Simple thoughts on prayer
I have to say that once in a while the Lord reminds me of some simple truths that I have known and taught for years, but have let slip in practice.
I taught recently on James 4:1-3. As I prepared and taught the Scriptures, I was reminded of a couple of important truths about prayer.
First; God is more ready to answer than we are to pray. For all of the struggling we do to make sure things go the way we think they should...for all of the fighting or arguing or scheming or whatever else we do to try and get things accomplished; what we really need to do first (and in the middle, and last) is pray. "You do not have because you do not ask." Why is that so hard for us to grasp? Why do we spend so little time in prayer? Why do we make all of our plans and preparations and then ask God to bless it? Perhaps the reason we do not have is that we have not really asked God.
Second (and more difficult) is the matter of our motives. "You ask and do not receive because you ask wrongly, to consume it on your own passions." It's hard to know our own motivation sometimes. Solomon said "the heart is deceitful above all things and desperately wicked...who can know it?" Some days I think that could by my life verse...how about you? To know whether we are praying for the right thing with the right motivation is something worth striving for. I'm going to spend some time with the Lord trying to be sure my priorities are aligned with His. I want to be sure that the things I am asking for are the right things (what He wants) and things that are not primarily for my own personal benefit or advancement but for His glory and honor.
How do you keep this difficult balance in place? What are the ways you check yourself to be sure your prayer life is effective. Don't you want to be like the verse later in James when he says that the prayer of a righteous man is effective? Let's keep striving for that. When we do; God gets more glory.
While I have you, let me direct you to another place where I am doing some writing. It's for a web site called Apropos Walk. I write a post every week on a new theme from a biblical perspective called Monday Musings. Check it out some time.
I taught recently on James 4:1-3. As I prepared and taught the Scriptures, I was reminded of a couple of important truths about prayer.
First; God is more ready to answer than we are to pray. For all of the struggling we do to make sure things go the way we think they should...for all of the fighting or arguing or scheming or whatever else we do to try and get things accomplished; what we really need to do first (and in the middle, and last) is pray. "You do not have because you do not ask." Why is that so hard for us to grasp? Why do we spend so little time in prayer? Why do we make all of our plans and preparations and then ask God to bless it? Perhaps the reason we do not have is that we have not really asked God.
Second (and more difficult) is the matter of our motives. "You ask and do not receive because you ask wrongly, to consume it on your own passions." It's hard to know our own motivation sometimes. Solomon said "the heart is deceitful above all things and desperately wicked...who can know it?" Some days I think that could by my life verse...how about you? To know whether we are praying for the right thing with the right motivation is something worth striving for. I'm going to spend some time with the Lord trying to be sure my priorities are aligned with His. I want to be sure that the things I am asking for are the right things (what He wants) and things that are not primarily for my own personal benefit or advancement but for His glory and honor.
How do you keep this difficult balance in place? What are the ways you check yourself to be sure your prayer life is effective. Don't you want to be like the verse later in James when he says that the prayer of a righteous man is effective? Let's keep striving for that. When we do; God gets more glory.
While I have you, let me direct you to another place where I am doing some writing. It's for a web site called Apropos Walk. I write a post every week on a new theme from a biblical perspective called Monday Musings. Check it out some time.
Good advice for what I am going through right now. Working on that second part. Not an easy thing to put into practice. Thanks for writing . L.
ReplyDeleteNot easy at all. Solomon asked of the heart of man: "who can know it?" His question was profound. I struggle with really getting to the root of my motivation sometimes too.
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