All tagged pray
A while ago, many of you prayed for me as I battled against double pneumonia but today, I wish to pray for you and all those around us, and to ask that you join me by praying for them as well. My prayer today is not for their physical bodies, but rather for their spirits and faith. Have you ever prayed such a prayer before? If you haven’t then you are missing the greatest opportunity in prayer... to pray for the will of God to be manifest in all its power within the spiritual being of others.
Are we alone with God when we pray or is it good to pray with others? Well, it is important to pray alone, and in secret, because that provides us with the degree of intimacy that our soul’s relationship with God longs for, but are there times when we need to pray together with others? The answer to this question regarding praying with others is a resounding “Yes!” There is power in joining together in certain times of prayer, whether we are physically together, or praying in unison from the far corners of the earth. A common cause prayed for by many carries much weight before the throne of God.
What is the state of our life right now? Are we satisfied with where we are in our faith at this particular moment? When we look back on our actions of the past, even those of the last few hours, how do they make us feel right now? We often hate the word “NOW” because it requires immediate action. We put off changing our lives, we neglect or marginalize faith, we postpone looking at where and who we are. We say, “I will worship the Lord ________.” How do we choose to complete this sentence within the bounds of our lives? Jesus says NOW is the acceptable answer regarding when we should worship Him, praise Him, honor Him, Glorify Him, and all the other things we can imagine concerning our faith and the Lord our God. Let’s look at this…
Do you find yourself longing for God? Are you at a place in your life where you feel separated from him and sitting in darkness waiting on His light to shine on you once again? Maybe you have asked for His Holy Spirit to fill you, and are waiting expectantly for it, or you need an answer to some other prayer that is yet to come. However you find yourself waiting for God remember that He is already with you and that it is only your own realization of His presence that you are actually longing for. Remember also that you are never alone, even in this feeling.
Who taught us how to pray? Did we learn Who Taught You to Pray?so long ago that we can’t remember any longer? Did you learn to pray by reciting common prayer in Sunday School or church? Perhaps your mother and father taught you as a child by praying over your meals or at bedtime. For something so crucial and basic to our faith and relationship with Jesus and God, we certainly appear to approach it in an often unthinking or haphazard manner. So how should we pray?
Do we hear the Gospel of Jesus and worship God as we should? We might go to church and sing songs, even pray together, chant, and recite creeds, but these are all simply physical manifestations of faith that any unbeliever can imitate. What I am asking is this... Do we allow our bodies and spirits to join as one as we worship with the Holy Spirit by praising God and give Him all the glory and honor for the things we do in obedience to His will? Can we honestly say that we worship Him as scripture tells us to… by loving Him, entering into relationship with Him, and in spirit and truth?
As we move towards a godly state of righteousness we shed one sin after another until at last we are down to our pet sins... those that give us personal pleasure or reduce the pain of living in some way. When we reach this point, and we refuse to let these sins go, then our relationship with God stalls, and we feel a growing separation from Jesus. This can happen early on in our walk of faith, but usually it occurs once all the low hanging sinful fruit has been plucked from us. These deeply rooted personal sins require a specialized spiritual surgery to extract them.
How do we pray in intercession? Do we give our own instruction to the person for whom we are praying, or do we place their suffering and other need before God as we ask His will be communicated to us, and done for them? One of the greatest snares in intercession is to allow our own sympathy to step between the person requesting prayer, and God. When this happens we are attempting to fill a void that only God is meant and qualified to fill. Our role as an intercessor is to pray for God’s will to be done, and not to lose heart as we do.
Do we search for God with all our heart, and in so doing are we seeking Him by His terms, or is our motivation our own self-gratification? As we pray and call His name are we continuously obeying His beckoning voice “come”, or are we calling Him to where we are, and asking Him for favors on our own terms?
What bubbles up from within us during prayer? Do we ever begin to pray and then hear ourselves as if from some faraway place; speaking to God in a language of groans and utterances that we can’t translate into words, but feel perfectly conversant in within our hearts? Our spirit, and the Holy Spirit that resides within us are speaking to God in a dialect unknown to us but understood perfectly in Heaven.
The hardest question that any missionary faces isn’t “can I go out and do this?”, but rather “is Jesus able to do this?” It all boils down to faith, and it begins with the faith of the missionaries themselves. Going out and reciting scripture can be done by anyone, but believing belongs to the disciple, and what is a missionary if not a disciple?
How do we pray when we are broken? What do we pray for when we have nothing left, and our life is in total shambles? How do we lift our spirit high enough that we can face God with our desires? We are often embarrassed when we have completely failed in life; we are inclined to cover ourselves in leaves and hide as Adam and Eve did. Is that really what we should do? Is our faith that shallow? Has our God given us up to our despair? No, He comes to us even when our prayer is nothing but a quivering breath. Listen to what He says…
Are you prepared to pray? By this I mean, are you prepared to pray and receive the blessing for which you spoke with God? So often we come to the Lord unprepared; living one life and praying as if we were living another. I was reading a devotional writing by Pastor Oswald Chambers, and as I did so he wrote of a truth regarding this topic that might cut deep; it answered in part the question of why our prayers are not always answered.
Do you have a secret garden? You know, a secret place that you retreat to when you need to do some serious thinking? How about a quiet place where you can go to be alone with God? Is it a place that you can get to quickly and often? Is it away from all the hustle bustle and the noise of the world around you? Do you begin all your days there? Perhaps it is a closet, a quiet room you go to in the wee hours of morning, or maybe a secret garden that smells of fresh-turned earth and the scent of morning glories. Where is your refuge from the world where you can sit with God?
When should we pray? Do we even know what to pray for? These sound like easy questions to answer and indeed one of them is... do you know which one? If I were to ask you to kneel with me right now, how would you begin? Would you begin to pray as you have always prayed before, or would you pray about something that was occurring in your life right now? Would you follow the same regiment or order of prayer that you always have, or let go of the old and familiar by beginning to pray as if God was a newfound friend or with an intensity and expectation that you hadn’t prayed with for a long time?