Please find below Sam Karl's notes from the Mid-service comments this past Sunday. Evaluate your prayer in light of Jesus Christ and seek to be more like Him in every way, especially prayer.

Last Sunday, Brother Rob exhorted us to “give thanks to God” for anything we are thankful for. I hope that you got to practice that around the dinner table or in your personal prayer life this past week.

This morning I’d like to share a bit on “Prayer” – a component that goes hand in hand with thanksgiving. Prayer is the gift of God to the Church and Thanksgiving is the God ordained fuel for it.

There are a number of recorded instances that simply mention about the prayer life of Jesus such as “He withdrew to pray” (Luke 5:16) or that “He prayed all night” (Luke 6:12) or that “He fasted and prayed 40 days and night” (Matthew 4).

And then in a few instances, we have the “actual” recorded of prayers of Jesus.

We could draw many inspirations for our personal prayer life from Christ’s. Let me highlight a few:

• Jesus always addressed Yahweh as “Father” with the exception handful of times in which He addressed Him as God. For example, while on the cross He called the Father just once, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” (Mark 15:34; Matthew 27:46) Do you have a closer relationship with God to be able to address Him as your Father?
• Jesus not only worked towards fulfilling the will of God during His embodiment of divinity in human flesh, He delighted in the will of the Father. For instance, He was delighted and filled with thanks for the gracious will of the Father for hiding the mystery of His will to the wise and revealing it to the little children – meek & lowly (Matthew 11: 25 – 26) Do we delight in the will of the Father? Do we desire God’s will and are we determined to do the will of the Father?
• His Chief’s Shepherd’s heart was on grandeur display when He prayed standing before the tomb of Lazarus. He prayed, on account of the people of standing around, that they may believe in Him and be saved out of their darkness. (John 11-41-42) And He continues to intercede for us at the right hand of God (Romans 8:34) that we will be sanctified in the truth (John 17:17) and be protected from the evil one (John 17:15). What are our motives behind our public prayers?
• The Second person of the Trinity desired nothing more than the glory of God’s name even when His Spirit was troubled looking onto the cross and agony that was sure to come with it. He prayed more than once, “Father, glorify your name” (John 12:28) Even when He prayed for the glory He shared with the Father before the world existed, it was so that the Son may glorify the Father. (John 17: 1-5) Do we seek the glory of God the Father the same way Jesus taught the glory of God?

Every time, I get to do a public exhortation like this or teach a Sunday school class, I pray that the name of the Lord be glorified through me but my motive behind that prayer used to be that “I would do a good job in communicating the truth of God”. The name of the Lord might be glorified in a good presentation, I don’t know but the name of the Lord is sure glorified when someone is equipped by the sharing of His word – armed to serve in the work of ministry that God has called him or her to do.

Jesus, the second person in the Trinity, one who is of the same essence as of God the Father and God the Holy Spirit, prayed for the glory that the Trinity enjoyed before the foundations of the world, that He may glorify the Father.

We have a long way to go. Don’t we? Let’s ask God’s help to be like Christ.

Let's pray:

Abba Father, thank you for recording the prayer life of our Lord Jesus Christ and some of His actual prayers for us to emulate in how we communicate what’s in our hearts to you. Many of us want the will of God in our lives but we treat it like one of those things that we have to do keep reminding ourselves “this too shall pass” so we can get back to doing our will for our lives.
Please forgive us.
Our own smallness is killing us.
Please help us to delight in the will of God following the example of our Savior.
Please bless us with a determination to seek to do your will in all areas of our lives.
Please glorify your name in our lives starting with our prayer time.
We pray this in the name of our Savior who taught us to pray, Amen.