A Hebrew View of Prayer
If you want to find if you must be willing to lose it. That is what our prayers should be about.
A Hebrew View of Prayer
(#060 from Suffer Well Devotional Series©)
www.sufferwell.org
The Torah of Moses, the first five books of Scripture, contains the totality of Yahweh’s commandments. In it, the concept that we have come to know as prayer is identified: “tefillah.” The root of the word tefillah means: to judge, differentiate, clarify, or decide. The intention is to bring forth a desire to hold oneself accountable, to make an honest self-assessment. The belief system in the Messiah to come warranted the desire to “judge oneself” according to the precepts of Yahweh. It was a requirement for young men coming of age to be accountable to the Torah and thereby to the Creator, hence the Bar mitzvah. Bar mitzvah conveys the idea of becoming a “son of the covenant,” or quite literally, “a son of good works.”
The modern-day believer needs to take note of this perspective, for we live in the era of the Messiah who has already come. Because of His death and resurrection, more wisdom, more insights, more revelation, and more promises have been revealed to us. As a result, we are to bring every thought captive unto the obedience of Messiah (2 Corinthians 10:5). The only way that can happen is through the shedding of the self (Hebrews 12:4). Prayer was given to help you achieve the Luke 22:42 lifestyle; “Not My will but Your will be done.” When you live that way, all of His promises are “yes” and “so be it!” (2 Corinthians 1:20).
Many believers today spend too much time praying for things that have already been given, rather than considering prayer as a tool to judge oneself from the Creator’s perspective. Consider the Hebrew view of prayer and pray about what Yahweh would have for your prayer life. Above all, set aside requests made in fear, as well as those that display that your struggle against sin remains only because you refuse to surrender your “self.”
In your struggle against sin, you have not yet resisted to the point of shedding your blood.(Hebrews 12:4)