The Source that Honors

When you pray, what spiritual works do you pray the Lord will do in your life? Cause you to be victorious over sin? Increase your faith? Draw you into greater intimacy with Him? Give you the power to do what is right? What means does God use to answer these prayers? What is the spiritual source we should ask Him to employ? What else, but Jesus' work on our behalf.

The Puritan Movement in England was primarily in the 16th & 17th Centuries with lasting effects far beyond. One thing we can learn from the believers of that era is that they too were looking to the cross of Christ for the source of their supplications. Arthur Bennett compiled and edited prayer thoughts of a number of such saints in the book The Valley of Vision: A Collection of Puritan Prayers & Devotions. Consider the content of this prayer with an eye toward reforming your own prayers:

"By thy cross crucify my every sin;
Use it to increase my intimacy with thyself;
Make it the ground of all my comfort,
the liveliness of all my duties,
the sum of all thy gospel promises,
the comfort of all my afflictions,
the vigour of my love, thankfulness, graces,
the very essence of my religion"

What is this man asking the Lord to do? Does this prayer look familiar? Perhaps the requests look familiar, but do you ask that God will answer such requests based in Jesus' sacrifice? This brother is asking for sanctification, intimacy, comfort, etc. through the cross. How that honors Jesus! We should ask for relief from our suffering, a love that is hard-working and other spiritual duties that are energized...and that God answering these prayers will be grounded in the death, burial and resurrection of our Savior. Why do we want these things in the first place, except to reflect what He has done? These prayers are granted because of our identification with and trust in Jesus' powerful sacrifice. In this way we reflect what Jesus has done as we live through answered prayers. Another excerpt from this Puritan prayer speaks to this concept a little more specifically:

"Thou has also appointed a cross for me to take up and carry,
a cross before thou givest me a crown.
Thous hast appointed it to be my portion,
but my self-love hates it,
carnal reason is unreconciled to it;
without the grace of patience I cannot bear it,
walk with it, profit by it.
O blessed cross, what mercies dost thou bring with thee!
Thou art only esteemed hateful by my rebel will,
heavy because I shirk thy load
Teach me, gracious Lord and Saviour,
that with my cross thou sendest promised grace
so that I may bear it patiently,
that my cross is thy yoke which is easy,
and thy burden which is light."

Let us learn from the prayers of those who have gone before us. Let your prayers be reformed to include not just requests that honor Jesus, but request that will be granted through the only source that honor Him: His own death, burial and resurrection. Pray for the conference to be characterized by such an attitude of complete dependence. Nothing will be accomplished for the Kingdom in this conference but that it is sourced in the power of Christ's sacrifice and victory.