“It doesn’t matter how complicated, how desperate, perhaps even hopeless your life has become. No matter how overwhelmed you may feel by your problems, if your trust is in Jesus Christ, you can be sure that he is praying for you now and through that prayer he will provide for you the resources to bring you relief or enable you to carry on.
The most important thing that you and I need to learn about prayer is this: first of all and ultimately, prayer is not something we do but what Jesus does for us.”
- Richard B. Gaffin, “Christ, Our High Priest in Heaven“
That was powerful & well worth the time it takes to read! The end paragraph stating the confession of the martyr Stephen in Acts, is a dramatic, climatic end to what the author is saying about our High Priest Jesus who sits at the right hand of God. This is another reason to dig into a study in Hebrews!
ReplyDeleteI copied from the article above, the following 2 statements that dug into my heart as I read:
1) The basic point of the comparison is that now, as well as then, the people of God are a pilgrim people. In New Testament times, as well as in the Old Testament, God's people are wayfarers. That is our basic identity as Christians; we are a people "on the way." That means, further, that those on this pilgrimage are exposed to all kinds of difficulties and hardship, and all of that hardship tends toward an ultimate temptation, the temptation to give up, to abandon our confession, not to "hold fast." That, then, is why it is so necessary for the writer to admonish the church as he does.
2)Jesus knows the desert, with the stresses and temptations that you and I are exposed to. He knows it by his own intimate experience. And so Jesus also knows something that some who call themselves Calvinists overlook. He knows that the certainty of our salvation does not cancel out the seriousness of our present situation. He knows that only those who endure to the end are going to be saved (Mt. 24:13). And he knows that enduring to the end is not something that happens automatically. He knows that for us to endure to the end will not happen without prayer. In particular, it will not happen without his prayer.
Thanks for the Wisdom & insight Candy You're doing a great Job!!! Debbi