"Every day counts when we are devoted to God!" -Elizabeth George (A Woman After God's Own Heart)

Jesus was forsaken so we would never be. -Dr. John Barnett

Daily Scripture Verse

"Cast your cares on the Lord and He will sustain you; He will never let the righteous fall." -Psalm 55:22

Thursday, January 25, 2007

Prayer As A Part Of Our Lives




I’ve recently been studying the Gospel of Luke during my quiet time with the Lord, and I came across this verse that really made me think.

“One of those days, Jesus went out to a mountainside to pray, and spent the night praying to God.” -Luke 6:12

A normal person sleeps about 8 hours a night. Jesus spent at least 8 hours praying to the God of the universe that night. And I don’t believe this was some repetitious prayer that so many people repeat from memory.

How much time do we spend praying to the one who loves us so much that He died on the cross for us? I’d have to say that I don’t do it nearly enough.

Another thing that strikes me is the fact that He went to a lonely mountainside to pray. He went alone; no followers, no friends, no teachers of the Law, nobody. It was just Him and God; no distractions.

How many times do we as true followers of Jesus get distracted with all the noise around us? For most of us (including me) the answer is a lot. We tend to start praying then all of a sudden we hear something that catches our attention, and Jesus is forgotten. And then maybe a few hours later we remember that we never finished praying. “Oops, sorry, God. I won’t do that next time.” But odds are we probably will.

“When He (the Lamb of God) had taken it (the scroll), the four living creatures and the twenty-four elders fell down before the Lamb. Each one had a harp and they were holding golden bowls full of incenses, which are the prayers of the saints.” –Revelation 5:8

Focus on the last part of that verse for a moment. “...golden bowls full on incenses, which are the prayers of the saints.”

God loves us so much that when we pray to Him; He puts our prayers in a golden bowl. Our prayers must be really precious to Him if He does that with them.
Prayer isn’t just a quick thing you say before a meal, or bed. It’s a communication with God Almighty. He talks to us through His word (the Bible), and we talk to Him through prayer.
So why can’t we spend more than 5 or 10 minutes talking to Him, but we can spend hours talking to our friends?

He loved us enough to die for us. We can show our appreciation and love by spending more time in prayer with Him.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

amen.

Kingdom Advancer said...

Yes, we certainly should be able to talk to God for more than five minutes. I think our "microwave, ADD" society is part of what has caused that to be such a hard thing to do.

Remember, though, that we are also to have an "attitude of prayer," i.e., "Pray without ceasing." So, although we certainly should have a good prayer time and quiet time with God, we know that we can talk to God anytime for any length of time, and He can talk to us anytime--as in, our Bibles don't have to be open for Him to teach us. Although, granted, it helps. And His lessons usually come back directly to the His Word.

By the way, I thought I'd let you and your readers know that I posted an extensive and comprehensive update on the Dakota Fanning, "Hounddog" situation. (Actually, I've been posting updates, as you know. But this is the first since Tuesday, and the longest.) Prayer is still needed, and the outrage needs to continue, but there's some encouraging news in the article. Plus, I linked to other articles and reviews on the movie.

Here's the article:
http://kingdomadvancing.blogspot.com/2007/01/updates-round-6-on-wrong-in-so-many.html

Anonymous said...

hey..i just read that article about Varieties that kingdom advancer..it is so bad..sexually perverted movie..i can't believe that Dakota Fanning doesn't have a problem with being in this film..trust me..you don't want to read the review..but at the same time people should..it just shows how bad the movie is.

Moriah said...

To Kingdom Advancer: Thanks for the update. When I get enough time I'll check it out. I myself am planning on writing another blog concerning Dakota, but it may be a couple of days before I'll be able to get it up.
I agree with you concerning praying without ceasing and all. I actually realized that I should have put that on this post, but I unfortunately had to get off and could not fix it. Thanks for the comment!