This Week’s Recovery Application Challenge
Be sure to have completed TWIRL 043 before continuing this Application Challenge
How to Pray: The Lord’s Prayer
When there seems to be so many roadblocks to an effective prayer life hindering recovery it is only natural to remain stuck in your problems. You can feel so paralyzed in your circumstances that you are enslaved by the likes of discontentment, failure, shame, fear, helplessness, depression, and isolation. You may find that you feel that you cannot pray when feeling so lost that you do not have the words to pray.
Jesus helped us out by giving us the words to pray that addresses our needs while acknowledging the authority of the One we are in such desperate need of. The Lord’s Prayer is our weapon for the battle that we so often feel cannot be won. Let’s examine these words to pray by from Matthew 6:9-13 (NKJV).
Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name.
Thy Kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.
Give us this day our daily bread. And forgive us our trespasses,
as we forgive those who trespass against us.
And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.
For thine is the kingdom, the power and the glory, for ever and ever. Amen.
This beautiful example given to us by Jesus Christ is the model for how to pray. When you are feeling stuck and don’t have the words to pray, simply repeat these words given to us by the Savior. In examining The Lord’s Prayer, the following eight points, when understood, can sensibly direct your prayer experience:
- Authority—God is God and in complete authority.
- Purpose—God’s plan and purpose is being accomplished.
- Providence—We are not God and in need of God’s providence.
- Repentance & Mercy—We have sinned requiring mercy from a repentant heart.
- Compassion—Forgiven, we must extend God’s mercy to others.
- Resist Temptation—Forgiven, we still wrestle with temptation.
- Deliverance—We need a Savior, everyday!
- Empowerment—Submitted unto the glory of God’s power and authority.
- How do you want God to manifest His authority in your life?
- How do you want for God to fulfill His plan and purpose in your life?
- How do you want for God to provide for your life?
- How do you want to experience God’s mercy in your life?
- How do you want for God to manifest a compassionate attitude toward others in your life?
- How do you want for God to help you to resist temptation in your life?
- How do you want to experience deliverance from selfishness by your Savior, Jesus Christ?
- How do you want to experience God’s glorious power and authority in your life?
- Next time you pray The Lord’s Prayer, how will these eight points have meaning and power in your prayer experience?
- Authority
- Purpose
- Providence
- Repentance & Mercy
- Compassion
- Resist Temptation
- Deliverance
- Empowerment
- How do you want God to impact your life empowered by a vital prayer experience?
Prayer is the Lifeblood to a Transformed New Life Experience
The Lord’s Prayer is a powerfully effective tool for speaking directly to God. Jesus taught the disciples how to pray in a manner that would produce results as God heard and responded, empowering the disciples to be effectively powerful in their ministry (service to God). It is through the power of prayer that our spiritual fellowship with Jesus Christ is revealed to our minds and realized in our experience.
Jesus said, “Keep on asking, and you will receive what you ask for. Keep on seeking, and you will find. Keep on knocking, and the door will be opened to you. For everyone who asks, receives. Everyone who seeks, finds. And to everyone who knocks, the door will be opened.” Matthew 7:7-8 (NLT)
The promise of Scripture spoken of by Jesus while still on the earth is that in relationship with Him, His Spiritual presence is alive in us, dwelling in us as God’s Spirit literally resides in our humanity. We are implored by Jesus to open the door of fellowship with Him through relationship. The Bible speaks of our physical bodies as the temple of God’s Spirit. Our commitment to God in recovery is fully realized as we allow the Spirit of Jesus Christ to inhabit our physical body, taking control of our cognitive mind and spiritual soul as we submit every aspect of our life into His care. Communication with God through prayer is our access to all that God has promised us in His Word.
But whoever is united with the Lord is one with Him in spirit. Flee from sexual immorality. All other sins a person commits are outside the body, but whoever sins sexually, sins against their own body. Do you not know that your bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit, who is in you, whom you have received from God? You are not your own; you were bought at a price. Therefore honor God with your bodies. 1 Corinthians 6:17-20 (NIV)
As you offer to God your body as a living sacrifice, you are in fact turning away from worship to self and expressing worship to God (Romans 12:1-2). This is huge for effective recovery from the old life into transformation into the new life. Prayer is the key that unlocks everything that God desires for you. As your mind is renewed and your desires conform to God’s desires for you, the new life is realized by experience.
If you read this and you still feel a bit uncomfortable, even threatened, by the truth of your desires being changed to conform to the desires of the loving God, then something still isn’t right. However, be not discouraged. As you come to more fully comprehend that God is God (and you’re not), and that He is all-powerful in complete authority, and most of all, that God, from a heart of compassion, saw your need for repair, and bought you at a price (the cost was His Son as the paid ransom for your eternal soul), you will more fully recognize how flawed you are, how flawed your selfish desires are, and will see it as a good thing to surrender control—an opportunity for something so much greater than you could ever imagine in your wildest dreams (Ephesians 3:20).
As you commit to living in the will and care of the Spirit of the Living God, wanting in agreement with what God wants for you, you will know His will for you and experience His best for you life. Prayer is the vehicle that facilitates God’s best in your life as you tell God that what you want is in fact everything that He wants and has for you. If you find yourself doubting that you want His best for you, confess it to Him with your mouth; then tell God that intellectual you know that you need His best, even though emotionally you might not be sure that you want everything God wants for you, a little fearful of what that might actually be.
God Communicating with You
God desires very much to have fellowship with you. He will communicate to you through your thoughts and feelings, and perhaps through the circumstances of your life; but most of the time God desires to communicate with you in writing. You most likely will not receive a mailed letter or an email but you have God’s written word every time that you take the time to read the Bible. NLX 101 is loaded with God’s written word but has only scratched the surface. There is so much more.
The most effective tool in experiencing revelation and knowledge of the will of God for your life each day is by way of His written word in Scripture, aptly referred to as the Word of God. If you happen to be someone who doubts the authenticity of Scripture as justification not to read it, consider this: While it was human beings that wrote the scriptures, it was God that inspired and ensured its accuracy. How is this not possible? From Moses to John the Revelator, God has had His hand on the accuracy and inerrancy of His written word. If God is not able to preserve the authority of His Word throughout these many centuries and generations, then how does He have the authority to do anything to impact the course of His creation? Please, do not allow yourself to stumble and be held back from receiving from God because you are not certain about the authority of the Bible. Pray for wisdom to be certain that God’s Word is His inspired of Truth.
It is imperative for empowered effective and productive recovery to spend meaningful time reading, even studying the Word of God. Pray for revelation, knowledge and wisdom as you read and study the Scriptures. Be open to receiving these things from The Word as the Spirit of God in your life bears witness to your spirit concerning the truth you are reading. Allow it to sink in and resonate with you. Enjoy the truth of the promises of God to be realized in your new lifestyle of recovery, disciplined in obedience to this profound truth for living.
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