Tag Archives: prayer

July 12, 2008 · 5:12 pm

“Forgive Us Our Debts”–Love Is All We Owe

     We owe mankind only one thing–love.  In the “Lord’s Prayer,” Christ is teaching us that loving others is all that we should owe anyone.  As the princes and princesses of the King, we are held to that high standard.  Owe no man any thing, but to love one another (Romans 13:8).

     God the King is Love, and we His children are born of His nature, which is love (I John 4:8, 16).  Loving others, then, is how we pay our debts. 

     So when the Savior, in teaching us to pray, tells us to say, “And forgive us our debts,” He want us to mean this: Forgive us Father, for the times we didn’t love others the way You love them.  And when Christ instructs us to say, “As we forgive our debtors,” He wants us to mean this: Father, grant us a forgiving heart to all who do not love us as You love us.  He did tell us, “Forgive and it shall be forgiven you” (Luke 6:37).

     To love one another–this is one of the “new commandments” Christ gave us.  “A new commandment I give unto you, That ye love one another; as I have loved you, that ye also love one another” (John 13:34).

     Loving one another is the sign that God resides in us.  “If we love one another, God dwells in us, and His love is perfected in us, because He has given us of His Spirit” (I John 4:12).  The caveat: we cannot love one another with the agape “love from above” if we do not have His Spirit within us.  Human love will only stretch so far and then it snaps ugly on somebody. 

     Love is the fruit produced from the sap (Holy Spirit) within us, the branches.  And we cannot be grafted in to the vine (Christ) until we go through the death, burial, and resurrection experience with Him {Read more on this in my book The Unveiling of the Sons of God at   http://www.yahwehisthesavior.com/sonsintro.htm }.  We must be “raised to walk in a newness of life” through faith in God’s promise to give us a new heart and a new spirit if we put to death our old sinful self on the cross with Christ (6:1-6).  When we receive His Spirit into our hearts, then the love will start flowing down and through us to others (See post, “Love From Above, Down and Through” at https://immortalityroad.wordpress.com/2008/01/22/love-from-above-down-and-through/ ).

     The “debts” spoken of in the “Lord’s Prayer” is much more than money or material things.  It is spiritual love that we owe each other.  We owe mankind a heart of love in gratitude to God for the love He showed us by providing the Sacrifice, the Lamb of God, and thereby giving us a way to escape sin and corruption.  It is now about Him channeling Himself (Love) through us on out to others. 

     These things should be in mind when we pray to our Father, “And forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors.”   Kenneth Wayne Hancock

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July 9, 2008 · 10:02 pm

“Give Us This Day Our Daily Bread”–The Bread of God

     We are to ask for the heavenly bread–not physical bread.  Christ told us specifically to not ask for food.  “Do not set your heart on what you will eat or drink; do not worry about it” (Luke 12:29, NIV). 

     Christ in the Lord’s Prayer tells us rather to ask the Father each day for the spiritual bread from heaven.  But what is it exactly?  Some churches believe that a round wafer is magically and     mystically turned into the body of Christ, the bread from heaven.  This practice is not found in the scriptures of truth.

     Christ gives a treatise on the heavenly bread in John 6.  The “true bread from heaven” was not manna which fell for the Israelites in the wilderness.  They all died.  But, My Father gives you the true bread from heaven (v. 32).  The spiritual “bread of God is He which comes down from heaven, and gives life to the world” (v. 33).

     Physical bread is the staff of a physical life that ends.  But spiritual bread is the staff of the spiritual life that never ends.  This bread feeds the new inner spiritual man; it is our sustenance.

     Then Jesus (Yahshua) declares Himself to be that Heavenly Sustenance.  “I am the bread of life: he that comes to me shall never hunger, and he that believes on me shall never thirst” (v. 34). 

     The key word here is “believes.”  It is believing on Him–that is how we partake of His Spirit.  You take into yourself what you believe.  You become what you believe.  You are what you eat. Believing Him and His word about who He is, and what He has done, and what He will do–this is what it’s all about.  Belief.  Belief is not a material thing.  It is a special invisible, spiritual thing.  To believe Him and what His name means is to eat of the spiritual bread from heaven.   

     He would later say that His body is the “bread of God” and encouraged us to eat it.  “Eat” here is to spiritually believe what transpired with His body–the death, burial, and resurrection.  He was saying that His flesh, His actual physical body was going to be presented as the one sacrifice that would purge our sins.  Believing this in truth is eating (taking in) this spiritual, true bread from heaven.

     “I am the living bread which came down from heaven: if any man eat of this bread, he shall live forever; and the bread that I will give is my flesh which I will give for the life of the world” (v. 51).  Here we see him giving His physical body so that we could have immortality.

     He was teaching us to pray–not for ourselves with things for ourselves, food, material things.  No.  We are to ask for more of His Spirit, more faith, more belief of what He has done for us.  We should recall and thank Him for allowing our old nature to die with Him on the cross, to be buried with Him, and to be “raised to walk in a newness of life” with Him (Romans 6:3-7). 

     The words, Give us this day our daily bread, contain a profound lesson in our learning to pray.  Kenneth Wayne Hancock

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June 26, 2008 · 4:09 pm

Hallowed Be Thy Name, Yahweh

Your Father’s name is Yahweh–if you consider yourself a child of the Hebrew God of the Bible. 

Christ is saying in the “Lord’s Prayer” that the Father’s name is “hallowed,” holy and extremely special.  How are we to appreciate it and make it holy if we don’t even know the Father’s name?

 Not many know that the Hebrew God of the Bible was known by Moses, Daniel, Isaiah, and all the rest of the prophets and apostles by His name Yahweh. 

“The Hebrew national literature centres in the thought of God. It is Yahweh who is all and in all, the father, the leader, the hope, the hero of his people” ( www.1911encyclopedia.org/Christianity ).  This quote is from the article “Christianity” in the Encyclopedia Britannica, 1911 edition, entirely on-line at this link.  There are 142 articles that mention Yahweh (www.1911encyclopedia.org/index.php?q=yahweh&title=LoveToKnow_1911%3ASearch&site=1911&fulltext=LoveToSearch ). 

We’ve been told that “God” is His name.  But “God” is a common noun that has been capitalized.  “GOD, the common Teutonic word for a personal object of religious worship. It is thus…applied to all those superhuman beings of the heathen mythologies who exercise power over nature and man…The word “god,” on the conversion of the Teutonic races to Christianity, was adopted as the name of the one Supreme Being, the Creator of the universe” (www.1911encyclopedia.org/God).  It was adopted, but God is not the name of the Father.  Yahweh is His name.  “This is my name forever,” Yahweh said to Moses (Exodus 3:15).

Some think that the Father’s name is “LORD.”  But “LORD” is merely a title of the Father.  This started when the King James translators substituted “the LORD” for the Hebrew name “Yahweh” over 6,700 times.  Only once did they leave “Yah” (the shortened form) in Psalms 68:4: “Sing praises to his name…Jah.”  The editors of the New King James Version corrected “Jah” to “Yah” ( www.yahwehisthesavior.com/sonspreface.htm  I’ve published two books on the subject.  I’ve placed both on-line; they can be read here free).

When Christ was teaching the disciples (us) how to pray by saying “hallowed be thy name,” He wants us to revere, keep holy, consecrate, and venerate the Father’s name.  That is what the word “to hallow” means. 

But first the Father’s name must be restored to our knowledge.  We cannot truly make His name holy and consecrated in our hearts if we don’t know His name. 

And the Father’s name is Yahweh.  We must keep this in our minds when we communicate with Him.  For His name is extremely important to Him.  So it should be of extreme importance to us His princes and princesses.  Or how else could we address the King?

Armed with this knowledge, the scriptures about His name will open to us.  It is a key.  But be forewarned.  The knowledge of the Father’s name is a pearl, a gem.  And Christ warns, “Cast not your pearls before swine, for they will turn and rend you with it.”  Be careful who you share this with.  It is dynamite knowledge and needs to be handled carefully.  You will be vilified and derided for sharing this knowledge–usually by those close to you. 

Share your thoughts with me about this or any topic addressed on this blog.  For it is your platform, too.  Kenneth Wayne Hancock

    

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June 15, 2008 · 10:52 pm

“Our Father”–The Father of the Sons and Daughters of God

God is not everyone’s Father.  He is the Creator of all, but not Father of all.  I’m just saying; that’s what the English says.

Christ told the Pharisees, who were very religious, “You seek to kill me, a man that has told you the truth…You are of your father the devil…a murderer from the beginning…a liar, and the father of it” (John 8:40:44).

We see, then, two spiritual fathers at work in the earth: “Our Father”  and “your father the devil.”  And to help the sons and daughters of God, Christ left us the salutation in His Blueprint Prayer, “Our Father” to distinguish our Father from their father.  (To read more on them and their father, see “Children of the Wicked One” under “Recent Posts”).

The words, “Our Father,” also signifies an engendering by God, begetting several spiritual offspring.

The LORD (Yahweh in the Hebrew), told the prophet Jeremiah, “Before I formed thee in the belly I knew thee” (Jer. 1:4-5).  God knew Jeremiah before his earthly conception and gestation!  And God chose him and ordained him a prophet before he “came forth out of the womb.”  Jeremiah was “born from above”–begotten by God long before coming to earth.  Jeremiah was in the very heart of God–and so were we, His sons and daughters, before the time of our earthly, fleshly sojourn.

Our Father “has chosen us in him before the foundation of the world” (Eph. 1:4).  He knew us before and has pre-destinated us “to be conformed to the image of His Son, that He might be the firstborn among many brethren” (Rom. 8:29).   He has given us a destiny to be like Christ before the world was ever founded.  This is nothing less that God’s purpose–reproducing Himself.

And so the cycle goes: seedtime and harvest.  God the husbandman has great patience waiting for His children to grow up until they are “conformed to the image of His Son.”  He will endure the “vessels fitted unto destruction” in order to create His “royal priesthood,” His ruling offspring.  This is our destiny, ordered for us by “our Father.”

For make no mistake.  Christ told it like it is.  He warned that in the last days, many will be deceived by false prophets and false teachers who lead the sheep through the wide and broad gate to destruction.  They are wolves in “sheep’s clothing.”  They show themselves as God’s spokesmen, but are really modern day Pharisees, whose father is not “our Father.”

And to the many who are deceived by them Christ warns: “Many will say to me, Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in thy name? and in thy name done many wonderful works?  And then will I profess unto them, I never knew you: depart from me, you that work iniquity” (Matthew 7:13-23).  They mouthed a bunch of half-truths but didn’t do the will of “our Father which is in heaven” (v. 21).

There is a lot in the phrase “Our Father, which art in heaven.”  We must begin to pray with the understanding of His words.  It is a great privilege to call Him “our Father.”  Not everyone truthfully can.   Kenneth Wayne Hancock

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June 12, 2008 · 8:39 pm

The Lord’s Prayer–Blueprint for Building God’s Temple–Us

The Lord’s Prayer is a blueprint showing us how to become His temple, which is the habitation of God.  It is not a ritualistic chant.

An architect’s blueprint contains blue lines and white paper that to the trained eye reveal what the building should look like.

The Lord’s prayer is a spiritual blueprint that shows us what the temple of God looks like and how to build it. Christ said that His house “shall be called of all nations the house of prayer” (Mark 11: 17).  And in His example prayer to us, we understand what those prayers consist of in His temple.  And His temple is us (I Cor. 3:16).  We, His sons and daughters, born from above, born of the King, are now His princes and princesses in training to rule with Him.  “To him that overcomes will I grant to sit with me in my throne, even as I also overcame, and am set down with my Father in his throne” (Rev. 3:21).

So what do we do with a blueprint?  A building contractor would not stand around repeating the dimensions found in the blueprint. By merely reading and repeating the words and figures found on the blueprint, the edifice would never get built.  Rather, he has to study it, visualize it, believe in the vision of the architect for the building, and get to work in order to make it a reality.  This is what God’s children need to be doing–studying out His example prayer and understanding what it means, and then do it.

To illustrate, the disciples asked Jesus (Yahshua in Hebrew–the same name as the anglicized name “Joshua”… <Dictionary.com http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/joshua> ).  “Teach us to pray.”  And He told them, “After this manner pray,” and then He spoke the model prayer.

“After this manner…”  After this way.  Make your communication to God based on these precepts I’ve given you in this example prayer, He was saying.  And the precepts are based in selflessness.

But many prayers that are offered up to God are shameless petitions for self–asking for material things.  These prayers cannot penetrate the brass of heaven’s dome.

To be heard by the Almighty, we must get on His wavelength.  And God’s all about reproducing Himself.  We are now “born of that incorruptible seed, the word of God.”  But that is just the start.  We must grow up into him, no longer content to be little babies in Christ, always wanting something from Him.

We must study to unlock the secrets of His kingdom, secrets held close to the heart of God, secrets that He will reveal to them that are in awe of Him, secrets encrypted in a spiritual blueprint called “The Lord’s Prayer.”

So, let us dig into it, line by line, phrase by phrase, extracting His thoughts about how He is going to get Himself down into His temple, us.  This I hope to do in the next few posts, beginning next time with “The Lord’s Prayer–Our Father.”  Kenneth Wayne Hancock

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June 7, 2008 · 1:57 pm

The Lord’s Prayer Is NOT an Incantation, Chant, or Ritual

There’s no magical powers in repeating the Lord’s Prayer.  And let’s face it.  Churchianity has reduced it to a chant, to a ritual of repetitious words with the intent that –poof!–magically our sins are forgiven or our requests are granted.  Please.

Chanting the Lord’s Prayer is taking his blueprint for prayer and using it as a “verbal charm” to enchant God into giving us what we want from Him.  Doing this is using an enchantment (which God forbids) and is the very definition of “incantation.”

“incantation–the chanting or uttering of words purporting to have magical power; a spell or charm”   <Dictionary.com http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/incantation>

“incantation–ritual recitation of verbal charms or spells to produce a magic effect; a conventionalized utterance repeated without thought”  <Dictionary.com http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/incantation>

   “Repeated without thought…”  Isn’t that what’s being done with the Lord’s prayer?  Reducing it to a chant?  Definition of “chant”:  “The use of religious phraseology without understanding or sincerity; empty solemn speech, implying what is not felt; hypocrisy.” <Dictionary.com http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/chant> )

   To mindlessly repeat the Lord’s Prayer “without understanding” its profound depths of meaning is cheapening it; it is futile and vain.  In fact, Christ warns us to not do this very thing. “But when ye pray, use not vain repetitions, as the heathen do: for they think that they shall be heard for their much speaking” (Matthew 6:7).  Heathens use incantations, enchantments, sorcery and spells.  “Be not ye therefore like unto them” (v. 8).

   We as His sons and daughters must press in, dig deep, and seek to know what He’s saying to us in the Lord’s prayer and to use it as a blueprint in our communication to Him and for Him.

   A blueprint is a “detailed outline or plan of action.”  His model prayer contains God’s thoughts, plan, and purpose.  And we are to pray in accordance with its precepts.

   Prayer is communication with God.  So God wants us to first know His thoughts, plan, and purpose so that we can commune with Him on what He wants to accomplish here on earth.  And He wants to use us. KWH

{To read more on this, check out ch. 13 of my book, The Unveiling of the Sons of God found at the top of this sites homepage}

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May 24, 2008 · 6:21 pm

Prayer and Fasting and George Washington

Alexandria, Virginia, Presbyterian Meeting House   Presbyterian Meeting House

I’m stepping where George Washington actually stepped as he went into this building to dedicate a national day of prayer and fasting that he had proclaimed.  The French were threatening.  And Washington entered this church to ask God’s protection for the infant country.

Obviously Washington was unafraid to mix religion and politics, for here he was in church asking God’s blessing on the event.

How far we’ve strayed from the original Founding Father’s intent.  They all believed in a Creator, a reachable Supreme Being–so much so that their writings are filled with allusions to Him–so much so that our first president would actually lead the nation for a complete day of prayer and fasting.

Prayer is a communication to God where we fragile finite beings may grasp the invisible, spiritual, and heavenly things.  And fasting is an act where we let go of our most precious and pressing fleshly desires–that of savoring delicious foods.  And both are done believing God will see and be pleased.

Where in the world did Washington get this idea to fast and pray?  Whatever possessed him to presume to put fasting and praying on the people?  He read it in the greatest bestseller of all time, the Holy Bible.  He knew its precepts were pristine and pure, its ways effective, and in dire times, as did the ancient Hebrew prophets and apostles, he would pray and fast for divine protection, too.

210 years ago, secular humanism did not rear its egotistical head here in Alexandria.  Agnosticism found no place in the faces of this young country.  No atheists or other “dark designing knaves” were there to prevent humility from taking the stage for a needy nation.  No cynic sneered at a humble and greatful people. 

Only the giving of thanks was heard on these very steps that George Washington trod on May 9, 1798.

                                                                                                  

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April 10, 2008 · 4:57 pm

“All Is Vanity” Without the Holy Spirit

     Without God’s Spirit dwelling within us, we are only a member of the walking dead who spend a few nightly whispers with loved ones and then bury our dead and wait to be buried in turn.   

     Without the Spirit of God that makes alive whatever it touches and lives in, we are just as good as dead.  Without His Spirit, we walk around breathing borrowed air into the lungs of an incredibly delicate and fragile shell.  And our  shell  will in a few moments, comparatively speaking, go back to dust from where it came, and our brief stint at self-glory here on earth will not be  remembered anymore.  Every thing that man says and does without the Spirit of God is vain and of no profit in the final analysis.

     But, if we ask Him, He will grant us a portion, an earnest, a down payment of His Spirit.  And that Spirit will come into us to replace that old heart and spirit, and it will grow like a tiny seed in a large garden, and we will come alive.  We must water it with our prayers and feed it with our study.  And that little portion of His Spirit will grow up into a full-fledged son or daughter of the King.  And we, the sons and daughters of God, will someday be transformed in a twinkling of an eye, and we “will be changed” when immortality will come down out of heaven to swallow up our shell that can die.

     Without His Spirit, we are the walking dead doomed to dust, unremembered, in the tombs of time.  But with His Spirit dwelling within us, we are destined to be His sons and daughters, sitting with Him on His throne–immortals whose legacy is neverending.              Kenneth Wayne Hancock

{If this has been helpful to you, please leave a comment and/or pass it on to someone who would appreciate it}

 

 

    

    

 

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March 27, 2008 · 3:32 pm

Let This Mind Be in You

     What determines me having a good day or a bad day?  What controls my actions and  feelings on any given day?  It’s the thoughts of my mind.

      We are “led by our thoughts.”  We’ve heard that all our lives, yet thoughts pour through our minds like a creek out of its banks.  But what kind of water is gushing forth?  We clean up our creeks and rivers, but we neglect the stream of thoughts that flood our minds daily.

     We get up groggy in the morning.  Our minds have been swimming in those dark mysterious waters of the unconscious all night.  We have been awash in dreams and wild thoughts from which we have little defense.  And so we slowly awake from the jet lag left in the wake of our “good night’s sleep,” and we stumble into the kitchen for our favorite go-juice and begin to try order our day.

     If we are not careful, thoughts from who knows where pop into our minds–thoughts of the earth and earthbound people.  Doubts, frustrations, regrets, revenge, desires for material things we can’t or shouldn’t have, and trivialities all race like speedboats through our mind.  And though we are awake and smelling the toast and spreading the jelly, we can unconsciously think these types of thoughts, most unaware of their origin.  And their origin is not from above, but from beneath.

      What are we to do?  The early Christians were admonished by the apostle Paul to “let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus.”  We have to let it.  But it order to let Christ’s mind be in us, we have to know what His thoughts were.  “Who being in the form of God, thought it not robbery to be equal with God.”  Yet, he humbled himself and served others by loving them and laying down His life for them.  He was all about helping the future sons and daughters of God get to where they need to go.  His mind was full of the purpose and plan of God, which is God reproducing Himself in a body of many children (Phillipians 2:5-8).  He later says to think on the true, honest, just, pure, and lovely things, and “the God of peace shall be with you” (4:8-9).  We are to think this way.

     I find that I must immediately in the morning “get my mind right.”  I do it by thanking God for saving me out of the depths of depravity.  I thank Him for the truth and for His purpose in bringing forth many sons and daughters.  And then I read about His wishes and desires for us, and then the fog lifts, the waters of my thoughts clear, things come into focus and joy rushes in and I pick up my pen and write these very words you are reading right now.  And, somehow, I know that someone will read them and be helped along this  road to immortality.    Kenneth Wayne Hancock                                                                          

(If this has been helpful to you, please leave a comment and/or share it with someone who would appreciate it)

    

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March 25, 2008 · 2:55 pm

“Fruit of the Spirit” : Why the Love Stops Flowing

     We’re spiritually going great.  The love, joy, and peace, “the fruit of the Spirit,” is flowing down and through us on out to others.  After a great day we get some sleep, wake up the next morning, and then–the blahs hit us.  Other thoughts begin to enter into our mind about worldly pursuits, obligations, responsibilities, money matters, and before we know it, we are sitting there wondering, “What happened to me?”

     We think, “I thought His presence would last forever.  I don’t feel too loving and kind right now, and I don’t like it.”  At this point, we need to realize that the Love-from-above stops flowing down and through us because we simply run out of the Holy Spirit.

     To illustrate this point we look to the Old Testament Tabernacle, which is a type of our spiritual experience today.  Inside the Tabernacle there was among other furniture a golden lampstand (candlestick).  The Levitcal priests were responsible for refilling the olive oil so that the light would not go out.  They literally went to a barrel of olive oil daily and brought enough to fill up the lamps on the lampstand.

     What’s that got to do with us?  Those priests are a type and shadow of us, the sons and daughters of God in this era who have the Spirit of Christ.  We are “a royal priesthood” according to the apostle Peter.  The olive oil is universally accepted to be a type of God’s Spirit.  The light from the lampstand’s burning oil is a type of the love, joy, and peace that our bodies exude when the Spirit is flowing in us. 

     The point:  The Love-from-above can stop flowing through us if we do not go and get more oil (Holy Spirit) to supply our vessels.  We must pray and ask God for more of His Spirit to come down and into us so that we can continue to channel His love to others.  He wants us to have His Spirit, but we His children must request it.  He has promised to give us His Spirit when we want it to give to others. 

     The Love-from-above can stop flowing at times, but we only need to ask Him for more of His Spirit to get it started again.  If a hungry little child asks us for some jelly and bread, are we not going to to give it to him?  How much more shall your heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to them that ask Him?  Luke 11:13                         Kenneth Wayne Hancock

{If this has been helpful please make a comment and/or pass it on to a friend}

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