What Is Our Prayer Life Like?

As we look forward to a new session of Adult Sunday School classes within the next two weeks, I stumbled upon this blog entry about our prayer lives. The class for women on Sunday morning will focus on prayer but this posting should be read and considered carefully by all of us.

Here's an excerpt:

For many Christians, and unfortunately for myself as well, our prayer lives fall far short of being the sort of thing that we would expect to be feared by hell. Instead of engaging in warfare in the Spirit, we spend most of our time presenting God with a check-list of things that we'd like Him to do for us. In fact, a good friend of mine once told me that "for most Christians, prayer is nothing more than an attempt to manipulate God with their thoughts". And I cannot count the number of prayer meetings that I have been in where the level of prayer never rises beyond telling God what is on our mind in order to move to what is on His mind. Because of this, I fear that when we stand before Jesus, He will say something to the effect of "Steven, I had many more things to tell you, but you could not bear them." It's just like Leonard Ravenhill used to say: "We are still paddling on the edge of the ocean of the possibilities of grace." There is so much more depth and breadth to prayer that we can't even appreciate, because we have stayed in the shallow end of the pool while all the while God is calling us to come out deeper and experience the fullness of His grace.

You can read the entire article here

By the way, we have an excellent book on prayer in our bookstore. The "Valley of Vision" demonstrates quite dramatically the way the Puritans prayed their theology and faith in their prayers. It's a great example of what God centered, Christ focused prayers should be. It makes a great devotional and a meaningful example of how our prayers should be made.