Dave's Diary

Prayer

Before you read, I invite you to pray this prayer, which is a verse from the modern hymn ‘Speak O Lord‘:

Speak, O Lord, as we come to You
To receive the food of Your holy Word
Take Your truth, plant it deep in us
Shape and fashion us in Your likeness
That the light of Christ might be seen today
In our acts of love and our deeds of faith
Speak, O Lord, and fulfill in us
All Your purposes for Your glory. Amen.

Briefly prepare your heart in silence, and ask the Holy Spirit to awaken your awareness to the voice of God, coming to you through His Word.

Reading

Matthew 17:14-23

Remembering that our quest this year is to discover “everything Jesus commanded us”, I see two very straightforward commands tucked away in this passage.

Firstly, I love the way Jesus commands the father, “Bring the boy here to me.“

The man had tried everything to find healing for his son. He had even brought the boy to Jesus’ disciples with great faith. But nothing had helped. No human being had been able to help him. Not even the disciples who had been anointed by Jesus Himself to heal and drive out demons had been successful in delivering the boy from his oppression.

So often, we also tend to go to all the human “experts” with our troubles, forgetting that we have the privilege of going directly to the One who is the true source of all power. There is nothing wrong with human help, and the Lord often chooses to use human-to-human ministry as His instrument. But the Lord Jesus Christ is the true source of all power and help.

So, very simply, I see in this passage a command for us to bring every struggle directly to the Lord in prayer. As Hebrews 4:16 says: “Let us then approach God’s throne of grace with confidence, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help us in our time of need.” That is not to say that we should not seek human help, but that we should only ever do so in conjunction with fervent prayer.

And secondly, our prayer should be filled with faith. When Jesus spoke about moving mountains, He was using a common figure of speech among the Jews of His day to describe accomplishing the seemingly impossible. He did not literally mean moving a physical mountain of rock and stone. He was commanding us to trust Him enough to take on the seemingly impossible things which we know to be His will for us, and to do so in full reliance on His power at work in us and through us. Our prayer should be fervent, it should be full of trust in Jesus, and it should be flowed up with action.

On the basis of today’s passage, we can say confidently that Jesus commands us, as His disciples, to bring all of our struggles and challenges to Him in fervent, faith-filled prayer.

Contemplation

Please take time to ponder what Jesus has commanded us. Turn these declarations over in your mind. Keep them in mind throughout the day and live in step with our King, Jesus.

As a disciple of Jesus Christ,

• I will bring every challenge I face to Jesus in prayer; and,
• I will trust Jesus to empower me to overcome.

Holy Spirit, help me to trust in Jesus and to pray to Him instinctively whenever difficulties arise. Amen.