Tag: prayer

Please Shut the Door, [Prayer]

“When you pray, go into a room alone and shut the door. Pray to your Father in private. He knows what is done in private, and he will reward you.”

Matthew 6:6, CEV

“We are to be shut out from men, and shut in with God.”

Andrew Murray

Prayer is a deep and awesome thing.  And yet in a sense our physical life must have cheeseburgers and spaghetti.  Food powers us, and we are fueled by it’s energy.  Prayer is also necessary to propel us, for it is our spirit’s nourishment.

We cannot survive without food. We see pictures of emaciated children in some African country, and they are just  skin and bones.  It is a sick evil.  But there are Christians who are like this spiritually.  They are starving because they are not praying.

Jesus told His followers, to go into a room alone.  Then shut the door.  We must learn that God is in the secret.  If we should meet with Him, we must be as secretive.  “Shut the door,”  what happens in there is not for public display. We must be quite discrete in our times with Him.

When I was at in my first year at Bible school, I heard a guest speaker teach from Matt. 6:6.  I was pumped up by it, praying with the door shut was a new idea for me.  When I got to my dorm room, I went straight for my closet to put this new revelation into action. Kneeling there in the closet, with the door slid shut, I tried to pray.  And after a bit I fell asleep, still on my knees.

About an hour later I woke up with a start.  I had no idea where I was, and in my disorientation I slid open the closet door with a loud bang.  I tried to stand, but my legs couldn’t support me.  I lurched out in the room and fell in a pile.  My roommate was startled to say the least.  He had been in the room studying quietly by himself, when suddenly this ‘wildman’ burst out of the closet and immediately collapsed.  It was hysterical!

So much for my first attempt at praying in secret.

The quest for spiritual growth will have to lead us into the closet.

The injunction to close the door can be understood in a variety of ways.  The act of isolating ourselves is a physical one.  But we must understand we need to shut up all our social entanglements and obligations.  We isolate ourselves so we can be intimate with Him.

We just need to figure out just how we are to do this.  We shouldn’t give up when it doesn’t bring wondrous results.  We are all students in this, we will advance at times, and then retreat.  But every second in the closet can be an intimate blessing to our souls.

“He that loveth little prayeth little; he that loveth much prayeth much.” 

– Augustine

 

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He Certainly Does Answer, [Prayer]

 “He shall call upon Me, and I will answer him;
         I will be with him in trouble;
         I will deliver him and honor him.”

Psalm 91:15

“So I tell you to ask and you will receive, search and you will find, knock and the door will be opened for you.” 

 Luke 1:9

Our Father God very much wants to put us into a ‘win-win’ situation.  This is remarkable considering our our pathetic condition.  It seems we cannot generate enough steam to reduce the tension in our own lives, much less others. We are more or less ‘babes in the woods’ when it comes to anything of spiritual consequence.  We can only hope that He goes before us, unlocking doors, and making us look important.

But these verses do act as an encouragement.  He fully intends that we step into a door that has been widened and opened for us to step through, right into a room of full grace and assurance.  He intends that we make it real, and accept all that is done for us, in His grace and mercy.

Prayer is incredible.  When we finally begin to understand, we start to see that He is actively encouraging us to step’ into the wind.’  To stand and not be ‘wimps’.  To become disciples who are open to seeing things that take on a supernatural significance; so we must make the decision to become sensitive to the needs of others.

The Father is excavating a deeper place for us to pray.  As we step into this new place, we find an increased amplitude to extend ourselves into the lives of the struggling among us.  There becomes for us a new place of a strong intercession, something that is substantially fresh and aware.  It doesn’t seem to get more sophisticated, only more gentle and alert.

But we must pray.  We must engage the enemy that tries to advance.  To fail in doing this leaves many unprotected and vulnerable.  It really is not acceptable for us to let Satan roll over our friend’s hearts and lives.  We must provide resistance and strength to our loved ones. They may never know the prayer we offered them; until heaven.

Prayer is our key, and we need to move with it in a deliberate and direct manner.  So much of the enemy’s focus is directed towards our times of prayer.  Prayer disturbs him.  He tries to ‘corral’ us and to reduce our access to the Father.  But if we only press forward, we will find a freedom and liberty waiting for us.

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“Men may spurn our appeals, reject our message, oppose our arguments, despise our person- but they are helpless against our prayer. Fellow Christians who love the cause of Christ- to prayer! To prayer!  The times are calling us to it. We must press on.”

 — Sidlow Baxter

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The Toughness of Prayer

  “Pray as you can, not as you cannot.”

-Dom John Chapman

This is a Reprinted Article.

 by Dom John Chapman

Every so often I find something so sublime and so wonderful that all I want to do is make it available to a whole other audience.  This is so rewarding for me, to introduce to you an author and believer who has something to say.  However, I must tell you that you need to watch the cadence of what you read, be slow at first and then push forward.  Remember that there are lots of echoes, but “few voices in the wilderness.”  Anticipate a blessing.  I don’t know much about Mr. Chapman but I feel like I know him.  In eternity, I plan to seek him out and talk. 

—And then I plan to thank him profusely.  —Bryan

——————-

Prayer, in the sense of union with God, is the most crucifying thing there is. One must do it for God’s sake; but one will not get any satisfaction out of it, in the sense of feeling “I am good at prayer. I have an infallible method.”

That would be disastrous, since what we want to learn is precisely our own weakness, powerlessness, unworthiness. Nor ought one to expect “a sense of the reality of the supernatural” of which I speak. And one should wish for no prayer, except precisely the prayer that God gives us — probably very distracted and unsatisfactory in every way.

On the other hand, the only way to pray is to pray; and the way to pray well is to pray much. If one has no time for this, then one must at least pray regularly. But the less one prays, the worse it goes. And if circumstances do not permit even regularity, then one must put up with the fact that when one does try to pray, one can’t pray — and our prayer will probably consist of telling this to God.

As to beginning afresh, or where you left off, I don’t think you have any choice. You simply have to begin wherever you find yourself. Make any acts you want to make and feel you ought to make, but do not force yourself into feelings of any kind.

You say very naturally that you do not know what to do if you have a quarter of an hour alone in church. Yes, I suspect the only thing to do is to shut out the church and everything else, and just give yourself to God and beg Him to have mercy on you, and offer Him all your distractions.”

———————-

Source at—http://www.unionlife.com/Struggle.html

Background at—http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Chapman_(priest)

Taken from The Spiritual Letters of Dom John Chapman, osb.
© Copyright 1938 Sheed and Ward, London, England.
This reprint appeared in the Jan/Feb ‘97 issue of Union Life Magazine.

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Devotions, [Eugene Peterson, Interview]

eugene-petersonInterview with Eugene Peterson

Why Can’t I Hear God? By Nancy Lovell

The musical group U2’s Bono quotes Eugene Peterson from the stage. Readers of the best selling Bible, ‘The Message,’ find themselves holding onto lines from his ‘fog-slicing’ Bible paraphrase, and many other works. For several years now, TheHighCalling.org has provided a daily prayer and reflection by Eugene Peterson. Recently, we asked the man himself: What are devotions and why do they matter in our daily work?

Why do so few people who believe in God bother to know Him?

The most obvious answer is that we’re in a hurry and not used to listening. We’re trained to use our minds to get information and complete assignments; but the God revealed to us in Jesus and our Scriptures is infinitely personal and relational. Unless we take the time to be quiet, in a listening way, in the presence of God, we never get to know him.

The same question is why so few married couples really know their spouses. People get divorced after 20 years of marriage, and the rejected spouse says, “I never knew this was coming. I thought everything was fine.” But there was not much listening in those 20 years. Devotions are the discipline of being quiet and listening for what we don’t hear in the streets, in the media, in the workplace.

What about people who sincerely set apart time, read the Bible, stay still, and hear nothing? They ask themselves whether God’s voice is anything more than their own thoughts.

We’re not good at this. We’ve had no practice doing it. No wonder we only hear our own thoughts. This is why the church is so insistent that we do this whether anything happens or not. Supported by 2000 years of history, we know that God does commune with us in our listening. But because we’re so unused to this way of communion, we don’t hear it. So it takes time.

How would you direct someone trying to start?

I would say: Get your Bible and find a place. If you can’t do this daily (some people can’t because of their life circumstances; mothers with young children are obvious instances), try for at least 20-30 minutes, two or three times a week, or four. Don’t make demands on yourself too high. Don’t ask questions about, “How long is this going to take?” Believe that something does happen in that silence—usually through Scripture, but not always—in prayerful, attentive listening, knowing that you’re in the presence of God.

I ask for a commitment of six months; so don’t come back in three weeks and say nothing’s happened. I’ve never had anyone who’s done this at least six months who came back to me and said, “I did it and nothing happened; I’m going on to something else.” Not many who give this a fair test ever say that nothing happens. Also, when I’ve asked people to do this as their pastor, I also ask them to worship regularly. This is a place where the whole community is gathered and listening and being in the presence of God.

Is that how you started?

I was lucky. In the family I grew up in, I started when I was about 14 …mostly with the Psalms, but all the Scriptures become part of it.

In your writing and speaking, you must have seen moments when a person realizes, “Yes, I want more and I want God.” What turns on the light for people?

Often the motivation is that people are tired of the way they’re living. They think there’s got to be more than just the motions they’re going through and the work they’re doing. There’s a craving and hunger that they identify with God. There’s enough pain or boredom or something to motivate them to do something that the culture’s not telling them to do. I got a letter recently from a friend of 40 years. She had been a parishioner of mine for a long time. Then she was ill, and divorced; and she quit, just gave up. She quit reading the Bible, quit going to church. Six months ago she wrote me a lovely letter that she was sitting with a group of friends and, in her words, “a rooster crowed”—it all came back and she was a Christian again and aware of the presence of God. Isn’t that a wonderful phrase? ‘A rooster crowed.’

Who knows what went into that statement of hers? Twenty years of unhappiness, pain, suffering, disillusionment …but still there was the need.She would have said during that time she didn’t believe in God. But the rooster crowed. That’s why we use the term the Holy Spirit to explain times like this. Given that it’s hard to discipline ourselves to silence, listening—and to daily time in quiet—tell us about your devotions on this website. I wrote those in the early morning for 20 years, maybe 25 years. And what I was trying to do was be present to the Scripture, listen to God, and to write as honestly as I could. I wasn’t thinking about anybody else but me.

It’s really hard to be honest as a writer. You get these wonderful ideas, and you love to manipulate words and see if you can make it sound good. It’s hard to be honest, especially working for God. That was the thing I was most aware of. “Eugene: Don’t say anything that is not relational, immediate, honest; stay present to the text and be honest before God.” I believed if I could be honest, I could draw some other people to honesty, too.

To read the rest of this interview, you will need to follow this link: http://www.christianitytoday.com/workplace/articles/interviews/eugenepeterson.html

 

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