Prayer

A while back, my brother invited me to attend a private prayer group that he had attended which was mostly made up of older men from out church at the time. Something I came away with, other than inspired confidence in the prayers and the faith of the older men, was a desire to understand to a greater extent the importance and power of prayer.

A little later, I picked up a small book called A Call to Prayer (available in full here) written by JC Ryle. This urgent call to every Christian to come regularly to God in prayer inspired me further to explore this gift to men.

So, this past summer, I decided to make a point of learning more about prayer and training myself to pray more often.

Here’s the highlights of my learning. Many of these may not seem like things that are new things but to me they have been gold.

The very act of prayer and not merely God’s answer to it is a precious act.

After this summer, I am so aware the there is so much value in the attitude that prayer indicates. I’ve found, through experience, and through certain books that the very act of coming to God and submitting your desires to him builds trust in God to do as He pleases with the issues surrounding those desires. This trust in God yields a contentment from God to be satisfied with God’s plan no matter what his answer is.

“Apart from the answer, prayer is itself a benediction. To pray is to cast off your burdens, it is to tear away your rags, it is to shake off your diseases, it is to be filled with spiritual vigour, it is to reach the highest point of Christian health. God give us to be in the holy art of arguing with God in prayer.”

~CH Spurgeon

God answers prayer

You guys don’t need a paragraph to know that God answers prayer. Just remember those times that He has answered prayer and you’ll know that He does do it. But I am reminded again every time He answers a prayer as He has done often this past year.

“Because God is the living God, He can hear; because He is a loving God, He will hear; because He is our covenant God, He has bound Himself to hear us.”

~CH Spurgeon

Praying for the desires of your heart keeps your desires in check.

I’ve found so much blessing in this fact. As the year has progressed, I’ve found myself praying more and more (all credit to God) and now I see that it is a thin line to be crossed for me to desire something and then to pray for it. It is good for me to ask God for the desires of my heart. But I’ve also found this is good because in the act of asking for my desires, I am submitting my desires to the scrutiny of God’s standards and I can more easily detect those desires of mine that are not in line with God’s word.

The power of prayer to fight temptation

This quote pretty much says it all for me.

“If we do not abide in prayer, we will abide in temptation. Let this be one aspect of our daily intercession: “God, preserve my soul, and keep my heart and all its ways so that I will not be entangled.” When this is true in our lives, a passing temptation will not overcome us. We will remain free while others lie in bondage.”

~John Owen

 

So all this leaves me with one baffling question. Given the innumerable benefits of eternal value and the ease which God makes prayer available, why don’t I pray more than I do?