The following is an edited version of the lecture given on November 26th, 2005 in the series entitled "In the Beginning."     And God said, "See, I have given you every herb that yields seed which is on the face of all the earth, and every tree whose fruit yields seed; to you it shall be for food. Also, to every beast of the earth, to every bird of the air, and to everything that creeps on the earth, in which there is life, I have given every green herb for food"; and it was so.     (Genesis 1:29-30)     The Kind of Prayer We Can Offer to GodLet's turn to Genesis chapter 1 and read from verse 26. Then God said, "Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness; let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the air, and over the cattle, over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth." So God created man in His own image; in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them. Then God blessed them, and God said to them, "Be fruitful and multiply; fill the earth and subdue it; have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the air, and over every living thing that moves on the earth." And God said, "See, I have given you every herb that yields seed which is on the face of all the earth, and every tree whose fruit yields seed; to you it shall be for food. "Also, to every beast of the earth, to every bird of the air, and to everything that creeps on the earth, in which there is life, I have given every green herb for food"; and it was so. Then God saw everything that He had made, and indeed it was very good. So the evening and the morning were the sixth day.  (Verses 26-31) We have already given deep consideration to the verse that says, "Then God said, 'Let Us make man in Our image, according to our likeness.'" The Korean word for God literally means "one being" - the one and only God. So the question is, how is it that here the word "Us" appears? We have also taken a brief look at John chapter 17. That chapter contains the prayer that Jesus said just before He was crucified when He was praying for His disciples and for those who would later come to believe in Him having listened to the words of the disciples. In certain respects, it might appear that this prayer is just a monologue from the Son addressed to the Father, but it also reveals the relationship between the Father and the Son. In it we can see clearly an image of God the Father, we can see an image of Jesus-God the Son who came to this earth in the flesh and is praying here. We also considered where God the Holy Spirit would have been in this case. In John chapter 6 it says, "The words that I speak to you are spirit, and they are life" (Verse 63). And in First Peter chapter 1 it says, "Of this salvation the prophets have inquired and searched carefully, who prophesied of the grace that would come to you, searching what, or what manner of time, the Spirit of Christ who was in them was indicating when He testified beforehand the sufferings of Christ and the glories that would follow" (Verses 10-11). The prophets of the Old Testament were taught by the Spirit of Christ and prophesied about the grace that would come to us. This verse is explaining the process by which the Old Testament was recorded. In this passage there is a reference to "the Spirit of Christ." "The Spirit of Christ" brushed past the minds of the prophets and caused His words to be recorded through their fingertips onto scrolls. In this sense, when we consider the Bible as a whole, we can see that the Holy Spirit is the word itself that lies open before us; these words themselves that are telling us something are the Holy Spirit. People think very lightly about the Holy Trinity, yet, there are many people who do not understand it. Even people who are not Christians have heard of the Holy Trinity. But if you were to ask people to explain precisely what the Holy Trinity is, you would not find many who would be able to offer a simple explanation. If we read through the words of the Old Testament along with the words of the New Testament, which are a record of the process of the Old Testament being fulfilled, we can come to know the heart of God the Father who fills the heavens and the earth and has planned all things, and we can discover God the Son, who came in the body of a man and spoke to man as the Lord of Creation in order to accomplish the will of God the Father. And then through the Old and New Testaments we discover that the words which bear witness to us of the relationship between God the Father and God the Son are themselves the Holy Spirit. The reason I am bringing this matter up and talking about it again now is that there is one more point that I would like to address before we go on. Last time we examined the concept of fellowship. The intrinsic nature of fellowship is to be found within the communication that took place within the Holy Trinity when God said, "Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness," resulting in the creation of man, formed in the image of God. We compared this fellowship that God had with the fellowship that we now have between us. We also took a closer look at some of the words that Jesus spoke in John's Gospel. "That they all may be one, as You, Father, are in Me, and I in You; that they also may be one in Us, that the world may believe that You sent Me. And the glory which You gave Me I have given them, that they may be one just as We are one: I in them, and You in Me; that they may be made perfect in one, and that the world may know that You have sent Me, and have loved them as You have loved Me."  (John 17:21-23) When we think about these words, we find that they refer to the group rather than to the individual. Also, as we live within this group, we begin to consider what kind of relationship we should have with others around us in our lives.The matter I would like to address today, however, in certain respects is very much related to the individual. It is related to the subject of prayer, and I would like to ask each of you what sort of prayers you say before God in your daily lives. Do you only pray when you are going through difficulties and you need something? To be honest, when everything is going well and all our problems are getting solved, we tend not to think about God. There are times when we should definitely be thinking about God and there are things for which we know we should be thanking God, but just because we know we should be thankful does not necessarily mean that we are. There are many times when we just let things pass. When we face difficulties, however, then we turn to God. We can see such images of ourselves in the actions of the Israelites that appear in the Old Testament. Think about what kind of prayers you offer to God in the course of your daily life. If the prayers that you have been offering to God until now have not been the right kind of prayers, isn't it necessary to think about this matter before just carrying on with your daily life? In the Bible it says, You ask and do not receive, because you ask amiss that you may spend it on your pleasures.  (James 4:3) Does this mean that when you want something or are hoping for something, there is no point in asking God for it? Or is there some deeper meaning than that? In the Bible it says, "For to be carnally minded is death, but to be spiritually minded is life and peace" (Romans 8:6). For as long as we are living in this flesh, there are always two trains of thought that are active in our hearts. In Romans chapter 7 the apostle Paul expressed his frustrations very frankly as he wrote, "with the mind I myself serve the law of God, but with the flesh the law of sin." (Verse 25). If we ask amiss, it is because we are asking for something to satisfy our flesh. The question is, are the prayers that we offer to God the kind of prayers that He wants, or the kind of prayers that we want?There are times when we give God responsibility for more than is necessary. We pray to our hearts content, asking for this and that, saying the things we need to say and the things we do not need to say. We pray earnestly to God in this way and then we think, "If God answers my prayers, I'll be grateful," or, "If this is God's will, He will answer my prayers." We tend to do this a lot. What we need to reconsider, however, is what exactly is it that God wants us to pray to Him about? What kind of prayer is it that God wants from us? This is related to the Trinity. There definitely are prayers that God wants to hear from us as individuals, and prayers that He wants us as individuals to say, but are they the prayers that we have been saying so far in our lives? Or have we been praying with the thought that this seems to be the kind of prayer that will please God? This is a matter that we need to think about. Let's take a look at the content of one particular prayer. It is Psalm 138. I will praise You with my whole heart; Before the gods I will sing praises to You. I will worship toward Your holy temple, And praise Your name For Your lovingkindness and Your truth; For You have magnified Your word above all Your name. In the day when I cried out, You answered me, And made me bold with strength in my soul. All the kings of the earth shall praise You, O Lord, When they hear the words of Your mouth. Yes, they shall sing of the ways of the Lord, For great is the glory of the Lord. Though the Lord is on high, Yet He regards the lowly; But the proud He knows from afar. Though I walk in the midst of trouble, You will revive me; You will stretch out Your hand Against the wrath of my enemies, And Your right hand will save me. The Lord will perfect that which concerns me; Your mercy, O Lord, endures forever; Do not forsake the works of Your hands. If you read right through the Psalms, you will find many such passages. This is a personal story, but I was never in the habit of praying for anyone else in my life. I always had to face difficulties since I had to deal with a lot of tough situations in my work, so I would simply lay my own situation before God. I would ask Him to do this for me or do that for me. I would ask Him to solve a problem in my heart. I had said countless prayers to ask God to solve some problem for me. Sometimes I would feel so frustrated that I would get down on my knees and pray. But then one day some people I am very close to and who are very dear to me had to face an extremely difficult problem. At that time, I felt really frustrated and troubled. I knew that I needed to pray for them, but I did not know how to go about it since I had never prayed for anyone else before. Apart from the times when I said a prayer after a sermon, I had hardly ever prayed on my own for the sake of someone else, and I reproached myself severely for this. At that time I felt so frustrated that I went into my room on my own and prayed to God, but even as I did so, in my heart I was wondering if this was really the right kind of prayer to offer. So after praying for a short time, I finished off my prayer rather abruptly with a silent "Amen" in my heart and I opened the Bible and began to read. But what I read in the Bible reflected exactly the situation that my acquaintances were facing and what was in my heart as I prayed as a result of all this. As I read the Bible I thought, "This is precisely how it is." That is to say, everything was in the Lord's hands. At the end of this Psalm, it says, "Do not forsake the works of Your hands." As I read these words at that time, I prayed sincerely and asked God to take care of us since we have been created in accordance with His will.At that time, I was deeply moved and full of remorse as I thought of the many vain prayers I had offered until that time. As I went through all of this, the thoughts that I had had regarding the Holy Trinity in John chapter 17 and God as He referred to Himself as "Us," all fell into place. I had always just told God the things that I wanted, and I had often ended these so-called prayers with the words, "I pray in the name of Jesus," or "I pray through Jesus who makes intercession for me at the right hand of God." I had never even imagined that my prayers already existed in the words of the Bible. On that day, however, I was not just saying a prayer; as I read the words of the Bible, I prayed along with those words. As I read the words of the Bible, the only thought that ran through my mind was, "Lord, these words that you are showing to me themselves are the prayer that I would like to offer to You." Then I remembered these words from the Bible, "You ask and do not receive, because you ask amiss." The Bible also says, "For to be carnally minded is death, but to be spiritually minded is life." It makes this very clear distinction. I realized that I had said very many prayers that were related to the desires of my flesh.From that time on, I realized that I needed to think a little more deeply about the content of my prayers. Since the Bible says, "To be spiritually minded is life," I decided that I should look in the Bible to find out what I should be asking God for. I knew that I should look in the Bible to find out what God wants of me and that I should be saying prayers that are in accordance with the Bible. In other words, we pray through the words of the Bible that are opened before each of us individually, through God the Holy Spirit who speaks to us continually in this way. When I cry out to God in accordance with the thoughts of the Holy Spirit and in accordance with the words of the Bible, Jesus-God the Son-will answer my prayer. Even now He is alive, even now He is bearing witness to God the Father that our sins have been forgiven, and it is this Jesus who will answer these prayers. Also, God the Father will hear these prayers through the risen Jesus, and so we always finish our prayers with the words, "We pray in the name of Jesus Christ." It is all accomplished at the same time, through the words of the Bible, through Jesus, and through God the Father. It all happens at the same time, a time that man cannot even calculate. It is just the same as when we are born again. The moment we receive the words of the Bible in our hearts, we come under God's time, which goes beyond past, present, and future or any form of time with which we are familiar. When this shines into our hearts, we describe it as "receiving God's word," "being saved," or "being born again." But it does not stop there. In the course of my daily life, when I want to trust in the Lord and in my heart there is something I would like to ask Him for, instead of praying according to the thoughts that I have as I live in this corruptible flesh, I should wish God would listen to my prayers which I pray in accordance with the word that God has given to me.I tend to be quite diligent when it comes to confessing my faults before God, and I have said a lot of prayers in my time. But when I think about it now, it seems that there were times when God answered my prayers and times when He did not. In the Bible it says, "But let him ask in faith, with no doubting" (James 1:6),

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