Lesson 25: Talking with God in Prayer (part 4)

Read: Psalm 90 - www.bible.com/bible/59/psa.90.esv

Seeking God's glory in and through our prayers determines what we ask for. In Matthew 21:22 we read, "All things you ask in prayer, believing, you will receive." This prayer can only be answered in light of what we have just learned in our previous few lessons. This prayer of Matthew 21:22 can never be answered if the prayer is selfish or self-serving. In fact, James tells us many times that self-serving prayer will not be answered (James 1). This is why the promise of Matthew 21 and the warnings of James 1 are not contradictory – the question is, what motivates us?

This command tends to make some people shrink away from prayer. This is never God's purpose. In fact, He tells us He wants us to come to Him with confidence. According to Hebrews 10:19 we can enter the very holiest of places with confidence. In the Old Testament only the high priest was allowed to enter the Holy of Holies, and only one day a year. There was a very strict process he must follow before he even dared to push aside the curtain. He even had bells placed on the bottom of his garment so others outside could hear him move and know he still lived. Tradition tells us a rope was tied to his foot so his dead body could be removed (by someone outside the Holy of Holies) in the event he was killed because he had not fulfilled all the requirements of a Holy God. It was no careless thing to enter this holiest of places. I'm sure the high priest trembled and quaked every time he did so.


We should have the same reverence for God, even though He has given us permission to enter His presence at any time we please. We need to understand the God we serve is far more powerful than anyone else we can possibly imagine. "It is a terrifying thing to fall into the hands of the living God" (Hebrews 10:31). We need to walk into His presence with the full knowledge that if we were not His beloved children, we would (and should) be terrified to death of Him.

We must never take this privilege of entering God's presence lightly. We must never play the game, "Oh it's okay, I can confess my sin anytime I want" and walk merrily on our way through the grime of our sin. The Bible warns us too many times in too many ways how we must "seek Him while He may be found" (Isaiah 55:6; Proverbs 1:28; Jeremiah 29:13; James 4:3). We can never know what the next moment of our lives will hold, we can never know if the next moment of our lives will be the last. Most of all we can never presume on God's grace. Paul tells us in Romans 2 God's judgment is a sure thing and anyone who nonchalantly waves it away should rightly stand in terror of the coming punishment. Is there a time when God will not be found by those who seek Him? Yes, there is. There are many examples in the Old Testament of times when God turned His back on His own people because they had taken His grace for granted.

*Have you ever treated God’s grace as something owed to you? If so, what happened?