A praying people

When Abram left Egypt he went back to Bethel where he had once built an altar to God. Two reasons – it was a place where he and God had some great conversations and/or to thank God for bringing him out of Egypt. I believe that all God’s people are praying people. You may as soon find a living person without breath as a living Christian without prayer. We may not have need to build an altar all the time, but, wherever I am, I am to call on the name of the Lord.

Then he left there and moved from place to place, going toward Bethel. He reached the place between Bethel and Ai where he had camped before  and had built an altar. There he worshiped the Lord. – Genesis 13:3-4 GNT

Here are some praying sentences I pulled out of Matthew.

And on him all peoples will put their hope. Matthew 12:21 GNT

May ______ know that in You, Jesus, the nations will put their hope.

Anyone who is not for me is really against me; anyone who does not help me gather is really scattering.  – Matthew 12:30 GNT

May ______ know that He who is not with You is against You. Lord, may ______ be with You.

You snakes—how can you say good things when you are evil? For the mouth speaks what the heart is full of. – Matthew 12:34 GNT

May ______ know that out of the overflow of their heart their mouth speaks.

A good person brings good things out of a treasure of good things; a bad person brings bad things out of a treasure of bad things. – Matthew 12:35 GNT

May ______ be a good person with good things stored up in them.

Who Has Time to Pray? | Nehemiah 2:4 Bible Devotional | Christian Vlogger

God wanted us to know how Nehemiah prayed when He made sure to mention the details of day and particular events. Why? First to show that Nehemiah prayed and waited four months. I think his prayer was all about doing it and how to do the ask.

One day four months later, when Emperor Artaxerxes was dining, I took the wine to him. He had never seen me look sad before, so he asked, “Why are you looking so sad? You aren’t sick, so it must be that you’re unhappy.”

I was startled  and answered, “May Your Majesty live forever! How can I keep from looking sad when the city where my ancestors are buried is in ruins and its gates have been destroyed by fire?”

 The emperor asked, “What is it that you want? – Nehemiah 2:1-4 GNT

How about the time when Peter was in prison. People gathered at Mary’s home praying. Mary is the mother of John Mark. They are gathered because Peter has been thrown in prison.

Aware of his situation, he went to the home of Mary, the mother of John Mark, where many people had gathered and were praying.  Peter knocked at the outside door, and a servant named Rhoda came to answer it.  She recognized Peter’s voice and was so happy that she ran back in without opening the door, and announced that Peter was standing outside.  “You are crazy!” they told her. But she insisted that it was true. So they answered, “It is his angel.”

 Meanwhile Peter kept on knocking. At last they opened the door, and when they saw him, they were amazed.  He motioned with his hand for them to be quiet, and he explained to them how the Lord had brought him out of prison. “Tell this to James and the rest of the believers,” he said; then he left and went somewhere else. – Acts 12:12-17 GNT

Is it not odd to believe they were praying for his release? Would the response from this praying group be different if they were? They thought the servant girl was out of her mind for thinking Peter was at the door. Neither response would suggest they expected this kind of answer to their prayer. There is a clear line of thought though that they might have been praying that Peter would not give up his faith while in prison. Even with the thought of death, they feared he may have renounced his faith again. So they asked God that Peter may die for his faith as opposed to denying Christ.

“It is necessary for us to recognize that there is an intelligent mysticism in the life of faith . . . of living union and communion with the exalted and ever-present Redeemer. . . .  He communes with his people and his people commune with him in conscious reciprocal love. . . . The life of true faith cannot be that of cold metallic assent.  It must have the passion and warmth of love and communion because communion with God is the crown and apex of true religion.” John Murray, Redemption: Accomplished and Applied, 1955

Learning how to pray from others

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Abraham is a great person to observe when it comes to prayer. On one occasion he built an altar before calling on God.

The Lord appeared to Abram and said to him, “This is the country that I am going to give to your descendants.” Then Abram built an altar there to the Lord, who had appeared to him.  After that, he moved on south to the hill country east of the city of Bethel and set up his camp between Bethel on the west and Ai on the east. There also he built an altar and worshiped the Lord. – Genesis 12:7-8 GNT

Abraham built an altar everytime he was obedient in listening to God and going where He called Him to go. Abraham knew who was blessing Him.

Here is what I am praying about, reflecting and asking myself:

Do I enjoy the mercy and love of God for me? In following the Lord, do I feel safe in Him? In times of pain, suffering and anxiety, do I put my total trust in the Lord? When tired, down and confused, do I find rest and peace in His loving heart? Do I trust the Lord at all times? Do I love the Lord at all times. Here is what He calls me to do and the outcome of the type of prayer that makes our relationship different. Jesus starts the prayer and then invites me into the secret of how it works.

At that time Jesus said, “Father, Lord of heaven and earth! I thank you because you have shown to the unlearned what you have hidden from the wise and learned.  Yes, Father, this was how you were pleased to have it happen.

“My Father has given me all things. No one knows the Son except the Father, and no one knows the Father except the Son and those to whom the Son chooses to reveal him.

 “Come to me, all of you who are tired from carrying heavy loads, and I will give you rest.  Take my yoke and put it on you, and learn from me, because I am gentle and humble in spirit; and you will find rest.  For the yoke I will give you is easy, and the load I will put on you is light.” – Matthew 11:25-30 GNT

Nehemiah’s risk in prayer was very similar to that of Esther. His request to the king was considerable, yet he considered that God had put him in this situation “for such a time as this.”

Listen now to my prayer and to the prayers of all your other servants who want to honour you. Give me success today and make the emperor merciful to me.” In those days I was the emperor’s wine steward. – Nehemiah 1:11 GNT

Yes, [Acts 2] was the baptism of the Holy Spirit. But we all get that now, and it is unconscious, we are not aware of it, it happens to us the moment we believe and we are regenerated. It is just that act of God which incorporates us into the Body of Christ. That is the baptism of the Spirit. So it is no use your praying for some other baptism of the Spirit, or asking God to pour out His Spirit upon the church. . . . It is not surprising that, as that kind of preaching has gained currency, people have stopped praying for revival.” – D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones

Shake up prayer

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Here are some shake up type prayer thoughts from these verses.

Those who declare publicly that they belong to me, I will do the same for them before my Father in heaven. But those who reject me publicly, I will reject before my Father. Those who do not take up their cross and follow in my steps are not fit to be my disciples. Those who try to gain their own life will lose it; but those who lose their life for my sake will gain it. – Matthew 10:32, 38-39 GNT

May ______ know that whoever acknowledges You, Jesus, before others, You will also acknowledge before Your Father in Heaven. But whoever disowns You before others, You will disown them before Your Father in heaven. May ______ be one who acknowledges You before others, Lord.

May ______ know that anyone who does not take up their cross and follow You is not worthy of You. May ______ be willing to take up their cross and follow You, Jesus.

“ Those who try to gain their own life will lose it; but those who lose their life for my sake will gain it. ” May ______ be willing to lose their life for Your sake, Lord.

I cannot help thinking still of Ezra and how much his prayer, in front of everyone, changed them.

While Ezra was bowing in prayer in front of the Temple, weeping and confessing these sins, a large group of Israelites—men, women, and children—gathered around him, weeping bitterly.  Then Shecaniah son of Jehiel, of the clan of Elam, said to Ezra, “We have broken faith with God by marrying foreign women, but even so there is still hope for Israel.  Now we must make a solemn promise to our God that we will send these women and their children away. We will do what you and the others who honor God’s commands advise us to do. We will do what God’s Law demands.  It is your responsibility to act. We are behind you, so go ahead and get it done.” – Ezra 10:1-5 GNT

I also think of Peter who had God in a nice little box and then He was able to shake him up during a time of prayer.

He saw heaven opened and something coming down that looked like a large sheet being lowered by its four corners to the earth.  In it were all kinds of animals, reptiles, and wild birds. A voice said to him, “Get up, Peter; kill and eat!”

But Peter said, “Certainly not, Lord! I have never eaten anything ritually unclean or defiled.”

The voice spoke to him again, “Do not consider anything unclean that God has declared clean.”  This happened three times, and then the thing was taken back up into heaven. – Acts 10:11-16 GNT

God can do the same for me.

“Shake yourself up a little, my brother. If you are too precise may the Lord set you on fire, and consume your bonds of red tape! If you have become so improperly proper that you cannot commit a proper impropriety, then pray God to help you be less proper, for there are many who will never be saved by your instrumentality while you study propriety.” Spurgeon

Look at the emotion of these shake up thoughts from Flannery O’Connor.

How can I live—how shall I live. Obviously the only way to live right is to give up everything. But I have no vocation & maybe that is wrong anyway. But how eliminate this picky fish bone kind of way I do things—I want so to love God all the way. At the same time I want all the things that seem opposed to it—I want to be a fine writer. Any success will tend to swell my head—unconsciously even. If I ever do get to be a fine writer, it will not be because I am a fine writer but because God has given me credit for a few of the things He kindly wrote for me. Right at present this does not seem to be His policy. I can’t write a thing. But I’ll continue to try—that is the point. And at every dry point I will be reminded Who is doing the work when it is done & Who is not doing it at that moment. Right now I wonder if God will ever do any more writing for me. He has promised His grace; I am not so sure about the other. Perhaps I have not been thankful enough for what has gone before.

The desires of the flesh—excluding the stomach—have been taken away from me. For how long I don’t know but I hope forever. It is a great peace to be rid of them.

Can’t anyone teach me how to pray?

Serious prayer

I tell those who are close to my age or older how I pray asking God to save me from being an old Christian man who becomes a fool. I say that because Noah was one prime example of such a man.

“Lord, don’t let me become a wicked old man.” – George Mueller

My guess is that there is not one of us who does not face the constant struggle against sin. Serious prayer is what I am doing. To that prayer I add other serious types of prayer. One being that I need to be praying for individuals to become disciple makers.

As he saw the crowds, his heart was filled with pity for them, because they were worried and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd.  So he said to his disciples, “The harvest is large, but there are few workers to gather it in.  Pray to the owner of the harvest that he will send out workers to gather in his harvest.” – Matthew 9:36-38 GNT

The background for this type of prayer comes from Jesus’ own travels. He looked at individuals and saw them as ones who needed a shepherd. I believe my prayer needs to be one of compassion – illustrates why prayer is so essential to reaching the lost. Ezra has some more serious types of prayer to give us.

When the time came for the evening sacrifice, I got up from where I had been grieving, and still wearing my torn clothes, I knelt in prayer and stretched out my hands to the Lord my God.  I said, “O God, I am too ashamed to raise my head in your presence. Our sins pile up higher than our heads; they reach as high as the heavens. – Ezra 9:5-6 GNT

This was Ezra’s prayer, but he prayed it before everyone during the evening sacrifice (3:00pm). He showed them what serious prayer sounded like.

“The officiating minister is not merely to pray before the congregation, while the people kneel as silent auditors. His prayer is designed to guide and help their prayers, so that there may be ‘common prayer’ throughout the whole assembly” Adeney

Serious prayer usually lands me on my knees too and when I need to surrender or show God I am all in or even ready to receive, I can be found with my hands all the way up in the air above my head.

Do you think Stephen’s prayer was serious as he was being stoned? Do you think it had a serious effect on Paul who was listening?

As Saul was coming near the city of Damascus, suddenly a light from the sky flashed around him.  He fell to the ground and heard a voice saying to him, “Saul, Saul! Why do you persecute me?”

 “Who are you, Lord?” he asked.

“I am Jesus, whom you persecute,” the voice said.  “But get up and go into the city, where you will be told what you must do.” – Acts 9:3-6 GNT

There was something working on Saul’s conscience despite all of his outward confidence. I believe Stephen’s serious prayer mattered.

I want very much to succeed in the world with what I want to do. I have prayed to You about this with my mind and my nerves on it and strung my nerves into a tension over it and said, “oh God, please,” and “I must,” and “please, please.” I have not asked You, I feel, in the right way. Let me henceforth ask You with resignation—that not being or meant to be a slacking up in prayer but a less frenzied kind, realizing that the frenzy is caused by an eagerness for what I want and not a spiritual trust. I do not wish to presume. I want to love.

Oh God please make my mind clear.

Please make it clean. – Flannery O’Connor

Prayer points

There is an interesting perspective on prayer from the story of Noah.

God had not forgotten Noah and all the animals with him in the boat; he caused a wind to blow, and the water started going down.  The outlets of the water beneath the earth and the floodgates of the sky were closed. The rain stopped,  and the water gradually went down for 150 days.  On the seventeenth day of the seventh month the boat came to rest on a mountain in the Ararat range. The water kept going down, and on the first day of the tenth month the tops of the mountains appeared. – Genesis 8:1-5 GNT

Despite the fact that God could have made the water to disappear instantly – He did not. In fact, the initial setting was that it took 150 days. Here is my thinking – my challenges are not usually solved instantly. There usually is a gradual process and for now those best reasons are known to Him only. I am encouraged to not give up praying as somehow I am somewhere in that gradual process and so why mess up a good thing.

I know this is in contrast, for example, with the model of prayer shown to us through the centurion who approached Jesus.

When Jesus entered Capernaum, a Roman officer met him and begged for help:  “Sir, my servant is sick in bed at home, unable to move and suffering terribly.”

 “I will go and make him well,” Jesus said.

 “Oh no, sir,” answered the officer. “I do not deserve to have you come into my house. Just give the order, and my servant will get well.  I, too, am a man under the authority of superior officers, and I have soldiers under me. I order this one, ‘Go!’ and he goes; and I order that one, ‘Come!’ and he comes; and I order my slave, ‘Do this!’ and he does it.” – Matthew 8:5-9 GNT

I know I have talked about the things that touch Jesus’ heart and this dialogue definitely did. I want to touch Jesus heart when I pray like this.

I can imagine our prayer life being more like the disciples as they were going through the storm.

Jesus got into a boat, and his disciples went with him.  Suddenly a fierce storm hit the lake, and the boat was in danger of sinking. But Jesus was asleep.  The disciples went to him and woke him up. “Save us, Lord!” they said. “We are about to die!”

 “Why are you so frightened?” Jesus answered. “What little faith you have!” Then he got up and ordered the winds and the waves to stop, and there was a great calm.

 Everyone was amazed. “What kind of man is this?” they said. “Even the winds and the waves obey him!” – Matthew 8:23-27 GNT

Is it not a comfort to know that I have a Saviour to trust in and pray to? He knows what it is like to be on the water and to be in storms. In fact, would it not be true that if I am walking with Jesus over the ocean of this world, that there would be storms? I will have my own set of fears in a stormy day – that may include thoughts that are dismal or even worse. What a blessing though to see these great storms, even those that are under the spirit of bondage end in a wonderful calm, created and spoken by the Spirit of adoption. There was nothing gradual in this story.

When it comes to storms, Ezra had the right idea – include a fast.

There by the Ahava Canal I gave orders for us all to fast and humble ourselves before our God and to ask him to lead us on our journey and protect us and our children and all our possessions.  I would have been ashamed to ask the emperor for a troop of cavalry to guard us from any enemies during our journey, because I had told him that our God blesses everyone who trusts him, but that he is displeased with and punishes anyone who turns away from him.  So we fasted and prayed for God to protect us, and he answered our prayers. Ezra 8:21-23 GNT

I do not look at fasting as an escape from a problem, but rather an attempt to ask the Holy Spirit to come and be part of solving the problem. I think that whenever I am going through a major change in life, fasting makes a difference.

Ezra provides a powerful example of how fasting and prayer go together. I believe we have to chose who we want involved in the fast. When our children became older, my wife and I set a fasting and praying time every Wednesday afternoon. Of course, whoever you invite into the fasting and praying time, you will have to share the problem with them. Fasting without prayer is just a diet plan. For it to be serious, prayer has to happen because I believe we are looking for spiritual breakthroughs.

“Originally, when people faced a life-threatening situation, they were too frightened or distressed to eat. They adjusted their diets out of agony and deep struggle of soul. The cause was the problem; the effect was diet adjustment. Eventually, people began to see that they needed this deep spiritual exercise to pray properly. Thus they reversed the effect—fasting, so everyone might enter into the cause—spiritual travail in intercession.” – Elmer Towns

Is it not true that we find ourselves attempting the solution before the praying and fasting? Only when that does not work do we resort to what should have been the main direction in the first place. Prayer walking could have been part of Ezra’s plan when he went to the banks of the river – so let’s consider the idea of walking in our problem areas and pray while we walk.

Back to my earlier thoughts on a gradual process – Ezra here shows the step-by-step guiding principles of what makes a good fasting/praying session. Outcomes are important but maybe the process needs our prayers too.

Dear God, I cannot love Thee the way I want to. You are the slim crescent of a moon that I see and my self is the earth’s shadow that keeps me from seeing all the moon. The crescent is very beautiful and perhaps that is all one like I am should or could see; but what I am afraid of, dear God, is that my self shadow will grow so large that it blocks the whole moon, and that I will judge myself by the shadow that is nothing. – Flannery O’Connor