Bible
Study: 1 Samuel 1, 9 to 20. And Mark 1,
21 to 28.
Prayer is
more than a combination of words proceeding from our lips. Prayer is a whole
lifestyle. It is not enough that we talk to God, we must engage him personally
with our day to day choices, our thoughts, desires and actions. For our prayers
to be effective, words alone are not enough.
Prayer is
a relationship, not a conversation. It is one thing to engage a person in a
conversation and just talk but it is a different thing altogether to engage a
person in a relationship, even when you are not talking with the person, you
still connect deeply with him or her. Whether or not that person is around, your
life is always affected by that relationship. Being prayerful is more or less
like being married, it is living in a covenant agreement with God.
Hannah
prayed with so much tears in her eyes for very many years but it wasn’t until
she made a vow to God that she saw the result of her prayer. As we read in
today’s first reading, Hannah looked up to God and said: “O Lord of Hosts, if
you will indeed look on the affliction of your maidservant, and remember me,
and not forget they maidservant, but will give to your maidservant a son, then
I will give him to the Lord all the days of his life and no razor shall touch
his head.”
In other
words, Hannah wasn’t going to just give God instructions, she too was ready to
play her part. Her prayer at this point was going beyond words, she was now
ready to engage her very self, ready to give back to God the son she was asking
for.
Prayer is
not just a matter of talking to God. Prayer demands that we are ready to be in
covenant with God, it means we are ready to give God as much as we ask from
him. It is an insult that we are asking God for this or that, yet we are not
ready even to move the slightest finger to obey even the least of his commands.
If we are
people who talk to God, then we must live in covenant relationship with him.
There has to be a difference between how we live as prayerful Christians from
the rest of the world. Our everyday choices and actions become a fulfilment of
our side of the covenant with God.
A vow
activates one’s faith. If I am able to do that which I promise to God, then
what stops me from believing that God will do for me what I am asking for. It
is not as though we are bribing God rather by living in a particular way, we
show to God we are in relationship with him, that He is not simply our errand
boy but our Lord who deserves total control of everything about us.
Our very
lifestyle becomes part of our prayer, our worship. As Jesus said to the
Samaritan woman, our worship is no longer a matter of this or that mountain,
but a matter of spirit and truth. It is from this perspective that we get to
understand what Scripture means when it says our bodies are temples of the Holy
Spirit. Since we pray with the Temple, we must keep it clean and holy.
When we
enter into a life-time covenant relationship with God, there is a certain
confidence that comes to us. For instance, when you become a personal friend to
the President, there is a degree of boldness you have, you are no longer
worried about a lot of things. In the same way, when we begin to do what God
demands from us, there is no need for us to be scared of the devil.
Our
covenant relationship itself gives us a new identity, an identity that the
devil himself respects. A child of God who lives in the light is a terrible
threat to the devil and his agents. This is why in our Gospel passage, the
possessed man could not withstand Jesus.
Notice
that there was no atom of fear on the part of Jesus. He did not only teach with
AUTHORITY, he also commanded the devil with AUTHORITY. Authority is a fruit of
identity. The kind of authority you exercise is a direct effect of the kind of
identity you possess. As we already know, there are certain places we cannot
enter without an identity card.
Fear of
the devil is a direct consequence of an identity crisis in Christians. We are
afraid because we are not sure of who we are, we do not live in covenant with
God so we do not know whether or not God will defend us. When we are truly
prayerful, the devil does not need any introduction, he trembles before us.
Like a Police man whose role is to check people’s ID card, there are certain
faces he sees approaching and instantly flings open the door.
Prayer is
not a conversation, it is a relationship. It is not something we do in life, it
is rather a life we live. Prayer is not just a matter of words, it is a matter
of deeds. Prayer is covenant.
Let us
Pray:
Lord
Jesus, I dedicate my whole life to you. I give to you my thoughts, my words and
my actions as my covenant agreement. Amen.
God bless you. Good morning. Be Happy. Live Positive. Have Faith. It is
well with you. Happy new week.
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