The Word To Live By: 3-17-26
Phil Waggoner
Our Father who is in heaven, Hallowed be Your name. Matthew 6:9
The Word to Live By: We’ve talked about the prayer of agreement and Jesus saying in Matthew 18:19 that where two or more of you agree on earth about anything that lines up with the will of God, it will be done for you by My Father in Heaven. And when you pray the prayer of agreement of a promise of God, you are agreeing with at least the Holy Spirit, which equals two. (You can throw more people in there that believe the same promise and increase the number and increase the strength of the faith, but two is all you need.) Then we talked about the prayer of faith, and that it was an ingredient in all types of faith, but also on it’s own as a prayer of declaration. Mark 11:23, “Truly I say to you, whoever says to this mountain, ‘Be taken up and cast into the sea,’ and does not doubt in his heart, but believes that what he says is going to happen, it will be granted him.” So, what you say, believing, will come to pass in your life. (That’s a spiritual law as concrete as the law of gravity is a physical law.) Then the next ingredient in the prayer of faith, and all types of prayer as well, is believing you have it when you declare it. Mark 11:24, “Therefore I say to you, all things for which you pray and ask, believe that you have received them, and they will be granted you.” The blood of Jesus and His resurrection from the dead is the payment and proof of payment for all of the promises of God. 1 Peter2:24, “He Himself bore our sins in His body on the cross, so that we might die to sin and live to righteousness; for by His wounds, you were healed.” All past tense. And of course, the lynchpin (again for all types of prayer) is for you to forgive those people and organizations that have trespassed against you. Now I want to show you how to combine these types of prayer with the prayer of supplication (asking for something) and the prayer of thanksgiving. The prayer of supplication is used strictly to overcome anxiousness and worry and must include thanksgiving. Philippians 4:6, “Be anxious for nothing, but in everything by prayer and supplication, with thanksgiving, let your requests be made known to God.” (Notice that’s IN everything, not for everything. If your best friend walked up to you and gave you $100, you’re not going to thank me for it. On the same note, if I stole $100 from you, you’re not going to accuse and thank your best friend for doing it.) What I want to do is use the prayer that Jesus gave His disciples as a pattern to pray, combining these types of prayer: agreement, declaration, supplication and thanksgiving. Notice it starts with the prayer of worship. It can be sung, it can be spoken, or it can be thought. I find that starting my day with worship (or in the middle of it if things begin to get out of control) centers my thought life. I’ll get into it more tomorrow and then away we go with the rest of it.
Read through the Bible in a year: Numbers 3-4; Ecclesiastes 3:16-4:16;
Read through the New Testament And Proverbs: Proverbs 17, Mark 10:27-52, Galatians 3
The sum of Thy Word is Truth Psalm 119:160