Prayer and Love
Mark 11:25
“And when
you stand praying, if you hold anything against anyone, forgive him,
so that your Father in heaven may forgive you your sins."
Study
Previously we
have discussed how our relationship with God must be right if we
expect God to hear our prayer and answer. This is in fulfillment of
the greatest commandment, “Love the Lord your God with all your
heart, soul, mind, & strength.”
Just as Jesus
gave us the second greatest commandment, “Love your neighbor as
yourself,” there is a second relationship that is crucial to having
our prayers answered.
How is love
for God and love for others connected?
Have a Forgiving Disposition
In the Lord’s
Prayer we learned that if we expect to be forgiven we must also
forgive others. This takes that one step further. Forgiving
someone is one thing, but actually loving them is another thing
entirely. But remember Jesus’ teaching about hate is that if we
hate another person and speak badly about them, it is no better than
actually murdering them.
Our Daily Life is the Test of Our
Prayers
Usually when
we pray we get in a certain frame of mind to come before God. This
may be the only time of day when we think about God. However, even
when we don’t think about God, He thinks about us and sees us at all
times. Our lives need to be a reflection of God’s love. This is
especially true with how you deal with other people. Murray writes,
“My prayer is not answered by God as a result of what I try to be
when praying, but because of what I am when I’m not praying.”
Does your life
match your prayers?
Is the way you
live your life affect the way God answers your prayers?
In Life Everything Depends on Love
Love sums up
everything about relationships. If we are always loving, we will
have no problem being forgiving. Our relationship with God will not
suffer because our relationships with people will always be in
love.
The Church
stands on two pillars, Prayer & Love. Without one or the other, the
church will not stand. We cannot love the way God loves unless we
ask God to enable us to do so. On the other side, our prayers may
go unanswered if we harbor resentment towards others and are
unloving.
This sounds
like circular logic and you may ask how anyone can be loving or have
their prayers answered. God doesn’t have a sign that says “you must
be this loving to expect your prayers to be answered.” As we mature
as Christians our love should naturally grow because we better
understand God’s love for us. And as our love for God grows, so
does our relationship with Him and consequently our prayer life.
The deeper our
love grows, the greater our prayer life should become. The deeper
our prayer life becomes, the greater our love should grow.
Adapted from
“With Christ in the School of Prayer” by Andrew Murray
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