Prayer: Our Conversations With God
Prayer is and always will be a conversation that we have with God, and whoever controls the language and speech concerning the issues of life, controls the conversation. God's deity and character controls the conversations we have with Him. His holiness controls our approach to Him in prayer.
We should be learning how to respect His holiness and know that He is holy, and how to approach Him in purity. We draw nigh to Him in imputed righteousness given to us by and through the Lord Jesus Christ. We acknowledge the blood that Jesus Christ shed for us to enter the place of prayer. Prayer is a royal palace, we change raiment to enter prayer, we go from rags to riches in one second.
Prayer is the only conversation that I know of that unrighteousness cannot control and it is exclusively a conversation that we can have with the Heavenly Father. In peace and safety can we converse with God. Only righteousness can control this conversation. Righteousness is needed to have and hold this conversation with God. We must posture ourselves, who postures us? We posture ourselves with the assistance of the Word, Holy Spirit and Jesus Christ. We must set the right attitude of approach. A lot takes place during a day, I can't nor do I trust unrepentant sin. It has a foul odor. In prayer we should desire to be a fragrance and not an odor because we failed to repent before going into God's holy presence.
Prayer is a place of hearing as well. If hearing is not a part of prayer it is a lopsided relationship. It is truly a immature approach that lacks discernment and balance we need. We can't do all the talking or where is the hearing? Maturity silences the desire to do all the talking relationally. When we value who is speaking, listening produces hearing. We form many relationships in life, but if we do not listen to others or if we do all the talking in these relationships, are we really in an interactional relationship. The Scriptures break through barriers and we learn how to be still and know that He is God and that He is in control of our conversation with Him and how we hear Him. Prayer covers a lot of territory, we can be in the prayer mode reading the Bible, we are listening to hear what is the Spirit saying to us individually and collectively.
Prayer is the only conversation that we can trust to be done through righteous intentions and motives and produce righteous answers and results because they come from a righteous God. We should be ever thankful that we can pray. There was a story and video posted recently on my facebook page about a 5 year old little girl who bowed her head in the school cafeteria to say her grace over her food. She was told that it is not good to pray by an adult. The headlines were Teacher Tells Kindergartner, “It’s NOT Good To Pray” – The Little Girl Has This To Say! It is good to pray. Parents were shocked when their 5-year-old daughter began to tell them about a staff member that saw her praying. She was told to stop, “It is not good”. This goes on behind closed doors to children who do not understand this hostile language. This is an example of who controls the conversation on prayer in school, and how it is accepted as normal and has found its way to law. Even a child knows that prayer is important and that it is good.
The biblical story leading up to the intentions to build the tower of babel teaches that the whole earth was one language and one speech (Genesis 11). With one language and speech they desired to build a city and tower whose top reached heaven and to make a name for themselves. Sound familiar? One world system which excludes God, modern day babel. Who controls that conversation?
In this account to build a tower that reached heaven, it is both a silly and inane idea and attempt. Think about it, what stone and mortar tower consisting of bricks could men build and succeed which reached heaven, and who was behind their motives? Read Isaiah 14:12-18, and you will see that these men were not playing with a full deck because the deck was stacked against them.
Why a tower that reached heaven? These men didn't even have a relationship with the God of heaven, or I think a spiritual tower of prayer would have been what they would have desired to build. Our conversations with God build a spiritual tower that reaches heaven, but it is a legal and lawful one through Christ Jesus and His shed blood.
This is one of the reasons I appreciate the ministry of John the Baptist. REPENT! There are many reasons that I love John the Baptist, but repent for the kingdom is at hand: after 400 years had passed between the Book of Malachi until the prophet came on the scene makes me bow my heart. Can you in retrospect imagine a world without anyone but high priests making atonements once a year? People that sinned and never gave God a second thought were now being called, and are still being called to repent and turn to God. This was a time of great awakening after a time of prayerlessness. Can you see the privilege Jesus Christ purchased for us to have an one on one conversation with the Father? Teaching us how to pray and direct our speech and language for our conversation with the Heavenly Father to be a success. The Word of God counsels us to "Pray without ceasing" to pray without ceasing is going on right now in the here and now! There are redeemed believers who pray around the clock and take intercessory prayer seriously, because they realize the needs are great.
The world system and all who speak their language are no different than the babel dwellers; desiring to build cities, and towers and make to names for themselves. It is so interesting, that with one language and speech they wouldn't rather clear the atmosphere and build a prayer tower first; and receive God's permission and blueprint for all buildings in the earth, since they wanted to reach heaven. Go figure! Yet, God lets us know in no uncertain terms that nothing that would be imagined to do would be restrained. It spills over into our lives today's. Nothing that man imagines to do, does he have the power to restrain himself apart from God. It plays out in immoral and unethical behaviors and conducts and their rejection of a biblically informed lifestyle which pleases God. What did God do in response to their intentions, He confounded their language so that they couldn't understand each other therefore they couldn't control the conversation on how to contact heaven via a tower. The prayer tower would have been a much better idea, but that entails a spiritual tower with open portals of flowing living waters full of praise and worship of God as well.
We usually go through daily natural cleansing to face our day. We wash and groom our selves accordingly. It is no different to enter prayer. We let God know that we of ourselves are not worthy to face Him apart from what Jesus Christ has accomplished for us. The blood is the soap we use, we let God know that we recognize, and respect that He is righteous, sinless and holy and so is Jesus Christ in whom we have a free passage that grants us access to having a conversation with Him.
King David has taught and continues to teach us through precept and example that if we regard iniquity in our hearts that our conversation is hindered. What must we do when we regard iniquity in our hearts? Repent! The only option we have is the blood of Jesus which cleanses us from sin and unrighteousness and grants us forgiveness by its wondrous working power. Because of the blood God can see the righteousness Christ has ascribed to us for accessing the throne of grace. Grace is poured upon us to give us the speech we need to hold our conversation.
I was listening to a teaching recently in which the teacher said, "whoever controls the speech and language controls the conversation", that is amazingly true. As we allow the Holy Spirit to give us utterance to speak we develop a language, with our understanding we are learning to speak the language that we are biblically informed to be acceptable speech that makes our dialogue with God successful. With it we speak the language of God and our understanding is fruitful. Without understanding we speak in unknown tongues and we call it our prayer language as well. God is really in control of our language and speech whereby He controls our conversation. Our prayer is God centered, we talk to Him in speech He can regard and hear us as we pray, because we remembered to stop by the basin of laver and cleanse away all that can soil us.
The speaker who uttered the words regarding the control of the conversation uses the of terms used in society that control the outlook, perspective and conversation. For example, "Global warming" is now called climate change. The conversation borders on the climate changes in our world. the words of the language that provides definition are global warming which produce climate changes. What controls this conversation? Anything that would suggest reasons for these changes. If you were engaged in a global warming conversation you wouldn't use terms that do not depict what is happening regarding climate. You wouldn't make an entry about bank statements, unless you would veer the conversation unto finances. You may not be in control or included in the conversation because you are speaking a different language and changed the topic.
The whole point is to be heard by God, but on His terms. Jesus gave us a model prayer to build upon. It includes acknowledging that God is our Father and making a distinction from all other fathers, we ascertain that we are talking to the Father in heaven. We tell Him that we believe that His name is to be hallowed because we deem it holy.
We ask Him to let His kingdom come and His will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. We ask Him to give us this day our daily bread and thank Him for all of the provisions He has made for us. We ask Him to forgive us our trespasses and not keeping the necessary boundaries that we ought to have, and we let Him know that we are willing to forgive anyone who has trespassed against us. We ask that He would not let us go in the direction of temptation and that He would keep us out of an evil path. We let Him know that we are aware that the Kingdom is all about Him, and that all the power and authority is His and all the glory is due Him, now and forever more. We end our prayers with amen, until the next time we have our ongoing conversation.
Who controls these prayers and conversations, God does, we speak His language and our conversation is on His terms for blessings and favor given by His beloved Son. We have had a biological father and some conversations we would not dare have with him. The same principle is true, we would not desire to speak anything to God that is not right in His sight.
This is a post from Daily Moments with God:
Prayer is like an insurance policy. The question is what type of prayer policy do you have? Do you have a comprehensive prayer life? Where you pray without ceasing. Or does your prayer life only cover your liability? Where you pray only when you are in trouble. Understand the importance of comprehensive coverage. Amen.
