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Posts Tagged ‘1st Thessalonians 5’

Learning To Pray

Posted in Prayer, tagged on June 25, 2011| Leave a Comment »

Pray without ceasing. – 1st Thessalonians 5:17

Learning to pray takes time — not hour time but calendar time.

I heard a preacher tell young seminary students he would not give five (5) cents for a minister who did not spend two (2) hours a day in prayer. I thought that strange because Jesus gave his whole life for people who did not pray at all.

Prayer is not strengthened by length but regularity.

  1. Pick a time each day
    • Preferably the same time daily — Early Christians picked 9:00am and 3:00pm
    • Adjust if the unexpected happens — push it one way or the other if you can, but don’t skip it
  2. Find a place to be alone
    • Susanna Wesley, with twelve (12) children — one being John Wesley, founder of Methodism — had nowhere to go so she covered her head with her apron,  praying right there in the middle of it all
  3. Pray for fifteen (15) minutes
    • Try setting a timer
    • The world will NOT fall apart if you don’t answer the phone or reply to an e-mail for 15 minutes
  4. Prayer includes
    • Quiet singing
    • Repeating a small portion of scripture, thinking and envisioning the meaning of the few words
    • Praising
    • Sitting quietly
    • Asking
    • Thanking
    • All of the above in any combination

Those 15 minutes will eventually become so precious and sweet you will find it hard to wait for the next scheduled time  — you won’t have to.

Sound Bite: You can read a lot of books on prayer, but that isn’t prayer. Take time to rest, to seek, and to be with God.

– fritz@langgang.com

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How to Connect Life and Prayer

Posted in Anthony Bloom, Prayer, Quotes, tagged on April 28, 2011| 2 Comments »

Anthony Bloom

Take a moment to read and consider this prescription for connecting life and prayer; I think you will be blessed, I was!

Prayer arises from two sources: either from our wonder at God and the things of God …or else from the sense of tragedy, our own, and especially other people’s.  But otherwise? At other times life and prayer must be made one. For instance, get up in the morning, stand before God and say: «Lord, bless me, and bless this day that is beginning», and then treat the whole day as a gift of God and consider yourself as God’s envoy in this unknown which is the new day.

This simply means something very difficult: that nothing which happens today will be alien to the will of God: everything without exception is a situation in which God will have placed you in order that you should be His presence, his love, his compassion, his creative intelligence, his courage… And on the other hand, every time you encounter a situation, you will be the one whom God has put there to perform the office of a Christian, to be a particle of the body of Christ and an action of God.

If you do that, you will easily see that at every moment you will have to turn to God and say: «Lord, clarify my intelligence, strengthen and direct my will, give me a heart of fire, help me.» At other moments you may say: «Thank you, Lord!» And if you are wise and know how to be thankful, you will avoid the folly that is called vanity or pride, which consists of imagining that one has done something that one could have left undone. It is God who has done it. It is God who has given us this marvelous gift of having that to do.

And when in the evening you present yourself again before God and make a quick examination of the day, you will be able to sing his praises, glorify Him, thank Him, weep over others and weep over yourself.

If you begin to connect your prayer to life in this way, the two will never again be separated

– Anthony Bloom, September 2, 1967

Sound Bite: You are the one God put there to perform the office of a Christian”

– fritz@langgang.com
Read Metropolitan Anthony’s whole message here.
Related Post: God is At Work – Feburary 24, 2011

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