Teach Me to Pray - Week #18: Prayer and Love

The fourteenth chapter of Andrew Murray's book, Teach Me to Pray, focuses on the imperative that we love others if our prayers are to be effective. Murray particularly underscores forgiving others and being a person with a disposition of forgiveness.

"And when you stand praying, if you hold anything against anyone, forgive him, so that your Father in heaven may forgive you your sins." Mark 11:25

"Prayer from a heart that is not right - either with God or with others - cannot prevail. Faith and love are essential to each other." (Matthew 5:23,24; 6:12; 6:15; 18:35)

"Every prayer rests upon our faith in God's pardoning grace. If God dealt with us according to our sins, not one prayer would be heard."

Over the years I have come to realize that the true follower of Jesus must become increasingly good at forgiving. I say this because the more alive I am in God, the more aware I am of my own heart and how it can shut down quickly over slight offenses that a day brings if I'm not quick to release the perceived offender from my judgment. Most days bring some kind of small, if not large, offense that I get to choose my heart response to.

To live a lifestyle of forgiving and receiving forgiveness requires the grace and power of the Spirit of Jesus. In recent years I've attempted to make a habit of fairly regularly holding my heart before the Lord and asking Him to show me if there has been anything in the past day or so that I was hurt or offended by; if He highlights something (I don't try to make things up but simply wait to see if He surfaces anything to my mind), I take the time to talk it out and process the experience with Him, being honest about how I felt when it happened. Then I consciously release the "offender" from my judgment of him/her in my heart and ask the Lord to forgive me for anything He shows me in which I sinned.

Most of the ongoing offenses of life (whether I'm the perpetrator or the recipient) don't need to be processed with the person involved because often they are unaware of what happened. But it's important to process the little offenses with the Lord so that they don't fester inside and eventually become bitterness and poison.

Just this week I was talking over a situation with the Lord and realized that when it took place, I had not been honest with Him and with myself about my emotions over the incident. My logic argued that there were good reasons for what had happened (and there really were good reasons), but that didn't change the fact that I had felt hurt by the incident. All I needed to do was to be honest with the Lord, forgive and release those I had unconsciously held responsible (even though my head said they weren't responsible), and then ask the Lord to cleanse me of unforgiveness and to expand my capacity to love and forgive quickly.

When you practice this regularly, it doesn't take a lot of time because you aren't dealing with a backlog of offenses, and you begin to be a person, like Murray says, "of a forgiving disposition." I want to get better and better at forgiving; I want to be increasingly aware by the Spirit of what I have been forgiven so that I become a "hilarious" forgiver - not simply in theory but in truth.

I'll close this by quoting a portion of this chapter that is very well put by the author:

"Our frame of mind in the hour of prayer is judged by God against the total frame of mind of our ordinary daily life of which that hour is but a...part. Not the feeling I muster up in prayer but the tone of my life during the day is God's criterion of what I really am and desire...Not only the distinct consciousness of anything wrong between my neighbor and myself, but also the ordinary current of my thinking and judging, or unloving thoughts and words I allow to pass unnoticed, can hinder my prayer. The effective prayer of faith comes from a life surrendered to the will and the love of God...Love is the only soil in which faith can put down its roots and thrive."

May the Holy Spirit teach us what true love for God and for others is.

Dear Spirit of Jesus, the One Who freely forgave me when I was His enemy and Who continues to forgive me, would You reveal the cross to me in such a way that I am increasingly empowered to love and forgive others, thereby releasing them to You and Your perfect ways. Thank You that You love to do this for Your own. In Jesus' name. Amen.