The right prayer
Proverb 30
❇️ Give me neither poverty nor riches, but give me only my daily bread. Otherwise I may have too much and disown you and say, ‘Who is the Lord?’ or l may become poor and steal, and so dishonor the name of my God. (v 8 & 9)
❇️ This prayer of Agur is like the Lord’s prayer asking for the daily bread only.
❇️ People generally pray for their want to be granted instead of their need to be met by the Lord even though our heavenly Father knows what we need before we ask him ( Mat.6:8).The emphasis on our need instead of our greed as told by Lord Jesus Christ clearly shows that our Father is obliged to meet our need and not obliged to satisfy our greed.
❇️ God in his foreknowledge keeps the resources ready beforehand to meet the future need as shown below.
❇️ Rev.13:8 talks about the Lamb that was slain from the creation of the world.Even before Adam and Eve were created and even before the first sin was committed, Lord Jesus Christ was chosen as a sacrificial Lamb since the Father knew man would fall into sin and would need a Saviour to rescue him from going down to the pit.
❇️ Our heavenly Father is sensitive to our need and not neccessarily to our greed.
❇️ There is another aspect we see in Agur’s prayer here in that it is accompanied by his self-abasement(v2&3), which is one of the right attitudes to accompany our prayers.
❇️ Following are some of the right attitudes to accompany our prayers.
▪️Repentence (Eze.18:30)
▪️Humility (2 Chr.7:14)
▪️Fasting (Neh.1:4)
▪️Confession (Dan.9:5)
▪️Praise (Ps. 66:17)
▪️Faith (Mat.21:22)
▪️Thanksgiving (Php.4:6)
▪️A sincere heart (Heb.10:22)
❇️ Our Lord answers our prayer for help graciously (Isa.30:19)
✅ Insights learnt:
▪️Pray for our need and not for – our want
▪️Pray with right attitude
▪️God meets our need not – our greed.
Dr.E.Christadoss
Vellore 🙏🏽
Proverbs 27:1
“Do not boast about tomorrow, for you do not know what a day may bring forth“
It is God who holds our future in His hands. He has given us today and we need to use it wisely. We may not know what is there for us tomorrow and we cannot stop any of those events. Let’s not boast about tomorrow as everything can be changed drastically in the next few minutes or hours. We will never have today back.
So what can we give God today to honor Him?
We need to guard our thoughts and deeds. 1 Timothy 6:6 says, “But godliness with contentment is great gain.” Are we content with what God has given us today and are we godly?
We need to humbly submit our life and plans to God and if it God’s will it will happen.
At the same time, let’s not procrastinate what has to be done today. Let’s count each day a gift from God and use it for His glory and submit all our plans humbly to God for only He knows the future!!!
Licy John, Hyderabad – 7067