OT DAY 171 - How to Pray for Rebels (Please click here for English podcast)

I guess you must have completed Break.Build 40 days daily devotion not long ago. And now you are back to Discipler 123. It would be a waste if you do not use the 40 days Break.Build to help someone to have 40 days daily devotion from now on! 

You can click the link below to my new 40 days Break.Build site any time you like to having a 40 days "Break.Build" daily devotion as a discipler to help those Jesus prepares for you to disciple. You need to know that the call and purpose of my Break.Build and this Discipler123 blog/podcast is for you to become a discipler to help more people to have a daily intimate relationship with Jesus and then they become disciplers too:
http://www.breakbuild.blogspot.ca/

Silence

1.   Put on your “brakes” and stop for a moment of silence

2.   Wait for God. Breathe deep for God's peace. Exhale your worries.

Praise and Thanksgiving

1.   Think through your day, all the times that made you smile

2.   Thank God for all those moments, and for all those people

3.   Open your heart to praise the Lord

     You have multiplied, O Lord my God,
                     your wondrous deeds and your thoughts toward us;
                    none can compare with you!
      I will proclaim and tell of them,
                   yet they are more than can be told.

                                                         Psalm 40:5

                                                                       

Confession and repentance

1.  Pray for the Holy Spirit to work in you:

     “Dear Holy Spirit, shine your light into the places of darkness in my life. Show me my sins, everything that blocks me from encountering God. In Jesus’ name I pray, Amen.”

2.  Through the Holy Spirit, examine yourself for a short silence and then pray:

     "Dear Lord Jesus, thank you for dying on the cross for our sins and being victorious over death and sin. I confess my sin to you(pause, to tell Jesus what the Holy Spirit has shown you). Forgive my sins by your blood and help me follow you. Holy Spirit, fill me that I may be able to receive your gift to love God and His people. In Jesus Name I pray, Amen."

The Word

English(ESV): https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Exodus+32&version=ESV

And the Lord said to Moses, “Go down, for your people, whom you brought up out of the land of Egypt, have corrupted themselves. 8 They have turned aside quickly out of the way that I commanded them. They have made for themselves a golden calf and have worshiped it and sacrificed to it and said, ‘These are your gods, O Israel, who brought you up out of the land of Egypt!’” 9 And the Lord said to Moses, “I have seen this people, and behold, it is a stiff-necked people. 10 Now therefore let me alone, that my wrath may burn hot against them and I may consume them, in order that I may make a great nation of you.”

11 But Moses implored the Lord his God and said, “O Lord, why does your wrath burn hot against your people, whom you have brought out of the land of Egypt with great power and with a mighty hand? 12 Why should the Egyptians say, ‘With evil intent did he bring them out, to kill them in the mountains and to consume them from the face of the earth’? Turn from your burning anger and relent from this disaster against your people. 13 Remember Abraham, Isaac, and Israel, your servants, to whom you swore by your own self, and said to them, ‘I will multiply your offspring as the stars of heaven, and all this land that I have promised I will give to your offspring, and they shall inherit it forever.’” 14 And the Lord relented from the disaster that he had spoken of bringing on his people.                                    Exodus 32:7-14

Let's have a time to be still and give the Holy Spirit space to speak through the passage of scripture we have just read. Offer this time up to Jesus as you listen to him, while listening to "Gabriel's Oboe"

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jmax47l2hLU

My Listening
      This is a very special and important passage teaching us how to pray.

      If you were Moses, you came down from the mountain and found out that all people were doing the top No. 1 sin of worshiping other god, the golden calf, what would you do?

      Read verses 9 to 10 carefully and you'll find out that God was going to kill those people just like he wiped out all the people on earth but only Noah and his family of eight got saved. Even God was in anger because human beings are a stiff-necked people. See how God told Moses in verse 8 using "your people" meaning God is not acknowledging that those people were His people. See how Moses reminded God in verse 11 that those people were "your people".

      Professor John Goldingay's title of today's passage give me inspiration and I use that title as today's title "How to pray for rebels".  

Let's see how Professor John Goldingay tells us: 
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Goldingay) :

    

       God's inclination is simply to abandon the people and start again with Moses, as God had once abandoned the world as a whole and started again with Noah.  Moses says, "You can't do that.  What will the Egyptians say? What about the promises you have bound yourself by?" And God relents...
       The theological question here is, How is God to respond to the rebelliousness and failure of the people of God?  It would be appropriate to abandon the people, but God cannot do that.  God faces two conflicting obligations.  God is torn between the obligation to cast off and the obligation to be merciful…
      At the same time, this suggests something significant about prayer.  In prayer we are like children begging our parents to do what we want.  Sometimes children fail in such attempts, but sometimes they succeed.  Significantly, however, Moses is not praying for himself but for the people, and he is praying about God's own honour   Significantly, he is not praying that the God who is inclined to be merciful should be tough but that the God who is inclined to be tough should be merciful. 
       

John Goldingay. Exodus and Leviticus for Everyone. Louisville,KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 2010, p.115.

      When you pray, do you pray to get what you want? 
      If you have some people against you, bully you, hurting you, would you pray to ask God to punish them, get rid of them? Or, do you pray for their changing of hearts, for God's mercy and your mercy on them?

Dear Lord Jesus,

      Help us to know how to pray, especially how to pray for rebels, for those who are against us and hurting us. Do not let bitterness, darkness and hatred change us to be a stiff-necked people. Help us to be merciful.  In Jesus name we pray. Amen.

Reflect on these questions:

1.  When you pray, do you pray to get what you want?

2.  If you have some people against you, bully you, hurting you, would you pray to ask God to punish them, get rid of them? Or, do you pray for their changing of hearts, for God's mercy and your mercy on them?

  

Praise and Thanksgiving

Let's give thanks for God with us. Let us praise Him:

10,000 Reasons

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DXDGE_lRI0E

Please click this link to the app. Andy Ng wrote. You really need to use that if you have an Android cel. Andy said he is going to do the App. for iPhone later:

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.ideal.rec.app

You may choose to follow my other daily blog:

Daily Devotion on Fire: http://bishopsilas.blogspot.ca/

Daily Devotion on Fire 2: http://bishopsilas2.blogspot.ca/

Break.Build: http://www.breakbuild.blogspot.ca/