This is the third book

PRAYING

Prayer isimportant so it is good to give consideration to it from time to time.Our Lord Jesus, God's only Son found it so necessary to spend much time in prayer to His heavenly Father, often He spent nights in prayer as there was such a special relationship between Him and His Father God which cannot be touched by any one of us.After the resurrection our Lord said to His disciples 'touch me not, for I have not as yet ascended to my Father, but go and tell my brethren, Iascend to MY Father and YOURFather, to MY God and YOURS', had not that special relationship been there He could have said, I go and ascend to OUR Father'.Now what has just been said is important teaching, but we also have a good relationship with our Father God and that is through the person of our Lord Jesus

As our Lord Jesus was on the Cross, as He was burdened with our sin, so at that moment the v�eil of the temple was rent in twain from the top to the bottom, now what did this mean?At the time when this happened I think that there must have been many folk within the temple walls.Jerusalem was awash with people, all there for the Feast of the Passover, they would have been in the temple itself for this their annual visit, to remind them of the time when our God passed over the people of Israel and the Egyptians, all those who were obedient to God had killed a lamb, had an evening meal with their family and sprinkled some of the blood of the lamb on their door posts and our God said, as I see the blood I will pass over'.Yes the folk in the temple at the time of the crucifixion of our Lord Jesus would have been there to give thanks for their deliverance so many years previously.In the temple there was the veil, it was there to divide the Holy of Holies from the rest of "the people, it was through the veil that the High Priest went on behalf of the people, he went into that area, into the presence of God, there, in that place, was the Ark and the Mercy Seat, there was the Shekinah glory, the actual presence of the Lord.When our Jesus was crucified the people in the temple must have been terrified as there was a might tearing sound, as the veil of the temple was rent apart, the veil was one inch, 25mm thick what a might noise there must have been as it was rent apart

At the giving of the life of our dear Lord Jesus, the veil that has just been mentioned, was rent in twain, this indicated that the old priestly order had come to an end as far as our God was concerned, the wicked Caiaphas was the last High Priest in the economy of our God, the temple authorities continued with this order up to the time of the destruction of the temple by Titus in AD70 and after that even to this present day, but as far as our God was concerned the old order had finished, a new order had come into being through our dear Lord Jesus.No longer was it necessary for a priest to go into the presence of God on our behalf as a new and living way had been made possible through our great High Priest our Lord Jesus.Now let us understand this aright, let us just think of our personal prayer life.As we pray we enter into the presence of the Lord God Almighty, we have fellowship with the Divine, we men and women of earth communicate with our eternal heavenly Father, we talk to our God and He talks with us and this is done through our great High Priest our Lord Jesus, He fills that office in all His fullness - what an experience this is for us and our Lord and what a friend we have in Jesus, all our sins and griefs to bear, what a privilege to carry, everything to God in prayer

Now in our prayers we pray in the name of Jesus, Shakespeare said what is in a name', as far as our God is concerned there is so much.In the Scriptures names are so important, they touch on the character of the person, indeed just think of the so many names of our God, think on them, go a little deeper and consider their meaning and by doing so come to a deeper understand of the One of whom they speak.Look at a Bible Dictionary and see the meaning of the names of so many folk in the Scriptures, of Jacob, Israel, David, Naomi, Mara, Abraham and so many others. In the Disciples Prayer there are the words hallowed be Thy name', in the Ten Commandments we are told do not take the name of the Lord thy God in vein', so as we pray it is through the person, through the name of our Lord Jesus that we enter into the Divine and we should pray that first of all His kingdom might come more fully, more fully first of all in our own lives and then in the world, looking forward to the blessed time when the kingdoms of this world will become the kingdom of our God and His Christ'.Then after that in the Disciples Prayer we seek for the will of God to be done, first of all in our, in mine, in your lives, that His will might be worked out in our every day living in every way.There is the hymn, May the mind of Christ my Saviour, live in me from day to day, by His love and power controlling, all I do and say, May the Word of God dwell richly, in my heart from hour to hour, so that all may see I triumph, only through His power.As we sing words like these, do not just read the words and make the necessary noises, let us muse upon them, let us understand what we are singing and may the truths that these hymns express be of meaning to us as far as our God is concerned

You see whatever we would like in our lives, may we understand that all we pray for is in accordance with the will of the Master, we dare to pray in His name, we come into His very presence, the presence of the Divine how dare we pray otherwise.In Gethsemane our Jesus prayed to His heavenly Father and it was agony, such agony that His sweat was like great drops of blood, in that prayer even He our Lord Jesus, God's only Son prayed that the Father's will might be done, that will was that our Lord might be given the strength to drink the cup' that was before Him and that cup', that portion was the Cross, the Cross in all that it meant and Jesus was given the strength through prayer to endure the Cross and He despised its shame for the joy that was set before Him, what a prayer that must have been

In our prayers, we pray to our God, we enter into His presence and pray for matters in connection with our own+ lives, now we have problems,I do so understand this in my own life at the moment, but they are nothing when we compare them with what our dear Lord went through.Now Jesus went THROUGH life, He did not go into it, He even went through the valley of the shadow of death', through it unto the wonder and the glory of the resurrection on the third day and is alive for ever more.In His strength, through His name we will also go through lifes problems and difficulties, we will also go through the valley of the shadow of death' - what a God we haveDSETz
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This is the third book