Comments on: What About Praying to Pray?

By: pmanley

pmanley — Wed, 18 Jun 2008 19:20:09 +0000

I love to commune with God, but the “spirit is willing and the flesh is weak.” So many things seem to pop up before me that have to be done now and my prayer time gets pushed aside. I have never asked God to help me pray maybe because it is so obvious it was just overlooked. I am definitely going to start. Thank you for your insight.

By: lizaellen

lizaellen — Fri, 13 Jun 2008 04:04:31 +0000

I find that there are times I need to turn to God concerning prayer most especially when I’m in an “in-between” season where changes, pruning, new roads, are taking me away from where I really think I need to be, which is close to God, Mary-style, on the floor at His feet, eyes up & locked onto His, ready to listening for all my life’s worth.
That’s when I start shooting “arrow” prayers up to ABBA. Short “help me; guide me” prayers and then I listen. Eventually God’s answers help me to open my heart to more and more of His will. I’ll take anything that will help to keep my relationship with God open and honest, moving forward with small steps of hope and trust. Scripture includes this advice for a reason – no waste in God’s world.

By: blessjoy

blessjoy — Wed, 11 Jun 2008 01:01:18 +0000

I Think we can all make suggessions and some might just
work for others,the praying to pray part is good and when we get into ” the secret place of the most high”
God in His uniqueness visits with each person in a
seperate and individual way to meet us at the point of
our need and according to the strength of our desire ,
learned or unlearned His undeserving love is enough to teach us all we need,Helping us to respond to him the
way He wants and not how we want,which in our vast understanding differs.Thus the scripture that saids His ways are higher than our ways,His thoughts are higher than our thoughts,And He takes the foolish things of this world to confound the wise.Prayer to everyone is
A lesson in God’s wisdom that only He can teach.That’s why He made us UNIQUE AND SPECIAL BEAUTIFUL BEINGS TO
PRAISE AND WORSHIP HIM IN THE BEAUTY OF HOLINESS.

By: Irene Ocskasy

Irene Ocskasy — Tue, 10 Jun 2008 17:00:32 +0000

Galatians 2:20 says that “Christ lives in me”. The Holy Spirit of my Risen Lord Jesus Christ lives in me, so when my conscious mind doesn’t quite know what to pray, I simply ask, “Holy Spirit, You know what to say I don’t. Please give me the Words to pray.” Then the words come to my mind, because I have surrendered my mind to Christ. The Lord has given me the privilege of being a “prayer warrior”. This is my life and joy. A day without constant communication with my Lord is impossible, He is my constant consciousness. Perhaps sounds strange, but this is my absolute delight in life. Much love in Christ, Irene

By: Ceelojr

Ceelojr — Mon, 02 Jun 2008 15:29:06 +0000

Hey Mart. This is something that I’ve been struggling with lately also: saying the right thing to God. What is that all about? I tell myself this, for I can easily find myself engaged in prayers that in some way “patronize” God. He knows my intentions; He knows my heart, and the truth of the matter is that sometimes I don’t know how to pray. Regardless of how much time I have in the church as a preacher and a teacher. I need to ask God to show me how to pray just for that day. For the most part I like Him to initiate our conversations and I have come to depend so much on “Our daily Bread” as a key communication tool with God that allows me to hear Him first. I can easily get caught up in talking at Him vs. talking with Him. In order to avoid this I let Him initiate. He did create us with two ears and one mouth, so doesn’t it make sense to listen twice as much as we speak? Today I lift up a lot of silent prayers to God that involve asking Him to read the pages of my heart and erase all that isn’t in line with His will, but also to write on these pages what should bring glory to His name. Listening to God has become my priority. By way of praise and worship songs, reading literature you guys publish, and simply placing myself in an environment conducive to the admiration of His glory (beaches, mountains, rivers, woodsy areas, etc). Isn’t this what Jesus did? As a result of this type of listening, the Holy Spirit has taken care of giving me the right words to express. In the end I can’t receive the glory for anything because even my prayers are the result of Godly intervention.

By: curtisleslie

curtisleslie — Sun, 01 Jun 2008 15:47:16 +0000

This is right where I am. Currently trying to develop a more meaningful prayer life. I confess to prayerlessness, rather than struggling as I should, or “wrestling” with God in my prayer closet. Mart, I think your thought of “praying” to pray is a good one. Maybe my asking God more of how I should pray will at least get me to praying. Mart, do you agree that spending time alone with God in meditative thought is immeasurably valuable in our life as Christians?

By: Hephzibah610

Hephzibah610 — Fri, 30 May 2008 21:40:00 +0000

dejean33

Thanks for the reminder…I remember once when God did just that…He answered my prayer when it was just a thought in my head.

You remember those shoebox gifts that are sent out at Christmas time? We had sent one out one time before Christmas. Well the organization that sends them sent us a magazine with an update in it a few months later. It told about how things went with the boxes. I had set the magazine aside thinking I would browse through it later.

Finally I picked it up one day to look at it. I was thinking to myself, “wouldn’t it be great to see a picture of the child that got our shoebox in the magazine?…” I was flipping through the pages and saw that there was some info about Uganda (which was a place that we sponsor a child)….and then I noted a picture nearby…wait, the picture looked familiar…it was the same one that was on the front of the magazine….and the box had the very same paper that we had sent!! (I knew it was ours because at the time I didn’t have Christmas paper and had to use some orange paper with designs on it). You can only imagine my surprise and amazement that God would let me see the little girl that got our shoebox gift…with 6 million boxes going out and that was the one on the front cover!!!

What it showed me is that God DOES know our thoughts…and before a word is on our lips, He hears……if He would care about such a “little” thing (that I would see the picture), than how much more those things that are life changing…. I keep going back to the fact that not a sparrow falls to the ground that He doesn’t know about….so much more does He love us! He is amazing!!!!

God bless you and thank you for causing me to remember this…I am encouraged! Hope you are now too :^)

By: dejean33

dejean33 — Fri, 30 May 2008 16:36:33 +0000

This is how I think about prayer, … God hears blood ( Genesis 4:10 ), stones ( Luke 19:40 ) and even planks of wood in a home ( Habakkuk 2:11 ).

I don’t even have to blink for God to hear my prayer. He knows my thoughts before I speak them ( Psalms 139:4 ), as a matter of fact all my days where already written before I WAS ( Psalms 139: 16 ).

If God can hear these objects …. you know He can hear me, His child ( Romans 8:14- 17, John 1:12 and other locations ) created in His image ( Genesis 1: 26, and 27 ) living with His Sprit in me ( John 14 ) Thank you Jesus !!! Hallelujah !!!

One last thing, silence is praise ! …… Lets Pray to PRAY !!!! — Better Yet, Lets breathe to pray. Yeah !!!! Thank You Father !!!!

By: sjd

sjd — Thu, 29 May 2008 03:25:28 +0000

Luke 11:1 (NIV)
1 One day Jesus was praying in a certain place. When he finished, one of his disciples said to him, “Lord, teach us to pray, just as John taught his disciples.”

I think that you are right in praying to pray. We see in the verse above where the disciples asked Jesus how to pray. We could say that if Jesus had not been in their presence they would be praying to Him, for guidance in how to pray. As I was teaching on Sunday I admitted that prayer is one of the most difficult aspects for me to fully participate in.
I do also believe it is so much about the attitude of the heart. Simply reciting the Lord’s Prayer word for word is not some secret way to get what we want. It was good to hear someone say that they would meditate on the phrases, thus understanding the heart behind the words. I am interested in Paul’s mention of prayer and how he often “struggled” in prayer for others. I often struggle in life, but it would certainly not be a regular adjective I would use to describe my prayer life. I enjoy prayer and see many of it’s benefits and pleasures, but I need to learn so much more and simply need to take more advantage of that privilege we have to communicte with our Father. Fortunately for me the Spirit intercedes as well. Praying for the ability to pray sounds like a good new beginning.

By: Mart De Haan

Mart De Haan — Thu, 29 May 2008 00:25:36 +0000

poohpity, you're probably way ahead of me on both of your questions. But I think we talked some about whether there is more prayer in numbers on a previous post. And the question about "faith that moves mountains" is one that I've also wondered about. I'm going to see if I can post in the morning something for us to test and think about together.