Posted By: revmaddog1948
Posted On: 07:26:31 7th Jun 2009Proudly we rely on our skills, our talented, our educations, and we overlook the humble tools of grace that God places within the grasp of every humble servant.
June 7, 2009
The Shepherd’s Journal
Grace and peace be upon you!
The giant looked down with contempt at the small young shepherd holding only 5 smooth stones and a sling. The spear in the giants hand weighed 125 pounds. That was close to the weight of the lad before him, if you dipped him in water and filled his pockets with rocks.
The mighty Pharaoh despised the provincial keeper of sheep that stood before him armed with only a shepherd’s staff. He ruled a kingdom of millions across a span of over a thousand miles with an army of tens of thousands, and the fame of Pharaoh was known round the world. The unknown man before him was a ruler of sheep, who kingdom spanned a hillside.
God places within the grasp of almost every child of God small weapons of grace. We turn to the highly trained, highly skilled individual whose reputation generates buzz. But it is His little known untrained children who are out there in the battlefield of life, rubbing shoulders with the lost, and unbeknownst to them they are armed and dangerous.
I have spent hours, days, weeks of study, poring over the Word of God, diligently searching for scriptural prayers that would prepare me for any situation from illness to adversity. I had within my grasp a prayer that every servant of His probably knows or could learn very quickly, and I had failed to use it for two decades. It was appropriate for every situation, and powerful enough for any problem. When the disciples asked the Lord Jesus to teach them how to pray, they did not get a long seminar, but a one paragraph prayer that packs more punch and has felled more of the enemies armies than all the flowery prayers from all the dignified pulpits combined.
It was the Lord’s Prayer!
It is so simple that a child can lead a congregation in it with very little practice and encouragement. That is what our small congregation has done for every service for many years. Our congregation is perhaps one of the smallest in the world. But our children are second to none, and the miracles that we have been blessed to receive could fill a book!
A prayer for grace can be slipped into a greeting, or tagged on to a goodbye, as a benediction. Our children stand before our congregation almost every Sunday, and one of them pronounces the benediction “The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be upon you all!”
This is not rocket science, nuclear physics, calculus! Our children have been praying for grace as early as age 6, and they all help lead down to the youngest toddler.
I had been researching for the right prayer to pray for a young woman near death. I had not found an answer when I called back to check on her condition, and I expected to receive the news of her demise. I was stunned to learn that the brief, simple prayer of grace that I had prayed two weeks before had worked a miracle, eliminating blood clots, 105 fever, and stage four cancer over night! The doctors were so shaken that they conducted a painful test on the poor girl four times, drawing fluid out of her back with a huge needle, and they reluctantly had to conclude that there was no cancer.
This prayer was not conducted by a visionary faith healer in a crowded stadium. It was prayed by a nervous pastor and a weeping friend at the conclusion of a funeral.
The story of the cross is easy enough for any one who can tell a story to master its essentials pretty quickly. It does not take years of preparation to adequately tell the simple story of the Son of God obeying the will of the Father and willingly allowing Himself to be murdered on a vicious cross so the penalty of sin can be satisfied, and we can be redeemed. Men and women of every caliber fanned out of Jerusalem after the death of Jesus, empowered by the Holy Spirit, and literally changed the course of history by telling that simple story with hearts filled with faith.
Lord Jesus, help us to forsake our pride, and grasp firmly in our hands the weapons of grace, so that we can fight a good fight in the name of Jesus! Amen!
The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be upon you all!
If you'd like to have your say and post your own comments, please login using the menu on the left.Nobody has commented on this yet - why not be the first?