Friday, December 16, 2005
To Know His Will
“Your Father knows the things you have need of before you ask Him.”
—Matthew 6:8
In the Lord’s Prayer, Jesus gave us a valuable insight into prayer. He showed us that prayer is not instructing or informing or bending the arm of God. In fact, the object of prayer is not to bend the will of God to ours, but to get our will in line with His. Martin Luther said, “By our praying, we are instructing ourselves more than Him.”
It’s funny how sometimes in prayer, we will try to educate God: “Lord, this happened and that happened.” Yet God already knows these things. We can go over the details if we want, but instead of going into every detail, it is better to spend a little time remembering that we are speaking to God, reminding ourselves of His greatness and goodness. We don’t need to educate God in prayer. We don’t need to inform Him of every detail. We bring a need before Him, and He is aware of it.
True praying is not overcoming God’s reluctance; it is laying hold of His willingness. We are not trying to move God our way. The idea is to move ourselves His way. So the objective is to find out what His will is, what His purpose is. Let’s learn to pray for His will to be done.
Copyright © 2005 by Harvest Ministries. All rights reserved.
Scripture taken from the New King James Version. Copyright © 1982 by Thomas Nelson, Inc. Used by permission. All rights reserved. Bible text from the New King James Version is not to be reproduced in copies or otherwise by any means except as permitted in writing by Thomas Nelson, Inc., Attn: Bible Rights and Permissions, P.O. Box 141000, Nashville, TN 37214-1000.
More by Greg Laurie: http://www.harvest.org/devotional/index.php/5.html