Shabbat shalom kol beit Yisra'el and Mishpachah and welcome to this assembly. To those of you listening in who are celebrating the Passover Season this week, Chag sameach Pesach and Chag haMatzah sameach. As you know this congregation will be observing the festivals next month, delayed in part by my heart operation but made absolutely unavoidable yesterday when I had a nasty fall on my head in town. Truth told, I wasn't sure I would be here today either.

Today we are continuing with the second part of our series on unity in the Messianic Community (Church). If, as Steve Donaldson claims, the Bride of Messiah seems even more desperately ill than the society she was sent to rescue, then surely a major part of the problem we face is that Body's own disunity. A family divided amongst itself cannot possible stand and either the family must learn to put aside its differences and unite on some fundamentals it is agreed upon or that family is doomed to be overwhelmed and eventually irrepairably break up. What is true of your average family is also true of the Family of Elohim (God).

Now I think you all know that I am not naïve. I realise, using common sense and experience of human nature, that if the Messianic Community (Church) hasn't solved its doctrinal issues in 1,800 or so years then it isn't going to suddenly do so now. However, it ought to be united on at least the essentials which means that it must agree what those essentials are. That means, at least in these areas - which I have identified as six - the Body must turn away from its wrongheadedness and quickly.

Last week we looked at the first two of these and saw how the New Birth-cum-Water Baptism and the Master's (Lord's) Supper are essential keys to unity. I had planned to look at Prayer and Scripture today but because of the accident yesterday I hope you'll forgive me if I just confine myself to Prayer this morning. I realise Prayer represents a potentially huge area, like all the others, in fact, so I am going to have to squeeze what I could say right down. Provided it's understood from the outset that this isn't going to be a long discourse or exposition on Prayer but rather a practical doorway to unity in the Body of Messiah, I think we may be able to achieve something useful this morning. That is certainly my hope.

So down to brass tacks and to prayer. There really is no great mystery to prayer, at least none that I can see but people being people I suppose I can see how they might try to complicate things.

In it's simplest most child-like form, prayer is simply being open to Someone or Something 'beyond' the familiar natural world. It may start as an awareness that there is a Power beyond our own power, a Presence, perhaps even a Person - greater than ourselves. I doubt anyone who approaches prayer for the first time has much of an idea of what they're doing, let alone how they should 'do' it, or know what they're really experiencing. And no two people are alike, particularly if they have little or no little religious background. Sometimes people just find themselves spontaneously flung into prayer when they face a life-threatening situation, like being in the middle of a war, and something deep within just 'knows' that this is the right thing to do.

Now I'm the first to admit, as you know, that prayer can be the most baffling of areas. Like everything else, it seems, everyone has their own ideas as to how it should be 'done'. Just as last week I was not interested in outer formulas for things like baptism, so I am going to avoid that in the matter of prayer too. How you do it, when you do it and such things don't interest me today. I want to get right to the heart or substance of prayer which means I want to approach it with the kind of innocence and, I dare say, an equally good measure of ignorance, that one might expect from a child. Confession: I haven't got any formulas for prayer anyway, never have done, and probably never will do. Most of my praying is exceedingly informal. The only liturgical praying you will ever find me doing is the Master's (Lord's) Supper and the Master's (Lord's) Prayer.

What interests me is how children pray and how adults, who are not particularly religious but sense under special circumstances the very real need to pray. What happens? What do they do? And I don't necessarily mean those who regard themselves as 'Christian', nominally or otherwise. You see, when people find themselves 'under fire', as it were, - even those who regard themselves as atheists - a mechanism unfailingly springs into action that connects them to something very deep and mysterious within. They haven't the faintest idea what it is, because they have never perhaps felt the need to tap into it, let alone analyse it, but now, suddenly, they are making a bee-line for it even though they have no mental and existential map to help them navigate it. They're operating by pure instinct. It's like there's an interior generator which they never turn on, and perhaps have never turned it on before, and yet some part of them 'knows' what to do. They just 'spring into action', as it were. And the odd thing about it is this: everyone has it and everyone instinctively knows what to 'do' even though they've likely never been taught.

This is a sort of vague, crude, lowest common denominator-like praying that has no recognisable form but shares an emotion and a spiritual need common to everyone. Little or no sense can be made of this impulse, this road, this direction, this cry from the primordial depths of the soul until you start reading the Messianic Scriptures (New Testament). Then, as the words of Scripture shape the experience into a form you can touch and describe in common with hundreds of thousands of others, you soon become aware of something much more tangible and real. You cease to be like a space probe sending out a desperate signal into empty space and sense you are not alone. Someone else is there - you're not talking into empty space. There's a receiver, it's sending a signal back, and it's something you can mysteriously decode in your own soul. Something intelligent is out there (even if it's simultaneously inside), it's greater than you are, you sense it, but you don't know too much about it.

I want to suggest that we all of us tend to experience prayer interaction between what N.T.Wright calls a kind of "nature mysticism" and a series of "petitions to a Deity". In the first instance, prayer opens us up to the beauty, joy, and power of the Creation around us. This is certainly how I began, before I became a formal believer in anything, communing with nature. I wasn't worshipping nature but I was definitely enjoying it as something mystically and wondrously bigger than myself. It commonly happens to most of us as we gaze on a snow-capped mountain, or listen to the breaking of waves on the seashore, or as we stand gazing into the starry heavens at night far away from the city lights. My childhood was full of the latter two. With a jungle on my doorstep in tropical Malaysia, a refracting telescope with which to look up at the moon, planets and stars at night and animals to look at by day, and glorious holidays by the seaside equally plentiful in wildlife from stingrays to red shelless crabs, these were my first times of silent, worldless prayer.

The same kind of thing happens when you fall in love and give yourself away to someone because it's a huge act of faith and you have no idea what to expect. All of these are 'religious'-like experiences. They are all forms of prayer because they celebrate something beyond ourselves which we feel a part of. We are caught up in it, existing in a kind of union, as something separate from everyday life that we can retreat to and hide in. What I call 'nature mystery' can indeed be very powerful and moving, and often life-changing. I view my own life up until about the age of 9 as a kind of nature Paradise. And yet, wonderful and important though all of this experience was, it is not what the Messianic Scriptures (New Testament) understand to be 'prayer'.

So now we come to the other end of that 'prayer spectrum'. If the 'nature experience' I have described sounds a bit 'New Agey', on its own it kind of is - then the other extreme is very 'pagany' because it consists of that kind of prayer in which petitions are being made to a deity or multiple deities who are distant and impersonal, usually not very well known, frequently capricious (unpredictable) and sometimes malevolent (hostile). Go back two or three thousand years to ancient Greece and you might come across a sailor going up to a Temple of Poseidon to offer sacrifices for a safe voyage. In his heart he might be afraid that someone else - an enemy or rival - may have more successfully bribed Poseidon to create a wind going in the wrong direction. Or he might be afraid he got some magical formula or spell wrong. Or the sacrifice might be blemished and rejected by the god. Lots of things could potentially go 'wrong'.

Now you might be chuckling at such a 'primitive' attitude but you'd be surprised just how common such an attitude is even in our churches and messianic synagogues. I knew one very fearful messianic, influenced by Talmudic Jewish superstitions, who was terrified of the 'evil eye'. Far too many Christians view their 'God' as kind of "a faceless bureaucrat who may or may not be interested or kindly disposed" toward them [1]. Has anyone ever viewed Yahweh like that? Be honest with yourself. Maybe you have never met Him, or have lost contact with Him for whatever reason - sin or carelessness - but whatever the true explanation, it is all too easy for believers to slip into paganism without even realising it because they're using the language of Christianity. And often they will conclude, because the prayer line isn't operating as it should, that the whole thing is just make-believe.

Now somewhere between these two poles, yet going way beyond both, we have the prayer life of ancient Israel. And though the Psalms do have some pagan parallels now and then, there is nothing like this collection anywhere else in pagan literature. They celebrate nature - the goodness of Creation - and recognise that the heavens bear witness of the goodness of Elohim (God)!

"The earth is Yahweh's (the LORD's) and all that is in it, the world and those who dwell therein. For it is He who founded it upon the seas and planted it upon the waters beneath" (Ps.24:1-2, NEB; cp. 1 Cor.10:26).

Yet unlike some New Age prayer, the Psalmists celebrate their intimate union, not with nature as such, but with the Creator of nature, Yahweh-Elohim, whose ahavah (love) and power are made known in nature. And though I didn't know Him as a boy, I most definitely recognised there was something in nature that was of a Higher Power that I was spellbound by. And yes, as we read the words of the Psalmists, we sometimes discover that they feel Yahweh has become distant and remote, and sometimes they feel He has turned against them and is actively fighting against them! And yet they choose not to believe that when they call upon Him and nothing happens so they conclude that He has gone away on some trip and is inaccessible.

This is where emunah (faith) comes in because even the most devout believer, who has met Elohim (God), communed with Him, and knows Him personally, goes through dry patches when He seems to be absent. So what did those Psalmists do? Give up? Stop believing? Go away? No, consistently they do one thing: they hammer on His door to remind Him of His personal promises, His great acts and miracles of old, and above all, His personally declared ahavah (love) and chesed (mercy). And even when they find no way to turn the corner towards resolution of a problem - and this is very important for you to carefully note - they are eventually, if sorrowfully, content to leave their dire situation in front of His door.

I don't know what your situations are or have been that have not found resolution. Maybe like me you have had to carry the agonising weight of broken marriages and lost children for decades. Maybe Yahweh has permitted lovers and friends to be taken away from you, as the Psalmist bewails:

"You have taken from me my closest friends and have made me repulsive to them" (Ps.88:8, NIV).

Read Psalms 88 and 89 sometime, if you would, they are so inspiring. Yet, I pray, you have been resolute and trusting like Job, so that we can declare that though friends should slay us, we will still continue to trust in Yahweh (Job 13:15). Century after century, the Hebrews prayed:

"Hear, O Yisra'el (Israel): Yahweh our Elohim (God), Yahweh is echad (one). [I will] love Yahweh [my] Elohim (God) with [my] your heart and with all [my] soul and with all [my] strength" (Deut.6:4-5, NIV).

This was no New Age or Pagan praying. Here you have transcendence, intimacy, celebration, and covenant. These four are the roots of biblical prayer. And if this is not itself amazing enough, consider what happens when you move from the Tanakh (Old Testament) to the Messianic Scriptures (New Testament), particularly in the light of Yah'shua's (Jesus') death and resurrection. Prayer goes deeper and higher still for in the Messiah, Israelite prayer has been refocussed and drawn further forwards by those climactic and decisive events concerning Yah'shua's (Jesus') life. And through this, the twin poles of nature mysticism and petitionary prayer - particularly prayer in times of trouble or danger - are drawn together in a new configuration.

I have asked you to read Psalms 88 & 89 after this assembly during the week but I am also going to ask you to read John 13 to 17. At the end of these farewell discourses of the Master to His talmidim (disciples) we read Yah'shua's (Jesus') own astonishing, sublime and exalted prayers to His Heavenly Father. We could have a whole series of sermons on the High Priestly prayer of John 17 alone, as this is probably the greatest prayer ever spoken, but what I want to especially draw your attention to, as you read these five chapters later, is the new relationship the talmidim (disciples) will have with the Father as a result of Christ's own 'going away', which is His shorthand for telling of His imminent death and resurrection. The result of this 'departure' is His sending the Ruach (Spirit) to be with them in His place. And not just for those first talmidim (disciples), but for us too!

Remember how last week I spoke about the core 'DDR' doctrines that as believers seeking unity we must be absolutely agreed about - the Deity, Death and Resurrection of Messiah? Well, they come to the fore in a big way here in prayer. You see, in this intimacy of relationship the talmidim (disciples) are encouraged to ask for whatever they want - anything at all - in Yah'shua's (Jesus') Name. But the intimacy has to be there for this to work, even as the Master spoke:

"For the Father Himself loves you, because you have loved Me and have believed that I came from Elohim (God)" (Jn.16:27, NRSV).

Do you realise what is happening here? This extraordinary, unique, intimate relationship which Yah'shua (Jesus) Himself had enjoyed with Yahweh the Father is now open to all of His followers - to all of us! John finally explains why and how this comes about in the first of his resurrection chapters. The risen Master tells Mary Magdalene to go and say to "My brothers", "'I am ascending to My Father and your Father, to My Elohim (God) and your Elohim (God)" (Jn.20:17, NRSV). Do you see what He is doing here? As Himself the fulfilment of Israel's goal to be Yahweh's 'son', the Belovèd of the Father, He now shares this status, and all its benefits, with all His followers. Like a loving elder brother generously sharing his things with his younger brothers and sisters, he's making everything available to His siblings. 'Come on chaps,' he's saying, 'here, help yourselves!' But this is more than sharing his possessions. Yahweh's intention was, and always has been, to draw humans freely into intimate fellowship with Himself, and He has accomplished this by stepping forward to meet us in Yah'shua (Jesus) of Nazareth. This is yet one more meaning of the resurrection.

In fact the day before yesterday I had a very beautiful experience. I had been struggling with this sermon all day and getting nowhere and so I put it aside. I always find the subject material of prayer a bit intimidating and I realised, finally, it was because I have always found the Father a bit distant and therefore intimidating, perhaps because my own earthly father was distant. I never had any brothers or sisters of my own either so I couldn't relate to that either. Our families are so important in helping us understand our Heavenly Family but even if we have not been blessed with that we can still come to know Elohim (God) and He will continue to draw us in His ahavah (love) through this, in human terms, 'Elder Brother', our Master (Lord) and Saviour (Deliverer).

It is difficult to draw close to someone you're afraid of, and more so if the reason you are afraid of Him is false. For me it was all of my life hearing from traditional Christianity that 'Jehovah' (and I am going to call this false deity by that name because I feel it is highly appropriate..because of what the Hebrew word hovah means) held us to a higher standard than himself. In short, the deity I was taught was a hypocrite. This pretender demanded that we forgive "seventy times seven" (Mt.18:22, KJV), that is, indefinitely, and yet intimated that he was either going to burn and torture all his enemies in hell for eternity or otherwise exterminate them in some heavenly gas chamber or fiery furnace.

The fact that this scenario isn't actually in our Bibles is besides the point because I sort of half believed it anyway from hearing it said so often by the clergy. The long and short of it was I found it very hard to pray to an entity whom I couldn't trust who seemed so at odds with the sugary, lawless son of the orthodox pundits who seemed willing to forgive anything and everything without exacting any kind of discipleship, commitment or accountability of any real substance. This 'Jehovah' was more like the ruthless, unprincipled 'Demiurge' of the Gnostics, a rather bad-tempered, vindictive, moody, mean-spirited and capricious creator-angel decidedly inferior to Yah'shua (Jesus). Why do I think the name 'Jehovah' is appropriate? Because the suffix hovah means '[is] perverse'. By the way, that name, loved by the 'Jehovah's Witnesses' which is found in so many of our English Bible translations, is not in the Hebrew Bible - it is a pure fiction and blasphemy, the artificial construction of men combining two different Hebrew words together - the consonants of the Tetragrammaton (YHWH) and the vowels of 'Adonai' (Lord, Master) [2]. Why was this done? To conceal the true Name of Yahweh because they were too scared to articulate it. Such is the price of superstition.

It all suddenly 'came together' for me two days ago as I read the Great White Throne Judgment passage and realised it meant something completely different to what I had been told by the advocates of eternal torture and annihilation:

"Then I saw a great white throne and Him (Yahweh) who was seated on it. Earth and sky fled from His presence, and there was no place for them. And I saw the dead, great and small, standing before the throne, and books were opened. Another book was opened, which is the book of life. The dead were judged according to what they had done as recorded in the books. The sea gave up the dead that were in it, and death and Hades gave up the dead that were in them, and each person was judged according to what he had done (Ps.62:13; Prov.24:12). Then death and Hades were thrown into the lake of fire. The lake of fire is the second death. If anyone's name was not found written in the book of life (Dan.12:1), he was thrown into the lake of fire" (Rev.20:11-15, NIV).

To cut a long story short, because I don't want to make this a talk about the final judgment, remembering that the Lake of Fire is, in fact, Yahweh's crucible of refinement that was represented by the Brass Laver outside the Temple which the cohenim (priests) were required to bathe themselves in before entering the Tabernacle or Temple, I realised that what was happening was indeed a 'death sentence' but no different from the one every believer has to submit to that we discussed last week when we spoke about baptism. For you will remember that that watery ordinance teaches us of the voluntary necessity of dying to the fleshy nature in order to be born again, which for believers is the 'first death', the 'second death' being physical death. (For the wicked it's the other way round). The difference between this and the "lake of fire"is that this death is fiery and by compulsion and is reserved for those who refuse to submit and repent. It is, moreover, a very long and painful death precisely because it is resisted.

Now I already knew this in my head, and had done so for many years, even though I didn't really thrash it out scripturally and historically in depth until last year. But two days ago my heart finally understood what my head already had concluded and I found inner release. This was justice alright, but remedial, not punative - loving not vindictive. This was not, as Jack Chick had tried to persuade several generations in his wretched tracts, a kind of heavenly 'Grand Inquisition' extracting a confession of 'Jesus is Lord!' from wicked souls and demons with their teeth gritted on a metaphorical torturer's wheel. Rather, this was a loving Father's detention - a corrective remedy for unwilling, rebellious sons and daughters determined to do it the hard and painful way.

Let me tell you, I went to bed two nights ago and I was able to pray to my Heavenly Father as a son rather than as a slave, probably for the first time in decades. I connected back to the innocence of my youth and to my love of nature, my earliest times of communion with He whose Name I did not then know but whose heart I most definitely sensed. I knew for sure He loved animals and plants. For the first time I felt I could evangelise with a clear conscience, without the baggage of guilt I had been carrying around with me all these years, of a being I could not reconcile with my spirit made in the true image of Elohim (God). Heaven smiled on me two nights ago and I have a shalom (peace) I've not had for a very long time. Coming in my mid-60's you might think it a little late in the day but it's never to late to know Elohim (God). My theology and my heart are now finally in agreement. I don't have to pretend to myself or others any longer that eternal torment or annihilation is an acceptable characteristic of a loving, just and qadosh (holy, set-apart) Elohim (God), however much the orthodox and messianic philosophers tried to twist it to make it 'fit'.

The reason I bring this up now is because I am talking about the importance of intimacy in prayer, and you have to have that if prayer is to be meaningful and alive. I don't want anyone to have any impediments to that or for you to end up admitting a false spirit. You can bury unpleasant things for so long but sooner-or-later you have to deal with them. And I had to finally deal with a doctrine that has been on my 'back burner' now for a very, very long time. Theologically I had resolved it in the doctrine of universal graded salvation, which I recently articulated and came out with unapologetically (and at great cost, I might add, because for so many believers eternal punishment or annihilation has become a kind of golden calf and test of faith), but my heart was unsure, being plagued by the rebukes of scared fellow religionists convinced I had lost my salvation or that I would become instrumental in others losing theirs. I do not fear their threats not do I choose to own their terror. They will try to make me out as saying things I do not believe, like Elohim (God) doesn't punish anyone or a hellish post-mortem life doesn't exist, neither of which I have ever said. No one escapes judgment who denies the Son of Elohim (God) or who did wickedly. So let's be absolutely clear about that. The only issue is the duration of punishment (finite rather than infinite) and its purpose (remedial rather than punative).

Yahweh uses all kinds of unexpected things to make things 'work' for us. A week ago I 'randomly' grabbed a book out of my library called Fog and Sun, Sea and Shore: The Monterey Coast by the late Steve Crouch, who was one of California's most recognised and celebrated photographer-authors. I love that book because I love nature. It's a beautifully arranged volume too and the pictures in it are so evocative that looking at them I want to be there in them. And of late I have been hankering for a change of environment as I always do after the long Scandinavian winter. This book connected me to my childhood memories, to the happiness and peace of those early carefree days when I liked nothing better than to be out in the jungle or peering down my telescope looking at the beautiful plumage of diving kingfishers or heavenly bodies. Crouch's book joined in the concatanation of events that led to my release.

More than anything else I want you today to take this one thing away with you, and it is this: intimacy stands at the heart of the New Testament's view of prayer. Realise also that that intimacy does not mean that we have left behind the sense of echad or oneness with the created order which we find in some other religions and indeed in our own human experience generally. As you read chapters 4 and 5 of the Book of Revelation (there are two more to add to your list...if you like), the great heavenly scene stands out at the very moment the Messianic Community (Church) is gathering up the praises of all Creation and presenting them before Elohim's (God's) Throne.

What I especially like about these chapters is that they deal with the central problem of nature mysticism. They tell us that the world is 'out of joint' and that it isn't enough, as New Agers maintain, to simply bring yourself into alignment with nature. Nature cannot save you. Environmentalism cannot save you. Nature is not a god. The environment is not a god. Nature is fallen, corrupted, containing a mixture of great beauty and terrible ugliness all mixed together. It needs caring for and enjoying but not worshipping. It needs environmentalists but not idolaters.

If all we do is try to bring ourselves into harmony with the created order as it is at present, which isn't remotely the same as it was in the Garden of Eden, what we're actually doing is embracing death: not only nature 'red in tooth and claw', but the cosmos running down into the cold night of entropy and chaos. There are a lot of crazies out there who are even advocating we should leave nature entirely alone and let it overrun all of man's civilising influences and attempts to subdue it even if it means man going extinct. That is naturism taken to a ridiculous extreme. Yes, we need to prevent man's deliberate pollution of nature and become better stewards of it but that is not achieved by committing species suicide.

To this day I can still remember standing in one of the two Biology labs at school in front of a large glass tank watching tadpoles and half-developped froglets happily swimming around only to be appalled to witness a large dragonfly larva leap out from amongst the weeds to seize and slowly eat a tadpole alive. I can still see that little juvenile amphibian struggling in agony as its life ebbed away as vividly as though it were yesterday. Or from when I was even younger seeing a python that had choked itself to death having eaten a calf alive and suffocated it. I also vividly remember being taken as a boy to a medical clinic just outside Kuala Lumpur and being shown a massively long flat segmented white tapeworm that filled up an entire metal bucket. The worm was several feet long and had recently been flushed out of a hapless patient who was lying on the concrete flow exhausted from his ordeal. So amidst the happy memories of giant colourful butterflies, kingfishers, flying foxes and gorgeous orchids are reminders that nature is also a terrifying place filled with death - disease, parasites, killers and the relentless struggle to survive. No, nature is not, and never was, some 'deity' called 'Maia' or whatever. There is nothing deserving worship there. Nature never loved me nor ever laid its life down for me nor purchased eternal life for me.

That's nature, its wonder and horror. At the other end of the prayer spectrum is that experience, which everyone has, of battering frantically at Yahweh's door and crying out, "HELP!" again and again. At one of the most climactic moments in all his writings, Paul, in Romans 8, pauses to comment that we as believers are caught inbetween [the old] Creation and New Creation, and this shows in how we pray and what we pray for. Or to be exact, it shows that much of the time we don't know what to pray for! And here it gets even more mysterious for it gets so much bigger then ourselves because at this point prayer moves beyond personal wants and needs to something outside of ourselves and yet is still very much connected to us.

Then we have crossed a very real gap, what we Messianic Evangelicals call the 'Shavu'ot or 'Pentecost' Gap' which is also a hinge that turns the seasons round (from spring to autumn/fall, Shavu'ot being the solo summer festival) to the whole of history which is itself seasonal. Then we graduate from self-centred prayer to corporate- or Body-centred prayer and start experiencing, like Count Zinzendorf whom we spoke of briefly last week, a very deep need to interceed for others. Self kind of 'drops out of the picture' because we have finally come to the point of fully trusting Yahweh with our lives, come what may, and no longer own ourselves, and can now focus on others. That's not to say we won't still have legitimate personal needs, for we always will, it's just that we will have found a higher and more glorious way.

Something like that happened to me yesterday as I layed sprawled out on the gritty paving stones of Arvika market place having just violently hit my head on a slab and narrowly missed bashing my heart operation wound. People gathered round to help. And though I was in a lot of pain and my head had swollen up into a bump the size of a golf ball and was bleeding all over the place, I felt a shalom (peace) as I lay there and made no effort to struggle back up onto my feet immediately. I was aware of Yahweh's presence and felt an assurance. I was able to quite genuinely smile at those who were being so kind to me and not to worry at all. You see, the evening before I had met the Saviour of the Cosmos in a completely new way and was communing. I had glimpsed, and was still glimpsing, into the New Creation world brought into being by the work of Yah'shua (Jesus) on the cross. It's hard to explain. The Swedish nurse and Romanian doctor were so nice at the Health Centre and I was able to relate to them as people in a new way too. It was very satisfying!

New Creation. Prayer puts us in touch with that. We glimpse Yah'shua (Jesus) in it and are astonished. My gosh, we discover, He's really there, and something is being brought to birth! We feel something of its power - not worldly power, but an other-wordly power; not 'mighty' but 'spiritual' which is 'higher' than any 'power' or 'mightiness', being greater than both (Zech.4:6). That said, this Ruach - this Spirit - does not give us simplistic, easy answers to the puzzle of life which for us, as believers, intersects the Old Creation and the New - two orders that are opposite to one another in so many ways. The Ruach (Spirit) doesn't necessarily make prayer 'easy'. Sometimes prayer can be an uphill struggle. Sometimes it can be dry but always the believer persists until the oasis appears. The oasis is a patch of the New Life in the desert of the Old which we are bidden to pitch tent in. Why are we in the Old? Why can't we just be in the New? Because we're here to help others be rescued to the New, just as we were rescued, and we have needful personal growing up to do too.

The Ruach haQodesh (Holy Spirit) has given us the immense privilege of sharing the intimate life of Yahweh-Elohim with others. The Ruach (Spirit) calls from the deep within us, calls to the Heavenly Father, calls from the pain of the world, the pain of the Body of Messiah that is today so sick, calls from the pain of our own hearts as we are misunderstood and treated in ways that hurt. And with that call, and with the answering ahavah (love) and chesed (mercy) of the Father, we are, as Paul says, conformed little by liitle into the image of Messiah, the Son of the Father, the one who shared the suffering of the world so that He might be the true intercessor for the world:

"In the same way, too, the Ruach (Spirit) comes alongside and helps us in our weakness. We don't know what to pray for as we ought to; that same Ruach (Spirit) pleads on our behalf, with groanings too deep for words. And the Searcher of Hearts knows what the Ruach (Spirit) is thinking, because the Ruach (Spirit) pleads for Elohim's (God's) people according to Elohim's (God's) will.

"We know, in fact, that Elohim (God) works all things together for good to those who love Him, who are called according to His purpose. Those He foreknew, you see, He also marked out in advance to be shaped according to the model of the image of His Son, so that He might be the firstborn of a large family. And those He marked out in advance, He also called; those He called, He also justified; those He justified, He also glorified" (Rom.8:26-30, KNT).

As you read Romans 8 and the farewell discourses of Yah'shua (Jesus) in the Gospel of John, you will discover how it is that the inner life of Elohim (God) Himself - Father, Son and Ruach (Spirit) - comes to meet us, coming forward from His future to where we are in the present. How so? And to what end? The future - our future, if we remain true, which is Yahweh's future world, comes forward to meet us in the present to transform our muddled praying that gets so confused by all the static noise of the world around us, impacting us and beckoning us to follow it down its dead-end paths. He transforms that muddled prayer life by sharing His own intimate chayim (life) so that you never accept anything less than His perfect chayim (life), so that you feel nothing but revulsion at the muddled, miserable 'life' of the unredeemed world, and can only see and only want that Chayim (Life) that burst forth at the Resurrection which alone is the future life of the saved. Prayer helps us sort through that muddle and confusion so that we can sort out the real life from all the fake stuff that seems at times to be real life, but which is not.

None of this is easy and it's not without cost. There are wounds that come from sharing in Elohim's (God's) chayim (life). Look what happened to Yah'shua (Jesus) Himself. Look what happened to His apostles and to His talmidim (disciples) through the ages. But see what happens when you bring the central prayer of the Tanakh (Old Testamrnt) - the Shema ("Hear, O Israel...") - into the heart of the Besorah (Gospel) and it becomes the Master's (Lord's) Prayer:

"Your kingdom come...on earth as it is in heaven..." (Matt 6:10, NIV).

So let us wind up. Prayer is communion with Elohim (God) but it isn't a one-way telephone line. It is the deep communion we have with the Creator with whom we have a faith relationship. We're trusting Him. It always assumes - and we should always assume - that it is possible to have an intimate relationship with our Heavenly Father who hears, cares, and is able to act, just like most ordinary Dads only He is perfect. He cares about us individually and He cares about us as congregations and indeed as the whole Body that sincerely names His Name. But believers of different denominations have to first learn to talk together as equals, and then talk together with Yahweh in prayer as equals. It may seem awkward and embarrassing at first but it gets easier the more natural, honest and open you are. Just don't use rpayer to preach at, lecture to, or rebuke others. If you want to express a difference, say it to their face instead, in charity, not in religious smugness. Prayer is not a ritual, it's not a performance, we're not being scored or getting credit points for how well we do it, but a frank, respectful, and kindly conversation rooted in trust.

The key to prayer, in my opinion, is what Yah'shua (Jesus) did for us in the past (the atonement) that unlocked our future and brought some of it into our present. He has made His New Creation available to us and wants us to use it and share it with others. Ask for that. Nature - the old Creation - is wonderful in its own way, but it's fallen and needs renewing one day too. We, on the other hand, can begin to be renewwed now, this very second, by simply believing and asking for New Creation every day! Yahweh bless you and transform your prayer life!

Endnotes

[1] Tom Wright, Surprised by Hope (SPCK, London: 2007), p.290
[2] For the true name of our Heavenly Father and what it means, see the Yahweh website

Acknowledgements

[1] Tom Wright, Surprised by Hope (SPCK, London: 2007), 'Reshaping the Church for Mission', pp.245-303
[2] Michael Bunker & Steve Donaldson, Persecution 2000: Preparing the Underground Church (The Prophecy Club, Topeka, Kansas: 1999)

Comments from Readers

[1] "The second death is daily 'deny yourself and take up your cross daily" (SW, Germany, 21 March 2019)

Author's response: "The way I understand it is this way. The first death for the wicked is physical death and being raised to judgment. The second death of the wicked is being cast into the refiner's fire against their will following judgment until they are purged and released into some lesser 'glory'. It is described as a 'lake' because it must be large enough to accommodate the billions who have chosen this route by refusing salvation. The first death of the saved is being baptised into Messiah's death, dying to self (daily, taking up one's cross, etc.) and being spiritually regenerated or born-again. The second death of the saved is physical death, judgment, and being raised to glory in the presence of Elohim (God)".