Hope Alliance Bethlehem

To a people who were looking for a shepherd of peace to rescue them from a scattered identity, Jesus arrived ending God's silence.  And in him, God graciously gave peace to the world.  Reversing the results of sin and death, Jesus brings peace with God, peace with each other and peace with ourselves.

Scripture tells us over 200 times that God cares for the poor and marginalized.  Because his throne is founded upon justice and righteousness, he does justice and calls his people to do the same through living out Christ's kingdom on earth.

When Jesus concludes his paradigm for prayer, he is showing us our desperate need to pray for heart direction.  In this wilderness journey called life, just like our forefathers, we all have God's direction, but we have hearts that embrace unforgiveness, wander into temptation and are gripped by evil.  Prayer and the intimacy with God it facilitates is a means or not only asking for a  transformed heart, but also pursuing it.  

When Jesus tells his disciples to pray for daily bread, he is invoking the great Exodus story of their past.  In so doing, he calls them to pray for provision and contentment.  And as they will go on to see, he is ultimately telling them to pray for more of him.  It's in Jesus that we realized the ultimate Exodus,  meet God's provision and find true contentment.

The context of prayer is a holy God who comes down the mountain to engage with us - how miraculous!  Our prayer then is in many ways a divine negotiation.  We make our requests known while seeking God's kingdom and will.  Likewise prayer prepares us to act.  God's will and kingdom advance on earth as his people embody them in the particularities of their daily lives.  

Prayer is not a means of coercing God.  Instead, prayer is a posture of sincerity that comes to God in the context of a relationship with real desire and real needs.  And our Father already knows what we need and stands ready to meet us with his covenant faithfulness and love.

Prayer is not a performance and God is not an audience.  He is a loving Father who desires an intimate relationship with us.  Prayer is the means by which we engage our Father and cultivate this relationship.  And when we do, we gain the true reward of prayer - the very presence of God with us.

Our world and our flesh are constantly telling us that we need to prove ourselves.  But just like the rich young ruler who met Jesus, the questions "what do I have to do" and "what do I lack" typically leave us exhausted.  True life comes when we believe that God is good, so I don't have to prove myself.  When we tase the grace of God and come to him like a child, we find true and full life.

God is good so I don't have to look elsewhere for satisfaction.   The story of the woman at the well and her interaction with Jesus demonstrates God goodness in his pursuit of people, his restoring power, his offer of full life and even his willingness to expose our brokenness.  It in those moments of seeing our brokenness that we realize we haven't believe God is good and have looked elsewhere.  

The Bible warns us that the fear of man is a snare aiming to catch and devour us.  We fear others when we revere them to the point of granting them control over us.  In a word, we worship them.  But the good news of the gospel is that we don't have to fear others because God is glorious.  It is when we live deeply into this truth that we find real peace.