We Need A Passion For Prayer
“Hey guys, could you please pray for my cat? Yeah, I know it’s silly. She just got spayed and she’s just purely miserable. She can’t walk and she keeps falling off stuff when she tries.” This isn’t a prayer request from a child, but one that I found on a Christian prayer board. I’m not really talking here about whether we should pray for animals, but I’m talking about the trivial prayers that we sometimes offer and ask.
It seems that I’ve been talking to people a lot about prayer recently. I’ve discussed with people the heartache I have when I hear the prayers that we offer up as a church and as individuals. I see people who don’t know how to pray. I hear people that are saying the words for men and not praying them for the Lord. It seems that when I begin to wrestle with an issue, God keeps it in front of me so that in my laziness, I don’t let it go. I happened upon a sermon by Adrian Rogers this week on praying in the Spirit. He said something in that message that finally put into words what I’ve been thinking for so long. “Do you know what’s wrong with a Baptist prayer meetings? We mostly pray for each other.” Adrian wasn’t saying that it’s wrong to pray for people with ailments and difficulties, but the majority of the prayers that he hears of are for sick people in their own church. He said, “We’re praying harder to keep the saints out of Heaven than we are to keep the lost out of Hell.” Let that statement sink in for a moment.
Think about your prayers. Are you praying for you, your family, and your friends? Are you praying for lost people that you know? Are you asking God to give you opportunities to share Jesus with them? Are you coming across missionaries to keep in your prayers? Are your prayers more inward than outward? Romans 8:26-27 says, “In the same way the Spirit also helps our weakness; for we do not know how to pray as we should, but the Spirit Himself intercedes for us with groanings too deep for words; and He who searches the hearts knows what the mind of the Spirit is, because He intercedes for the saints according to the will of God.” When I don’t know what to pray, I ask the Holy Spirit to guide my prayers, and I am often amazed at the requests that come through my lips. Ask Him to guide your prayers and allow you to be a person who prays with the power of the Holy Spirit and the purposes of the Kingdom.
#1 from Derlin on September 09, 2009
Where’s the “like” button when you need it? One of my old pastors shared many of the same thoughts a while back. It’s good to be reminded.
As Bill Hybels puts it (in Too Busy Not To Pray (an excellent book on the subject)):
“The grease is bubbling, the salt is glistening, the sugared drink stands ready to slosh the stuff down. ‘Dear Lord,’ the person says, ‘bless this food to our bodies, and grant us strength and nourishment from it so that we may do your will.’ God’s will might be for the person to say ‘Amen,’ push back from the table and give the meal to the dog—except that dogs matter to God too!”
It’s also important to note that praying is easy, as you point out on your other blog. Praying well (or perhaps “balanced” is a better word) can be hard.
Some acronyms can help:
A-adoration
C-confession
T-thanksgiving
S-supplication
-or-
T-thanks
S-sorry
P-please