Pray for us

Heb 13:18 Pray for us: for we trust we have a good conscience, in all things willing to live honestly.


Pray for us.


Paul wasn't presumptuously living as though he needed no prayers. NO ONE can ever get to the point in their walk with Christ where they can believe they have no need of prayers. The most pious, the most Christ-like, the most humble believer is in need of prayers. The ones that appear to be closest to God- need prayers. There will NEVER be a day that we don't need to pray for one another, never.


Prayer is underrated - at least in my little circle of life. I didn't grow up with personal prayer being the thing to do. I grew up with the prayers before dinner and the prayers at bedtime and I thank God I had that much. Yes, at the time as a child they became a mere formality, but at least there was a teaching of God as the One I owed allegiance towards. I was also taken to church where there continued the formalized prayer but I wasn't ever exposed to prayer as a personal act on a day to day basis. What I mean is my mother never took me aside and said we've got to pray, and then prayed. I didn't witness prayer as a spiritual tool, a weapon in the spiritual warfare.


As I grew up I became more exposed to prayer, and I especially became exposed to it when I was about 19 years old and started an adult walk with Christ. Even so, I've never found it very easy to pray in front of strangers and such. I took to heart the bit about going into a closet to pray- justifying my need to pray privately rather with any others about.


I can remember when I'd go to Wednesday night prayer meetings at a church and at the end of the meeting we'd be told one person was going to start us in prayer and then we'd just go around the room and people would pray if they felt the spirit move them to do so. Basically one person would begin then when they said amen, another would start up. I always wanted to join in but could never bring myself to do so- my shyness overruling my desire. When a long pause would indicate all were done that were going to pray the leader of the prayer group would close with prayer and that would be that. It was a wonderful way to pray really. I wonderful outreach to God as a group of fellow believers. There was power in that praying, you could sense it. We say stuff like there is power in numbers and in some respects it's true, but we also know the most humble prayer spoken by one person can be more powerful than an entire congregation praying.


I get a prayer request list in my email every now and then, and my sister showed me a site she goes to online where people send in prayer requests. A lot of people realize they need to pray and they need the prayers of others. Prayers aren't magic words. Prayers are an outreach to our Creator, our Redeemer, our Sustainer. Prayers are an acknowledgement of a need for something we cannot provide for ourselves. Jesus prayed, Jesus reached out to His heavenly Father knowing that He had to rely on a power beyond His own to sustain Him. We cannot have a true spiritual walk with God without prayer, without communication with Him, without acknowledging our dependence upon Him.


Heb 13:18 Pray for us: for we trust we have a good conscience, in all things willing to live honestly.


Pray for us.
For we trust we have a good conscience in all things willing to live honestly.


They believed they had a good conscience.
They believed they willing lived honestly in all things.


We too need to believe we have a good conscience in all things- don't we?
We too need to believe we are willing to live honestly in all things- don't we?


This willingness is the key. People get all caught up in their failures, their falling short, their moments of weakness and Satan pounces on us ready to hold up those failures until it's all we see and we no longer see beyond our own shortcomings. Satan would blind us to everything as long as he can hold up our past sins- as current as a day ago or as long ago as our childhood years- and use those sins to get us to take our eyes off Christ and put them onto ourselves. Satan has a wallow for each of us that he fills with everything and anything he can hoping that we'll jump into that wallow and let the mud of his making climb up over our feet as we sink deeper and deeper until we choke on the filth he puts before us. We are filthy of that there is NO doubt. All our righteousness is filthy and that's not something we often equate with filthiness- righteousness. By its very nature righteousness sounds pure and clean, good and to be desired. And it is! But only the righteousness that is our Savior's! Our righteousness is corrupted by the filthiness of sin and will never be pure. We need to be WILLING to live honestly in all things. We need to cling to that willingness and never lose it because it's that willingness that we call hope and we call faith. We can never stop willing to live honestly, we can never stop trusting we have a good conscience. We need this because our will determines what we are. Does willing ourselves to be God's make us God's? No. But willing ourselves to be God's through the sacrifice of His Son does make us God's. Believing is being willing, choosing to have faith, hoping- allowing ourselves to believe. If we are willing… if we would allow… if we willingly submit our lives to Christ this is all we can really hope for. We can't lose the willingness to live for Christ and through His righteousness we will prevail.


Heb 13:18 Pray for us: for we trust we have a good conscience, in all things willing to live honestly.


By the grace and mercy of our Lord and Savior!!!


Amen.