Tag Archives: Lord Jesus Christ

The Fruit God Produces In You

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The Evidence Is The Fruit

Everyone who is “in Christ” will evidence the fruit of that relationship. Jesus is the vine, and we are the branches! So, if you don’t bear fruit, it’s because you’re “not abiding in the vine,” He said. Let’s take some time to consider what kind of fruit is expected to be growing in our lives if we belong to Him. Besides Galatians 5, which speaks to the fruit the indwelling Holy Spirit produces in us, there is also an expectation that our lives will produce the fruit of winning others to Jesus.

The Fruit of Disciple-Making

In John 4, Jesus said, “Do not say, ‘There are yet four months, and then comes the harvest.’ I tell you, lift up your eyes and see how the fields are already white for harvest. He who reaps receives wages and gathers fruit for eternal life, so that sower and reaper may rejoice together.” Does your life reveal the fruit of disciple-making? Jesus also said, “If you love me, you will keep my commandments” (John 14:15). So, we would expect to see the fruit of obedience in the life of someone who claims to be a follower of Jesus Christ.

The Fruit of Obedience

If our faith is genuine, the indwelling Holy Spirit will be at work in us—pointing out all the areas of our lives that we still need to bring into obedience to the Word of God. In John 15, Jesus refers to the Father as the vinedresser (v.1), and He adds that God will remove you from the vine if there’s no life in you. In v.6 He says you will be thrown into the fire! Jesus taught the same truth in His parable about the wheat and the tares in Matthew 13. The “tares” looked like wheat, but they were frauds. They were weeds, and at the harvest they will be separated from the genuine wheat and burned up. That pictures judgment for everyone who claims to be Jesus’ disciple but has no fruit to evidence that claim. Just as the owner of a vineyard expects fruit, so God expects every one of us who genuinely abides in Christ to produce fruit! He saved us on account of His great name and for His great purpose—that He might gather a people to Himself for all eternity who belong to Him. Jesus Christ “invested” His life in you, and He expects a “return” on that investment.

Jesus Chose You

Consider what Jesus said: “You did not choose me,” Jesus said, “but I chose you and appointed you that you should go and bear fruit and that your fruit should abide” (John 15:16). It’s fruitfulness, He says, that evidences real faith! If your life is absent from fruit, you would do well to examine yourself against the Scriptures to see if your faith is the real thing. Please consider Jesus’ words carefully and with all sobriety. This is “life or death” because fruitfulness is always the result of abiding in Christ. If there is no fruit of the Spirit, if there is no fruit or passion to make disciples, if there is no fruit of obedience—it may be because you do not abide in Jesus, nor does He abide in you. The church here in the West has made a distinction between a “believer” and a “disciple,” a distinction that is not endorsed by Scripture. We’ll get into that in next week’s post!

God Makes Us Fruitful

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Through An Encounter With Jesus

No one has a genuine encounter with Jesus Christ and walks away unchanged! The deaf were made to hear. The blind were made to see. The lame could walk again. The hungry were filled. The ignorant were instructed. The guilty were forgiven. And sinners were set free from their sin!  There is nothing in Scripture to support the “cheap grace” religion so prevalent in the Western church—that someone can be saved without becoming Jesus’ disciple. Repeating words in some kind of “sinner’s prayer” is not a “get out of hell free” card!

Saved From A Self-Absorbed Life

Jesus didn’t save us to live a self-centered, self-absorbed life. He didn’t just die on the cross so we could listen to a good sermon and some worship music every Sunday morning. This post is about fruitfulness! God makes us fruitful when we enter into a genuine salvation relationship with Him. Just as you anticipate that an apple seed planted in the ground will grow into an apple tree that produces more apples, so God will produce the fruit of the Spirit in us when the seed of the Gospel is planted and His Spirit begins to indwell us. Always. Every time. Let me tell you why that’s important. It’s important because if you don’t get this right, it could lead to eternal judgment and condemnation.

Gotta Get This Right

If you’re holding on to some prayer you repeated in third-grade Children’s Church as proof you’re going to heaven, you may have been misled. The Scriptures never encourage us to hold onto something we did or said—or something our parents or pastor did or said—as proof of our salvation. God’s Word focuses on a changed life and a progressively changing life now. “If anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; old things have passed away, and look, new things have come.” (2 Corinthians 5:17) “If you love Me,” Jesus said, “you will keep My commandments.” (John 14:15) Our life will be marked by a love for obedience to God’s Word and a hatred and abhorrence for all sin we stumble into. The Apostle John wrote: “I have written these things to you who believe in the name of the Son of God, so that you may know that you have eternal life.” (1 John 5:13) The written Word, inspired by God’s Spirit, was given to act like a mirror to reflect back to us our spiritual condition.

Test Yourselves

Seek proof of your conversion from the Scriptures! “Test yourselves to see if you are in the faith. Examine yourselves,” the Apostle Paul wrote, “Or do you yourselves not recognize that Jesus Christ is in you? Unless you fail the test.” (2 Corinthians 13:5) Test your life according to God’s Word. Examine yourselves. Is there any evidence of a changed life? Is there fruit in your life that can only be produced by a genuine encounter with Jesus Christ? Listen to Jesus’ words: “I am the true vine, and My Father is the vinedresser. Every branch in Me that does not bear fruit He takes away, and every branch that does bear fruit He prunes, that it may bear more fruit.” (John 15:1–2) Evidence of genuine faith is produced by life in Jesus!
 

How God Uses Prayer

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To Show His Great Power

A survey of God’s Word reveals how God uses prayer in our lives in a number of ways. In this post, I want to ask you to consider how God will often answer your prayers with a display of power in order to strengthen your faith. In Acts chapter 12, we find the Apostle Peter imprisoned by King Herod. The text says that the church was earnestly praying for his release. With great power, an angel of the Lord suddenly appeared in the prison where Peter was being held and released him from his chains. The angel then escorted him out of the prison, safely passing two separate guard posts and out through an iron gate. From there, it says: “When he (Peter) realized this (that the angel had freed him), he went to the house of Mary, the mother of John Mark, where many had assembled and were praying. He knocked at the door in the gateway, and a servant named Rhoda came to answer. She recognized Peter’s voice, and because of her joy, she did not open the gate but ran in and announced that Peter was standing at the gateway. ‘You’re crazy!’ they told her. But she kept insisting that it was true. Then they said, ‘It’s his angel!’ Peter, however, kept on knocking, and when they opened the door and saw him, they were astounded. Motioning to them with his hand to be silent, he explained to them how the Lord had brought him out of the prison.” (Acts 12:12–17)

To Astound You

They were astounded! I’ve often thought about Herod and his guards when reading this text. What a display of power was evidenced to release Peter from his chains and imprisonment! The same display of power God used to confront Herod and the Jews—revealing their helplessness to stop Him when He determines to act according to His sovereign plans—is the same display of power God uses to strengthen our faith. The same power that buckled and weakened the knees of unbelievers strengthened the faith of believers. When you study the Gospels, you see that Jesus kept growing the faith of His disciples. For three and a half years, He kept convincing them that the work of God can never be done in the power of the flesh or by the world’s methods, but only by the supernatural power of God alone. God wants to engage us in prayer so that we see His power.

To Build Your Faith

He also intends to build our faith and belief in Him as He answers our prayers. Why do we see the supernatural work of God in the book of Acts? Acts 2:42 says the believers:  “…devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching, to the fellowship, to the breaking of bread, and to prayer.” The early church was birthed in prayer! It says they devoted themselves to prayer. James identified that prayer was a problem for some: “You ask and don’t receive because you ask with wrong motives, so that you may spend it on your evil desires.” (James 4:3) God doesn’t answer selfish prayers. He does, however, answer the prayers of helplessness and utter dependence on His power. Jesus taught His disciples that God answers prayers that are God-centered and God-focused. So, how might your prayers need to change?
 

How Pain Brings Us To Our Knees

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Does God Really Love Us?

We are tempted to ask how it is that God could truly love us if He allows us to suffer through painful experiences. In fact, it is because He loves us that He choreographs pain and suffering into our lives. Let me explain. It is not our natural tendency to seek closer fellowship with God when our lives are filled with blessings attached to this world. No — it is our tendency to stray from God when life is good! We become more comfortable leaning on this world’s blessings for our daily support. So God — in His love and sovereign grace — places a “wake-up call,” in the form of a painful experience, in front of us. He shakes us back to reality with something that refocuses our attention on Him, forcing us to our knees in prayer.

Our Greatest Satisfaction

He does this because He knows that nothing will ever offer us greater satisfaction than a Spirit-filled relationship with Him. All of this world’s goods and services are but cheap substitutes for a walk with God. If you follow the narrative from the first chapter in the book of Acts, you’ll see 120 disciples waiting in an upper room in Jerusalem for the promised Holy Spirit. Then, in chapter 2, the Spirit comes to indwell and fill the believers so they would have the supernatural power of the Spirit to obey Jesus’ commission to take the gospel to every people group and disciple them. Immediately, God begins to use them in His supernatural work as 3,000 were saved and became disciples that day — and then more and more were added!

Comfortable and Complacent

But as you read the next few chapters, it seems the church becomes complacent and comfortable with their success, and God’s work begins to slow down. So God, in His sovereignty, brought persecution. Stephen is stoned. Then James is killed, and Peter is imprisoned. It’s this crisis of faith that unsettled them, and they returned to their knees in prayer. They were humbled. They got back to biblical prayer. They expressed their helplessness and total dependence on God’s power to see Peter released from prison: “So Peter was kept in prison, but prayer was being made earnestly to God for him by the church.” — Acts 12:5. In the verses that follow, God sends an angel to spring Peter from prison (vv. 6–11).

The Lost Confronted By Answered Prayer

There’s another prayer principle that God reveals to us through His answered prayer to release Peter from incarceration: God will use a mighty display of His power to confront the lost with their sin. King Herod had imprisoned Peter and assumed he had more power than he actually had. But God says, “No, Herod — your plans to kill Peter won’t work!” Someone once said, “We make our plans, and God laughs.” I love that! Don’t lose heart, church. It may appear the world is out of control, but God hasn’t lost it. In His sovereign timing, He will display His power again and confront the lost with their need for repentance. So let’s get the bigger picture when we find ourselves in a painful place. Don’t pray that God will take it away — He may be doing a special work in your life or in the life of someone watching. Trust His plans!
 

Supernatural Prayer

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Lots of Goofy Ideas About Prayer

The world — and even the church — has some pretty goofy ideas about prayer. For some, prayer is like magic: if your faith is strong enough, you can pray the sick back to health! You can pray the dead back to life! I’ve heard prayers — by some who claimed to be believers — that sounded more like witchcraft or New Age spirituality, where prayer is like “The Force” and the battle against the dark side. And if God is going to win, you have to support Him with your prayers! In other words, the fate of the world — and even of God — is in your hands, or in your prayers.

Blasphemous Prayer

Then there’s the blasphemous “Word of Faith” teaching on prayer, or the “Prosperity Gospel” that makes God out to be little more than your personal “Jeannie in a Bottle.” You want health, wealth, and prosperity? Just name it and claim it! God is helpless against the power of your words if you claim it in Jesus’ name. He has to give it to you! That’s a perversion of what Jesus taught His disciples to pray. It’s a perversion of what prayer looks like in the New Testament.

Why Is Real Prayer Supernatural?

Prayer in the New Testament was supernatural! I mean by that, prayer was an absolute reliance and dependence on God. These perversions of prayer are humanistic in nature — the power is inside us. Biblical prayer, instead, depends on the power of God that is outside us. We’re admitting to our weakness and to our inability to affect change. We’re trusting in a supernatural God to do what we cannot do. Biblical prayer is expressed helplessness and dependence on God’s power. Let me put it another way: whatever we don’t pray about, we’re basically telling God, “I got this,” right? “Don’t need You for this one, God.” Let me get personal. How many of you get up early enough Sunday mornings to pray that God would move powerfully in your worship service? How many of you have prayed specifically for a certain person who needs to be saved? Whatever ministry you might be part of in your church — do you pray regularly over it? For the people who are part of it? I doubt that most of you really believe you can do God’s work without His supernatural help. But if you’re not praying over it regularly, it kind of casts doubt.

What Are Your Expectations?

We need the Holy Spirit’s conviction — that if we’re not spending significant time appealing to God in passionate prayer, we shouldn’t expect Him to do any supernatural work in our midst, in our lives, or in our church. By our failure to pray, we’re telling God, “I got this. Don’t need Your help.” Listen, the Holy Spirit doesn’t need our self-centered know-how. He doesn’t need us at all. But it seems to be God’s M.O. to engage His people in deep, passionate, humble, helpless, and desperate prayer before He does His great supernatural work. He includes us, and He uses our prayer to grow in us a deeper dependence on His power rather than our own. Will you repent of your false views of prayer — or your prayerlessness? God help us!
 

How God Uses Prayer To Heal You

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Your Response Is Key

The pain and suffering of unfulfilled hopes and dreams can foster an internal root of bitterness and leave emotional scars. Unless you respond like Hannah, whose story is told in 1 Samuel 1-2. Hannah took all her pain, suffering, and bitterness to the only One capable of doing something about it—Hannah prayed to God! Her story shows us that God uses our God-honoring prayers to heal our brokenness. I’m not saying that prayer fixes it! I’m not saying that you’ll always get what you want when you pray! But if your prayer is “God-honoring,” He will use it to heal the brokenness inside you.

Prayer Can Change You

Prayer won’t necessarily change your circumstances; but God will use your prayer to change you! He’ll give you the understanding you need to accept His will. We need Hannah’s story! God teaches us about life in Hannah’s story! We all have burdens to bear! No one leaves this life unscathed, without experiencing a myriad of painful circumstances. Hannah’s story gives us some answers to the “why” questions behind those circumstances; and it also gives us some answers to the “how” questions—such as, “How” should we respond to those circumstances as followers of Christ? So, we all need this! Through Hannah’s story, God gives us another example of effective prayer. It’s effective because it’s God-honoring! It’s also effective because it’s “God-centered”!

Pray Like Hannah

I want to challenge you to learn to pray like Hannah. Ask God’s help to change the way you pray if it doesn’t line up with Scripture, such as Hannah’s example! Look at the text: “…the Lord had kept her from conceiving. Her rival would taunt her severely just to provoke her, because the Lord had kept Hannah from conceiving” (1 Samuel 1:5–6). In v.10, the text says that “…deeply hurt, Hannah prayed to the LORD and wept with many tears. Making a vow, she pleaded, ‘Lord of Hosts, if You will take notice of Your servant’s affliction, remember and not forget me, and give Your servant a son, I will give him to the Lord all the days of his life…’” That’s an effective prayer because she prayed with a view to God’s sovereignty over her situation.

Seeing God’s Sovereignty

Whenever we experience something painful, it’s so typical for us to ask the “why” question, isn’t it—Why me? Why do I have to go through this? Why was Hannah childless? Why was she unable to conceive? The Scripture says it was the Lord’s doing, doesn’t it? God is the ultimate sovereign over all our problems; and Hannah believed that! It wasn’t because of “natural causes” that she couldn’t conceive. I’m sure if Hannah lived in our day that doctors would have come up with some “medical reason” why she couldn’t have children; but God’s sovereign control is behind every “medical reason.” Clearly, God had graciously given Hannah a “problem” in her life. That’s why she went to Him in prayer. In v.12, it says, “…she continued praying in the LORD’s presence.” She believed nothing was outside His ability to alter!

A Mother’s Effective Prayer

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You Don’t Have To Be Superman

Why is it our human tendency to think that good Christians must not have any problems? Maybe it’s because we come to church and see all the smiling faces, and we assume they must have it all together. Or maybe we’ve heard too many sermons on the abundant Christian life, and we assume there’s some secret formula we have yet to discover. If we can just find it, then the Christian life will become effortless, and temptations will bounce off us like bullets off Superman!

What About Pain & Suffering?

I have a well-intentioned Christian friend who called me several times over the three-year period when I dealt with cancer, surgeries, and chemo. He told me it wasn’t God’s will that I had cancer because I was a pastor and a “good man.” And yet, I told him, “I have cancer.” None of us are immune to pain, suffering, sickness, heartache, or loss. Job is the poster child for pain and suffering, and yet Scripture’s testimony of Job was that, “…He was a man of perfect integrity, who feared God and turned away from evil” (Job 1:1, 8). He was a righteous man who endured some of the worst pain and suffering in the history of mankind. Job’s commentary on pain and suffering was that, “…mankind is born for trouble as surely as sparks fly upward” (Job 5:7). And so, it ought not to surprise us that trouble afflicts the righteous as well as the ungodly.

Look It Up In Your Bible

If you have doubts about that, check it out for yourself. Research the Bible, starting at the very beginning, and see how many of God’s faithful followers endured significant pain and loss in this life. Eventually, you’ll come to Hannah’s story in 1 Samuel 1. Her story is intertwined with that of her husband and his second wife: “There was a man from Ramathaim-zophim in the hill country of Ephraim. His name was Elkanah… He had two wives, the first named Hannah and the second Peninnah. Peninnah had children, but Hannah was childless” (1 Samuel 1:1–2).So, there was the rub—she was childless. But to make matters worse, her husband’s other wife had children and taunted her because of it. The next few verses point out her pain—she wept, she wouldn’t eat, she was deeply hurt.

Don’t Try To Counsel God

Look at this: “…the Lord had kept her from conceiving. Her rival would taunt her severely just to provoke her, because the Lord had kept Hannah from conceiving. Whenever she went up to the Lord’s house, her rival taunted her in this way every year.” So Hannah wept. The text says: “…and she would not eat… deeply hurt… Hannah prayed to the LORD and wept with many tears. Making a vow, she pleaded, ‘Lord of Hosts, if You will take notice of Your servant’s affliction, remember and not forget me, and give Your servant a son, I will give him to the Lord all the days of his life…’” (1 Samuel 1:5–11). Notice—she didn’t take matters into her own hands. She prayed. We all have more in common with Hannah’s childlessness than we may think. And we need to respond, like Hannah, by taking all our pain to the only One who can fix it.
 

Praying About Temptations

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How Did Jesus Teach Us To Pray?

Let me challenge you to take a good, long look at your prayers! Are your prayers consumed with requests? Little more than sending God a grocery list of items you want Him to do for you! If so, you need to spend some time meditating on Jesus’ response to His disciples when they approached Him: “Lord, teach us to pray!” (Matthew 6:5-13) They found a deficiency in their prayer life; so, they sought Jesus’ counsel to improve it! One of the last things He teaches them to pray about is “temptation”— “And do not bring us into temptation.”

A Warning About Being In The World

Up until this point, in Jesus’ counsel about prayer, His focus had been on praying over our relationships with God and the people around us. Now, He teaches us to pray about going out into the world, where He’s called us to make disciples; but, there’s a bit of a warning! We need to pray— “Lord, as we go into the world to advance Your kingdom, we need Your strength to help us be IN the world and not OF it!” We will face some spiritual warfare as we advance against Satan’s kingdom! There is an evil one who wants to take us down! We need to pray for the Spirit’s strength to withstand him; so, we pray for the Father’s guidance.

A Prime Motivation For Prayer

Overcoming sin and evil should be a prime motivation in our prayers! Are your prayers motivated by a desire to walk deliberately with your God? To love Him with a desire to keep His commandments? Test yourself! Are your prayers centered on the STUFF you want, or on Holy Spirit help to beat sin? Finally, Jesus adds these words, in His counsel to His disciples, about prayer: “…deliver us from the evil one…” (v.13) Earlier, in His ministry, Jesus had taught them that “…the evil one comes only to steal and to kill…” (John 10:10). He wants to steal your joy in the Lord and your love for God and others! He wants to kill your effectiveness as a disciple! And we don’t have the strength in ourselves to stand against him! We’re no match for Satan. So, Jesus is teaching us— as His disciples— to humble ourselves by praying for the Father’s protection from evil! To pray that He would deliver us from Satan! And, from falling back into sin! To stand firm and finish strong despite persecution, if we should face that kind of resistance.

Don’t Try To Counsel God

As I bring this series of posts on Jesus’ “model” prayer to a close, let me remind you never to pray like you’re trying to be God’s counselor! Never pray like you’re trying to convince God that YOU know the best way to run His kingdom! Clearly, Jesus leaves no room in His counsel on prayer for us to make prayer about what we think God should do. He’s far too wise! We’re far too ignorant of the details of His work in the world. He is an omniscient God—in other words, He knows EVERYTHING! That means He’s already considered anything you might try to convince Him to do! He may answer in the affirmative! Or, He may answer negatively! And if He does, it’s because He knows the “end from the beginning” and has the best reasons to make the wisest decision! Let us learn to pray with humility, trusting God’s answers always!
 

What Do Your Prayers Look Like?

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Are You Willing To Be Honest?

Are you willing to take a good, hard look at your prayer life? What do your prayers consist of? Are they consumed with requests? Are they filled with pleas for God to change your circumstances—make your life easier, help you earn more money at your job, or provide a new job altogether? What if none of that is God’s will for your life? Have you ever considered that? Have you ever considered that, for reasons beyond your ability to comprehend, it might not be God’s will to heal the person you’re praying for? Have you considered that, in God’s eternal plans for His glory and your good, it might not be His will for you to get the job you’ve always wanted?

The Proper Motive For Prayer

The only proper motive for prayer is God’s will. In Jesus’ model prayer, He taught His disciples to pray, “…your kingdom come. Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven” (Matthew 6:10). Perhaps the implication is that, rather than praying for God to change our circumstances, we ought to pray that God would use the circumstances to change us. Not until after Jesus taught the disciples to pray for God’s will does He turn His attention to praying for their individual needs. Only after submitting to God’s will in prayer does He teach them to pray, “…give us today our daily bread” (Matthew 6:11). There is so much we could say about the simplicity of that prayer request: just give us what we need today. That’s it. Don’t borrow tomorrow’s trouble. Just ask for the Father’s provision today—and leave it there.

God Already Knows What We Need

Earlier in the same text, Jesus said, “When you pray, don’t babble like the idolaters, since they imagine they’ll be heard for their many words. Don’t be like them, because your Father knows the things you need before you ask Him” (Matthew 6:7). Don’t babble lengthy prayers about your needs, Jesus said, because the Father already knows. Then Jesus turns His attention to praying for others. Again, this is a model prayer. “When you pray, pray like this,” He said. “Forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors” (Matthew 6:12). In other words, pray that God would forgive you in the same way that you forgive others. Be so thankful for the Father’s forgiveness that you forgive others in the same way He forgave you—totally, completely.

God’s Absolute Forgiveness

There is nothing anyone has ever done to you that could compare to the quantity and level of depravity with which you’ve sinned against God. And yet, He forgave you. It’s not until we are truly thankful for His absolute forgiveness that we are truly able to forgive others. After He finished teaching the disciples how to pray, He shared these sobering words with them: “For if you forgive people their wrongdoing, your heavenly Father will forgive you as well. But if you don’t forgive people, your Father will not forgive your wrongdoing” (Matthew 6:14–15). In essence, He’s telling them to take a hard look at themselves. If they’re unable to forgive others, it’s evidence that they may never have been forgiven themselves.
 

Prayer Is Not Counseling God

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We Don’t Know What’s Best

I’m afraid that many people treat prayer as their opportunity to counsel God on certain matters. We ought never to pray like we’re trying to convince God that we know what’s best—as if the eternal, all-wise God, who knows the end from the beginning and everything in between, needs our advice for anything! His eternal plans for creation were already laid out before the world began. The writer of Acts reminds us: “The God who made the world and everything in it—He is Lord of heaven and earth and does not live in shrines made by hands. Neither is He served by human hands, as though He needed anything, since He Himself gives everyone life and breath and all things.” —Acts 17:24–27

God Doesn’t Need Our Counsel

When it comes to prayer, let’s get one thing straight: GOD DOESN’T NEED ANYTHING… INCLUDING OUR COUNSEL! He didn’t create us because of some deficiency, hoping that we could fix Him. There’s a clear, underlying message in Jesus’ response to His disciples’ question: “Lord, teach us to pray.” God doesn’t need us—we need Him! According to Jesus’ response in Matthew 6, prayer is to be GOD-CENTERED. “Pray like this,” He says, and He begins with the “Father,” not with us. By the way, He didn’t tell them to memorize it and repeat it mindlessly—“Our Father, who art in heaven…blah, blah, blah.” He said, “…pray like this.” This is how we’re supposed to pray—it’s Jesus’ model prayer.

Don’t Try Twisting God’s Arm

Rather than making prayer our attempt to twist God’s arm over something we want Him to do, prayer should begin with a focus on God the Father. Start your conversation with the Creator of the universe by honoring Him for His character. Praise Him for who He is! Don’t rush into His presence like your schedule is what matters—“Here’s my grocery list of needs, God! Will You go shopping for me?” Show Him reverence when you pray. You’re entering the throne room of Heaven! God transcends far above anything on your agenda. There’s an order here: Your kingdom first, Father! Our greatest desire should be that God’s name is hallowed, admired, and cherished. And He’s “our” Father too, Jesus says. Never get over that great doctrine of adoption—that God has birthed us into His family!

We Become His Children

Though we were born children of wrath because of our sin, He adopts us into His family in Christ. We’re FAMILY! Depend on Him like He’s family—because He is! We’re brothers, sisters, and joint-heirs with Jesus Himself. Then Jesus models prayer by moving from the Father’s character to His KINGDOM: “Your kingdom come. Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.” —Matthew 6:10 So, pray like this, Jesus says—pray for the Father’s KINGDOM and for His WILL. If we’re praying like Jesus taught us to pray, our primary concern will be for the Father’s glory and the advancement of His kingdom. Our prayers will be GOD-CENTERED. Take note of the things you pray for. Are your prayers motivated by your dreams and goals, or by God’s eternal kingdom, His will, and His plans? Mature believers pray for God’s will above their own.