Kilgoris Brothers Fellowship is a Church in a remote village in the Rift Valley, Kenya and is pastored by James Nyangute who has recently been in touch with us to ask for prayer and to make known the situation with the Church in Kenya.

Kilgoris Brothers Fellowship has been meeting under a tree for the past three years.

Pastor James has shared with us that it is difficult to meet together as there are no roads in the region therefore making it difficult to travel to meet together without 4×4 vehicles. It is especially hard to meet without a building as meeting under a tree is determined by the weather. Also during the recent elections there was violence and many were killed, leaving orphans, widows and homeless families. Kilgoris haven’t been able to help financially or by providing shelter but they have been there to share the gospel and pray with those that have suffered due to the violence.

‘…whatever you ask in My name, that I will do’

In chapters 14 and 15 of John’s gospel Jesus makes this promise three times. As I have been reading through these chapters I have begun to appreciate more clearly the context in which Jesus was speaking. It is the last supper, Judas has gone out to do his worst and Jesus is about to be crucified. He is seeking to reassure his disciples that although their world is about to be turned upside down they are not to let their hearts be troubled. He continues to outline to them how they are to live when he has returned to heaven with a particular focus on three things – their continuation of His mission, their knowledge of and closeness to Him, and their love for one another. It is in each section that Jesus promises to do whatever His disciples ask. It will be well worth us looking at these three sections in more detail because it is these three things – mission, truth and love – that make up the DNA of what Jesus always intended His church to be.

MISSION

Most assuredly, I say to you, he who believes in Me, the works that I do he will do also; and greater works than these will he do, because I go to My Father. And whatever you ask in My name, that I will do, that the Father may be glorified in the Son. If you ask anything in My name, I will do it. (John 14:12-14)

In chapter 14 John clearly links miracles with mission. Philip says to Jesus “Lord, show us the Father and it is sufficient for us” (vs. 8). Jesus’ immediate response is that He has already shown them the Father: “He who has seen me has seen the Father” (vs. 9). This includes His works, which Jesus says are actually done by the Father (vs. 10). These works are an important sign to others that Jesus’ message is from God, and Jesus can ask the disciples to ‘Believe Me that I am in the Father and the Father in Me, or else believe Me for the sake of the works themselves’ (vs.11). Elsewhere in the New Testament we see works confirming the message being preached. In Matthew 11:20-23 Chorazin, Bethsaida and Capernaum are gravely warned that even Tyre, Sidon and Sodom would have repented in dust and ashes if they had seen the works that accompanied Jesus’ message. Jesus spells it out explicitly in John 5:36: “But I have a greater witness than John’s; for the works which the Father has given Me to finish – the very works that I do – bear witness of Me, that the Father has sent Me.”
Back into John 14, Jesus tells His disciples they will also do great (and even greater) works because He is going to the Father. His earthly ministry is nearly over, theirs is just beginning and they should expect miracles to confirm their authority from God just as they confirmed Jesus’ authority. The outcome will be ‘that the Father may be glorified in the Son’ (vs.13). So this is the first context in which Jesus said prayers would be answered: as confirmation of God’s authority behind the good news.

TRUTH

If you abide in Me, and My words abide in you, you will ask what you desire, and it shall be done for you. By this My Father is glorified, that you bear much fruit; so you will be My disciples. (John 15:7-8)

Moving into chapter 15 Jesus uses the idea of a vine to explain the importance of the disciples maintaining intimacy with Him. Just as a branch cannot bear fruit on its own, so Christ’s disciples cannot be fruitful unless they are abiding in Him. This fruitfulness probably includes every aspect of the Christian life such as the fruit of the Spirit (Galatians 5:22-23) and also fruitfulness in holding out the gospel to others. Jesus explains that this intimacy with Himself has two sides. The first is knowing Him. He is the way, the truth and the life (John 14:6), He is the Word of God incarnate (John 1). This is not just head knowledge, it is a real, vibrant, living relationship with God Himself. The other side of intimacy with Jesus is His words abiding in us (vs.7) – knowing the scriptures. These need to become part of who we are, how we think and act. This is the second context in which Jesus said prayers would be answered: where He is known in intimate relationship and where His spoken word abides in the hearts of believers, leading to fruitfulness.

LOVE

You did not choose Me, but I chose you and appointed you that you should go and bear fruit, and that your fruit should remain, that whatever you ask the Father in My name He may give you. These things I command you, that you love one another. (John 15:16-17)

Immediately after speaking about the importance of abiding in Him, Jesus goes on to tell His disciples that they must abide in His love in verses 9 to 17. This can be confusing – surely abiding in Christ means abiding in His love! However, Jesus Himself makes the distinction. If abiding in Christ means staying close to Him and being full of His truth, abiding in His love means obeying His commandment to “love one another as I have loved you.” (vs. 12) Abiding in His love is not a warm feeling, rather it is practical obedience of this commandment. It flows from abiding in Him, but is a necessary extension from it. This self sacrificing love is the context of the third time Jesus promised that the disciples’ requests would be given to them.
What conclusions should be draw from this? It would be easy to fall into the trap of setting up a tick list of things we need to do for Jesus to answer our requests. He is a person, not a code to be broken, and the book of Job and other Bible passages make it clear that suffering and sickness are sometimes a mystery that God chooses not to share with us – for now. However, I wonder what might happen among a group of people given to mission, truth and love – all of them held in balance, together.

Andy G

‘And whatever you ask in My name, that I will do, that the Father may be glorified in the Son. If you ask anything in my name, I will do it.’ (John 14:13-14)

There are some verses in the Bible that, if we’re honest, many of us don’t know what to do with. We accept that the scriptures are God-inspired and believe what He says, yet how many of us believe that God will do whatever we ask in His name? The words Jesus used, taken at face value, are impossible to explain away. Whatever we ask, anything in His name, He will do it. There is no asterisk directing us to a footnote which limits this promise to certain requests at certain times in history.

 
Granted, we must ask in His name which necessarily means that we ask for things that are in accordance with Jesus’ character, so that precludes asking God for things based on greed, envy, selfish ambition or any other ‘works of the flesh’ found in Galatians 5:19-21. However, even taking this into account, there remain many things we can ask for that clearly are consistent with God’s character. Take physical healing for example. Are we to say that God does not want to heal the ones we pray for, that it is contrary to His character? How can we be asking amiss when there were times during Jesus’ earthly ministry when He seemed to be doing little else? Yet most of us know of situations where we have prayed for someone who has got worse, not better.
Probably most of us pray hoping that God will do what we ask rather than believing that he will certainly do it. Some people might put this down to a lack of faith, yet even this didn’t stop Jesus healing people. How much faith did the man healed at the Pool of Bethesda have? (John 5) Was anyone other than Jesus not totally stunned by the raising of Lazarus? (John 11) And besides, we do believe Jesus can heal people today. I even know of a situation where someone was so convinced that God would heal his friend that even at the funeral he was waiting for a miraculous resurrection!

How can we be asking amiss when there were times during Jesus’ earthly ministry when He seemed to be doing little else?

I have found it increasingly difficult to just read over these words of Jesus as I have read through John’s gospel. My wife and I are part of a relatively small church and yet we could probably produce a list a page long of people in the church and those related to them who are sick, many of them seriously. More recently serious illness has impacted our own families and we are praying through a protracted period of medical treatment for one of our parents who is being treated for Leukaemia. We have seen many ‘minor miracles’ in terms of positive responses to treatment, fantastic care from medical professionals and many other blessings, but still the illness persists. Do I believe that every word God says is true? Yes. Do I believe God will answer our prayer for healing? Honestly, I don’t know for certain that He will. This is not just a theoretical discussion. There are real life situations where people are suffering and crying out to God for help. And it doesn’t only relate to healing. There are many things we ask for in accordance with God’s character that we still seem to lack. So what do we do with this promise ‘whatever you ask in My name, that I will do’?
I believe the answer to this question lies in a proper understanding of the context in which Jesus made these promises. I will pick this up in my next article.

Andy G

In my Christian walk, my prayer life is never quite what I want it to be. At the moment I have some really big changes and challenges in life to pray through and yet I’ve still struggled to pray in the way I wanted. I wanted to emerge from the last few months as a prayer guru but I’ve failed to meet my own expected standard.

Psalm 119 has been a great encouragement. It stands out as the longest Psalm and is a about  devotion or commitment to the word of God, his statues, word, law, command, precepts or decrees. It mixes profession of devotion to Gods word, with prayer for Gods help. For that reason it’s great to meditate on and make notes on what to pray for. If these things are important for the author to pray for, they are clearly good enough for me.

 It’s a long Psalm because, in the words of the NIV study bible, “the author had a theme that filled his soul, as big as life, that ranged the length and breadth, height and depth of a persons walk with God.” The Psalm reflects this by encompassing the entire power of the Hebrew language, the scope of the Hebrew alphabet, Aleph to Taw (A to Z). As the first section under the letter Aleph is the introduction, the last section under the letter Tau contains a summary of the themes within the Psalm, expressions of devotion and things to pray for in life. Here’s my list of what to pray from Psalm 199:

• 119:169: Pray for God to teach you, to give you a better understanding of his word. It doesn’t matter if you are smart enough to write a Psalm, you still need to pray for ‘the LORD’ to give you more wisdom, more understanding.
• 119:170: Pray for God to hear your prayers or supplication! It’s strange, but in many prayers and psalms in scripture the author asks God to listen, to hear him (1 Ki 8:30; Dan 9:17; Psa 28:2). Appeal to him to listen to you, to have compassion or mercy on you, on your own situation and on your own failings. God has also filled scripture with promises and these are the confidence behind our petitions.
• 119:171-172: Pray for praise to always be on your ‘lips’ and ‘tongue’. This is an expression of intent, of devotion, and a prayer for help. If we understand his word fully as per our first prayer, we would praise him more as we would have a greater understanding of his salvation. Earlier in verse 165 the Psalmist writes “seven times a day I praise you for your righteous laws.” Seven is the number of perfection, completeness and signifies that the author praises ‘the LORD’ all day long. The high standard of prayer and praise is not necessarily hours of devotional time but those continual scattered moments of prayer and praise throughout the entire busy day.
• 119:173-175: Pray for salvation. A true understanding of Gods law, precepts or promises gives us an understanding that only he can save us. We therefore need to pray continually for his salvation. Pray for salvation in current circumstance, from our own failings and for his mercy in letting us live simply that we would be able to do the only thing worth doing which is to praise him.
• 119:176: Finally pray a confession of fault. Even the author of this Psalm, scripture itself, acknowledged that he often ‘strayed like a lost sheep’. He prayed that God would continually seek him, that God would not forget about him despite the fact that he continually failed Gods law time and time again. Reading the Psalm doesn’t leave you with the impression that he had messed up much, but still he recognises and prays about his need to be constantly brought back to God.

Reading this Pslam did not encourage me because I could accept a lesser prayer life, it encouraged me because no matter how good the author of the Psalm was in any aspect of his walk with God, he still recognises his own lack, his need for Gods great help in staying devoted to Gods law. The Psalmist understood that he had to continually pray to God for help in his walk with God and clearly laid out for us the greatest issues in our christian walk that we need to pray for.

Struggling to pray? Not enough time, don’t know what to say, not feeling passionate, mind wandering, tired? You’re not alone! Everyone feels that way at some point, if not many points! Fortunately the Bible gives us some guidance.

Infact it does better than that it gives us an insight into the prayer lives of many saints. And today we’ll look at just one verse from Paul’s life in Philippians 1:3-5.

After all, how do you change the world? One life at a time. Or in the words of the film Evan Almight, one random act of kindness at a time. The President of the United States, Barak Obama started his career by doing legal aid work, and now has responsibility for a whole lot more. What relevance has that? Well, often we wish to leap to the heights of prayer and intercession and when we jus don’t know how to pray we feel a failure and give up altogether. But how do we change our prayer lives? One prayer at a time! Much the same way if we’re struggling to read the Bible – where do we start? One verse at a time!

Little and often is the rule in many things in life and stands true in our prayer life. If we want to run a marathon we start with a 10 minute jog. If we want to learn the piano, we start with the scale of C. If we want to be a prayer warrior (or even manage to pray for at least 10 minutes a day) we start with a simple prayer.

And that simple prayer today is – “thank you”. It will do more than just change our prayer life, it will change our attitude and over time our character. Why thank you?

Well let’s read Philippians 1:3-5.

3 I thank my God in all my remembrance of you, 4 always in every prayer of mine for you all making my prayer with joy, 5 because of your partnership in the gospel from the first day until now. 6 And I am sure of this, that he who began a good work in you will bring it to completion at the day of Jesus Christ.

In every ‘remembrance’, ie prayer for every time we remember someone or something it is also a chance to pray. Paul said thankyou. This should immediately move us away from the guilt-tripping ‘quiet time’ which isn’t found in the Bible to a place of seeing prayer as part of our every day lives, much like breathing. If you’ve ever been to the Middle East you’ll know that you don’t get much peace and quiet and the concept of personal space doesn’t really exist! The only ‘quiet time’ that Jesus probably ever had was when he retreated to the mountain top to pray and in a middle Easter culture that was the only way to get away!

3 I thank my God in all my remembrance of you

Let our rememberings be our chance for prayer. Then we don”t start off the day with a guilt-complex. But instead we look forward to the day as full of opportunities for remembering and therefore for praying. And in this insight into Paul’s life we start to understand that he always started with thankyou and that he said thankyou in every rememberance! Now there’s a challenge even before you start to prayer. You may be familiar with sayings like ACT – adoration, confession, thanksgiving. We should rightly start with adoration of God. But if you don’t know how to do that start with thanksgiving. For in thanksgiving we start to acknowledge all that God is and all He has done.

When we thank him for our breath that he provides…
When we thank him for our food that comes from Him…
When we thank him for our health that we owe to him…
When we thank him for creation that He made with his hands…
When we thank him for our family, that is modelled on Him,
When we thank him for our work, which we use to honour him…
When we just thank Him…

For as we thank Him, so we start to acknowledge Him as our God and our Creator…

Our King and our everything…

Start with simply saying thankyou…

Start with one thankyou at a time…

It will transform your prayer life…

Start today.

Next time we’ll look at joy. And being thankful is a good way to get ready for joy!