Today's "My Utmost For His Highest" by Oswald Chambers is another great exhortation to every born again believer, this time speaking of prayer!
The Cross In Prayer
At that day ye shall ask in My name. — John 16:26
We are
too much given to thinking of the Cross as something we have to get through; we
get through it only in order to get into it. The Cross stands
for one thing only for us — a complete and entire and absolute identification
with the Lord Jesus Christ, and there is nothing in which this identification
is realized more than in prayer.
“Your
Father knoweth what things ye have need of, before ye ask Him.” Then why ask?
The idea of prayer is not in order to get answers from God; prayer is perfect
and complete oneness with God. If we pray because we want answers, we will get
huffed* with God. The answers come every time, but not always in the way we
expect, and our spiritual huff shows a refusal to identify ourselves with Our
Lord in prayer. We are not here to prove God answers prayer; we are here to be
living monuments of God’s grace.
“I say
not that I will pray the Father for you: for the Father Himself loveth you.”
Have you reached such an intimacy with God that the Lord Jesus Christ’s life of
prayer is the only explanation of your life of prayer? Has Our Lord’s vicarious
life become your vital life? “At that day” you will be so identified with Jesus
that there will be no distinction.
When
prayer seems to be unanswered, beware of trying to fix the blame on someone
else. That is always a snare of Satan. You will find there is a reason which is
a deep instruction to you, not to anyone else.
* 'Huffed' means: a mood of sulking anger; a fit of resentment
I LOVE that he says we do NOT pray to get answers, but to get intimate with God! 1 John 5:14-15 tells us how to get answers and it says to pray the Word (His will)! When we pray the Word, we are speaking back to God what HE has already proclaimed to BE ours! Standing in faith means that we believe that God is "not a man that He should lie" (Numbers 23:19), but that He is true to His own Word! Get intimate with God so that you KNOW Him; how He thinks, speaks and acts, and then you will see the answers! AMEN! Here is Hillsong UNITED with "Future Marches In":
Shalom in Him!
