PRAYER, SUPPLICATION, KNOWN "...in every thing by prayer and supplication" Prayer means that general turning toward God, basically what we have just been saying. "Supplication" does not mean a general turning toward God. It means a specific request made about a specific situation. Then he says, in case you didn’t catch it, "let your requests be made known." "Requests" means a specific presenting. Another place in the New Testament where that word is used is when the Jews requested Barabbas to be released by Pilot instead of Jesus. That was specific. We don’t want Fred, Jack, etc. We want Barabbas. So the Holy Spirit is saying here, "Turn toward God and very specifically share with Him EXACTLY what the cause of the worry is." Specifically lay it before Him. That is what He is saying. "... be made KNOWN ...." "Known" means to fully uncover. It means to lay the case out. This isn’t saying, "Oh God, bless me." That is almost an insult to God. I mean, you go into such detail in "never never land" and now coming into "real real land" be every bit as specific and revealing as you were in your fantasy of evil. God demonstrates this by giving us the Psalms. We are overhearing a man talk with His God. And most of the time he is in trouble. Read them and you will see that he just spills it all out. He tells God how he feels and sometimes you feel there is fire coming out of his ears, he is so clear about how he feels. He wants people dead, their wife a widow, their children orphans. He doesn’t go to them and kill them. Nor does he tell the whole church what he wants. He tells God how he feels. It is OK. Stop pretending that good Christians never get angry. Present it all to God. He can handle it and He can deal with you in a loving way. Let God have your anger. Be very specific. This is very Biblical. Remember the two on the road to the village called Emmaus. The bottom has dropped out of their life. They believed Jesus was the Messiah. They watched Him die. And Jesus, freshly risen from the dead, comes walking beside them. For what ever reason, they don’t recognize Him. Jesus says, "You fellows look so down." They say, "Are you the only person in Jerusalem that hasn’t heard what happened." (He was the only One Who really did know what had happened.) Notice His response. "What things?" "Tell me." "What’s bugging you guys?" Well, they spilled it all out. There is hardly a pause. "We had hoped ..." "We thought ..." "We are disillusioned ..." Then He starts with Moses and all the prophets and explains to them until their heart was burning inside of them. Do you realize that our Risen Lord would not deal with their problems until He had them pour it all out before Him? He teased it out of them, then He dealt with it. Just go through your Bible and search out the questions of God. You will be impressed at how God deals with man. God asks questions, answers to which He already knew. He made us to communicate with Him. Sometimes we are so slow to do that, that He pulls it out of us. Don’t say that God knows already, TELL HIM. THAT IS WHAT HE WANTS. "Adam, where are you?" He knew. "Who told you that you were naked?" He knew. "What have you done?" He knew. "Where is Abel, your brother?" He knew. God knows all the answers to all the questions, yet He asks them. Why? To get man to talk to Him. God has chosen that He can not help us until we will spill it out. "LET YOUR REQUESTS BE MADE KNOW TO GOD." This is the emphasis here ... MAKE IT KNOWN. This is not the time to tell God what to do. The essence of worry is "I don’t know what to do." I don’t know. I stand helpless. Life is caving in on me. I don’t know the answer to this. It is not the time to tell God to make them all go away. Don’t bring God into your "never never land." Just expose it. Make it known to Him Who knows all things. Give it to Him. I face situations all the time where I simply do not know the answer. Often I even go through the physical jesters of holding out my cupped hands, palms up, and saying, "Here, Father, I give it to You. I am helpless. Take this (naming it specifically) into Your love for me. I give it over to You. Because You love me so much, it belongs to You. I give it over to You right now. Do what ever has to be done, because I don’t know." One by one, I give each situation, each problem, each person, each hurt to Him Who does all things well. To my flesh that is such a sense of helplessness, cause I am not even telling God what to do. I don’t know. It is a real abandonment to Him. "Our Father Who is in heaven. Your Name be hallowed in this situation, person, etc. In this case, let Your Kingdom come, let Your government be. I don’t know how You can work it out, but I know You are the All Wise One, the All Knowing One and that you love everyone of us, even those who are in an enemies posture right now, you love us unconditionally. Let Your will be done on earth now, as it is in heaven. And forgive us as we forgive each other. Etc." WITH THANKSGIVING "... with thanksgiving" We don’t just come blundering in. He says to remember God’s track record. It is a good one. Forget not all His benefits. Remember. And then the peace of God ... the shalom of God ... will guard your hearts and your minds. PEACE "Shalom" is a bigger word than our word "peace." First of all, it is not changing circumstances. See, our idea of peace is that everybody finally does it our way. But that is not the Hebrew understanding of peace. Shalom means that in the middle of chaos, I have peace. That passes all human comprehension. The word contains in it the idea of success and prosperity. It means I have this success, peace and harmony in my spirit. It means I have harmony in my mind. I am successful in my thinking; I have creative light in my mind. I have prosperity in my emotions. Love and joy and peace so that even my body is successful at being a body. It is at rest. Proverbs goes so far as to say, "When a man’s ways please the Lord, even his enemies shall have shalom with him." Instead of dumping my gloom on people, I am one who carries shalom wherever I go, the peace of God. It is just beyond our comprehension. "Thou will keep him in perfect peace whose mind is stayed upon thee." The Hebrews actually did not have a word for "perfect peace" so it is "peace peace" in the original. Double dose. Peace upon peace. The word for mind is IMAGINATION. Your imagination is not established in the "never never land" of unreality, but your imagination is upon Him Who is Reality, Truth. Your imagination is not rooted in the insane lies of "what if." Your imagination is stayed and established in Who God is. In Psalm 23, David imagines tomorrow and evil, but he does not surrender to that evil. He says, "Even if tomorrow has me walking through the valley of the shadow of death, I WILL FEAR NO EVIL (why?) FOR THOU ART WITH ME." There is evil, but in his imagination he sees the greater, which is GOD WITH HIM. He imagines God in all of his tomorrows. And, knowing God, he says, "Surely goodness and mercy will follow me all the days (tomorrows) of my life." That is a correct use of the imagination, SEEING GOD WITH YOU. THIS IS SINGLE VISION... SEEING GOD IN ALL THINGS. So you take your tomorrows, that do not exist, and you take the specific person and the specific situation that is causing you to go off into "what if’s," and you take that person, that thing, and you just give them to God. And then when you think of tomorrow, it is basically saying that whatever happens, though it is a valley of deep darkness, I here and now say I believe in God, the Father Almighty. I will fear no evil for THOU ART WITH ME. Whatever tomorrows hold for me, my spouse, my children, my children’s children, surely goodness and loving kindness WILL follow (the word is "pursue" like hunting dogs) us all our days. Goodness and loving kindness are like those hunting dogs that ever pursue me and are always leaping upon me. They follow me, pursue me relentlessly, all the days of my life. Psalm 55: 22 Cast your cares on the LORD and he will sustain you; he will never let the righteous fall.
Posted on: Mon, 22 Jul 2013 19:35:30 +0000
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