Thursday 1/31/13 When You Pray 4

Good Thursday Last Day of January morning, my dear brothers and sisters.  January 2013 is gone already.  On Saturday people are going to pull a rodent out of a cage and try and tell what the weather will be for the next six weeks, then they will all go and get drunk, for it is just one big party.  Let me tell you that God is in charge of the weather and it will be what He wants to send us and we will appreciate or should appreciate it, because God sends us His will for us.  Amen.

No new additions to our prayer list today, so let's pry for those who are on the list and also for our schools and all that have anything to do with them.  Pray first please for the little boy who is being held hostage down south and for the family of the bus driver who was shot to death when the boy was abducted.  Seems when we were all young, back when the streets were dirt, and even some after that we did not lock our doors, and if we did, it was with a skeleton key and those keys fit everyone's doors.  The biggest thing we had to worry about was passing in school because failing was not an option at our house.  Folks, we need to keep pushing forward for our Lord Jesus.  Once again today we will go back to working the Lord's Prayer ... Let's get started.

When You Pray 1/31/13 Day Four.

Matthew 6:9 - This, then is how you should pray:  "Our Father which art in heaven, Hallowed be Thy name. Thy Kingdom come, Thy will be done in earth, as it is in heaven.  Give us this day our daily bread.  And forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors.  And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil, For thine is the kingdom and the power, and the glory, forever.  Amen."  (KJV)

Let's get started today with "Thy will be done in earth, as it is in Heaven."  If we follow what our Lord Jesus taught us we are praying for "Thy" will to be done, meaning the Will of our Father in Heaven.

I have been asked about if we pray for "Thy" will to be done in earth as in Heaven, why then do we have sickness here on earth because the Bible tells us that we will not have sickness in Heaven.  To help us all better understand that, I want to go to Matthew 26:39 and take a look at what happened when Jesus prayed at Gethsemane the night before He was put to death on the cross.

Matthew 26:39 - Going a little farther, He fell with His face to the ground and prayed.  "My father, if it is possible, may this cup be taken from me.  Yet not s I will but as You will."  (NIV)

We see the example that Jesus set once again by not just telling us in the Lord's Prayer to pray for Thy will to be done, but also by showing us He did just that the night He was arrested and the night before He was put to death on the cross.  Here we find Jesus praying to His/our Father in Heaven and asking if He had to go through with this.  I guess when it comes to the end, Jesus did not want to be put to death like this, Jesus knew it was not going to be a pleasant thing.  So He asked but at the same time prayed to His/our Father in Heaven stating it was God The Father's will that was to be done and not His own.  So our Lord Jesus was killed here on earth for us, of course, but that would not have happened in Heaven.  Heaven, of course, will be full of peace and no hurts like this, and of course no sickness like we suffer through down here on earth.  When we pray "Thy will be done on earth as it is in Heaven", please remember that here on earth, more often than not we are not doing His will to start with,even, even, if we pray Thy will be done, do we honor that?  Not all the time!

So the things we are asking or saying is, Lord it would be nice to have no sickness or cancers down here on earth like it is in Heaven, but Lord, it is Your will to be done.  Now I want to help you understand why some suffer with cancers or pain in some way or other ... Let's look at Romans.

Romans 5:3 - Not only so, but we also rejoice in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance, 4 perseverance, character, and character, hope 5 and hope does not disappoint us, because God has poured out His love into our hearts by the Holy Spirit, whom He has give us.  (NIV)

So what does it mean, well, first of all, God is going to heal us in His time and in the meantime as we deal with what ails us it tends to make us stronger in faith and love for our Lord Jesus.

Let's move on with "Give us this day our daily bread."  Now in this wonderful, wonderful prayer we are just asking for our daily bread, our manna from heaven so to speak.  If we really trust God, we know that we will be furnished our needs each day.  If we work for Him and also work for our keep, The Bible does tell us this, if a person will not work, then he should not eat.  That is plain and simple in the Bible.  While we do need to help the poor, and that means the working poor and we need to help those who cannot work, there are a lot of people out there who according to the Bible just plain should not eat.  There are a lot of people riding the systems of our states and our great nation and if they would get their lazy backsides to work our state and national debts would come down.  Then there are a lot of them who do work but keep on the system by working and getting paid "under the table."  It is amazing that some of these folks have not been sick or even died from lead poison because it seems a lot of lead has settled in their backsides!  (Did I really say that?)

Folks, as you know, we have a food pantry and we do not ask a lot of questions.  If someone tells us they need food help, they do get it.  The other day I had a call wanting us to pay for a scrip at the drug store.  Of course I refused, we do not have that kind of money and we already helped this family with money to get fuel oil.  But the man of the house wears a lot of gold chains, sort of like Mr. T, but not as many.  I just out and out told him that it was time to sell off those chains.  They got upset with me.  But folks, you know this old man and I tell it like it is.  In feeding others from the food pantry it is part of our outreach to teach people how to help themselves.  We have a wall board with a pack of smokes on it and ten boxes of macaroni and cheese.  If people give up one pack of smokes they can purchase 10 boxes of macaroni and cheese to help feed their family.

Okay, I got off beat a tad, but Give us this day our daily bread is great and Jesus goes so much beyond that. How long has it been since you sat down to a meal of bread because it was all you had?  I hear people talking now about stocking up on food for a long term because of the way our world is.  We stock in our personal shelf, food for if the electric goes out, food you need not cook, but for long term.  I trust in what the Bible tells me and He will supply our needs.

Okay, time now to leave for the day, and yes, we are going to pray the Lord's Prayer for by the end of the week, I want you to know it and also understand it so you don't just say it, you pray it.  Let's pray.

"Our Father which art in heaven, Hallowed be Thy name. Thy Kingdom come, Thy will be done in earth, as it is in heaven.  Give us this day our daily bread.  And forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors.  And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil, For thine is the kingdom and the power, and the glory, forever.  Amen."

Go forth now sharing your blessings and loving others.

Love ya, Pastor Dan.