A Pattern For Prayer (Part 3)
Context
Content
God is deeply grieved by the thanklessness and ingratitude of which so many of us are guilty. When Jesus healed the ten lepers and only one came back to give Him thanks, in wonderment and pain He exclaimed,
“Were not the ten cleansed? but where are the nine?”
In Romans 1:21, Paul calls attention to two primary sins of the pagan. He says, “For although they knew God they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him.” Honor and thanksgiving may be distinguished, but not separated. God is honored by thanksgiving and dishonored by the lack of it. All that we have and all that we are we owe ultimately to the benevolence of our Creator. To slight Him by withholding appropriate gratitude is to exalt ourselves and debase Him
The pagan must be distinguished from the apostate. The pagan has never entered into the household of faith. He is a stranger to the covenant community. Idolatry and ingratitude characterize him. An apostate is one who joins the church, becomes a member of the visible covenant community, and then repudiates the church, leaving it for a life of secular indulgence. The apostate is “one who forgets.” He has a short memory.
Thanksgiving is an acknowledgment of God and His benefits.
Forgetting the benefits of God is also the mark of the immature Christian, one who lives by his feelings. He is prone to a roller-coaster spiritual life, moving quickly from ecstatic highs to depressing lows. In the high moments, he feels an exhilarating sense of God’s presence, but he plunges to despair the moment he senses an acute absence of such feelings. He lives from blessing to blessing, suffering the pangs of a short memory. He lives always in the present, savoring the “now” but losing sight of what God has done in the past. His obedience and service are only as strong as the intensity of his last memory of blessing.
If God never grants us another glimpse of His glory in this life, if He never grants us another request, if He never gives us another gift from the abundance of His grace, we still would be obligated to spend the rest of our lives thanking Him for what He already has done. We have already been blessed enough to be moved daily to thanksgiving. Nevertheless, God continues to bless us.
Gratitude is born of meditation on God’s grace and mercy. “The Lord hath done great things for us, whereof we are glad.” Herein we see the value of serious meditation. “My meditation of him shall be sweet.” Praise is begotten by gratitude and a conscious obligation to God for mercies given. As we think of mercies past, the heart is inwardly moved to gratitude.
“I love to think on mercies past,
And future good implore;
And all my cares and sorrows cast
On Him whom I adore.”
Gratitude is born of meditation on God’s grace and mercy. “The Lord hath done great things for us, whereof we are glad.” Herein we see the value of serious meditation. “My meditation of him shall be sweet.” Praise is begotten by gratitude and a conscious obligation to God for mercies given. As we think of mercies past, the heart is inwardly moved to gratitude.
“I love to think on mercies past,
And future good implore;
And all my cares and sorrows cast
On Him whom I adore.”
Love is the child of gratitude. Love grows as gratitude is felt, and then breaks out into praise and thanksgiving to God: “I love the Lord because he hath heard my voice and my supplication.” Answered prayers cause gratitude, and gratitude brings forth a love that declares it will not cease praying: “Because he hath inclined his ear unto me, therefore will I call upon him as long as I live.” Gratitude and love move to larger and increased praying.
Returning thanks for blessings already received increases our faith and enables us to approach God with new boldness and new assurance. Doubtless the reason so many have so little faith when they pray is because they take so little time to meditate upon and thank God for blessings already received. As one meditates upon the answers to prayers already granted, faith waxes bolder and bolder, and we come to feel in the very depths of our souls that there is nothing too hard for the Lord.
Gratitude and thanksgiving forever stand opposed to all murmurings at God’s dealings with us, and all complainings at our lot. Gratitude and murmuring never abide in the same heart at the same time. An unappreciative spirit has no standing beside gratitude and praise. And true prayer corrects complaining and promotes gratitude and thanksgiving. Dissatisfaction at one’s lot, and a disposition to be discontented with things which come to us in the providence of God, are foes to gratitude and enemies to thanksgiving.
Paul appeals to the Romans to dedicate themselves wholly to God, a living sacrifice, and the constraining motive is the mercies of God:
“I beseech you, therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that ye present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God, which is your reasonable service.”
Consideration of God’s mercies not only begets gratitude, but induces a large consecration to God of all we have and are. So that prayer, thanksgiving and consecration are all linked together inseparably
When Paul wrote to the Colossians to let the word of Christ dwell in their hearts richly and to let the peace of God rule therein, he said to them, “and be ye thankful,” and adds, “admonishing yourselves in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing with grace in your hearts unto the Lord.”
Further on, in writing to these same Christians, he joins prayer and thanksgiving together: “Continue in prayer, and watch in the same with thanksgiving.”
And writing to the Thessalonians, he again joins them in union: “Rejoice evermore. Pray without ceasing. In everything give thanks, for this is the will of God concerning you.”
Commitment
A farmer was once found kneeling at a soldier’s grave near Nashville. Some one came to him and said: “Why do you pay so much attention to this grave? Was your son buried here?” “No,” he said. “During the war my family were all sick, I knew not how to leave them. I was drafted. One of my neighbors came over and said: I will go for you; I have no family.’ He went off. He was wounded at Chickamauga. He was carried to the hospital, and there died. And, sir, I have come a great many miles, that I might write over his grave these words, ‘He died for me.’ ”
This the believer can always say of his blessed Savior, and in the fact may well rejoice. “By Him therefore, let us offer the sacrifice of praise continually, that is the fruit of our lips, giving thanks to His name.”