Bible Bedrock
“I urge…that requests, prayers, intercession and thanksgiving be made for everyone.”
– 1 Tim. 2:1 (King James Version)
Prayer is the product of our union with Christ. He in us is the Pray-er. So the first need in the prayer life is not to pray but to relax! Quietly, naturally, recognizing the Real One within us, we sort out what warms or stirs our heart with a sense of definite need or challenge. Now we are ready to pray.
What form is our prayer to take? Supplication? Importunity? One fact seems to me to stand out from the lives of the men of the Bible. However they might start their praying, it must end up in faith. It must be the prayer of faith. Indeed they are all called men of faith, rather than prayer, in the Hebrews 11 survey, though it is true that their exploits of faith, when studied in detail, have a background of travail in prayer. And what is significant about their contacts with God? Invariable, as they meet with Him, He tells them that He has something already in hand which He is now going to manifest through them. For Abraham there is God’s fixed assurance that he would become a great nation. For Moses there is the sure word that God is going to bring the people out of Egypt and into Canaan, and that he can go before Pharaoh and through the trials in the wilderness in that certainty. For Joshua it is the same; the crossing of the Jordan and the capture of Jericho are declared to him as settled facts well before they took place. And so through all Biblical history.
–God Unlimited
