March 3, 2002

PRAYERS - the Disciples, the Lord, and Paul

Matthew 6, John 17, Ephesians 1,3,6

   No Bible passage is repeated more than the so-called Lord's Prayer. Yet the verses preceding this prayer discourage such practice, "use not vain repetitions as the heathen do..." (Mt. 6:7). The Lord before His crucifixion told them, "hitherto you have asked nothing in My name" (John 16:24). This prayer was only a model to accompany His presentation of the Kingdom as He instructed His disciples to pray for the kingdom He was proclaiming. They were to pray for the success and work toward that same goal. "As in heaven" God's will was to be done on earth. Their asking for daily bread reminds us of the Manna sent each day and that they did not live by that alone but by every word of God. Forgiveness, deliverance from trial, and rescue from the evil one were the burdens, for His was the kingdom, power and glory.

   But in the Lord's own prayer in John 17 He first prays for Himself, for the accomplishment of His ministry and the restoration of His glory (17:1-5). Then He prays for His own, especially the apostles. He had manifested the Father and given them His word. For that moment His prayer focused on them, and not on the world. He mentioned having kept all except for Judas, the son of perdition. The Father is asked to watch over them and keep them because of the Lord's soon absence. They would be hated by Israel just as He had been. Then He prays for converts through their ministry and finally that the world ( Israel ) would believe He had been sent by God, and that they would know that He had loved them.

   But Paul prayed that believers would "know what is the hope of His calling, and what is the riches of the glory of His inheritance in the saints, and what is the exceeding greatness of His power toward us...according to the working of His mighty power...when He raised Christ from the dead, and seated Him at God's own right hand in the heavenly places far above all the hosts of heaven and gave Him as Head over all things to the church, His body. He prayed that God would grant us...to be strengthened with His power by the Spirit in the inner man, that Christ may dwell in our hearts by faith, that we would be rooted and grounded in love." Paul's prayers are our model.

Ivan L. Burgener