A Prayer About Prayer

Holy Father,

To paraphrase John Newton; “what a blessed privilege it is to love you”, Father, forgive me for so many times taking that for granted. It is truly amazing that part of that amazing statement includes the privilege of having a deep and personal relationship with you through Christ and through prayer.

A relationship where we can praise you, a relationship where we can confess our shortcomings and failures, a relationship where we can thank you for your many blessings in our lives, a relationship where we can humbly make our requests known.

Father, I confess my prayer life is not what it should be. It is often hurried, sometimes mechanical, and oh so many times simply ends up with me giving you a “to do” list. Please forgive me.

Lord, I am so thankful for Your Son; my Lord and Savior, Your Spirit; my Comforter and Counselor, and for prayer. No matter the struggle, no matter the trial, no matter the situation we are forgiven, we are loved, we are cared for. And no matter what is going on all we have to do is reach out in prayer. How rich we truly are.

And that is my prayer for each of us, that we would all develop a rich prayer life, that each of us would find our prayer closets and come into deep and meaningful relationship with you, that each of us through prayer would recognize the blessed privilege of loving you. Abba Father, we love you!

I pray these many things in the most holy name of Jesus Christ. Amen and Amen!

Grace and Peace!

Francis Schaeffer

Francis Schaeffer once asked his wife:

""Edith, I wonder what would happen to most churches and Christian work if we awakened tomorrow, and everything concerning the reality and work of the Holy Spirit, and everything concerning prayer, were removed from the Bible. I don’t mean just ignored, but actually cut out—disappeared. I wonder how much difference it would make?" We concluded it would not make much difference in many board meetings, committee meetings, decisions and activities."

This short paragraph just stopped me in my tracks. Would it make a difference; would we even notice? In the introduction to his book; Forgotten God, Francis Chan writes;

"From my perspective the Holy Spirit is tragically neglected and, for all practical purposes, forgotten. While no evangelical would deny His existence, I’m willing to bet there are millions of churchgoers across America who cannot confidently say they have experienced His presence or action in their lives over the past year. And many of them do not believe they can. The benchmark of success in church services has become more about attendance than the movement of the Holy Spirit."

Powerful words, but even more to think about!

In his book, Chan quotes A. W. Tozer who said;

"We may as well face it: the whole level of spirituality among us is low. We have measured ourselves until the incentive to seek higher plateaus in the things of the Spirit is all but gone… [We] have imitated the world, sought popular favor, manufactured delights to substitute for the joy of the Lord and produced a cheap and synthetic power to substitute for the power of the Holy Ghost."

Could this be true? I pray we take this as a challenge; a challenge of reflection, recognition and a realization of the wonderful gift of the Spirit that dwells among us; our comforter and counselor.

Abba Father, may your Spirit move mightily among us, may we never forget, and may we all stop to understand the difference of the Holy Spirit in our lives. Amen.

Grace and Peace!

Pay Attention

Recently I was reading in Matthew and once again read the parable of the wedding banquet. It is amazing to me that no matter how many times I read a passage something new seems to be revealed. Anyway, as I was reading verse 5 just stuck with me;

5"But they paid no attention and went off—one to his field, another to his business.

As I read this over and over, it just struck me that the business of life, the struggles of the day, the technology we enjoy, recreational opportunities, media, etc. just overwhelm us. And as they do I worry that we are not (I am not) paying attention.

Philip Yancey wrote that as a writer he is a busy person and it sometimes impacts his focus on Christ, his focus on prayer, his focus on things most important. However, he quickly pointed out he was not too busy for his e-mail, his favorite recreational activities perhaps a favorite show. You know I can really relate to that.

As busy as we all are, we must ensure right priorities; we must fight to ensure these right priorities. We must pay attention! I know it is a struggle; I know the temptations are strong; I know we can’t do it alone, but there is good news. We don’t have to do it alone.

We have a good and loving God, we have a Lord and Savior to rescue us, we have a Spirit to comfort and counsel us. Oh, how can we not pay attention!

As you know, that parable doesn’t really end with simply a call to pay attention; in fact the parable ends with a rather chilling statement in verse 14;

14"For many are invited, but few are chosen."

Oh, Abba Father you are so good; help us to “pay attention”, help us to recognize the wonderful invitation and to join you at your banquet for all eternity. Abba Father, we love you!

Grace and Peace!