Day 168 - What is my First Thing?

PAPA Prayer - 5

A – Approach God as the “first thing” in your life – “As your most valuable treasure, the Person you most want to know.” Crabb encourages honest prayer, suggesting if true we “admit that other people and things really do matter more to you right now, but you long to want God so much that every other good thing in your life becomes a ‘second thing’ desire.”

This thought reminds me of consecration. If we have allowed God in the previous three steps to see us as we are, to forgive and cleanse us, then as Ephesians 3:12 says, “In him and through faith in him we may approach God with freedom and confidence.

Again, Hebrews 4:16 says “Let us then approach the throne of grace with confidence, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help us in our time of need.”

While I agree that I should approach God this way – as the FIRST thing in my life – my most valuable treasure – if I have not gone to the Word and seen WHO HE IS, I might feel hopeless after looking into the mirror of His Word and seeing WHO I AM.

The first three steps should have prepared me to approach God with confidence that He will hear me, but so far Crabb does not reveal the tools with which to do so.

Granted, he is writing as a mature Christian, likely to other ‘mature’ believers, yet if so many of us have missed such basic prayer instruction, don’t we then need basic guidance to find and understand it?

I will complete the study, hoping for more exposition and direction to God’s Word, but to be honest, I believe these four steps were ‘there’ all the time in the Lord’s Prayer, albeit perhaps in a different order;

THE FIRST A - Our Father, Who Art in Heaven, Hallowed be thy name (recognize how am I thinking of God – Who is God – is He my Father? etc. –)

THE FIRST P - Thy Kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven (present myself to God without pretense – what is really going on inside of me – do I want HIS kingdom, HIS will, HIS presence in my physical life as it is in the spiritual?)

THE SECOND P - Give us this day our daily bread … and forgive us as we forgive others (Purge yourself of anything blocking your relationship with God) – Placing the irritating grain of ‘yourself’ into the shell of God’s provision, confess, repent and be forgiven)

THE SECOND A - And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil. For Thine is The Kingdom, The Power, and The Glory. – Approach God as the first thing in your life, as the most valuable treasure. (admitting that I need to be delivered from the truth that people and things (evil if they replace God) may be more important in my life and ask God’s help that only HIS kingdom, power and glory would be first-place in my life.)
This forms APPA
• "Appa" in Korean and Tamil (Indian language) is similar to the word meaning "father" or "dad", and also an anagram of the word "Papa". "Apa", in Hungarian means "Father" or "Daddy"
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• Many young people will recognize that word as a character in the movie Avatar.. A trivia source says “that name "Appa" also sounds like "Abba", the Hebrew word for "father". This may be intentional, and rightly so, as the group rely on Appa to carry them around the world, and to protect them when everything else fails. “Now isn’t that interesting. Not all that spiritual – but interesting ☺

Pondering on what - or who - is my first thing is more the purpose of ‘relational prayer’… more on that tomorrow. But first: Today's food pictured above:

Full Strawberry Smoothie

Italian Salad: Tomatoes, cucumbers, chicken, celery, and Tenuta's Italian Seasoning

Asparagus-Nectarine Chicken - yummy combination

Day 6 of this 21