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!