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Spiritual Disciplines (2of4) - Prayer

Prayer

The second most important spiritual discipline is prayer.  It can be argued that there are anywhere from 9, 12, or even more spiritual disciplines but Carl Lundquist stated that “Whatever varying religious exercises we may practice, without the two basic ones of prayer and Bible reading the others are empty and powerless.  We are expected to pray. 
                Matthew 6:5 “And when you pray…”
                Matthew 6:6 “But when you pray…”
                Matthew 6:7 “And when you pray…”
                Matthew 6:9 “This, then, is how you should pray…”

Colossians 4:2 tells us to devote ourselves to prayer.  We are all devoted to something, most of us are devoted to too many things, I know I feel spread too thin a lot.  But when we make something a priority we make sacrifices for it, we dedicate time to it, and God is clearly calling us to be devoted to prayer.  After all his son Jesus prayed.  Luke 5:16 tells us “But Jesus often withdrew to lonely places and prayed”.  If Jesus needed to pray, how much more do we need prayer?  We aren’t expected to be perfect at praying as soon as we become a Christian, prayer is learned, which is a good thing because that means we can get better at it.  I read one book where prayer was actually compared to a crying baby, which I’ve heard a lot of recently.  When a baby cries he is crying for basic communication, and our prayer lives may start out that way.  But just like babies learn to talk we should eventually learn to pray deeper and more effectively.  And the best way to learn to pray is by praying.  We also learn to pray by praying with others.  One of the most powerful things for me over the last year has been the prayer at the deacon meetings.  At the end of each meeting, we go around the room and we all pray for a specific prayer request and anything on our mind.  Hearing these men pray has helped my prayer life, not by learning phrases that sound good in front of the church, but by learning principles of prayer: how to pray for those in need, how to express thanks to God, how to pray for the needs of our church. 
I want to challenge everyone reading this to plan to pray.  If you want to take a week-long vacation you don’t just wake up one morning and say “Hey, let’s go!”  You wouldn’t have anything packed, you wouldn’t know where you’re going, or even if you had a place to stay.  But we do that every day with our prayer lives.  We get up and at the convenient times we bow to pray for a couple minutes.  But we don’t have a certain time, place, or procedure for our prayer…if we plan to pray we will be more apt to do it and it will move us into a deeper relationship with Christ.  If you fail to plan, you plan to fail.

#discipline #prayer

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