"Teach Us To Pray"

I recently had a wake up call about my prayer life I’d like to share with you. It happened while I was praying a very familiar and often quoted verse from 2Chronicles 7:14.

If My people who are called by My name humble themselves, pray and seek My face, and turn from their evil ways, then I will hear from heaven, forgive their sin, and heal their land. (2Ch 7:14)

I suddenly realized that my prayer was distinctly flawed in that it was rooted in an Old Covenant understanding of God. It implied that unless I humbled and purified myself God would neither hear my prayers or forgive me. While this was certainly true of Old Covenant believers who had but the blood of bulls and goats to make them clean in the sight of God, it is not true of New Covenant saints who stand forever washed in the precious blood of Christ. Under the New Covenant I am no longer required to meet any such condition for God to forgive me. I AM FORGIVEN. Or to hear my prayers for…

This is the confidence we have before Him: whenever we ask anything according to His will, He hears us. (1Jn 5:14)

Because Christ had not yet come and paid the debt of mankind to God, believers under the Old Covenant were bound to pray such prayers as…

Create in me a clean heart, O God; and renew a right spirit within me. Cast me not away from thy presence; and take not thy holy spirit from me. (Psa 51:10-11)

Or…

Oh that thou wouldest rend the heavens, that thou wouldest come down… (Isa 64:1)

God has already “renewed a right Spirit in me”. And He has “rent the heavens and come down”. His work under the New Covenant is “finished”. When I pray to ask God for things like healing, prosperity, the salvation of loved ones etc. I’m, ignorantly, insulting His finished work by saying it was insufficient for my needs and I require Him to provide something more. Yet, until recently, this characterized the bulk of my prayer life.

But, as I said at the beginning, I’ve had a wake up call.

For verily I say unto you, That whosoever shall say unto this mountain, Be thou removed, and be thou cast into the sea; and shall not doubt in his heart, but shall believe that those things which he saith shall come to pass; he shall have whatsoever he saith. Therefore I say unto you, What things soever ye desire, when ye pray, believe that ye receive them, and ye shall have them. (Mar 11:23-24)

You won’t find statements like this in the Old Testament.





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