Category Archives: Prayer

Why Don’t you Pray?

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How about this for a radical idea: pray! LOL Yes, as a response to terrorism, we should pray. (NO, of course not fail to do anything; bless our law enforcement; we mothers and grandmothers should pray! As a response to the crime rate, we should pray. As a response to the failing academic rates, we should pray. As a response to societal troubles, we should pray.

Actually not such a bad idea. You know that Maharishi Mahesh Yogi would get people meditating in a big city and have scientifically measured statistics that the crime rate would go down in that city. Don’t you think prayer would do just as well or better?

And if you don’t think your prayers do any good, then why don’t you go find out how to pray better? So many Christians just make up stories about why God doesn’t answer. Maybe the answer is to learn how to pray! If your computer is not doing what you want, often you check the manual or ask a friend. But computers do sometimes break, while we kinda think that the creator doesn’t. LOL

So, why don’t you set aside some time and pray? Wouldn’t that be a great New Year’s resolution? Maybe you could get together with some girlfriends to pray. Hot coffee, you know. Haha. Even checking in about prayer with your friends on the phone. Don’t tell me you don’t have time to talk on the phone. Spend a coffee break praying instead of jabbering about somebody’s new clothes? Build up a little workplace prayer group.

If MMYogi can change a city, why your prayers to Almighty God can change your workplace, your neighborhood, your city, your nation, and your world. PRAY in 2016. It’s an open door.

Pistol and Rifle Prayer

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I was rotating through the dial of the radio station and heard some old guy going on about politics, witchcraft, and masonry in Washington DC. I’ve been round lots of blocks; I’ve heard it before; I wasn’t really very interested. But he said something that somehow I thought was brilliant. After he had gone on for some time about witchcraft being set about and influencing our nation’s capital, he told his followers to pray a certain prayer against it every hour (his pistol prayer) and another every day (his rifle prayer.)

It just occurred to me that this was brilliant. Unlike so many who go on and on about the problems of our nation, world, or other institution (and some of this is entirely right), this fellow had an answer. Now, you might say prayer is a poor answer. Wait! If witchcraft is the problem, prayer is absolutely the answer. So his solution absolutely fight the answer. Fear, hatred, and/or more (psuedo-)intellectualism would not have been.  So if his followers think that witchcraft might be a problem, then praying against it is the obvious, if little thought of, answer.

Probably prayer is always a good answer. Good prayer can do much. Many miracles have been produced from prayer. Good prayer can also do much on the hearts of the people praying.  Let’s us therefore dedicate ourselves to starting with prayer. Whatever problem we face, let us commit our selves to God, roll our cares upon Him, and ask for guidance. If praying for a miracle is requisite, then by all means, let’s pray and pray big.

And regularly is fine.

And if you don’t know how to pray, using a prayer from your pastor or teacher is a fine idea.

Do you have any prayer testimonies? Prayers to share for the world’s problems? For children today? For educators today?

Rest! It is a command.

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We have heard much about commitment, about tithing, about giving our time and talents. Those are necessary sermons, preached by a leadership that depends upon a great deal of volunteer labor to make the programs and offerings of the traditional church happen. The most involved, however, very frequently get burned out. Most leadership works an enormous number of hours and at great stress. (While some others do not, I realize.) For most of us who are committed, the Christian life has been one of working, more working… even more working… to exhaustion.

But it does say in the Bible: “Strive to enter that rest.”

I have read over that, prayed over that, and wondered over that a great deal.

A series of challenging incidents, however led to what seems to be a revelation in my life. Stopping, “slowing down” (NOT what my friends mean when they say this, doing less,  but a diving deep into spirituality), connecting with Holy Spirit at a deep level, brings a rest, is a secret place, causes a power that is hard to put into words.

Let’s focus and aim at this sort of rest, connecting with All Grace.  Let’s do faith the way it was originally meant: pistis, relying on, leaning on. Let’s not try to do faith as a work of will, separate from the prevenient (coming before) Grace of God. Let’s not try to do Christian walk all in the head or all in the hand, but dive deep into the heart of God with our hearts. This, after all, is like Jesus. He did work, teaching and healing the crowds. He also took his disciples aside to rest and eat. And he also spent nights in prayer.  I think it was a communion prayer, not must more work, not just getting through some more words, don’t you think? So yes, let’s follow Jesus; lets be Christians, one who shine out Christ.  Yes, let’s do the social work, political work, mothering work, and any other work we are called to do, but let’s first do the rest of connecting with God.

Do you have an experience of this you would like to share?

Come, Let’s Pray Bigger

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reblogged from Hala Thompkins, Christian Education Director at Hope Chapel, Austin
Far Too Easily Pleased?

I have been reading all sorts of essays and blogs recently. As a result, they become jumbled in my head and I can’t quite remember whose thought was whose.

However, in something I read recently, the author quoted C.S. Lewis and this idea has stuck in my head ever since:

“If we consider the unblushing promises of reward and the staggering nature of the rewards promised in the Gospels, it would seem that Our Lord finds our desires not too strong, but too weak. We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and s-x and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased. ”

-C.S. Lewis, The Weight of Glory, p.26

I’ve thought about applying this as I pray. Am I far too easily pleased? As I pray for my friends who are battling hard things- do I actually believe that God can do even more than I am asking? Am I willing to ask even bigger than is safe? What does real faith look like?

I want to encourage all of us to not be too easily pleased with ordinary, average, okay things. I am asking God to increase my faith, stretch my obedience and glorify Himself by making me dissatisfied with mud pies.

Will you come with me?