Tim Sherrill, Feb 13, 2022

Of all the disciplines, prayer is the most central. It places us in perpetual communion with the Father. Real prayer is life creating and changing. To pray is to change.

If we are unwilling to change, we will abandon prayer as a noticeable characteristic of our lives.

Prayer is simply communing and talking with our Father.

You ask and do not receive because you ask wrongly, your motives are off... James 4:3

In real prayer, we begin to think God’s thoughts after him, to desire what he desires and love the things that he loves and to will the things he wills.

All who have in the past, and all who today, walk close to God, view prayer as the main business of their lives. Think of all the incredible examples of prayer throughout scripture. Have we not longed for those experiences in our lives as well?

Many of us though are discouraged rather than challenged by those examples.

Stop beating yourself up over any obvious lack. God meets us where we are and slowly moves along into deeper things... IF we are interested in changing.

Occasional joggers do not sign up for marathons... let alone finish them.

The universe is not closed as we are taught. It is wide open to the “impossible/improbable”. The question is are we?

Moved by the Holy Spirit, this is a prayer from Paul, alive and active for us today, recorded in Ephesians 3:14-21:

For this reason, I kneel before the Father, from whom every family in heaven and on earth derives its name. I pray that out of his glorious riches he may strengthen you with power through his Spirit in your inner being, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith. And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have power, together with all the Lord’s holy people, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge—that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God.

Now to him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to his power that is at work within us, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, for ever and ever! Amen.

Meditate on that... He is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine!

1 Cor. 3:9 God tells us we are co-laborers with God. God is always at work. There is no place for stoicism in the Kingdom mentality. Human thinking is stoic and demands a closed system. God does not.

Real prayer, like meditation is learned. You learn it by doing it. PRAY! With all kinds of requests and intercessions. Pray without ceasing!

Prayer is not difficult. The Holy Spirit intercedes even on our behalf.

Romans 8:25-27 But if we hope for what we do not yet have, we wait for it patiently.

In the same way, the Spirit helps us in our weakness. We do not know what we ought to pray for, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us through wordless groans. And he who searches our hearts knows the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for God’s people in accordance with the will of God.

Still to come:

Fasting

Study

Simplicity

Solitude

Submission

Service

Confession

Worship

Guidance

Celebration