July 9
Prayer
How important is your prayer life? How would you describe prayer to a new believer?
Personal
Prayer is Personal. Hallmark can express our sentiments with their well written cards, but no gesture is as personal as prayer. When you care enough to send the very best, send your prayers.
Refreshing
Not long ago, I was having a conversation with one of our members after losing my little sister to lupus. When I told Mrs. Cuevas about Lori’s passing, and the phone call I got early in the morning from my mother, she said “Pastor, I was praying for you at that time.” God knew I needed extra strength and He had one of our lovely ladies praying for me just when I needed prayer the most. It is refreshing to know that God loves us enough prompt people to pray for us.
Always
The scripture teaches us to “Pray without Ceasing.” How important is your prayers? So important that God wants you to be in a prayerful attitude all the time.
Yes
When you pray, you are saying YES to God. Jesus wrestled with His destiny in the Garden of Gethsemane., but concluded His prayer by saying, “not my will, but thine be done.” Are you saying yes to God?
I fear that the most common lie told in the Church is “I’ll be praying for you.” Prayer is not a word to throw around lightly. It is the key to our Christian existence and the power of our Christian witness. Are you praying that something mighty will happen in your Church today?
Prayer
Prayer is not making three wishes while rubbing on a mysterious lamp. Neither is it convincing God to do our will instead of His will. Prayer is one way we express our faith. Sometimes we pray in faith asking God to move the mountain, and sometimes we pray for enough faith to climb the mountain.
When Lindsey Crittenden started to pray, she didn’t know what she believed or if she was a believer but one Sunday morning, in the midst of a personal storm, she walked into a church and started to pray. She figured that church wouldn’t hurt, and besides she might just meet some nice people there.
Later, when she learned that her mother was dying of cancer, that decision would become a source of strength to her. She said, “Prayer didn’t keep my mother from dying, but it gave me a way to be with her through the chemo and the hospital stays when I visited her nightly to talk and rub her feet.”
Lindsey’s faith got her through the hard times when God chose not to remove them. It was a faith that enabled her to pray and a faith she got through prayer. The biggest mistake we make is to stop praying when our faith is weak. When all is well, and our prayers flow, mixed with praise to God, prayer is God’s gift to us. But when all is not well, and we are too tired, too discouraged, too angry to pray, but we pray anyway, prayer is our gift to God. (Reader’s Digest, April 2002, p. 101)
Psalm 3:4 NIV “To the Lord I cry aloud, and he answers me from his holy hill.”
Jim L. Wilson, Fresh Start Devotionals (Fresno, CA: Willow City Press, 2009).
Comments