Symbol: Prayer
like a piece of mail.
Lesson: Prayer,
like a piece of mail, must be addressed properly.
Illustration:Correct addressing is required by the postal service in order to ensure
delivery. Also, it matters to the person the mail piece is addressed to, how
they are identified. For example, when you receive a piece addressed to “Occupant”
or “To Whom It May Concern,” are you likely to give it much attention? As for
me, I know that I tend to throw out those items without reading further.
Now you may feel it is unnecessary to address your prayers
to a specific name, but think a bit: Besides those praying to “Our Father,”
there are some that pray to saints, some to “Mother Mary,” some to Jesus, and
even some to their deceased loved ones—and all those are only considering the
field of Christendom. In the much larger realm of non-Christian numbers, there
are literally thousands of gods that are prayed to. Although Christians
remember Paul’s observation that “there are many gods
[that people worship], there is actually to us only one God,” Some of the
tribes of the North American continent have numerous gods, as does Hinduism and
others.
The Bible cites yet another god that most people haven’t
considered. It speaks of a “god of this system”
who blinds people to the message of the good news. Obviously that cannot be
Jesus or the Father, it can only be Satan the Devil. Yes, Satan is the god of this world
order, this system we live under.
With all those that vie for our attention in prayers, merely
addressing our prayer to “God” is as much an insult to the one and only
Creator, the one Jesus called “Our Father,” as it is an insult to us to receive
a mail piece addressed to “Occupant.” So is the title “Our Father” the closest
we can get to specifying which God we are addressing? No, referring to “Our
Father,” there is a unique name in the Bible that is mentioned over 7,000
times. In ancient manuscripts it is represented by the Tetragrammaton. In common usage today, that name is “Jehovah”
or “Yahweh” or some other Anglicized form of the Hebrew word. So if we want the
God that Jesus prayed to to listen to us, we need to pray to Jehovah.
Well, now that we have identified who we are “mailing” our
prayers to, we need to use the correct address. By this I mean what Jesus
mentioned at John
14:13,14. Yes, we pray to Jehovah, but addresses it through the postal code
of Jesus Christ.
Last, comes the contents of the message. For those living in
the United States, we all know how inundated we are with “junk mail.” For me,
most of it never even makes it into the house. I walk over to the garbage bin
and throw it out. From God’s viewpoint, are there such things as “junk prayers”?
To answer that question, we first need to examine the model prayer that Jesus taught
at Matthew
6:9-13. Note that the primary focus of that example, the things that
concern God, should be our first concern—namely the sanctification of God’s
name and that His kingdom take over the earth. Next is a humble plea for
necessities of life, followed by a request that Jehovah forgives our sins JUST
AS we forgive others. (Note that his means we MUST forgive others.) Finally, a
humble request that God protect our spiritual
relationship with him by protecting us from Satan’s onslaughts. Note that
nothing in that model prayer talks about gaining riches, gaining fame, winning
competitions, winning wars or anything else that is frivolous
in God’s eyes.
So pray to Jehovah, through Jesus, and speak to him about
the truly important things in life—things related to pure worship and anything that
can affect our spiritual health.
Notes: Although I made major modifications to the original, still the original was not my idea.
