Awaken The Dawn

AWAKEN THE DAWN!

“He speaks to God as if He were already in heaven, as indeed He expressly says He is a little farther on: ‘Now I am no more in the world.’” 7 The prayer of Jesus is not a silent invocation. It is a won- derful display of intimacy between Father and Son, and it is spoken aloud. It is instructional as well as intercessional, for He modeled to his disciples how to approach the Father in prayer. He lifted His eyes to heaven, and addressed His heavenly Father with humble words. In a sense, Jesus prays to an audience, for He wishes to ingrain His concepts on the disciples. He gave them prayers that they must repeat after He is gone, and He explained to them as their high priest the nature and concerns of the perpetual inter- cession that He will engage in when He occupies the seat at His Father’s right hand. Eleven rugged yet childlike men listened to their Master’s instructional prayer, and then one of them recorded those sterling words for the benefit of the Church of all ages. As He prayed before them, He shared the perfected fruit of what He had learned about prayer during His many early morning sessions in the Father’s presence. He also showed them the basic content of His continued prayer when He ascends back to the Father in heaven. We teach our children to pray by allowing them to observe our posture and sincerity as they hear the words we speak when we pray. At the dinner table, small chil- dren will frequently want to lead the prayer, and we should let them, but it is equally important that they hear adults pray on a regular basis. The precepts of prayer and faith are communicated to the child even as the parent prays directly to God. This is exactly what Jesus was doing in John 17, just as He had done in Luke 11:1-4. 132