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The Necessity of Prayer – Lesson XIV, Prayer and Trust
God expects as reasonable service that his children have a daily walk in trust that always puts God first in every situation.
It is the trust that a little child has in her mother.
It is the trust where Christ is pre-imminent.
It is the kind of trust that moves God because it is a trust that comes from great faith.
We must remember that, that it all stems from faith which is what pleases God.
Faith and the trust that comes from faith is the very foundation of praying.
The reason and driving force of prayer is trust. Why would anyone pray, I mean really pray, without trust.
Christ’s ministry and work was dependent on implicit trust in His Father. I and my Father are One tells us of that implicit trust. We read of a picture of that trust in Psalm 91:4, He shall cover thee with his feathers, and under his wings shalt thou trust: his truth shall be thy shield and buckler. For under his feathers we are concealed, under his feathers we are protected, under his feathers we are refreshed, and under his feathers we are nourished and cherished. And under his feathers we are One with the Father. This is the pattern for anyone working the ministry of the Father. The center of trust is God.
All difficulties, anything that hinders prayer, are moved out of the way by faith and trust.
When trust is perfect and without doubt, prayer is the stretched out hand ready to receive from the father.
Trust looks to receive the thing asked for, and gets it.
Trust is not a belief that God can bless, that He will bless, but that He does bless, here and now.
Trust always operates in the present tense.
Hope looks toward the future. Trust looks to the present.
Hope expects. Trust possesses. Trust receives what prayer acquires. So that what prayer needs, at all times, is abiding and abundant trust. This is what the disciples needed when they failed to bring a cure to the boy who was afflicted by the devil. Christ was on the Mount of Transfiguration and they had been sent to do the Father’s will. They had been commissioned to cast out the devil from the boy, but they had failed. The devil was too much for them but the devil is never too much for one who trusts in the Almighty.
Did Jesus Christ provide sympathy for their failure?
Did he try to make their failure appear less failing?
Did he try to mitigate their failure?
Was he concerned about their self-esteem? Did he soft pedal their lack of trust.
No, he rebuked them as faithless and perverse.
“Then Jesus answered and said, O faithless and perverse generation, how long shall I be with you? How long shall I suffer you? Bring him hither to me. And Jesus rebuked the devil, and he departed out of him and the child was cured from that very hour. And when He was come into the house, His disciples asked Him privately, Why could not we cast him out? And He said unto them, This kind can come forth by nothing but by prayer and fasting.” (Matt 17:17-18; Mark 9:28-29)
perverse (dee-as-tref'-o )
From G1223 and G4762; to
distort, that is, (figuratively) misinterpret, or How would you like to be rebuked for not being able to cast out the devil? But Christ thought it a normal thing for his disciples to do this? Don’t they have the same Father in whom to flee for refuge? Don’t they have the same Father as Christ? Doesn’t the Father promise to provide for those He commissions. By bringing prayer and fasting into the picture the Lord indicates that the disciples had been negligent in cultivating their faith by prayer and fasting, (fasting is simply that which would bring more time for prayer), and, as a consequence, their trust failed completely. See how prayer and trust are so intricately linked. God gives instruction for his ministry but he expects you to stay in touch with him though prayer.
Jesus said, I and my father are One.
How do you stay One with the Father?
By being intricately linked though prayer. If you are married how do you stay one with your mate? By being intricately linked through communication.
The disciples trusted in themselves as the power to cast out the devil.
Christ’s lesson was that the power did not lie in themselves but lay in God and was to be received though prayer founded upon faith and excercised by trust.
Does the power to move your car lie in you or is the power only turned on by you connecting the car to the gas pump and then turning on the engine by the little power of turning a key?
It takes little faith to gain great power in your car.
All you have to do is believe that activating the engine will provide you a source of power.
Failure of ministry results from a lack of trust which comes from weak faith, and this, in turn results in a lack in prayer.
Faith must be nurtured and made powerful by trusting prayer.
Neglect of the prayer closet, neglect of being alone with God is the reason for spiritual failure.
Above all people, God’s people have no reason to fail. Don’t you sense this in Jesus reaction to his disciples failure to cast out the devil?
Then Jesus answered and said, O faithless and perverse generation, how long shall I be with you? How long shall I suffer you? Is trust such a hard concept to understand?
It is so simple but sinners refuse simplicity in favor of complexity.
How do you know that God is with you if you neglect that private communion with Him in the closet?
Trust is so simple that children trust without being taught how to trust. Example after example is given in the scriptures of simple trust and how Christ saw their faith by experiencing their trust. |