Old Jerry

Hezekiah’s healing was important for his nation because there might not have been an heir to the throne and it would have thrown into chaos. This related to God’s promises to David because He told David that he would always have an heir on the throne of Judah.

The Lord’s Prayer is putting God above all things. We are saying that is the only God and saying how Holy He is. It is important that we see Him as the only God. We have a tendency to not make Him number one. Unless we see this our prayer will not be answered.

The significance of Hezekiah spreading out the enemy’s message before the Lord is to show that this is going to be the Lord’s battle. He was turning over to the Lord. The underlying principle illustrated here is that we should turn the thing over to the Lord that is his and follow Him in doing His instructions. If we don’t apply this principle we will be under stress all the time because we don’t think that the Lord will take care of us.

The danger that Nehemiah is in is that he is about to irritate the king with his request. He does a quick pray because he what all the help that God will provide. Therefore the “arrow prayer” is just the topping on the cake of what Nehemiah has been building up to.

The way that Daniel’s situation compared to Ester’s is that they are going to go before the king and is not invited therefore they could lose their lives. God places his people in strategic positions today because He is still looking out for the ones that He loves. The responsibilities we have to God that can cause danger to our positions or our lives is that we are to worship Him and that we are to spread the word about Jesus Christ being our savior. Whenever I am in this situation I pray to God and ask for His protection.

Nehemiah’s appeal to God for the people and himself is that He promised that if they would seek Him then He would gather them. We can learn that if we repent and follow Jesus then God will make things right with us not to say that He will give us what we are wanting.

I think that Nehemiah prayed day and night for four months because he wanted to be sure that it was God’s plan that he was putting into action. If it wasn’t God’s plan then it would surely fail. That is the reason that he fasted and weep in order to get closer to God so that he could follow God’s lead.

The attitude of a person’s giving is related to that person’s attitude toward praise because we can praise God with his money. If we have an attitude that we earned it all and God had nothing to do with it then we are not likely to give much. I believe it all came from God because God gave us the skill to do what needed to done in order to have a career.

I mention God’s greatness in all my prayers. Most of the prayer in the example of the Lord’s Prayer is where we exalt God. Some of my favorite songs that point to God’s greatness is “How Great You are and Holy Holy Holy.

Praising God put him up in His heavenly place and we acknowledge that He is our King. By knowing this it exalts us to seek His heavenly power. As long as we remember that his our King then we will always bow down to him.

God is always wanting to hear from us just like we like to hear from our kids. Every time we hear from our kids we count that as a blessing. The same is true with our Heavenly Father. We mere humans have the love for God that He desires and calls it a blessing.

The meaning of a broken heart and spirit is that we truly do repent of our sins. It is always on our minds and we want to get rid of it. This kind of attitude is essential for our prayer of pardon. The reason that we resist a “broken and contrite heart” is sometimes we really do enjoy our sin and it is hard to give up.

The only way that we can have a pure heart is through Jesus Christ. We need to ask God for the forgiveness of our sins and sin no more.

I don’t think that David is either seeking to minimize his sin nor is he maximizing the sin. He is acknowledging that he has sinned. So his authentic prayer for pardon is telling God that he knows that he had done a terrible thing and he says it in unvarnished terms. That is the way we need to be also.

The way that a prayer of pardon requires faith is that you have to know that somebody is there to hear it. If you don’t believe that then what is the use of praying. That faith is based on what we can see that God is doing. We know that He hears us because of some of the things that we see in this world that could know could only come from God.

Abraham showed persistence when he keep going back to God and asking for the city to be saved. Prayer is necessary because it keeps your mind on what you think that you need. I am praying through something now but it still hasn’t happened the way that I way I thought it should so I keep going back to God and asking him to answer it my way.

I do think that Abraham’s boldness pleased God because it showed that he trusted Him and believed in Him. Abraham didn’t bargain with God he just asked Him to do something that was within His will.

Abraham demonstrated his humility before God by asking if it ok for him to continue to negotiate with him. He knew that God is the creator of the universe and so Abraham was respectful to him. Boldness must be tempered with humility because we might be end up thinking that we are in charge.

Abraham’s argument that God should spare Sodom because there are might be some righteous people in there. If there are then He should spare them and not destroy the whole city. This relates to God’s character by Him being merciful.

I think that prayer can change God’s mind without conflicting with the doctrine of the Immutability of God. We see that happens a lot of times in the Bible where He was going to do something but then changes his mind and does something else. God answers all prayers but sometimes it is no. So if the prayer is not in the scope of His will He will answer that prayer with a no.

If we think that everything is predestined then we wouldn’t pray for anything. We would not have the faith that our prayers would be answered even though the Bible says they will. We would stop having a close relationship with our God.

We should emulate all of Moses’ prayer of intercession in our own prayers. The logical grounds that Moses offered this bold appeal to God was that of his promises. To be praying the promises of God means that we have read the bible and know what God has promised. We will praying for his will to be done.

Yes, what the people had done was that bad. God had brought them out of Egypt and had protected them all the way and now they want to worship an idol. God loved them enough to protect them but when you go against God’s commandments He gets angry. If He didn’t get angry then we would have a God that we could manipulate into doing anything. God has a tough group of people to work with so it could have been better to start all over.

We should be asking for forgiveness because we sin often. Sometimes we sin and don’t know it and we sometimes sin even when we know that it is a sin. So we should always be asking for forgiveness. Unforgiveness on our part on our part blocks God’s blessing because we are always thinking about the sin that was perpetrated on us. And since we were unable to forgive others then God will not for us for our sins.

The reason that I think we seek independence of asking anyone for help is that we are taught that from childhood. We have been told to pull up our own bootstraps and not to rely on somebody else. The reason we should ask God to “give” us daily bread so long as we can earn a living for ourselves is because He is the one that is giving us the strength to make that living. He is also the one that has made us that daily bread.