Do we pray the right prayers the FATHERs way..... For we do not know how to pray as we should, but HIS direct wind that comes from HIS voice presence or frequencies that intercedes for us with groanings too deep for words; Romans 8:26 How To Pray Matthew 6 states the following “Be careful not to parade your acts of tzedakah in front of people in order to be seen by them! If you do, you have no reward from your FATHER of Eden. So, when you do tzedakah, don’t announce it with trumpets to win people’s praise, like the hypocrites in the synagogues and on the streets. Yes! I tell you, they have their reward already! But you, when you do tzedakah, don’t even let your left hand know what your right hand is doing. Then your tzedakah will be in secret; and your FATHER, who sees what you do in secret, will reward you. “When you pray, don’t be like the hypocrites, who love to pray standing in the synagogues and on street corners, so that people can see them. Yes! I tell you, they have their reward already! But you, when you pray, go into your room, close the door, and pray to your FATHER in secret. Your FATHER, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you. “And when you pray, don’t babble on and on like the pagans, who think HE will hear them better if they talk a lot. Don’t be like them, because your FATHER truly knows what you need before you ask HIM. You, therefore, pray like this: ‘Our FATHER in Eden! Creator of the Universe May your NAME be kept set apart form all common. May your Kingdom come an be fully restored here on earth your will be done on earth as in Eden. May Eden be restored to Israel Give us the food we need today and may we eat of it. Forgive us what we have done wrong by not following your goals and instructions, as we too have forgiven those who have wronged us. And do not lead us into hard testing, but keep us safe from the adversarial One. For kingship, power and glory are YOUR forever and ever. Amen.’ For if you forgive others their offenses, your FATHER of Eden will also forgive you; but if you do not forgive others their offenses, your FATHER of Eden will not forgive yours. For it is the ways of common believers and the pagans who set their minds on all these things. Instead of bring Your FATHER of Eden who already knows you need yes all of theml. But seek first HIS Kingdom and HIS righteousness, HIS plans and goals and all these things will be given to you as well. Don’t worry about tomorrow — tomorrow will worry about itself! Today has enough tsuris already! Is this really the problem? Does Matthew and Paul mean to say that we don’t know how to pray? It doesn’t seem so. Prayer is ultimately about communion with the Creator HIMSELF. It is about all of the emotional, volitional, cognitive and embodied elements that bridge the gap between who I am and who The Creator is. I don’t think I really have any serious concerns about how I pray. I know that the Hebrew words cover the range from growling to weeping, from shouting to dancing and from pleading to praising. The real problem is that I don’t know what to pray. I don’t really know what The Creator is doing in the circumstances of my life, so I don’t really know what to say that will align my heart with HIS purposes. I am stuck with the finite version of the eternal plans of The Creator. More often than not, I am at a loss for true perspective. Someone is sick. What should I pray? Should I pray for healing? What if that is not what The Creator is doing with these circumstances? Someone lost a job. Do I pray for another, or is The Creator teaching something else? At every hand I am confronted with confusion. How can I pray rightly if I do not know the mind of The Creator first? Do I just toss up words and add the “if it is Your will” catch-all at the end? Paul seems to say something else. First, the Greek phrase does not include the word pos (how). Therefore, any translation that adds this thought doesn’t seem to be correct. There is also no justification for adding the “for” in a translation such as “what to pray for.” Paul literally says, “because what we may pray as we ought, we do not know.” Leon Morris comments: “But we cannot hide behind a plea of ignorance and give up on prayer. Prayer is part of the Believer life. . . We must pray aright, and since we cannot do that, the HIS direct voice wind comes to our aid.” Paul’s comment is not an excuse for incapacity. It is a description of our finitude. We don’t know what to pray because in our brokenness in a broken world we cannot know what to pray. Unless The Creator shows up in our prayers, we are simply guessing. The Greek verb here is proseuchomai, the standard (New Testament meaning the renewed Covenant) word for praying. It is a general category word, covering all the elements of prayer. Paul isn’t saying that we lack insight when it comes to intercession or supplication. He is saying that the human condition leaves us deficient in all aspects of prayer. If you have ever struggled in conversation with The Creator, you know that Paul speaks the truth. Prayer is very difficult. Without the Presence of the inter voice wind presence , there is always an awareness of inadequacy in the experience. In other words We pray for the FATHERS will to be done in a full adoration to HIM. Let the FATHER and HIS Edens Eternal host to pray for us HIS way. A lot of us recognize this problem, but now what? Perhaps it helps to recognize that the Hebrew approach to prayer almost always focuses on praise and blessing for The Creator. In fact, most prayers in the Siddur (the Hebrew prayer book) are filled with blessing and praising YAHUUAH’s name, HIS works and HIS Trusted Messenger. There seems to be a lot less concern about human needs and supplications. What comes to the forefront is the magnificence and majesty of The Creator. Maybe these prayers don’t struggle so much with the issue of incapacity because they start by acknowledging the impossibly wide gap. Furthermore, when the prayers of the Siddur do bring needs before the King of the Universe, the attitude is always focused on the transformation of the supplicant’s heart in order to be content with the sovereign will of the King. In other words, the prayer is not so much about what we want The Creator to do as it is about becoming pliable and accepting HIS purposes. Prayer is real petition, but it focuses on the degree of my contentment. YAHUUAH’s sovereignty always trumps my desires and I need to absorb that. Finally, it might be helpful to see that prayer is a duty, not simply a desire. We are commanded to pray. That means we must pray in spite of our feelings about the situation. How easy it is to shed the discipline of prayer when we are discouraged or downtrodden. But prayer is not emotionally based. Prayer is the requirement to talk to Him about it. “Why didn’t you come to me sooner,” is YAHUUAH’s answer to our hesitancy. We need to make prayer a discipline of life. Once again, this is demonstrated in the Siddur which begins prayer at the very moment we wake and has prescribed prayers for nearly every activity in the day. Maybe the rabbis knew how quickly we lose sight of The Creator in the hustle and bustle of life, so they built into the training process the constant reminders of Creator conversation. Paul concurs with his exhortation, “Pray without ceasing.” In our modern religious culture prayer is a communication between man and The Creator. While this definition could be applied to some passage of the Bible (such as Genesis 20:17) it is not an Hebraic definition of the Hebrew word palal. By looking at the etymology of this word we can better see the Hebraic meaning. The word palal comes from the parent root pal meaning fall (The root pal is most likely the root of our word fall which can etymologically be written as phal). Pal is also the root of the Hebrew word naphal also meaning fall. The word palal literally means to fall down to the ground in the presence of one in authority pleading a cause. This can be seen in Isaiah 45:14 where the Sabeans fall down and make supplication (this is the Hebrew word palal) to Cyrus. In personal confession, I recognize that I do not know what to pray. That often leads me to not pray, since I can see no way out of the circumstances I face. I don’t know what to do, so I don’t know what to ask. Not knowing what to ask, I ask nothing at all. But this is a terrible and debilitating mistake and an awful display of arrogance. Who am I to know? The solution to the problem is not asking The Creator to assist me with my solutions. I don’t have a solution. Therefore, I am left with pouring out my heart-felt struggle without an answer. That opens the door for HIS inter voice and that wind to direct my path. All I have really done is come to the Father with these words on my lips: “I do not know what to pray, Father, but I know who You are. Let my heart be molded to YOUR daily purposes. That is enough for me.” This isn’t the end of the story, but it is a beginning.
Posted on: Tue, 14 Oct 2014 23:16:12 +0000
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