Saturday March 3, 2007
Saturday of the First Week of Lent
March 3, 2007
“God will then raise you high in praise.”
Deuteronomy 26:19
____________________________________________________
What if heaven was set up with rooms according to the way we prayed the most in life so that when you died you would go there? Some speculate that the supplication room (praying for needs) would be packed full and the praise room would not have too many people there. What prayer room in heaven would you go to? In other words, is the center of your prayer supplication, intercession (praying for others), repentance, listening, adoration, praise, etc.?
I have been preaching on the importance of making Jesus big. What does that mean? Of course Jesus is big for he is the Lord God Almighty who takes away every sin and has defeated death. But it seems so many times that I see Christians who have little power for living the Good News. Jesus and his joy and life and freedom seem buried under the weight of so many people’s worlds. Often I think we give the problems all the honor and glory and they become bigger and bigger instead of giving our all-powerful Jesus all the honor and glory so that we can know just how big he is. Thus, when we, in a sense, pray to our problems and not to Jesus, our problems become magnified and Jesus gets smaller in our lived experience.
Let us go back to the supplication room example. There is nothing wrong with praying for all our problems and needs but there can be a tendency with this type of prayer to focus on our problems and not Jesus. In other words, we spend our time, focus and energy in prayer on problems instead of Jesus. The problems get the attention and glory and the one who can do something about the problems gets left out of the mix.
A crucial question to ask of ourselves about prayer is, “Where do we start with our prayer? Do we start out with God or do we start out with ourselves and all our problems?” A great quote that we would all do well to move towards in our prayer is, “It is time to stop telling God how big our problems are and start telling our problems how big our God is.” And how do we make Jesus and God big and our problems small? We praise Jesus. We praise him with all our hearts and he comes with power in the midst of that praise to heal, bind up, release, forgive, save, and let us see his glory.
Praise allows Jesus to be the starting point and center of our prayer. And we need Jesus’ power for living. Praise him and he will manifest his power and all the problems will get smaller.
Live the confronted life!
+Fr. John
I have been preaching on the importance of making Jesus big. What does that mean? Of course Jesus is big for he is the Lord God Almighty who takes away every sin and has defeated death. But it seems so many times that I see Christians who have little power for living the Good News. Jesus and his joy and life and freedom seem buried under the weight of so many people’s worlds. Often I think we give the problems all the honor and glory and they become bigger and bigger instead of giving our all-powerful Jesus all the honor and glory so that we can know just how big he is. Thus, when we, in a sense, pray to our problems and not to Jesus, our problems become magnified and Jesus gets smaller in our lived experience.
Let us go back to the supplication room example. There is nothing wrong with praying for all our problems and needs but there can be a tendency with this type of prayer to focus on our problems and not Jesus. In other words, we spend our time, focus and energy in prayer on problems instead of Jesus. The problems get the attention and glory and the one who can do something about the problems gets left out of the mix.
A crucial question to ask of ourselves about prayer is, “Where do we start with our prayer? Do we start out with God or do we start out with ourselves and all our problems?” A great quote that we would all do well to move towards in our prayer is, “It is time to stop telling God how big our problems are and start telling our problems how big our God is.” And how do we make Jesus and God big and our problems small? We praise Jesus. We praise him with all our hearts and he comes with power in the midst of that praise to heal, bind up, release, forgive, save, and let us see his glory.
Praise allows Jesus to be the starting point and center of our prayer. And we need Jesus’ power for living. Praise him and he will manifest his power and all the problems will get smaller.
Live the confronted life!
+Fr. John
posted by Patti @ 6:18 AM
0 comments
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home