Why don't you pray? What hinders you from praying? If one looks at a person who is too busy to pray, I believe you will see a person whose life is not holy.
I know, our lives are busy. No doubt about it. But, if we have filled our lives so much that there is no room for prayer, then we are too busy. If we crowd prayer out of our lives just once, then we will always find ways to continue crowding it out. More than anything, Satan desires us to not pray! If he can accomplish that, then he has pretty much disabled us from living a productive life.
The process of hindering our prayers is very simple. If one thinks about it there are stages. First, we hurry through our prayer. So often we experience agitation and unrest. What happens? We shorten our time in prayer. Once our prayer time is shortened we find that we really are not eager to spend time in prayer. When we crowd our prayer into a corner and make it dependent upon fragmented time, its value depreciates. By this time the duty of prayer has lost its importance. It doesn't command our respect nor does it bring any benefit. It is sad when prayer is no longer in our heart because then it isn't a habit any longer, which means it is out of our life. When one ceases to pray, he ceases to live spiritually.
We must value our prayers. We must value our prayers more than prestige, wealth, leisure or even life itself. I truly believe that Satan's sneakiest tricks is to destroy the best by the good. By that I mean, the *things* of life, business, living, etc. are good, but we are so filled with these that they crowd out and destroy the best. Does that make sense?
It does take discipline because it involves the whole man. It is a union of our wills and our intellect. Think about prayer in the Old Testament. It is called wrestling. Conflict and skill and strenuous, exhaustive effort are involved. Look at the New Testament. We have words like striving, laboring fervently, effectual, agony. These all indicate an intense effort is put forth and difficulties overcome.
What a powerful force prayer is!! It helps us, it helps God and God's kingdom is advanced by it. We need to put it to the test! Come on! Let's pray!
3 comments:
AMEN!
Oh my goodness! How I have been lacking in the prayer department...I want to be a warrior...how easily I forget that it is one of the most powerful weapons, how quickly I forget the priviledge...the priviledge to come and anoint my head with oil in the holy presence of the Lord...to just be able to talk to Him...Lord make me a Prayer Warrior...let my mouth in praise to you and prayer for others...let me commune with you!
By the way...the Educator's Reception was a success!!!!
Claire, this is just what I needed tonight. After two days with parents and then two days of being "under the weather" I have all but skipped right through mine all week. I've been climbing into bed each night saying, "Be with James and don't forget about Rylee and be with my friend Becca while she struggles with her past...amen! I'm logging off early tonight...time to get back into the swing again!
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