Day 22 : To be pleasing to him by faith

We have seen that we must always pray FOR and not AGAINST, which we sometimes do by mixing our own ideas, prejudices and judgments in our prayers. We have seen that the apostle Paul always begins with praise and thanksgiving before saying something, and that his prayers are often found at the beginning of the epistles. He prayed first, and then spoke !

We have seen that one must always ask the Lord for his thoughts on a situation before praying, even if it turns out that his thought goes against our thoughts and then pray the prayers which are according to his will And His Word.

We have also affirmed that God is always a God who thinks in the long term. Therefore, most of these prayers in the New Testament are prayers that must be prayed continually before they can reach their depths.

We shall see, with the other prayers which we are about to treat, that they almost always carry three aspects :

1) the revelation and knowledge of God and his heart,

2) knowledge of one's will

3) our inheritance in eternity.

Among others, we also find Paul's prayers that have a more general scope, rather prayers of encouragement and exhortation, like this one in Romans 15:13:

"May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in faith, that you may abound in hope through the power of the Holy Spirit."

We all need so much hope, joy and peace! Incredulity always produces despair, rebellion and confusion. Faith produces joy, peace and hope. With God, we never need to despair ! However, the hope for which Paul is praying here is not the hope, for example, of having good weather for our holidays ! The hope of which the Bible speaks is always a hope of eternal salvation. So even here, this prayer leads us to heavenly and eternal things.

You know, God does not seek in the first place our praises and our adoration. Heb. 6:11 says to us : "Without faith it is impossible to be pleasing to him. We are pleasing to him when we believe in him ! And it is by this faith that we praise and adore it, especially in difficult situations.

In the Gospels we see twice that it is written that Jesus was astonished (Mark 6: 6 and Luke 7: 9). The first time was because of the unbelief of the people, so the lack of faith, the second time because of the faith of the centurion. Do you realize that Jesus is not a distant impersonal Power, who can never be surprised by who or anything because he already knows everything anyway ?

In the next few days we continue to look at some of the apostle Paul's prayers.

"Lord, thank you for this joy, this hope that you give us by your Spirit. Help me to have a 'long-term' vision, to know your thoughts. Lord, I want to astonish you by my faith, then give me your faith ! In the name of Jesus, amen !"

René de Groot