Ocean of Grace (32): SATURDAY – While Christ Ever Lives (p108ff)

 Lent Book: https://www.thegoodbook.co.uk/an-ocean-of-grace

 

My jottings:

 

(Comments welcome)

 

Ocean of Grace (32): SATURDAY – While Christ Ever Lives (p108ff)

 

It is interesting to ask what the risen Lord Jesus would pray for us. And it seems sensible to take his prayers on earth as a model for his prayers in heaven. They reveal his heart, his priorities, his vision and longing for his people. He would, perhaps, pray rather less about our health and happiness than we might and rather more for our holiness and unity and love and….

 

What priorities do the prayers of Jesus (and of the Bible) reveal? How might we make our prayers more like the biblical patterns?

 

(Don Carson’s book, A Call To Spiritual Reformation / Praying With Paul, is an excellent study of the priorities revealed in the Apostle Paul’s prayers (Baker))

 

Our passage today also alludes to Paul’s confident thanks and prayer for the Philippians 1v3ff:

 

 I thank my God every time I remember you. In all my prayers for all of you, I always pray with joy because of your partnership in the gospel from the first day until now, being confident of this, that he who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus.

 It is right for me to feel this way about all of you, since I have you in my heart and, whether I am in chains or defending and confirming the gospel, all of you share in God’s grace with me. God can testify how I long for all of you with the affection of Christ Jesus.

And this is my prayer: that your love may abound more and more in knowledge and depth of insight, so that you may be able to discern what is best and may be pure and blameless for the day of Christ, filled with the fruit of righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ – to the glory and praise of God.

 

Our assurance of course rests on the sovereign grace of God and the saving work of Christ, applied to us by Christ’s heavenly intercession for us. We trust in Christ in the power of the Spirit and we can depend upon God to keep us and bring us to glory. Jesus’ prayer should encourage us and give us confidence and boldness: the Father surely hears and grants the prayers of the Son. He will lose none of those the Father has given him. Praise him!

 

Hymn: I Know Not Why God’s Wondrous Grace

 

Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0UFz_tGxFxo

 

Words etc.: https://www.hymnal.net/en/hymn/h/333/3