What to pray even when I feel I can’t

what to pray even when I feel I can't

How many times I have come to God looking for Him to revive me. Having more of life is the cure for any of my troubles and I know only my Lord can give it to me. It comes to me based on His promise to give it and I receive it through His grace. It is good for me to know what to pray for.

I lie defeated in the dust;
    revive me, as you have promised. – Psalm 119:25  GNT

Sometimes I am tempted for pray for the little things – more of something like comfort – but these little things come with the bigger ask when my life is renewed in Christ and the blessing that is rooted in rest and peace is what I wanted and needed all along. Knowing the promises of God is the first step in knowing what to pray for. I read a powerful testimony this morning in this blog post – is it not an amazing thing to read of one struggling, then finding the promise and then be renewed, revived and receiving everything they had hoped for?

At the end of the day this is where I might find myself – laying defeated – I pray to live. Revived – I pray for more of life. In both cases I find myself praying and in both cases the object of pursuit is the same – I would love to have life and to have it more abudantly.

What does it mean to seek God?

Usually it means that we pray.

Turn to the Lord and pray to him,
    now that he is near. – Isaiah 55:6  GNT

It is unfortunate that so many feel they cannot. I have heard people say they do not have enough knowledge about the Bible, God, or His promises to say the “right” things. Knowing God seems to be on the top of the list because they just do not know how to make prayer “sound” – by that, is my prayer too coarse or too casual or too holy and by that, do I sound like a hypocrite?

Unfortunately, I know there are preachers who preach one cannot pray until they have become followers of Jesus. Lot’s of walls being thrown up everywhere and they have become obstacles for some people.

I love how this verse encourages all of us – it calls me to turn and look to Jesus. It calls me to pray. It encourages me to know that He is right there with me – near me – and we are both enjoying each other’s presence, company and time.

“But what do I love when I love my God? Not the sweet melody of harmony and song; not the fragrance of flowers, perfumes, and spices; not manna or honey; not limbs such as the body delights to embrace. It is not these that I love when I love my God. And yet, when I love Him, it is true that I love a light of a certain kind, a voice, a perfume, a food, an embrace; but they are of the kind that I love in my inner self, when my soul is bathed in light that is not bound by space; when it listens to sound that never dies away; when it breathes fragrance that is not borne away on the wind; when it tastes food that is never consumed by the eating; when it clings to an embrace from which it is not severed by fulfillment of desire. This is what I love when I love my God.” – Augustine

 

Praying everyday with asks and thanks

Kisongo Trek Resource

The promises that come with obedience and the curses that come with disobedience are clear messages that come to me from the Bible. What I like about them both is that they are clearly stated and not something I have to figure out or read between the lines to understand them.

Here are a few things I picked up today regarding blessings.

“The Lord will bless you with many children, with abundant crops, and with many cattle and sheep.

“The Lord will bless your grain crops and the food you prepare from them.

“The Lord your God will bless your work and fill your barns with grain. He will bless you in the land that he is giving you.

The Lord will give you many children, many cattle, and abundant crops in the land that he promised your ancestors to give you. He will send rain in season from his rich storehouse in the sky and bless all your work, so that you will lend to many nations, but you will not have to borrow from any.

Deuteronomy 28:4-5, 8, 11-12  GNT

I do not think that it is all about being rich or having the good things in life – even though they are promised – I think that this is about me having the opportunity of honouring God. These blessings are about things that are helpful and even a source of encouragement to serve HIm cheerfully and to move forward in my spiritual journey in my obedience to Him. It is my place to see my needs constantly being met as coming from God’s good treasure – even if it means, at times, that I am obligated to Him for them. Why? Because I know without His blessing I will not make it. I know that I depend on God and His blessing – that is why the Lord’s Prayer is taught and I pray for it every day.

The writings in the Psalms expresses this well too. There is a desire to keep the law of God. Yet the confidence in doing so is coupled with prayer asking God not to forsake them.

I will obey your laws;
    never abandon me! – Psalm 119:8  GNT

It is my prayer because I have no other grounds of persuasion that will enable me to keep any of the commandments of God other than the truth and belief of that truth and the hope that comes with that truth – that He will not leave me.

This is the place, in this particular Psalm, where David moves from petition to praise. He sees and is thankful that God empowers him to learn and thereby obey His Word. Here we read of his resolve to do his best. I think it is an exercise of my will, while I am praying, to expect God’s Holy Spirit to enable me to do His will. His presence, His constant presence is needed for I know without Him I can do nothing.

There is a sense of God’s holiness and transcendence in these works that is significantly absent from much modern writing and thinking about God. Of course, such can be misplaced—there are right notions of God’s transcendence and holiness and wrong notions of the same; but I would dare to say that a wrong notion of such is better than no notion at all. We live in a casual age when we stroll flippantly in and out of God’s presence. The mystics did not do so. Indeed, what makes them mystics is their sensitivity to their very smallness and insignificance before the vastness of God who, in himself, is unknowable and who has chosen to reveal himself in the fragile forms of human words and human flesh. If the theology often leaves much to be desired, it would seem that the answer is not to reject the ambition of the mystics but to combine this ambition with appropriate theology. For example, our theology should be shot through with reflection, for example, on the law of God in all of its terrifying demands upon us and on the mysterious—and sometimes disturbing—passages of the Old Testament that underscore that God’s ways are not our ways. The loss of a sense of God’s mysterious and awesome holiness surely lies at the root of much of today’s shambolic theology. Medieval mysticism is a sharp corrective to this, a reminder that when we have dealings with God, we should be aware that we tread on holy ground. – Carl Trueman

 

 

Allow blessing to shape prayer

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There was a practice repeated twice in Deuteronomy that drew my atttention today only because there was an added – liturgy, if you well – that was a very powerful addition.

Basically, the practice was something to take place every third year. God wanted His people to give generously to the those that were possibly hurting, financially. They were identified as the foreigner, those children who had no father and those women who had no husband and no children. The priests were also on that list because they were given no inheritance of their own when they entered the promised land. It was called a tithe – a gift of 10% of the blessing or increase given to one by God. While the gift was being given, a vow had to be given that the worshipper was indeed coming to bring their tithe as a fulfillment of God’s request. This is where I found myself meditating – it was in this place of obedience that the worshipper would take a moment to pray asking God to bless His people.

Look down from your holy place in heaven and bless your people Israel; bless also the rich and fertile land that you have given us, as you promised our ancestors. – Deuteronomy 26:15  GNT

I never realized that my obedience in giving allows me the opportunity to bless the community of believers in such a powerful way.

Personalizing God’s promises means that I make His promise mine. Here is another.

But because of our sins he was wounded,
    beaten because of the evil we did.
We are healed by the punishment he suffered,
    made whole by the blows he received. – Isaiah 53:5  GNT

I am believing that the blessing I can pray over others includes healing.

In your thoughts of Christ, be very careful that they are conceived and directed according to the rule of the word, lest you deceive your own souls, and give up the conduct of your affections unto vain imaginations. Spiritual notions befalling carnal minds did once, by the means of superstition, ruin the power of religion. A conviction men had that they must think much of Jesus Christ, and that this would make them conformable unto him; but having no real evangelical faith, nor the wisdom of faith to exercise it in their thoughts and affections in a due manner, nor understanding what it was to be truly like unto him, they gave up themselves unto many foolish inventions and imaginations, by which they thought to express their love and conformity unto him. They would have images of him, which they would embrace, adore, and bedew with their tears. They would have crucifixes, as they called them, which they would carry about them, and wear next unto their hearts, as if they resolved to lodge Christ always in their bosoms. They would go in pilgrimage to the place where he died and rose again, through a thousand dangers, and purchase a feigned chip of a tree whereon he suffered, at the price of all they had in the world. They would endeavour, by long thoughtfulness, lastings, and watchings, to cast their souls into raptures and ecstasies, wherein they fancied themselves in his presence. They came at last to make themselves like him, in getting impressions of wounds on their sides, their hands, and feet. Unto all these things, and sundry others of a like nature and tendency, did superstition abuse and corrupt the minds of men, from a pretence of a principle of truth; for there is no more certain gospel truth than this, that believers ought continually to contemplate on Christ by the actings of faith in their thoughts and affections, and that thereby they are changed and transformed into his image, 2 Cor. iii. 18. And we are not to forego our duty because other men have been mistaken in theirs, nor part with practical, fundamental principles of religion because they have been abused by superstition. But we may see herein how dangerous it is to depart in any thing from the conduct of Scripture light and rule, when for want thereof the best and most noble endeavours of the minds of men, even to love Christ and to be like unto him, do issue in provocations of the highest nature.

Pray, therefore, that you may be kept unto the truth in all things, by a diligent attendance unto the only rule thereof and conscientious subjection of soul unto the authority of God in it; for we ought not to suffer our affections to be entangled with the paint or artificial beauty of any way or means of giving our love unto Christ which are not warranted by the word of truth. Yet I must say that I had rather be among them who, in the actings of their love and affection unto Christ, do fall into some irregularities and excesses in the manner of expressing it (provided their worship of him be neither superstitious nor idolatrous), than among those who, professing themselves to be Christians, do almost disavow their having any thoughts of or affection unto the person of Christ. But there is no need that we should foolishly run into either of these extremes. God hath in the Scripture sufficiently provided against them both. He hath both showed us the necessity of our diligent acting of faith and love on the person of Christ, and hath limited out the way and means whereby we may so do; and let our designs be what they will, where in any thing we depart from his prescriptions, we are not under the conduct of his Spirit, and so are sure to lose all that we do. – John Owen

 

 

 

I pray because God is faithful

i pray because He is faithful

Even when I go through some of my most troubling times, I pray. I pray because through each of them, God has been faithful. My thoughts sound like this – why pray? what’s the use? God is just going to do what He wants to do anyway.  If I stay there, with my thoughts, my heart will become hard and bitter. But I do not have to stay there. I move past me and go directly to God in prayer. 

I love the Lord, because he hears me;
    he listens to my prayers.
He listens to me
    every time I call to him. – Psalm 116:1-2  GNT

I can trust in His goodness even when I do not know what He is doing. I can be in a place of joy knowing that He has always been good and He always will be.  

The danger of death was all around me;
    the horrors of the grave closed in on me;
    I was filled with fear and anxiety.
Then I called to the Lord,
    “I beg you, Lord, save me!”

The Lord is merciful and good;
    our God is compassionate.
The Lord protects the helpless;
    when I was in danger, he saved me. – Psalm 116:3-6 GNT

God meets me in my troubles. He helped and still helps me. He gives me strength, faith, hope, joy, power to change and an amazing supernatural grace that I need to make it through.

I pray – Marantha.

He who gives his testimony to all this says, “Yes indeed! I am coming soon!”So be it. Come, Lord Jesus! – Revelation 22:20 GNT

Where light (knowledge) leaves the affections behind, it ends
in formality and or atheism; where affections outrun light
they sink into the bog of superstition, doting on images and
pictures or the like. – John Owen

 

God’s saving acts allow me to pray and praise

 

It is because of what God has done in my life already that I can pray today, no matter what my circumstances, knowing that He will once again bring a change for good in my life.

To you alone, O Lord, to you alone,
    and not to us, must glory be given
    because of your constant love and faithfulness. – Psalm 115:1 GNT

This prayer from Isaiah has this kind of motivation behind it.

Wake up, Lord, and help us!
Use your power and save us;
    use it as you did in ancient times.
It was you that cut the sea monster Rahab[a] to pieces.
It was you also who dried up the sea
    and made a path through the water,
    so that those you were saving could cross.
Those whom you have rescued
    will reach Jerusalem with gladness,
    singing and shouting for joy.
They will be happy forever,
    for

The Lord says,

“I am the one who strengthens you.
    Why should you fear mortals,
    who are no more enduring than grass?
Have you forgotten the Lord who made you,
    who stretched out the heavens
    and laid the earth’s foundations?
Why should you live in constant fear
    of the fury of those who oppress you,
    of those who are ready to destroy you?
Their fury can no longer touch you.
Those who are prisoners will soon be set free;
    they will live a long life“

I am the Lord your God;

“I am the Lord your God;
    I stir up the sea
    and make its waves roar.
My name is the Lord Almighty!
I stretched out[b] the heavens
    and laid the earth’s foundations;
I say to Jerusalem, ‘You are my people!
    I have given you my teaching,
    and I protect you with my hand.’” – Isaiah 51:9-16  GNT

 

Here is a prayer that would invite God to become involved in my life. He is wide awake when it comes to engaging with me as I pray.

I am encouraged to plead with Him as I recall precedents, and experiences of those who had already experienced God in their lives. I am encouraged to recall as many experiences as necessary for they build up my faith and my hope as I continue in prayer.

I love God’s answer. The prayer was for God to act and He shares with me His grace – therein lies His power.

It is no surprise when reading about the new creation in Revelation 21 that God will make us all pure.

I posted the video above – it is a song that Charles Wesley wrote that parallel’s this chapter in Revelation. Here is the verse that catches my ear and my eye.

Come, Almighty to deliver, Let us all Thy life receive; Suddenly return and never, Never more Thy temples leave. Thee we would be always blessing, Serve Thee as Thy hosts above, Pray and praise Thee without ceasing, Glory in Thy perfect love.

The spiritual intense fixation of the mind, by contemplation on God in
Christ, until the soul be as it were swallowed up in admiration and
delight, and being brought unto an utter loss, through the infiniteness of
those excellencies which it doth admire and adore, it returns again to its
own abasements, out of a sense of its infinite distance from what it would
absolutely and eternally embrace, and withal, the inexpressible rest and
satisfaction which the will and affections receive in their approaches
unto the eternal Fountain of goodness, are things to be aimed at in
prayer, and which, through the riches of divine condescension, are
frequently enjoyed. The soul is hereby raised and ravished, not into
ecstacies or unaccountable raptures, not acted into motions above the
power of its own understanding and will; but in all the faculties and
affections of it, through the effectual workings of the Spirit of grace and
the lively impressions of divine love, with intimations of the relations and
kindness of God, is filled with rest, in JOY unspeakable and full of
glory. – John Owen