Quote for the Day
Claiming that the USSR was a good system run by bad people is like saying hell is a nice place plagued with hot weather.” Terry Law
Don’t copy the world
Ephesians 6:18
Here is my commentary on Ephesians 6:18. I am publishing these once or twice a week, but you can read all of the available articles at our web-site, http://www.new-life.org.au
Ephesians 6:18
“Pray in the Spirit at all times in every prayer and supplication. To this end, keep alert and always persevere in supplication for all the saints.”
Although prayer is not part of the armour of God, it is an essential part of the spiritual life. Paul here uses very expansive language, using words such as all, every, always. For the genuine Christian, there is never a time to neglect prayer. It should be as natural a part of our life as breathing.
Not just any prayer will do. This prayer is not a recitation of the Lord’s Prayer or reading from a prayer book. Paul is exhorting us to pray in the Spirit.
Praying in the Spirit means that we pray with an awareness of the Holy Spirit dwelling in us. We listen to what the Holy Spirit is directing us to pray. We pray with the knowledge that the Spirit Himself intercedes for us in groans beyond human understanding (Romans 8:26-27).
Praying in the Spirit means also praying in tongues, the language given to us by the Holy Spirit. We allow the Spirit to direct our words because our words alone are not enough.
We are to pray at all times. This takes discipline and endurance. Some of us have established specific times to pray, both alone and with others. This is good, but Paul is saying we need to learn to pray at all times.
By being conscious of our thoughts and the rhythm of our days, we can learn to direct every part of our lives to prayer. When people or situations go through our mind, rather than letting our brain idle past them, we can turn them to prayer.
We can learn to turn the routine and monotonous times of life to prayer. Tasks like mowing, cleaning, washing up, can easily become opportunities to pray in the Spirit.
We must pray every kind of prayer and supplication. This is a classroom of the Holy Spirit. It is the Spirit who can lead us into every kind of prayer. A supplication is a request. We listen to what the Holy Spirit is saying about a person or a situation, and then we make our request to the Father.
We must keep alert, listening to the promptings of the Holy Spirit. We are in partnership with the Lord. There are millions of testimonies from believers who received an impression, an idea, sometimes even an urgent summons to pray for someone. They pray earnestly for the person, and later find out that their prayers were needed at that exact time.
To keep alert means that we are not distracted by the things of the world. It is easy to fill every part of the day and night with external stimulation- music, social media, movies, TV, and the like. When we engross ourselves in these things, we are not being alert to the Holy Spirit. Like a sentry guarding a military target, we must keep our spiritual senses actively engaged for the prompting of the Holy Spirit.
We must persevere in supplication for all the saints.
We are not the only ones involved in spiritual battles. My Christian brothers and sisters are also fighting against the enemy. There are other people who are being targeted for persecution, suffering, or discouragement. Our hearts must never become so focused on our own struggles that we fail to support others in their struggles. Our prayers of supplication must be for others and not just for ourselves.
It is not easy to pray for “all the saints” as there are millions of people to pray for. We should regularly pray for the saints in we know, such as people in our church, members of our cell group or home group, pastors and other leaders, people who are sick, and those who are facing persecution in other countries. When the Spirit lays a burden for particular names into our heads, Then we should pray urgently and earnestly for those people.
The ministry of prayer is the duty and the privilege of all Christians. We must always look to the needs of other people and not just ourselves, and be alert to the leading of the Holy Spirit.
Key points in this verse:
- Prayer is a key weapon in our spiritual warfare
- We must constantly pray in the Spirit, allowing the Holy Spirit to prompt us to pray specifically
- We must learn to pray on every occasion at all times
- Our prayers should be directed towards the needs of other christians, as well as our own needs.
Pray Together
Today’s Bike Ride
Humid and drizzly ahead of forecast rain. Not too bad for a ride.
Quote for the Day
A song of praise on your lips is a safeguard for your mind. It causes you to see things from God’s point of view, so that “the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart [may] be acceptable in Your sight, O Lord, my strength and my Redeemer” (Ps. 19:14). Terry Law
Freedom
God’s Limitless Love
Gary Demar: “Why Hasn’t The Lord Come Yet?”
Gary DeMar answers the question: Why hasn’t the Lord come yet?”
That’s the question being asked on the Christian Post website. Here’s the first paragraph:
Many believers are anxious for Jesus’ return and, in the natural, some feel God is postponing His return despite knowing that the scriptures, such as 2 Peter 3, teach that God is not slow, but is patient, not wanting anyone to perish, said Jeff Kinley and Todd Hampson of the “Prophecy Pros Podcast.” Kinley and Hampson emphasized that Jesus hasn’t yet returned because the Lord is giving “humanity a chance to repent before He returns.”
Why keep history going if it’s all about continued repentance? It seems to me that if this is the argument, why didn’t Jesus return to wrap up everything in the first century? That way, fewer people — by the billions — would never have to repent of anything since they never would have been born.
Like so much of Bible prophecy speculation, many who traverse the topic miss the timing factor built into most prophetic texts.
What is going on in 2 Peter 3? Peter, under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, describes what was taking place before their generation passed away (Matt. 24:34). There were scoffers who were ridiculing the prophecy made by Jesus as recorded in Matthew 24, Mark 13, and Luke 21.
Know this first of all, that in the last days mockers will come with their mocking, following after their own lusts, and saying, “Where is the promise of His coming? For ever since the fathers fell asleep, all continues as it was from the beginning of creation” (2 Peter 3:3–4).
Peter and those to whom he wrote were living in the last days, that is, the last days of the old covenant order that began with Adam and ended with the finished work of Jesus on the cross, His resurrection, and ascension. For a generation a warning went out to the Jews to repent. Those who denied that Jesus was the promised Messiah and placed their faith in the stone temple and its planned obsolescence sacrificial system would be caught in the threatened conflagration because they believed God would rescue them from the war machine of the Romans. The rescue came 40 years earlier, and those who believed did not die when the Roman armies march on the city of Jerusalem and dismantled the temple stone-by-stone.
Some believers were impatient and left the faith as James Jordan’s point out in his comments from his commentary on Matthew 23–25 to be published by American Vision:
Indeed, Peter says that these men would “follow their own lusts,” language similar to “eat and drink with drunkards” in Matthew 24:48. As the epistle of Jude, 2 Peter 2, and the later letters of Paul make clear, some of the Christian teachers and disciples also fell away and began to mock and live wantonly.
The temple was still standing. In fact, it was more glorious than ever with the rebuilding process started by King Herod I (the Great) in 19 BC and completed in AD 63, seven years before it was destroyed as Jesus predicted it would be (Matt. 23:38, 24:1–2). Jesus was its ultimate and lasting incarnation (John 2:13–22).
In 1 Peter 4:7, we read: “The end of all things is at hand.” Whatever “things” Peter had in mind, notice their end was “at hand,” that is, near for him and his readers (James 5:8). Jay Adams writes the following:
In six or seven years from the time of writing, the overthrow of Jerusalem, with all its tragic stories, as foretold in the book of Revelation and in the Olivet Discourse upon which that part is based, would take place. Titus and Vespasian would wipe out the old order once and for all. All those forces that led to the persecution and exile of these Christians in Asia Minor—the temple ceremonies (outdated by Christ’s death), Pharisaism (with its distortion of the O.T. law into a system of works-righteousness) and the political stance of Palestinian Jewry toward Rome—would be erased. The Roman armies would wipe Jewish opposition from the face of the land. Those who survived the holocaust of A.D. 70 would themselves be dispersed around the Mediterranean world. “So,” says Peter, “hold on; the end is near.” The full end of the O.T. order (already made defunct by the cross and the empty tomb) was about to occur.[1]
Peter defines the time parameters of the last days after the people witnessed a series of manifestations of the Holy Spirit and their effect on the disciples: “For these men are not drunk, as you suppose, for it is only the third hour of the day; but this”— the events you saw with your own eyes and heard with your ears—“is what was spoken of through the prophet Joel: ‘And it shall be in the last days,’ God says, ‘That I will pour forth of My Spirit upon all flesh’”[2] (Acts 2:15–17a).
The “last days” were a present reality for the New Testament church made up of Jews who embraced Jesus as the Messiah and believing Gentiles. The gifts of the Spirit were hard evidence that the last days had arrived.
Read the rest of the article here
