“After This Manner Therefore Pray…”

“After this manner therefore pray ye:  ‘Our Father, which art in heaven, Hallowed be thy name.” –Matthew 6:9 (KJV).

            Prayer as we’re taught it in the Bible, is dialogue between God and his people.  The disciples had observed Jesus going apart to pray.  One of the Lord’s disciples made this request:  “Lord, teach us to pray, as John also taught his disciples” (Luke 11:1, KJV).  The result of Jesus teaching His disciples to pray is what we have termed “The Lord’s Prayer’ (recorded in Matthew 6:9-13 and in Luke 11:2-4).  But a better name for this prayer, which we sometimes pray in concert in public worship, would be “The Disciples’ Prayer,” for in it Jesus was fulfilling the request and teaching the disciples how to pray.  It is a contrast to hypocritical prayers, those uttered to be heard by men’s ears and to sound well in public.  Disciples are to beware of this type of prayer.  Likewise, we are to avoid vain repetitions.  So when you pray this prayer, really mean it from the heart!

            It would be well for us to remember, when we pattern our praying after the prayer Jesus taught in Matthew and Luke, that he was emphasizing how we are to pray.  The prayer covers adoration of God (Matthew 6:9).  Next is a plea for God’s kingdom life to be practiced on earth as in heaven (Now wouldn’t that be amazing? We should pray to that end!).  Then comes a petition for physical needs: “Give us this day our daily bread.”  Scholars generally agree that this plea is recognizing God as the provider of all we need, not only food, shelter and clothing, but whatever is necessary to our health and well-being that would help us grow in the grace and in the character and spirit of Christ the Savior.  The fourth petition is for forgiveness of sins and abstinence from temptation.  How well did Jesus know, when He taught the disciples this prayer, that even though they loved Him and wanted to follow Him, they were still bound about with human frailties and the bent toward temptation.  How we need to emphasize and pray earnestly for our own forgiveness, even as we forgive those who perpetrate unkind actions toward us.  Then the prayer returns again to adoration of God.  The Father that Jesus taught His disciples to direct their petitions toward is in control and He is good.  In our prayers we express recognition that He has “power and glory, forever.”

            Many quotations on prayer inspire and inform me.  Here is one I especially like written by Mark Hopkins.  I’ve underlined it in one of my prayer journals:  “Our prayer and God’s mercy are like two buckets in a well; while the one ascends the other descends.”  Likewise, this one by William Temple:  “Only one petition in the Lord’s Prayer has any condition attached to it: it is the petition for forgiveness.”  And William Law wrote: “There is nothing that makes us love a man so much as praying for him.”  And in the words of John Greenleaf Whittier (1807-1892), American poet, the words, set to the hymn tune “Rest” by Frederick C. Maker (1844-1927) has these words of insight:  “(1) Dear Lord and Father of mankind,/Forgive our foolish ways;/Reclothe us in our rightful mind;/In purer lives Thy service find,/In deeper reverence praise. (2) Drop Thy still dews of quietness,/Till all our strivings cease;/Take from our souls the strain and stress,/And let our ordered lives confess/The beauty of Thy peace.”

            What prayer will you sincerely pray to “Our Father in Heaven? 

                                                                                                -Ethelene Dyer Jones 03.30.2014

The Influence of a Godly Example

“When I call to remembrance the genuine faith that is in you, which dwelt first in your grandmother Lois and your mother Eunice, and I am persuaded is in you also, therefore I remind you to stir up the gift of God which is in you through the laying on of my hands.  For God has not given us a spirit of fear, but of power and of love and of a sound mind.” -2 Timothy 2:5-7.  “But as for you, continue in the things which you have learned and been assured of, knowing from whom you have learned them, and that from childhood you have known the Holy Scriptures, which are able to make you wise for salvation through faith which is in Christ Jesus.” 2 Timothy 3:14-15 (both references NKJV).

            Timothy’s mother Eunice and his grandmother Lois are mentioned by name only once in the Bible, in 2 Timothy 3:14.  Luke, in writing the Acts of the Apostles, records the story of Timothy’s call and going with Paul and Silas when they were in Lystra.  We read:  “And behold, a certain disciple was there, named Timothy, the son of a certain Jewish woman who believed, but his father was Greek.  He was well spoken of by the brethren who were at Lystra and Iconium.  Paul wanted to have him go with him.  And he took him and circumcised him because of the Jews who were in that region, for they all knew that his father was Greek (Acts 16:1-3)  Timothy and his mother and grandmother were likely converted to Christianity (from Judaism) on Paul’s first missionary journey while he was in Lystra.  By the time Paul returned on his second missionary journey, Timothy was already an outstanding Christian there.  Lois and Eunice were Jews by birth, but Timothy’s father (unnamed) was Greek.  That is why Paul thought it best to circumcise Timothy so that no criticism would be forthcoming from Jewish Christians they might meet.  Eunice and Lois’s influence made such an impact that Paul felt it worthy of noting in his epistle to Timothy.

            Family influence is a strong factor in helping children to become Christians and to assist them to develop in Christ-like graces.  Paul commended Timothy that his faith had first lived in his mother Eunice and in his grandmother Lois.  They had prepared Timothy with a solid education in the Jewish Scriptures, taught him to be responsible, and trained him in strong character traits.  Paul called Timothy his “son in the gospel.”  He trusted Timothy to be sent on important missions for Christian teaching and training.  He assigned Timothy hard places to assist struggling congregations and to instruct in problems concerning doctrine and Christian discipline.

            Paul wrote in 1 Timothy 6:11-12:  “But you, O man of God, flee these things and pursue righteousness, godliness, faith, love, patience, gentleness.  Fight the good fight of faith, lay hold on eternal life, to which you were also called and have confessed the good confession in the presence of many witnesses.” (NKJV).  What Paul was urging Timothy (and us) to flee was the love of money, which “is the root of all kinds of evil” (1 Timothy 6:10) and causes people to “wander away from the faith and pierce themselves through with many pangs” (v. 10).  Paul urged Timothy to embrace the fruits of the Spirit including godliness, faith, love, patience and gentleness.  These characteristics had been taught to Timothy from his youth up by his mother and grandmother.  “”I’d rather see a sermon anytime than hear one,” is a truth about the value of Christian example.  In the home, fortunate the children who see sermons (and godly qualities) practiced and lived out by Christian elders who provide genuine examples of Christ-likeness.

            Timothy had that example in Eunice and Lois, and in Paul after he met him and was mentored by the apostle.  Let us pray that we can be godly examples for others.  –Ethelene Dyer Jones 03.23.2014.

Rejoice at All Times

“Rejoice in the Lord always; again I will say, Rejoice.” –Philippians 4:4 (ESV).

“Rejoice always; pray without ceasing, give thanks in all circumstances; for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you.” -1 Thessalonians 5:16-18 (ESV).

Sometimes I find the Lord’s commands extremely hard to follow.  Paul’s statement of the Lord’s will in Philippians 4:4 and in 1 Thessalonians 5:16 is one such command:   “Rejoice always.”  I want to argue and question the Lord:  I am to “always rejoice” Lord?  What about when troubles beset on every hand?  When my own perceived needs are immanent and I don’t know how I will meet them?  When others turn to me for help and I am so mired in my own load of deadlines and things to do that I cannot see the light of day?  Rejoice then, Lord?  There must be some mistake, Lord, in this admonition from You.  And so my arguments and excuses go.

Following closely on the command to “rejoice always,” are others equally as hard for me to follow:  “Pray without ceasing, give thanks in all circumstances.”  And then comes this concluding reason with which I can raise no argument:  “For this is the will of God concerning you.”  Then almost as brilliantly as the sunlight shattering the darkness at dawn or the landscape turning into dazzling aliveness after the dead of winter, an insight came to me as I read more carefully.  “Rejoice in the Lord always.”  It is the Lord’s indwelling within the life that makes the person rejoice.  He walks alongside me, dwells within me, fills me with the reason for rejoicing.  I don’t have to do the constant rejoicing on my own power!  It is He who lifts and upholds me.  “Do not quench the Spirit,” Paul writes (1 Thes. 5:19).  Further, he states, “Now may the God of peace Himself sanctify you completely, and may your whole spirit and soul and body be kept blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ.”  The secret, I think, of rejoicing always is abiding always in Him and allowing the Spirit of God who lives within the believer lead us to rejoice.  “He who calls you is faithful; He will surely do it,”  declares Paul in 1 Thessalonians 5:24.

It is possible to rejoice even as one cries.  I have experienced this over and over in my life.  It is at times like these that we hold on to God’s faithfulness, not our own weaknesses and woes.  Considering how the Lord loves and provides for His children, how can we help but rejoice in every circumstance and look for the good even in what appear at first to be disappointments? 

Good and God’s undergirding reasons lie beneath every circumstance that besets us.  In this foreknowledge, we can, indeed, learn to rejoice always!  In retrospect, when we’ve been through a hardship, we can examine and see how God worked it all out for His glory.  But in anticipation of the good outcome—and with the sure knowledge that God is working things according to our good—we can rejoice.  The Psalmist had the right attitude as he penned 19:8:  “The precepts of the Lord are right, rejoicing the heart; the commandment of the Lord is pure, enlightening the eyes.”  And again from the Psalmist:  “This is the day which the Lord hath made; I will rejoice and be glad in it.” (Psalm 118:24 KJV).  I like the words of Vivian Green that go along with the idea of rejoicing always:  “Life isn’t about waiting for the storm to pass.  It’s learning how to dance in the rain.”  -Ethelene Dyer Jones  03.16.2014.

Death Be Not Proud

“When the perishable puts on the imperishable, and the mortal puts on immortality, then shall come to pass the saying that is written:  ‘Death is swallowed up in victory.’  ‘O death, where is your victory?  O death, where is thy sting?’” -1 Corinthians 15:53. (ESV)

Recently several dear friends and relatives have come to the end of their lives.  Some I knew and loved over a period of years.  Others I did not know as well but knew their relatives and thus was grieved at their passing.  I think quite often of the English poet John Donne’s quotation, “Death be not proud,” when I hear of persons I love having passed.  Just within the last two weeks death came to a young lady and her husband in a plane accident; they were daughter and son-in-law of a friend of mine.  My husband’s niece died after a long sickness.  Her death reminded me again of my own husband’s death three years ago, and of what enjoyable times his niece, her husband, Grover and I had together.  Valentine’s Day came, and I always remember the death, years ago, of my own mother on that date.  I got word of a poet friend’s death, and his wife sent me copies of two beautiful poems he had penned, “Watch for Me” and “Last Request.”  Even in their beauty, Charles’s poems brought tears to my eyes.  A dear friend whom my husband and I had known and loved since we met in 1960 passed away on March 5. A cousin away out in Colorado passed away this February and left a legacy of his work and a strong, loving family.  The deaths of all of these touched me and I was filled with sympathy and feeling for their families as well as a sense of loss that, as the poet John Donne wrote:  “Any man’s death diminishes me, because I am involved in Mankind; therefore, never send to know for whom the bell tolls’ It tolls for thee.”  But for those of us who know the Lord Christ, He walks with us “through the valley of the shadow of death,” and takes some of the sting and sorrow out of dealing with death.  “O death, where is thy victory?” Paul asked.

Paul in writing about death in 1 Corinthians wanted Christians to have a positive view of death and consider it a means of transition from this mortal life to immortality.  In his treatise on earthly bodies and resurrection bodies in 1 Corinthians 15, he emphasizes the difference in the two.  The first condition describes the earthly body, the second the resurrection body:  perishable/imperishable; exists in dishonor/raised in glory; exists in weakness/raised in power; natural/spiritual; first Adam, of the earth, earthly/last Adam, a living spirit, heavenly; image of dust/image of glorified; mortal/immortal.  We as Christians need not fear death:  “Thanks be to God who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ!” (1 Corinthians 15:56).  I share this poem with you, some thoughts I wrote on death:

Death Be Not Proud

“Death, be not proud, though some have called thee

Mighty and dreadful, for thou art not so.”  -John Donne (1571?-1631)

Be not proud, O Death.  Laud not the power

You hold to end this life, to smother breath,

To bring this earthly span its ending hour,

To boast that over all hovers dark Death.

Your call to mankind brings a way of walking

Through shadows of a valley dark and drear;

But I know a Friend whose gentle talking

Lends my journey courage, assuages fear.

Not unlike birth that brings from Mother’s womb

The newborn babe to face this life on earth,

Your summons to endure the fearsome tomb

Is but brief passage to resurrected birth.

“Grave, where thy victory?  Death, where thy sting?*

Be not proud, Death!  I’ll rise to shout and sing!

                        -Ethelene Dyer Jones

                        (Poem composed November 20, 1999)

-Devotional by Ethelene Dyer Jones for 03.09.2014.

*(reference from 1 Corinthians 15:55)