A NEVER ENDING ADVENTURE

 MARCH 14, 2023

1 John 5:14

“This is the confidence we have in approaching God: that if we ask anything according to His will, He hears us” 

PRAYER

“You cannot estimate prayer power. Prayer is as vast as God because He is behind it. Prayer is as mighty as God because He has committed Himself to answer it” (Leonard Ravenhill).

If a main purpose of Lent is to have a deeper, more intimate relationship with God, then it seems to me, that prayer must be a foundational discipline. Have you noticed that having a strong and active prayer life can be difficult to develop? Despite our best intentions to devote ourselves to prayer many of us struggle with the practice of prayer.

Matthew 6:8 describes that God knows our every need before we ask. So why do we need to pray? We pray because prayer is the expression of an intimate relationship with God, an ongoing dialogue that brings Christ into every detail of our lives. Prayer can feel risky because it requires two things of us: trust in God’s goodness and surrender to “what he deems best.” Prayer is: the alignment of our heart to God’s heart and desire.

Prayer expresses itself through our words, meditations, and actions. Whether it’s prayers of petition, gratitude, power, sorrow, or repentance, we know that God hears us: “This is the confidence we have in approaching God: that if we ask anything according to His will, He hears us” (1 John 5:14, NIV).

I have come to believe that a strong prayer life is not a destination, or the goal. Rather I wonder if our prayer life ought to be thought of as a never-ending adventure of the discovery of the heart of God. 

In this way of thinking we are positioned to see ourselves as always being a student of prayer, because God uses the practice or discipline of prayer as a way to reveal Himself to us. 

The New Testament shows us that even the apostles were ongoing students of prayer, and through their hunger to learn, they were taught and passed on to us Jesus beautiful model prayer, the Lord’s Prayer, or as some of my Roman Catholic friends call it the “Our Father.”

“This, then, is how you should pray:

“‘Our Father in heaven,
hallowed be your name,
10 your kingdom come,
your will be done,
on earth as it is in heaven.
11 Give us today our daily bread.
12 And forgive us our debts,
as we also have forgiven our debtors.
13 And lead us not into temptation,
but deliver us from the evil one.
for yours is the kingdom 

and the power and the glory forever. Amen.

During this Lenten season, as you meditate on Christ’s journey to the cross, start an open dialogue with God and begin, renew, and continue the adventure of a lifetime through prayer.

?'s WORTH PONDERING

What keeps you from intimate prayer?

What are blocks that you may have in prayer?

Invite God into those spaces and ask Him to bring down the barriers.