:16). In James 5:17, the Lord’s brother reinforces the principle that anyone’s prayers can be powerful when he says that "Elijah was a man with a nature like ours." That is an extremely important little statement. It tells us that the prophet Elijah, known among the Jews for his phenomenal prayer power and prayer ministry, was a natural human being. He had a sin nature; he struggled with areas of weakness; he knew what it was like to sin and to fail. But his prayer power was not based on anything in Elijah; it was based on God.

So, how can we "energize" our prayers? Every time we stop to pray, we should ask ourselves two questions:

1. Am I in fellowship (Eph. 6:18)? Sin throws up a barrier between God and us and short-circuits our prayer (Isa. 59:2). Self-examination and confession removes the barrier and restores us to fellowship (1 John 1:9, 3:21-22). If we have unconfessed sins in our lives, if we are not filled with the Spirit, our prayers are works of the flesh and have absolutely no power.

2. Am I praying according to the will of God (John 15:7; 1 John 5:14-15)? How do we pray according to His will? We have to know His Word. Lack of study will rob us of the ability to pray effectively. Jesus said that whatever we ask in faith, we will receive. But what is "faith"? It is a response to God’s Word. We cannot ask for something in faith unless the Word of God declares that what we ask is the wilt of God. When we know the Word and our will is in line with His will, then our prayer will be powerful prayer.

Paul tells us in Colossians 4:2 to devote ourselves to prayer, "keeping alert in it with an attitude of thanksgiving." There are five dangers to which we should be alert: failure to confess (Isa. 59:2), failure to study (John 15:7), failure to obey (1 John 3:22; 1 Pet. 3:7), failure to ask according to God’s will (1 John 5:14-15), and infiltration of personal lusts (James 4:2-3)

If we are alert to those dangers and can say "yes" to those two questions, we can pray in faith-rest, knowing that what we ask will be done in God’s perfect time. Jesus Himself said in John 15:7, "If you abide in Me, and My words abide in you, ask whatever you wish, and it shall be done for you."

1 Thessalonians 5:16-18

Unit 2, Lesson 5

2. Explain the command to "pray without ceasing."

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3. To what did Jesus compare prayer in Matthew 7:7-11?

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4. What are the tree promises and the three conditions to those promises in Matthew 7:7-8?

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5. What is the difference between asking, seeking, and knocking?

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6. What two prayers are always right and always honoring to God?

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7. Name ten characteristics of the essence of God and explain the meaning of each.

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8. What is "energized prayer"? How can we know that our prayers are energized?

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9. How would you explain prayer and the priesthood of the believer to a friend? What Scriptures would you use to back it up?

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