Atonement: A Foundation for our Prayers

Do you remember the song “Do Re Mi” from the movie “The Sound of Music?”  It goes something like this:

“Let’s start at the very beginning, a very good place to start, when you read you begin with ABC when you sing you begin with Do Re Mi.”   If foundational pieces make up our music and vocabulary, couldn’t the same be said of prayer?   Often when we pray, we focus on the outcome, without knowing the “individual notes” that are needed to compose the “song” properly.

One of the “individual notes” that serves as a foundation for our prayer life is atonement.  Atonement provides the reconciliation between God and humankind through Jesus Christ and describes what happens when something is offered up to God as payment for sin.  We were once at odds with God, separated by sin, but the most beautiful thing happened when God sent His Son to make this payment and remove the barrier between us.

Romans 3:24-25a highlights this foundational truth “being justified freely by His grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom God set forth as a propitiation by His blood, through faith,”

Do we have a realization of what atonement is and how it affects our prayer life?   When we pray for healing, for example, we can identify the sickness as something Jesus already bore on His body, and stand on His Word for our healing.  1 Peter 2:24 says “who Himself bore our sins in His own body on the tree, that we, having died to sin, might live for righteousness -by whose stripes (wounds) you WERE healed.”   When we pray, we can “appropriate the atonement,” which means we apply this spiritual reality to our life.  Without this realization our prayers won’t have any power.

So let’s end on that note …and learn more redemptive realities next week!