Praying Properly (3)

The true anxiety of prayer: the people of God, (1 Kgs 3:7b-9).  When the Lord said to Solomon, "Ask what I should give you" (v.5), His Word was both a gracious invitation and an inevitable test.  He was being invited to come with big requests and to 'ask anything.'  Here's the challenging point: your response to such an invitation reveals who you really are.  Your true spiritual character comes out when you are given such an invitation.  How?  Because we either act on it as it stands, or else we just do not believe that the Lord is serious and is making such a gracious offer to weak believers like us.

Also, what we ask for reveals what is most important to us.  Whah!  What Solomon asked for revealed what was important to him.  He asked the Lord for a 'hearing heart' and the ability to discern between good and evil, so that he could rule the people of God well.  He wanted his entire being to be geared toward pleasing God through serving Him well.  What was it that drove Solomon's prayer?  The well-being of others; in this case, God's people.  He was anxious over the people of God, and that motivated his prayer.

It was the same with Moses.  When he saw the burdens under which his fellow Hebrews were living/existing,   he was moved to pray for their deliverance, little knowing that God would use him as the answer to his own prayer.  Lesson: be very careful what you ask for - you might get it!  His prayer was not asking God to advance his own political career; it was Israel's need for deliverance, regardless of cost to himself, that drove him.  In Solomon's case, his prayer was driven by the need for a discerning heart to rule the people of God.  His was a holy anxiety, concern over the well-being of God's redeemed people.

The leaders of God's people ought to exhibit a watchfulness over them; they ought to have a watchful worry that trembles for the welfare of the people of God and that always prays with one eye on their good.  And that ought also to drive us in our prayers.

Are you concerned about the low level of true spirituality there is in the church today?  Are you anxious about your own poor spirituality?  At the beginning of a new year (2013) is a good time to take spiritual stock of your own soul, and of that of your church.  Don't settle for second best either personally or for your church.  Seek the Lord and He will reveal to you what you need to do - for yourself and for your church.