Confidence before God

This week I'm going to step away from Murray's book on prayer and share some thoughts about confidence before God.

I heard a young preacher (who is an intercessor) say recently that if he had to put prayer into one word, it would be "confidence." That really struck me and goes well with what Andrew Murray teaches on prayer. When we have confidence before God in prayer, we pray in faith, and it's faith with which He partners in the answering of prayer.

So how do we gain confidence before God?

As believers in Jesus Christ, we know that His blood is our solid ground for confidence before the holy God. Oswald Chambers says, "We are acceptable to God not because we have obeyed, nor because we have promised to give up things, but because of the death of Christ, and for no other reason." But it's possible to have entered into a genuine relationship with God because of Jesus' blood and not live and move and pray with confidence before God as a lifestyle. One major obstacle to this is a mistaken view of God's character and nature and our need for revelation of the Father.

Religion has taught us (me, at least) that God is difficult to please, demanding and impatient with our slowness and weakness as humans. We wouldn't necessarily say it in these words, but our lack of confidence with Him shows that we see Him as Someone like this.

In recent years I've realized how much I've related with God in a Master-servant relationship, or a Boss-worker relationship. Both of these are valid metaphors for our relationship with God, but they aren't the primary relationship that the Scriptures present. As we draw near the end of the age, I believe the Holy Spirit is going to awaken His people to the reality of relating with God as sons of God and the bride of Christ.

As the Holy Spirit fully unveils the Father heart and the Bridegroom heart of God, believers will gain increasing confidence before Him. We will see with greater clarity the extravagance of love and affection that He has for His own. We will understand that He's not an impatient perfectionist who is never satisfied, but rather a kind Father who loves our desire to love and serve Him, even thought it's far from perfect. Even His discipline of us will be seen in the beauty of His unwavering zeal and affection for us. All of this will give us confidence before Him and we will partner with Him in prayer that is filled with faith and assurance that He hears and answers.

I John 2:28 teaches us that this kind of confidence before God comes through abiding in Him, and abiding in and with Him becomes easier as we think rightly about Him.

Years ago I read an article by A.W. Tozer entitled, "God is Easy to Live With." The title says it all! God, the holy all-consuming Fire, is our Father. I'm discovering that the more I dare to believe and receive the truths related to His nature as Father and as Bridegroom, the more I desire to be like Him and to live uprightly before Him. The correct kind of confidence that comes with this understanding creates in me greater motivation and desire to walk humbly with Him and with my brothers and sisters.

Lord, the truth of what You are really like is so beyond our natural ability to receive that we ask You to send Your Spirit afresh upon our hearts and minds to empower us to say "yes!" to You, the real Lord. Come Holy Spirit and continue to reveal the true Jesus and the Father to us as we seek Your face. Fill us with understanding of Your nature so that we stand before You in confidence in prayer and in all areas of our life. Thank You that You want this infinitely more than we do and that You, Jesus, are praying for this! We love You, Lord...

Teach Me to Pray - Week #26: The Word and Prayer

"If you abide in Me, and My words abide in you, ask whatever you wish, and it shall be done for you." John 15:7

Quoting a new convert, Murray says, "When I pray, I speak to my Father; when I read, my Father speaks to me. Before prayer, it is God's Word that prepares me for it by revealing what the Father has told me to ask. In prayer, it is God's Word that strengthens me by giving my faith its ground for asking."

This is a wonderful chapter and underscores what I've been learning over the past 10 years or so about the importance of praying the Word. As one of my mentors in the faith has said, praying the Scripture in faith is like putting the second signature on a check that requires two signatures in order to cash it. The prayers in the Word already have God's signature on them (He wrote them); but He looks for our agreement with His own prayers as the second signature that releases the fulfillment of what is being asked for.

"Prayer is not a monologue but a dialogue...Listening to God's voice is the secret of the assurance that He will listen to mine...His listening will depend on ours. To the degree that His words find entrance into my heart will my words find effect with Him."

It's through words that a person reveals himself. If he makes a promise, he is giving himself away, binding himself to the person he has spoken to. "It is through the words of a man, heard and accepted, held fast and obeyed, that he can impart himself to another. On a human level, all this is done in a very relative and limited sense. But when God, the infinite Being, in whom is life and power, spirit and truth...speaks Himself into His words, He really gives Himself, His love and His life, His will and His power, to those who receive the words in a comprehensive way. In every promise He includes Himself that we may lay hold of it with confidence; in every command He puts Himself that we might share with Him His will, His holiness, His perfection. In God's Word God gives us Himself. His Word is nothing less than the eternal Son, Jesus Christ..."

Murray goes on to talk about how the ability to speak is connected with the ability to hear. A child that can't hear isn't able to speak properly. This is true in our relationship with God; if we don't hear Him, we don't know how to pray to Him rightly. The primary way that we hear from Him is through His Word by His Spirit.

But Murray makes a strong point of saying that hearing God in His Word is much more than doing careful study of the Word (which is important but not to be confused with hearing God's voice in His Word). "There may be study and knowledge of the Word in which there is very little real fellowship with the living God. But there is also a reading of the Word in the very presence of the Father and under the leading of the Spirit, in which the Word becomes to us a living power from God Himself...It is on hearing this voice that the power both to obey and to believe depends...It is only in the full presence of God that disobedience and unbelief become impossible."

God's words abiding in us implies that they are fully accepted into our will and life and "reproduced in our disposition and conduct". Being immersed in His Word (which implies intimate fellowship with the living Word) is imperative if we are to grow in faith in our prayer life. The more we are in fellowship with Him in His Word, the more we will hear Him speaking to us during the day when we are not reading His Word. We find Him speaking throughout the day through our thoughts that are filled with His Word.

"Nothing but the word coming to us from God's mouth can make us strong. By that we must live..."

A couple of simple things that help me approach the Word of God in a lifegiving way are the following:
1) I consider the Bible God's love letter to me; all through it He is communicating His desire for intimate fellowship with weak humans, with me. When I approach the Word through this lens, it becomes life and food to me.
2) It helps to continually remind myself that Jesus is the Word of the Father, so the written word cannot be separated from a Person. When I approach the Scriptures, it is with a consciousness that I am approaching a Person Who cannot be manipulated. When we see the Scriptures as simply words on a page of paper, we can make them say almost anything we want if we're clever enough; but when it's the Living Word of God, Jesus Who gave Himself for me, then there is desire for relationship, not merely knowledge with which to win an argument.

As the days intensify and we draw closer to the end of the age when wickedness will increase in unimaginable ways, we must be people who know our God intimately, which means we hear and understand His voice and pray accordingly. May His Word quickened to us by His Spirit be our bread and strength in increasing measure.

Lord, I ask that Your Word and Your Spirit within me would radiate up throughout my entire being, causing me to have a quickened mind, a cleansed imagination, whole emotions, and a strengthened will that is aligned with Yours. Forgive me for being more interested in talking to You and not as much in listening to what You have to say to me..."Deliver me from the uncircumcised ear. Give me the opened ear of the learner, awakened morning by morning to hear the Father's voice." May Your word abide in me in reality so that whatever I wish, I may ask for and receive. Thank You, Lord, that you are doing this in and for me!

Teach Me to Pray - Week #25: The All-Inclusive Condition

"If you abide in me, and my words abide in you, ask whatever you wish, and it shall be done for you." John 15:7

The one simple condition to Jesus' promise is that we abide in Him and His words in us. "To be in Him is the way to have our prayers heard."

In this wonderful chapter on abiding in the Lord, Murray points out that when we are growing in abiding in Christ, the first stage is the stage of faith: "...his aim is simply to believe that just as he knows he is in Christ, so in spite of failure, abiding in Christ is his immediate duty and within his reach. He is especially occupied with the love, power, and faithfulness of the Savior."

But true faith always expresses itself in obedience, and so as we grow in faith in Jesus' love and power and faithfulness, we recognize the importance of obedience to whatever the abiding Lord tells us: "Obedience and faith must go together...Faith is active in obedience in the home; then obedience is faith stepping out to do His will...The peace that as a young or weak disciple he could enjoy in believing now evades him. It is in practical obedience that the abiding must be maintained: 'If you obey my commands, you will remain in my love.'...Now in this stage his chief effort is to unite his will with the will of his Lord and allow the heart and the life to be brought entirely under His rule."

Murray continues by saying that as faith increasingly expresses itself in obedience, we cling to the Lord in love; the inner life grows in its capacity to receive the life and spirit of the glorified Lord. We become more and more aware of the abiding presence of God in us (John 14:20).

"To those who abide like this, the promise comes as their rightful heritage: Ask whatever you wish. It cannot be otherwise. Christ has full possession of them. Christ dwells in their love, their will, their life. Not only has their will been given up but Christ has entered it. There He dwells and breathes into it His Spirit. He whom the Father hears, prays through them. What they ask will be done for them."

In the last part of this chapter Murray says two things that I want to underscore:
1. Our focus should not be so much on the abiding as on Him to whom the abiding links us. "Let it be Him, the whole Christ, in His obedience and humiliation, in His exaltation and power, in whom our soul moves and acts. He Himself will fulfill His promise in us." I have found this to be absolutely critical in order to walk well with the Lord Jesus! My focus must be primarily on Him and all that is true of Him or I will not abide (stay with Him) when the pressures come.
2. We must exercise our right to receive answers to whatever we ask when we are so united with Him in heart and mind and will. I've been challenged to be more active in taking hold of what is mine in Christ Jesus in the area of answers to my prayers. Murray expresses strong disagreement with our tendency to make up reasons why we don't have answers to our prayers and points out that if you gather together all that Jesus taught on prayer, you will find that He never taught that we should not expect prayer to be answered. "It is not that Christ would have us count the gifts of higher value than the fellowship and favor of the Father, but the Father intends the answer to be the token of His favor and of the reality of our fellowship with Him (II Samuel 14:22)."

The final sentence in this chapter is the following: "Prayer that is spiritually in union with Jesus is always answered."

Lord, I ask that You would open our eyes to Your beauty and power and desire; anoint the eyes of our heart to see You and empower us to focus on You and Your life dwelling within. Help us catch a glimpse of Your burning passion to live Your life in and through us and thereby may we find the divine power to live aligned with Your will. Come Holy Spirit of God and do this for us, and then help us take hold of and claim that which is rightly ours by virtue of the blood of Jesus through faith and obedience. May You be honored and glorified through continual answered prayer and may others begin to see Your favor upon us because of Your activity in response to prayer. Thank You, Lord, that You are doing this, in Jesus' name!

Teach Me to Pray - Week #24: The Chief End of Prayer

"I am going to the Father. And I will do whatever you ask in my name, so that the Son may bring glory to the Father." John 14:12,13

"That the Son may bring glory to the Father...Every answer to prayer He (Jesus) gives will have this as its object; when there is no prospect of the Father being glorified, He will not answer."

John 6:38 gives us the keynote of Jesus' life: "I have come down from heaven not to do my will but to do the will of him who sent me." Jesus' greatest passion and desire is to glorify His Father, and He tells us that the way He will do this when He ascends to the Father will be through answering human prayers that are in agreement with the Father receiving glory.

Murray points out that this is a reality that divides soul and spirit, serving to discern the thoughts and intents of the human who is praying. "Jesus in His prayers on earth, in His intercession in heaven, and in His promise of an answer to our prayers, makes this His first object - the glory of His Father. Is it so with us? Or are self-interest and self-will the strongest motives that urge us to pray? Or, if not, do we have to confess that the distinct, conscious longing for the glory of the Father is not what animates our prayers?"

As I was reading this chapter, I paused and cried out to the Lord that He would burn this desire more deeply into me. As a sincere follower of His, I certainly want His glory in my prayers but I recognize that I need this to thoroughly fill my heart and mind and being, not only in prayer but in all areas of my living.

In fact, Murray goes on to say that it is only as we live all of life for His honor and glory that we can hope to pray with His glory as our chief desire and purpose. "Only when the whole life, in all its parts, is surrendered to God's glory can we really pray to His glory. 'Do it all for the glory of God' (I Cor. 10:31), and 'Ask all to the glory of God' - these twin commands are inseparable. Obedience to the former is the secret of grace for the latter."

Living in such a way is not possible through our own efforts. Only in Jesus do we see such living, but the good news is that He dwells in us by His Spirit; as He increases in us and we decrease, Jesus teaches us to live and pray in Him to the glory of the Father. His increased presence within us comes through simple, daily obedience to Him in all areas of our life.

When we pray with lesser motives than God's glory, our prayers can't be answered; and when prayers aren't answered, God cannot be glorified! "How humbling that so often our joy or pleasure in prayer for someone or something is far stronger than our yearning for God's glory. No wonder there are so many unanswered prayers."

Faith is willing to give up all lesser motives so that the Father will be glorified in answered prayer. How often I have prayed wanting relief from the pressure and pain that comes from seeing others in pain. The Lord understands this human tendency but He comes with great grace to teach us to pray without mixture of motives, making our requests and interceding with thanksgiving and for His glory and praise. I'm learning to draw on His grace a day at a time to live with the pressures and pain while I cry out in prayer for Him to act in such a way that He will receive glory, even if that means I must wait longer in the pressure of pain.

Murray says that the way we attain to living and praying for God's glory is through confession of our sin in this. "Let us wait on God in prayer until the Holy Spirit reveals it to us and we see how we have sinned in this regard. True knowledge and confession of sin is the sure path to deliverance."

"Blessed Lord Jesus, I come again to you. Every lesson you teach convinces me more deeply how little I know how to pray in the right way. But every lesson also inspires me with hope that you are going to teach me and that you are teaching me not only what prayer should be but also how to pray as I ought...Teach me also to live and to pray to the glory of God. To this end I yield myself to you again...I have given self to death as already crucified with you. Through the Spirit, self's workings have come to nothing. Your life and your love of the Father are taking possession of me. A new longing begins to fill my soul that every day, every hour, in every prayer, the glory of the Father may be everything to me. Lord, I am in your school to learn this. Teach me...Lord, show me your glory. Let it overshadow me. Let it fill the temple of my heart. Let me dwell in it as revealed in Christ. Fulfill in me your own good pleasure...Amen."