Wednesday, July 13, 2011

PRAYER IS LIKE BREATHING…


This subject is clearly on my mind today and this is what I want to write about.  It’s about Prayer!  I write this as the day is ending and all day we have gotten news of someone needing prayer one after another.  We are feeling helpless, we want to go to them but what can you do, we ask ourselves? Our friend found out today she has breast cancer, in a few days she will get the details of where this journey with take its course.  Another friend ask prayer for her husband who had a massive stroke and his future hangs in balance. That is just a few to put on our list of all the others.  One good thing happen today among all the above.  My niece Angie, text me with exciting news with a sonogram picture of our newest family member she will be having in February, this was happy news among the sadness we felt within an hour ….

What do you do when you hurt so badly for your friends in need and you don’t know what to do? You pray.  That is one thing that I have always felt I didn’t understand, and I know we will never.  We aren’t wired to know we’re just told to do it and like we breathe each breath.   You ask Father for answers and sometimes you just hear “crickets”. I’m just sharing my heart here!  Don’t judge me you know what I am talking about.   I think, no I know... this is the release we need when we hurt with those who hurt.  Prayer is giving it to God who then takes it and works it to His good not ours.  I had a paradigm shift and felt so small when I heard this the other day. It was a comment given after a beautiful young lady was killed in an auto accident, this person near to her said:

“Many times we pray for God to heal someone or to keep him or her safe. Sometimes God chooses to make them perfect instead, and brings them home with him.”

Wow! That brings you into focus on leaving it with the One who knows all things! I think I will take the Devotional I read each year when it comes around on May 26th in My Utmost for His Highest and digest it into my soul that is needing it right now.   Prayer is not just something we do once in a while, it is part of us that gives us relief while knowing we can’t fix it or control it. Let's read this together, maybe you are where I am today.....

Pray without ceasing . . . —1 Thessalonians 5:17

Our thinking about prayer, whether right or wrong, is based on our own mental conception of it. The correct concept is to think of prayer as the breath in our lungs and the blood from our hearts. Our blood flows and our breathing continues, “without ceasing”; we are not even conscious of it, but it never stops. And we are not always conscious of Jesus keeping us in perfect oneness with God, but if we are obeying Him, He always is. Prayer is not an exercise; it is the life of the saint. Beware of anything that stops the offering up of prayer. “Pray without ceasing . . .”— maintain the childlike habit of offering up prayer in your heart to God all the time.

Jesus never mentioned unanswered prayer. He had the unlimited certainty of knowing that prayer is always answered. Do we have through the Spirit of God that inexpressible certainty that Jesus had about prayer, or do we think of the times when it seemed that God did not answer our prayer? Jesus said, “. . . everyone who asks receives . . .” (Matthew 7:8). Yet we say, “But . . . , but . . . .” God answers prayer in the best way— not just sometimes, but every time. However, the evidence of the answer in the area we want it may not always immediately follow. Do we expect God to answer prayer?
The danger we have is that we want to water down what Jesus said to make it mean something that aligns with our common sense. But if it were only common sense, what He said would not even be worthwhile. The things Jesus taught about prayer are supernatural truths He reveals to us.

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