Month: January 2021

PRAYER

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WHAT IS PRAYER?

“…prayer…The word that conquers God” Clarence Edward Noble Macartney (ref#212, p10).

“The Christian’s trade is praying…” Martin Luther (ref#54, p167).

“…prayer…is an agony and entreaty, a pleading and striving, a wrestling and persistence” Samuel Chadwick (ref#4, p73).

“Prayer is the lisping of the believing infant, the shout of the fighting believer, the requiem of the dying saint falling asleep in Jesus.  It is the breath, the watchword, the comfort, the strength, the honor of a Christian” Charles Spurgeon (ref#34, Jan 2nd, AM).

“Prayer is not a question of altering things externally, but of working wonders in a man’s disposition” Oswald Chambers (ref#7, Aug 28th).

“True prayer uncovers the emptiness in the petitioner but the fullness in the Petitioned” Watchman Nee (ref#101, p52).

“…true prayer is the breathing of the life of God in the soul of man.  It is the Spirit dwelling and breathing in him” Octavius Winslow (ref#135, Apr 11th).  “It is more than asking, it is communion, fellowship, co-operation, identification, with God the Father and the Son by the Holy Spirit.  Prayer is more than words, for it is mightiest when wordless.  It is more than asking, for it reaches its highest glory when it adores and asks nothing” Samuel Chadwick (ref#4, p61).

“Prayer is the means of unleashing God’s power on earth and the means of laying hold of God’s promises” Kay Arthur (ref#12).

“Prayer is the condition by which all foes are to be overcome and all the inheritance is to be possessed” E.M Bounds (ref#54, p27).

PRAYER

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DISCLAIMER TO PRAYER

After writing over 50 blog posts on the subject of prayer, I have some conclusions.  (Conclusions are usually at the end of a subject, but they need to be here, too.)

Prayer is such a broad subject because it represents all GOD’s creature’s communications with Him.  Dawn starts another day for us creatures.  As children of our Creator we look to Him in ways as individual as we are.  When we write about a large subject as prayer we can only write snippets of what it really is and we write what it really is to us individually at that moment in time.

Thus there are a lot of words in writing that contradict each other.  I have some in my blogs.  They seemed right at the time but as I write these conclusions some concepts seem myopic, even biased.

After completion of all the blogs the SPIRIT reminded me of an exercise I did many years ago.  I went through the Davidic Psalms and recorded David’s prayer requests.  There were hundreds and hundreds.  I’ve since thrown the list away but I still remember my conclusions.

David was a man—a child of GOD who looked to His FATHER for everything—EVERYTHING!  All day long he was pleading with his FATHER to get him through all he encountered.  All this praying confirmed that he rarely left the presence of his FATHER.  And when he did lose sight of Him he knew he must direct his mind back to thoughts of Him.

The writers of the New Testament recorded their prayers mainly in light of their evangelistic assignment from GOD.  Therefore New Testament prayers are mainly of the spiritual variety.

But, as Christian writers and readers of a prayer blog, my conclusion is to look to King David as our mentor on how to pray.  Let us stay close to our FATHER as we can and ask Him for everything we need throughout each of our days.  No prayer is too small; fathers love to hear from their children.  And the more we pray the more we see answers and the more praise we’ll give our GOD.