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I was handed a dose of humility the other morning as I finally made time for “daily devotions”. You know what I am talking about, that special time early in the morning when you are truly alone with God, that precious special time that you have allocated just for you and Jesus, that you have called daily devotions—and you do them at least once a month—religiously! My dose of humility came in the form of a quote by Dean C.J. Vaughan:
“If I wished to humble anyone, I should question him about his prayers. I know nothing to compare with this topic for its sorrowful self-confessions.”
The truth of that statement humbles every form of human existence. How many of us scurry along day in and day out trying to accomplish everything on our list, barely taking time to breath, taking care of the urgent, all the while shelving the all-powerful link between us and God—prayer. I wish that I could report that there is an exception regarding those who preach behind pulpits every week. It is an irony that it is truly possible to believe that you are tending to the work of the Lord from morning till night and miss the opportunity of prayer somewhere in between. It is a tragedy to get so busy trying to accomplish something for God that God Himself is ignored or neglected. We know prayer is important, we claim that it is essential, we tell ourselves we’re just busy, and that if it weren’t for this or that we’d probably do a whole lot more praying. But the truth is, when we do have the time—we don’t.
J .Oswald Sanders in his book Spiritual Leadership brings out in the open some of what many of us deal with in our guilt:
Most of us are plagued with a subtle aversion to praying. We do not initially delight in drawing near to God. We pay lip service to the delight and potency and value of prayer. We assert that it is an indispensable adjunct of mature spiritual life. We know that it is constantly enjoyed and exemplified in the Scriptures. But in spite of it all, too often we fail to pray… “When I go to prayer,” confessed an eminent Christian, “I find my heart loath to go to God, and when it is with Him, so loath to stay.”
Those are strong words said to Christians! We do not “initially delight drawing near to God?” We “loath to stay with God?” Add to this the uncomfortable truth that for many Christians, prayer is neglected because of the absence of expected results and answers—prayer is seemingly powerless.
Prayer is the indicator of a personal relationship with the almighty God, and there can be great difficulty in that. Phillip Yancey asks the hard question “How then can we have a ‘personal relationship’ with a God who is invisible, when we’re never quite sure He’s there?” Fortunately he adds “the only thing more difficult than having a relationship with God is having no such relationship.” The reason there is such difficulty in this relationship, and the reason we don’t realize the power in prayer is our lack of disciplining ourselves to the practice of prayer. James, in chapter four of his New Testament book gave us two important facts to consider regarding prayer:
1. You do not have because you do not ask (V.2b). Our prayers seem powerless because we don’t pray! We might offer up a desperation prayer on occasion, and it didn’t get answered the way we wanted it to, so we give up on prayer. Our lives are to be filled with constant conversation with God—asking Him to work in our lives. Prayer is to be our lifestyle. To live life without prayer is to, in the words of Richard Wilber, "die of thirst, here at the fountainside.”
2. You ask and do not receive, because you ask with wrong motives, so that you may spend it on your pleasures (V.3). Sometimes the problem is not that we don’t offer our prayers. The problem is that sometimes we offer them and God will not accept them. The reason is that they are based on the wrong motivation, our own lust and selfishness. God is not going to underwrite our selfishness. You say, “I thought I could come to God and get my needs met." You can. “My God shall supply all your need according to his riches in glory by Christ Jesus.” You may have your selfish needs denied, but you will never have your true needs denied.
Prayer is vital to the Christian life! We will get passionate about prayer when we discipline ourselves to pray! Jesus’ prayer life was so vital, so powerful, that the disciples, when they observed him praying, could not help but cry out to him, “Teach us to pray like that!” C.H. Spurgeon was known as a great preacher in the 1850’s, but those who knew him best remembered him for his unceasing, passionate prayer life. His words on prayer should be ours:
I cannot help praying! If I were not allowed to utter a word all day long, that would not affect my praying. If I could not have five minutes that I might spend in prayer by myself, I should pray all the same. Minute by minute, moment by moment, somehow or other, my heart must commune with God. Prayer has become as essential to me as the heaving of my lungs and the beating of my pulse.
Trinity Baptist Church
711 Fairview Dr. Moscow, Idaho 83843
208.882.2015
trinity@moscow.com
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