|
(Mat 26:41 KJV) Watch and pray, that ye enter not into temptation: the spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak.
Prayer is one of God’s most precious gifts to us. Prayer is conversing, communicating with God. We talk to God, aloud
or within our thoughts. Prayer involves other disciplines and spiritual activities if it is to go well, especially study,
mediation, worship, and often solitude and fasting as well. It would be a low-voltage spiritual life in which prayer was chiefly
undertaken as a discipline, rather than as a way of co-laboring with God to accomplish good things and advance his Kingdom.
Yet prayer can be a discipline.
A lot of times the direct and indirect effects of prayer are taken as the point of prayer. But the effect of conversing with
God cannot fail to have a pervasive and spiritually strengthening effect on all aspects of our personality. Just think about
it: we are talking to the King of the Universe, conversing with the Creator of the Cosmos! Conversation with God, when it
is truly a conversation (talk to God and listen to God!) makes a tremendous impact on our minds, and our consciousness of
him remains vivid as we go on our way.
“Continuing instant in prayer after the conclusion of each period of definite communion with God, [the one immersed
in prayer] will set himself to undertake every legitimate risk, to do the right without fear of consequences, and to embrace
in loving purpose those who are opposed to him no less than those who are in agreement with him, n the attempt to realize
the vision and to exercise the sympathy with which prayer has endowed him. The many groups into which his fellows are divided
will be seen by him in the light of the whole, and he will ever strive to bridge gulfs and so assist in the realization of
that living unity which is experienced by hum in anticipation when, in his moments of intensest prayer, he is caught up to
God and filled with the sense of union. Economic, social, political, national, and racial antagonisms are waiting for this
sole solution of the deadlock which they present. There is no other way.” - O. Hardman
Prayer is an avenue of union with God, and ties into all aspects of our lives: economic, social, political, national, racial;
as O. Hardman mentioned. And the more we pray, the more we think to pray, and as we see the results of prayer – the
responses of our Father to grant our requests – our confidence in God’s power spills over into other areas of
our life.
(Phil 4:6,7 NIV) Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present
your requests to God. And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ
Jesus.
(1 Th 5:17 NIV) pray continually;
We can train ourselves to invoke God’s presence in every action we perform. It is an experiential fact that has been
proven in the lives of many disciples of Jesus, ancient and modern. God will meet us in love, and love will keep our minds
directed toward him. Habit will be confirmed in gracious interaction, and our entire lives will be bathed in the intoxicating
presence of God. Constant prayer will only “burden” us as wings burden a bird in flight.
In many Protestant churches prayer and Bible study are held up as the activities that whill make us spiritually rich. But
very few people actually succeed in attaining spiritual richness through them and indeed often find them to be intolerably
burdensome. The “open secret” of many “Bible-believing” churches is that a vanishing small percentage
of those talking about prayer and Bible reading are actually doing what they are talking about. They have not been shown how
to change their life as a whole, permeating it with appropriate disciplines, so that prayer and Bible reading will be spiritually
successful.
|
