Beginnings of Prayer – Part 5: Start Now and Improve Your Prayer Life -- A Robust Prayer Life Will Transform Your Life

Beginnings of Prayer – Part 5: Start Now and Improve Your Prayer Life -- A Robust Prayer Life Will Transform Your Life

MESSAGE SUMMARY:

INTRODUCTIOIN -- Prayer is: 1) spending time with God – acknowledging God’s presence in all our lives’ activities; and 2) conversation with God – listening to and talking with God. Prayer reflects on our relationship with God. Why don’t we pray. The Apostle James, in James 4:2-3, provides a perspective regarding Prayer Life: “You desire and do not have, so you murder. You covet and cannot obtain, so you fight and quarrel. You do not have, because you do not ask. You ask and do not receive, because you ask wrongly, to spend it on your passions."

In praying, we should know the difference between prayers of "petition" (praying for one's own needs) and prayers of "intercession" (praying for the needs of others). God wants prayers of "petition" from us -- all our needs and concerns should be brought to Him in prayer because He loves and cares for us. However, God want us to, also, focus on others and their needs (intercession) -- physical and spiritual. "Intercessory prayer” is fundamental to deepening our prayer life and our personal relationship with God. 

SUNDAY MESSAGE -- This Sermon is Q and A session on prayer with Archbishop Beach and Rev. Matt Jordan.

Jan Karen, author of the Mitford Series, says that "In the big issues of life as well as the small, God wants to hear from His children . . . the most important thing we get from prayer is the relationship that we enter into with God.". As Jesus tells us in Luke 11:9-10 that, as His followers we are both expected to pray and to ask as a fundamental part of our lives in Him: “And I tell you, ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives, and the one who seeks finds, and to the one who knocks it will be opened.". Additionally, Luke tells us, in Luke 18:1, that we should continue to pray: “And he told them a parable to the effect that they ought always to pray and not lose heart."

How do you know that God has answered your prayer? What does it mean when God has not answered your prayer? Why, if God answers our prayers, should we ask for others to pray for us? How do we know if we are praying in the Holy Spirit? Why does my mind start wandering when I start praying? How good is it to have a prayer journal? Why, sometimes, are we tempted to sin when we pray? How important is fasting? Do we stop in our prayers enough to give thanks to the Lord? The common position, derivative of all these questions is expressed to us in Ephesians 3:21b-24 that prayer is life changing and fundamental to a life in Jesus: “the truth is in Jesus, to put off your old self, which belongs to your former manner of life and is corrupt through deceitful desires, and to be renewed in the spirit of your minds, and to put on the new self, created after the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness.".

Pray specific prayers, in the Holy Spirit and in Scripture, for ourselves and for others -- be persistent.

 

TODAY’S PRAYER: Keeping the Sabbath, Lord, will require a lot of changes in the way I am living life. Teach me, Lord, how to take the next step with this in a way that fits my unique personality and situation. Help me to trust you with all that will remain unfinished and to enjoy my humble place in your very large world. In Jesus’ name, amen. Scazzero, Peter. Emotionally Healthy Spirituality Day by Day (p. 129). Zondervan. Kindle Edition.

TODAY’S AFFIRMATION: I affirm that because of what God has done for me in His Son, Jesus, I AM A FORGIVEN. If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness. (1 John 1:9).

SCRIPTURE REFERENCE (ESV): Jeremiah 33:3; Luke 11:1-13; Luke 18:1-8; Luke 22:44; Ephesians 3:20. (Click the blue below to read the full Bible text for these scripture references in BOLD.).

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