Modern-day Christians can learn some good lessons from Old Testament prayers. When Jehoshaphat beseeched God for help, he struck a balance between asking the Lord to meet his needs and proclaiming His greatness. Likewise, our requests shouldbe made with recognition of who God is. Otherwise, the focus of our prayers becomes need, weakness, failure, or fear.

Jehoshaphat cried out to God about his terrible predicament, but he also exalted the Lord’s attributes, acknowledging the great things He had done. When we pray like this, we become stronger, bolder, and more forthright. That’s why knowing the Word of God is so important. When we read about how the Lord worked in the lives of others, we understand His awesome power and might. Then we can look to the men and women of the Old Testament as an example and begin to pray in a similar way. God’s wonder-working power is still available today, and He wants His children to access it.

By proclaiming, “Power and might are in Your hand so that no one can stand against You” (v. 6), Jehoshaphat was praising God and at the same time reminding himself of the Lord’s greatness. As you pray, remind God of His mercy, talk to Him about His grace, and recall His mighty power.

Do you want to revolutionize your prayer life? If you focus as much attention on declaring the attributes of the Lord as you do on making requests, your prayers will take on a whole new dimension. They’ll cease to be self-centered and instead will become God-centered.

A powerful story is told of the bombing raids of World War II where thousands of children were orphaned and left to starve. After experiencing the fright of abandonment, many of these children were rescued and sent to refugee camps where they received food and shelter. Yet even in the presence of good care, they had experienced so much loss that many of them could not sleep at night. They were terrified they would awake to find themselves once again homeless and hungry. Nothing the adults did seemed to reassure them, until someone thought to send a child to bed with a loaf of bread. Holding onto their bread, the children were able to sleep. If they woke up frightened in the night, the bread seemed to remind them, “I ate today and I will eat again tomorrow.”(1) 

Hours before he was arrested, Jesus spoke to his disciples about the time ahead of them, days they would face without his physical presence. “In a little while,” he said, “you will see me no more, and then after a little while you will see me.” Reasonably, at his words the disciples were confused. “What does he mean by ‘a little while’? We don’t understand what he is saying,” they grumbled. Jesus answered with more than reassurance. To their confusion and uncertainty, perhaps also to their fears of the worst and visions of the best, Jesus responded with something they could hold on to. Concluding his last conversation with them before the cross, he said, “I have told you these things, so that in me you may have peace. In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world.”  

Like children with bread holding onto what gives us life, Jesus offers peace in uncertainty, mercy in brokenness, something solid when all is lost. He speaks of peace can that transcend understanding when we cling to the one who gives us life. It is worth noting that his use of the word “peace” here portrays a quiet state of mind, which is infinitely dissimilar to a mind that has been silenced by coercion or despair—emotions some associate with religion. To these, the gospel is good news. It is as if Jesus says, “These things I have spoken to you, so that in me you might be thoroughly quieted by what gives you life.”

When the Apostle Paul wrote down the now oft-quoted instruction “Do not worry about anything,” he had every reason to be anxious about everything. In prison and facing days unquestionably out of his control, Paul was undeniably holding on to something solid. “The Lord is near,” he wrote from a jail cell. “Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God. And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.”(2)

Paul does not promise that followers of Jesus will not see darkness or sorrow anymore than he himself was avoiding it or Jesus himself escaped it. But he does promise, as clearly as Jesus promised the disciples, that there is a reason for hope in the best and worst of times. The Lord who is near has overcome the world in which we will continue to find trouble. The mystery of Christ is that somehow even in the midst of trouble he can answer the cries of our hearts with more than reassurance.

For the Christian, to be found in Christ means to be thoroughly stilled by who Christ is. His victory gives life, and the surety of that victory gives peace that transcends all things. Like children pacified by the assurance of bread, we are invited to hold the very bread of life, a hope more solid than fear.

Jill Carattini is managing editor of A Slice of Infinity at Ravi Zacharias International Ministries in Atlanta, Georgia.

(1) Story told in Dennis Linn’s Sleeping with Bread, (New York: Paulist, 1995), 1.

(2) Philippians 4:5b-7.

Morning “And the glory which thou gavest me I have given them.” John 17:22

 Behold the superlative liberality of the Lord Jesus, for he hath given us his

all. Although a tithe of his possessions would have made a universe of angels

rich beyond all thought, yet was he not content until he had given us all that

he had. It would have been surprising grace if he had allowed us to eat the

crumbs of his bounty beneath the table of his mercy; but he will do nothing by

halves, he makes us sit with him and share the feast. Had he given us some small

pension from his royal coffers, we should have had cause to love him eternally;

but no, he will have his bride as rich as himself, and he will not have a glory

or a grace in which she shall not share. He has not been content

 with less than making us joint-heirs with himself, so that we might have equal

possessions. He has emptied all his estate into the coffers of the Church, and

hath all things common with his redeemed. There is not one room in his house the

key of which he will withhold from his people. He gives them full liberty to

take all that he hath to be their own; he loves them to make free with his

treasure, and appropriate as much as they can possibly carry. The boundless

fulness of his all-sufficiency is as free to the believer as the air he

breathes. Christ hath put the flagon of his love and grace to the believer’s

lip, and bidden him drink on forever; for could he drain it, he is welcome to do

 so, and as he cannot exhaust it, he is bidden to drink abundantly, for it is

all his own. What truer proof of fellowship can heaven or earth afford?

  “When I stand before the throne

Dressed in beauty not my own;

 When I see thee as thou art,

 Love thee with unsinning heart;

 Then, Lord, shall I fully know–

 Not till then–how much I owe.”

 

Evening “Ah Lord God, behold, thou hast made the heaven and the earth by thy great power

and stretched out arm, and there is nothing too hard for thee.” Jeremiah 32:17

 At the very time when the Chaldeans surrounded Jerusalem, and when the sword,

famine and pestilence had desolated the land, Jeremiah was commanded by God to

purchase a field, and have the deed of transfer legally sealed and witnessed.

This was a strange purchase for a rational man to make. Prudence could not

justify it, for it was buying with scarcely a probability that the person

purchasing could ever enjoy the possession. But it was enough for Jeremiah that

his God had bidden him, for well he knew that God will be justified of all his

children. He reasoned thus: “Ah, Lord God! thou canst make this plot of ground

of use to me; thou canst rid this land of these oppressors; thou canst make

 me yet sit under my vine and my fig-tree in the heritage which I have bought;

for thou didst make the heavens and the earth, and there is nothing too hard for

thee.” This gave a majesty to the early saints, that they dared to do at God’s

command things which carnal reason would condemn. Whether it be a Noah who is to

build a ship on dry land, an Abraham who is to offer up his only son, or a Moses

who is to despise the treasures of Egypt, or a Joshua who is to besiege Jericho

seven days, using no weapons but the blasts of rams’ horns, they all act upon

God’s command, contrary to the dictates of carnal reason; and the Lord gives

them a rich reward as the result of their obedient faith. Would

 to God we had in the religion of these modern times a more potent infusion of

this heroic faith in God. If we would venture more upon the naked promise of

God, we should enter a world of wonders to which as yet we are strangers. Let

Jeremiah’s place of confidence be ours–nothing is too hard for the God that

created the heavens and the earth.

 

And so in the matter of the envoys of the princes of Babylon, who had been sent to him to inquire about the sign that had been done in the land, God left him to himself, in order to test him and to know all that was in his heart.   2 Chronicles 32:31 

Hezekiah was growing so inwardly great and priding himself so much upon the favor of God that self-righteousness crept in, and because he trusted in himself, the grace of God was for a time, in its more active operations, withdrawn. If the grace of God were to leave the best Christian, there is enough sin in his heart to make him the worst of transgressors. If left to yourselves, you who are warmest for Christ would cool down like Laodicea into sickening lukewarmness: You who are sound in the faith would be white with the leprosy of false doctrine; you who now walk before the Lord in excellency and integrity would reel to and fro and stagger with a drunkenness of evil passion. Like the moon, we borrow our light; bright as we are when grace shines on us, we are darkness itself when the Sun of Righteousness withdraws Himself.

Therefore, let us cry to God to never leave us. “Take not Your Holy Spirit from me! Do not withdraw from us Your indwelling grace! Have You not said, ‘I, the LORD, am its keeper; every moment I water it. Lest anyone punish it, I keep it night and day’?1 Lord, keep us everywhere. Keep us when we’re in the valley so that we do not grumble against Your humbling hand; keep us when we’re on the mountain, so we do not lose our balance by being lifted up; keep us in youth, when our passions are strong; keep us in old age, when becoming conceited in our wisdom, we may therefore prove greater fools than those who are young and silly; keep us when we come to die, in case at the very end we should deny You! Keep us living, keep us dying, keep us working, keep us suffering, keep us fighting, keep us resting, keep us everywhere, for everywhere we need You, O our God!”

1Isaiah 27:3

Family Reading Plan   Isaiah 61  Matthew 9