- [Instructor] Welcome to Grace Digital presentation.
and what he does in general for us.
Thanksgiving on the other hand,
is offered to God for everything
he has done in particular for us.
Psalm 48:1 tells us,
"Great is the Lord and greatly to be praised."
Praise is vocal.
It is uttered with the lips.
Praise should be offered in direct
proportion to God's own person.
God is great in power,
great in his creative works,
wondrous in his redemptive acts,
great in wisdom,
great in his dealings with us.
Every single thing that God does is great.
Therefore, it means that God should be greatly praised.
It is never a loss of time when we praise the Lord.
However, most of us do it far too little.
Thanksgiving is also voiced.
It takes all the greatness that is universal about God
and makes it specific for our distinct cases.
This is how Paul puts it in Philippians 4:6,
"Be anxious for nothing,
but in everything by prayer
and supplication with thanksgiving,
let your requests be known to God."
Thanksgiving and praise give us a direct path to God.
The word of God says in Psalm 104,
"Enter in his gates with thanksgiving
and his courts with praise.
Give thanks to him, bless his name,
the gates lead us to the courts,
and the courts lead us to his presence.
You get into the gates by thanksgiving
and into the courts with praise.
Then you are there, you are in his presence."
Without those tools,
we are like the 10 lepers who came to Jesus
for assistance standing from afar and crying out,
"Lord, have mercy on us."
As seen in Luke 17:11-19.
Jesus did have mercy upon them.
Many Christians pray that way,
Lord, help me, I need health,
but they are crying far away from a distance because
they are not using an essential means of access to God.
In that story of the lepers,
you will see that one of them
returned to give appreciations.
When that leper did that,
he had direct access to Jesus.
The Bible says all 10 of them were healed,
but only one was saved.
By giving thanks, he got spiritual and physical benefits.
We also see the beautiful phrase in Isaiah
that gives us another image of coming into God's presence.
"You shall call your wall salvation and your gates praise."
Isaiah 60:18.
The walls of this city, our salvation,
relates to God's provision and protection for the redeemed.
Salvation is the great comprehensive word for every benefit
and every blessing that was purchased
for us by the death of Jesus on the cross.
This city, whose walls are salvation, also has gates.
Revelation 21:25-27:22 1
tells us simply that the only way
into this glorious city is through the gate.
If we want to get into the presence of God,
we want to get into the city of salvation,
we enter through the gate of praise
Paul says, "In everything by prayer and supplication,
let your requests be made known to God,"
but he added, "with thanksgiving."
Philippians 4:6.
Number two, worship.
Worship is poorly understood in current Christendom.
Worship is not singing carols or choruses,
worship is not a statement of God's attributes.
While vocal expression has to do
with praise and thanksgiving,
our worship has to do with attitude.
Many of the words translated as worship in the Old Testament
and the New details essentially an attitude of the body.
Several words expressed different
attitudes in the word of God.
One indicates to bend the head low,
while another implies to bend the upper part
of the body forward and stretch out the hands.
A third means to prostrate oneself face down
in the presence of the one whom you are worshiping.
Now, to make clear,
we are not saying that worship
cannot be expressed by speaking,
but it is not worship if it is not an attitude of the body.
In Isaiah 6,
the prophet described a vision of the throne of God.
Above it he observed the seraphim,
the burning, fiery creatures that surround God's throne.
He saw that each had six wings,
and he saw how they use them.
With one pair of wings,
the seraphim concealed their faces.
With the second pair,
they concealed their feet.
With the third pair, they flew.
We understand from this description
that two pairs of wings are given to worship
as indicated by concealing their faces and feet.
Worship in a manner of speaking
is covering your face and your body.
It is bowing low, bending the head.
Of course, this does not have to be solely
a description of the physical body.
We are speaking about something in the spirit.
We are talking about the approach of our spirits to God.
John 4:23 tells us,
"The true worshipers will worship
the Father in spirit and truth."
This is this represented in the Lord's prayer.
"In this manner, therefore,
pray Our Father in Heaven,"
as seen in Matthew 6:9.
After we have first approached God,
the next thing we say is,
"Hallowed be your name."
It is a privilege even to use your name.
We use your name with respect,
we do it in humility,
we do it in awe and admiration.
That is the true meaning of worship.
It is a heart bowed low in God's presence.
Number three, petition.
The tool that most people intend
when they talk about prayer is petition,
which is asking for physical and material needs to be met.
However, we must remember praying is not thinking
of anything we want and asking for it.
Praying is learning God's revealed plan in word of God,
and then praying for the outworking of that plan.
Look at 1 John 5:14-15,
"Now, this is the confidence that we have in him
that if we ask anything according to his will,
he hears us and we know that he hears us.
Whatever we ask, we know that we have
the petitions that we have asked of him."
One of the great secrets of getting
something from God is receiving.
Many people ask, but fail to receive.
It is not just the ask that is essential
but asking and receiving.
This happens many times.
God touches someone with a healing touch,
but that person does not receive it.
One way not to receive an answer
to a petition is to go on praying for it.
Some people pray themselves into faith
and then pray themselves out of faith.
Another scripture is even more emphatic.
Jesus was speaking about this very
matter of petition when he said this,
"Therefore, I tell you
whatever you ask for in prayer,
believe that you have received it and it will be yours."
Mark 11:24 NIV.
Some translations say,
"Believe that you will receive them,"
but that is not correct, or at least not literal.
The New International Version
is more accurate in this instance.
"Believe that you have received it."
When do you receive the things you ask for when you pray?
Notice this, though,
receiving is not the same as having.
Receiving is settling it,
having is the experience that follows.
Hebrews 10:36 tells us that,
"We have need of endurance
so that after we have done the will of God,
we may receive the promise."
In that gap between doing the will of God
and receiving the promise, you can do two things.
You can keep the plug in
or pull the plug out.
If you pull the plug out,
you get nothing.
If you keep the plug in, you get everything.
Remember this, if you are going
to petition God for something,
always begin with thanksgiving.
Never go straight into petition,
and never use a petition as a way
to parade someone's faults before God.
Number four, intercession.
Intercession is one of the highest
expertise of Christian life.
To intercede means literally to come in between.
The intercessor is one who comes in between God
and those for whom he is praying.
The Bible gives us patterns of extreme cases.
First is the time that Abraham stood
between the Lord and the wicked city of Sodom.
Genesis 18 gives us the story of the Lord
and his two angels visiting Abraham's home.
This is an exceptional picture of hospitality.
Abraham offered them water to wash their feet,
he killed a calf for their meal,
he chatted with them in the shade of the terebinth trees.
Then the Lord began to reveal
to Abraham his goal in being there.
He was going down into the infamous cities of Sodom
and Gomorrah to examine the situation
and take proper action.
Now, this concerned Abraham quite a bit as his nephew,
Lot, who was in a backsliding state was lived there.
"At that time, the two angels turned away
from there and went towards Sodom,
but Abraham stood there before the Lord."
Genesis 18:22.
That is the status of the intercessor.
Abraham stood in front of the Lord and said,
"Lord, please, hold on a moment.
Don't go yet to place judgment.
I have some things I would like to say to you."
In a sense, he held the Lord back
and then he began bargaining.
Abraham asked the Lord if it would be possible to spare
the cities if he could find 50 righteous people,
then 40, and so on and so forth
until the Lord agreed to spare Sodom
for the sake of 10 righteous persons.
When a person's sin has caused a breach,
the intercessor stands before God and says,
"Lord, I am closing the gap.
Your action can't come upon him
unless it first comes upon me."
This model also shows the position
of the supplicant who calls out for mercy,
as we'll see in a moment.
This is not the only form of intercession,
but it is the ultimate.
The intercessor is God-centered.
It is not problem focused,
he is not focused on what man can or cannot do.
He has a vision of what God can do.
When no intercessor can be found among God's people,
it is the highest mark of frustration
in our responsibility to God into our fellow people.
The story of Job praying
for his children is another example.
And his sons would go and feast in their houses,
each on his appointed day,
and would send and invite their
three sisters to eat and drink with them.
So it was when the days of feasting had run
their course that Job would send and sanctify them,
and he would rise early in the morning
and offer burnt offerings according
to the number of them all,
for Job said, "It may be that my sons have sinned
and cursed God in their hearts."
Thus Job did regularly.
1 Job 4-5.
That is intercession.
How far can we accept responsibility
for other people's sins?
I do not think that the human mind
can give a final analysis,
but to some extent,
we can accept the responsibility
for other people's sins by intercession.
This is what Job did for his sons and his daughters.
He said, "If by any chance they have sinned,
I am offering this sacrifice."
And he rose early in the morning to do it.
Thinking of intercession corporately,
think of people meeting to offer
sacrifice on behalf of the whole body.
These individuals stand as representatives before God
and say, we've here for our group.
If anybody has fallen, Lord,
we offer up sacrifice.
If you wanna speak to the body, Lord,
they are not all here,
but we are here.
You could say that Job did not get much
for his sacrifices because all his sons
and daughters were blotted out in one moment,
but I want to point out to you something
that to me is tremendously exciting.
If you read on, the end of the book says
that after Job had stood the test,
God gave him exactly double of everything he had before.
"The Lord blessed the latter days
of Job more than his beginning,
for he had 14,000 sheep,
6,000 camels, 1,000 yoke of oxen,
and 1,000 female donkeys.
He also had seven sons and three daughters."
Job 42:12-13.
God did not double the sons and daughters,
however, he gave Job the same number.
What is the message?
Job had not lost his previous children,
they had just gone before him.
Job sacrifices prevail for his sons and daughters.
God did not have to double the numbers
because they were still there in the eternal.
If you are praying for your family or lost someone,
be encouraged.
Rise up early in the morning
and offer the appropriate sacrifice.
Trust God with the outcomes.
Number five, supplication.
The next instrument of the symphony
of prayer is supplication.
Supplication is a complicated word for some people.
When you are supplicating or you are a supplicant,
there is only one thing you ask for, mercy.
It is often tied to intercession.
Looking at two passages that clearly show this,
Zechariah 12:10, the Lord was speaking and he said,
"I will pour on the House of David
and on the inhabitants of Jerusalem
the spirit of grace and supplication."
Notice the order.
The first is grace, then supplication.
If you say, God, I want to come before you in supplication,
God says, if I don't give you the grace, you can't do it.
The truth is no prayer of any value
can be given to God without his grace.
If it does not initiate in the grace of God,
it is worthless.
The next part of that verse in Zechariah 12 reads,
"Then they will look on me whom they pierced.
Yes, they will mourn for him as one mourns for his only son
and grieve for him as one grieves for a firstborn."
This verse describes the turning
point of God's dealings with Israel.
It is the point at which they come to repentance
and acknowledgement of the messiah,
and it is brought about
by the spirit of grace and supplication.
This is part of our three part series
on types of prayer and understanding prayers.
If you would like us to continue the series,
please leave it in the comments below.
Also, we appreciate your prayers towards us.
It is a vital part of this ministry.
God bless.
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