All in Daily Devotional
This morning my devotional reading was on the subject of prayer, thanksgiving, and how their presence leads us to consecration. E.M. Bounds, the author, was very emphatic in his proclamation as he wrote these words: "True prayer and gratitude lead to full consecration, and consecration leads to more and better praying. A consecrated life is a life of both prayer and thanksgiving." So, when we read such things do we truly understand what it means to be consecrated?
This morning let’s contemplate the negative impact that dissatisfaction and covetousness has on our prayers and thankfulness. This resonates with me because I have personally been there; have you? Can we hear ourselves praying the lyrics of an old Janice Joplin song? Do we hear ourselves saying “Lord won’t you give me a Mercedes Benz, all my friends they drive Porsches, I must make amends”? Is this true prayer?
This morning we are looking at our prayers and their forward facing nature. In my morning reading Pastor E.M. Bounds proposed that although gratitude and thanksgiving are predominately about those things realized, our "prayer deals with things desired, asked for, and expected." He goes on to write "As prayer brings things to us that produce gratitude and thanksgiving, so praise and gratitude promote prayer and encourage more and better praying." I have found this to be true in my prayer life, and I hope you have also.
Today's let’s talk about a topic that has nagged at me in the past, and caused me great fear to this day. Our subject is a loss of intensity in our relationship with God. Many people call this a crisis of faith and if we are not careful it can lead us into a total breakdown in both faith and belief. Our ultimate goal is to increase desire and deepen our relationship with God, and developing a deep devotion to His Son Jesus Christ is the way we do this. So how do we overcome these moments of doubt, and the times when our faith seems flat and its effervescence is gone?
What are we grateful for? What things in our lives, both physical and spiritual, are we truly grateful for? These sound like such simple questions but in fact they are not. So many reasons for gratitude slip right past us each day without our slightest sense of their passing, or without our acknowledging from whence they came. Let’s look at a verse from Psalm 126 today. In this psalm the psalmist speaks of gratitude and joy when he says...
The journey through the devotional messages of E.M. Bounds that I took several years ago taught me much about developing a full and holy prayer life, and the results of such a life that naturally concludes in God answering us. I learned how the aroma of that blessing, that gracious response, is a sense of gratitude which should be expressed in thanksgiving as we continue on in our prayers. Bounds conveyed this revelation with these words: "thanksgiving is the expression of an inward, conscious gratitude to God for mercies received." He goes on to say that "Gratitude is an inward emotion of the soul, involuntarily arising therein." Don’t we find this true in our lives?
This morning my devotional reading was incredibly uplifting; E.M. Bounds instructed us not only on praying our personal desires, but on discerning our holy desire and dedicating ourselves to it. He made a couple of statements that I found most revealing. The first was his observation that desire "contains choice, attitude, and fire." The second was that "Serious thought, practiced before praying increases desire." Let’s dig into these two thoughts today.
This morning in our time of devotion let’s remind ourselves that prayer is not just a method of asking God for earthly things, and relief from worldly problems, but much more. Prayer is the beautiful avenue along which we travel to seek spiritual comfort and enlightenment as we ask our Father for divine blessings and desires. Prayer not only rescues us, and provides for us, but it also refreshes us in every way… none more importantly than the peace and refreshment of our souls as they are made new by it.
Our devotional lesson and my thoughts today are in regards to what we pray for. E.M. Bounds wrote to us that although we have many desires, we should pray for those things which are "specifically and individually felt and expressed." He goes on to say that "For us, it is entirely true and frequent that our prayers operate in the dry area of a mere wish or in the lifeless area of a memorized prayer." He encourages us to pray fervently and with a sincere yearning, not for wishes, but for the Will of God.
Do we ever find ourselves praying just because we think it is required of us, or we simply think we should? Today's devotional is an interesting one; it will both convict, and encourage us, all in the same breath. E.M. Bounds taught a lesson on the sincerity of prayer by defining the difference between babble and prayer. His lesson started with the statement that "Prayer is a necessary phase of spiritual habit, but it ceases to be prayer when it is done by habit alone." Have our prayers become habit? Do we pray the same words day after day? Have our prayers become babble and chants?
In my devotional reading this morning Pastor E.M. Bounds wrote of the early churches that had no heat in their buildings to keep them warm in the winters during services. He said "that the flame in the pew and the fire in the pulpit must be sufficient to keep them warm." Of course, Bounds is talking about the spirit of The Lord, and our burning desire for Him. Then to further make his point he used verse 2 from Psalm 141, and added verse 8 as well.
This morning we continue to contemplate God's desire for us to commit our love, and lives, to Him. We revisit His desire for us to live and worship Him with zeal. Pastor E.M. Bounds describes the way we should pray in this way: "True prayer must be aflame." And he writes that "The Christian life and character need to be on fire." Today we return once again to Revelation 3 as being the principal scripture that describes God’s expectation of our devotion to Him.
Today let’s talk about our faith and churches, and how they both should be "on fire" for God. As I read my devotional this morning the author portrayed God as glowing in white heat, but we should be cautious when we attempt to build the fire, and ignite the zeal, within our own selves, and churches. Pastor E.M. Bounds cautions us that the only things that we and our churches can afford to be on fire about are the great eternal interests of God-given faith. In making this point regarding zealousness, Bounds uses a scripture from Romans 12.
Our study this morning is on the subject or Gratitude and Thanksgiving in our prayers, and today’s scripture verse comes from the account of Jesus healing the ten lepers. All were healed but only one came back to thank Him.
This morning's devotion deals with how we should begin our prayers with inspiration and desire, and how once we have mastered this we will understand the way that they should end. Pastor E.M. Bounds used what was written to the Laodicean Church in order to awaken us to the danger of feeling a sense of self-sufficiency when we pray, and the negative impact which it has on our spiritual and prayer life.