Prayer, Part ?
The other day I told a friend, who is in my Sunday Bible Class, "Sometimes I feel so blessed that I just don't want to pray and ask God for anything." It would of course sound wrong, even heretical, to some, and even though my heart was sort of in the right place, I was wrong in the thought. I was wrong because asking for things is only a small part of prayer done right.
The acronym helps some with prayer: ACTS--Adoration, Confession, Thanksgiving, and Supplication. I had never really practice the Adoration part, as it seemed odd to tell God things about Himself. Again, I had it wrong, since Adoration is about my heart rather than God's character. I don't have a sense of what to confess without reflecting on who God is. So I am trying to meditate on an attribute of God when I pray, and the one we probably need to focus on most is His goodness.
I say this because Satan would first make us doubt God's goodness, in any number of ways and from any number of perspectives. Satan is satisfied to lead us to believe God's goodness is tainted with lack of wisdom, or an aloof holiness, or an unapproachable righteousness, or an incomplete love in such a way that we cannot trust His best for us. And it's not hard for Satan to find things that would blind us to God's goodness. We all feel the suffering in the world, near and far. If we humans feel it, doesn't God? Is He too cold to feel the suffering in Haiti and Chile, which he could have prevented. As Mary and Martha said to Jesus, "If you had been here, our brother would not have died." So the question is not new to God, nor the emotion. Remember Satan has been attacking the our trust in the goodness of God for a long, long, looooonnnng time.
Ironically, as long as I have been a believer and studied the Scripture, I am an infant when it comes to prayer.
The acronym helps some with prayer: ACTS--Adoration, Confession, Thanksgiving, and Supplication. I had never really practice the Adoration part, as it seemed odd to tell God things about Himself. Again, I had it wrong, since Adoration is about my heart rather than God's character. I don't have a sense of what to confess without reflecting on who God is. So I am trying to meditate on an attribute of God when I pray, and the one we probably need to focus on most is His goodness.
I say this because Satan would first make us doubt God's goodness, in any number of ways and from any number of perspectives. Satan is satisfied to lead us to believe God's goodness is tainted with lack of wisdom, or an aloof holiness, or an unapproachable righteousness, or an incomplete love in such a way that we cannot trust His best for us. And it's not hard for Satan to find things that would blind us to God's goodness. We all feel the suffering in the world, near and far. If we humans feel it, doesn't God? Is He too cold to feel the suffering in Haiti and Chile, which he could have prevented. As Mary and Martha said to Jesus, "If you had been here, our brother would not have died." So the question is not new to God, nor the emotion. Remember Satan has been attacking the our trust in the goodness of God for a long, long, looooonnnng time.
Ironically, as long as I have been a believer and studied the Scripture, I am an infant when it comes to prayer.
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