The Father Waits To Answer
Posted by jerrywhite on Aug 30, 2010
“One of the greatest mistakes that a Christian can make, is to imagine that increased social or spiritual activity can be any compensation for the lack of secret communion with God. A prayerful life is always a powerful life; and a prayerless life is always a powerless life. If we cannot pray aright, we really can do nothing aright; but how slow we are to believe that. We find a spiritual law at work in the uniform experience that the more we pray, the more we need to, and want to; and the less we pray, the less is the desire to do so….
The simple fact is, we must find time for prayer, or we shall perish: we must regard it to be as essential to our souls as is our daily dinner to our bodies. For every child of God some time each day must be reserved for private communion with Him; and we can better afford to drop anything in the day’s programme than that.”
W. Graham Scroggie
How to Pray, 11, 13
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“God is looking for prayers to answer. When He does so, it satisfies a part of His Fatherly nature. It allows Him to express His love as nothing else can do.
Your every prayer wafts like incense to heaven and elicits a response from a God who is hungry to move on your behalf.”
Nick Harrison
Magnificent Prayer, 339
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You do not have, because you do not ask.
James 4:2 (ESV)
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Do You Watch With Him?
Posted by jerrywhite on Aug 26, 2010
“These three [Peter, James and John] were appointed by our Lord for one purpose—to see His agony. ‘Tarry ye here, and watch with me.’ He did not put them there to go to sleep; He put them there to wait and watch. The twelve disciples were all He had; He knew that one had gone to betray Him, that Peter would shortly deny Him with oaths and curses, and that all of them would forsake Him and flee; but He took these three with him to see the unveiling of His heart—and they slept for their own sorrow.”
Oswald Chambers
If You Will Ask, 19-20
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“In essence, there is only one thing God asks of us—that we be men and women of prayer, people for whom God is everything and for whom God is enough. That is the root of peace. We have that peace when the gracious God is all we seek. When we start seeking something besides Him, we lose it.”
Brennan Manning
The Ragamuffin Gospel, 46
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Prayer was priority in the life of the Lord Jesus. Prayer was priority in the early church. Prayer was priority in the life of the apostles. Prayer was priority in Paul’s ministry. With Biblical commands like, “pray without ceasing” (1 Thessalonians 5:17), and “continue steadfastly in prayer” (Colossians 4:2), and “praying at all times in the Spirit with all prayer and supplication” (Ephesians 6:18), there comes a compelling question, “Does prayer hold that kind of priority in my life?” Do I watch with Him to see the unveiling of His heart, or do I sleep in my own selfishness?
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The Pleasure Of Worship
Posted by jerrywhite on Aug 23, 2010
“We evangelicals do not know much about worship. Evangelism is our specialty, not worship. We have little sense of the greatness of Almighty God. We tend to be cocky, flippant, and proud. And our worship services are often ill-prepared, slovenly, mechanical, perfunctory, and dull…. Much of our public worship is ritual without reality, form without power, religion without God.”
John Stott, quoted by Oswald Sanders
Enjoying Intimacy With God, 20
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“The blessed and inviting truth is that God is the most winsome of all beings, and in our worship of Him we should find unspeakable pleasure.
The living God has been willing to reveal Himself to our seeking hearts. He would have us know and understand that He is all love and that those who trust Him need never know anything but that love.
God would have us know that He is just, indeed, and He will not condone sin. He has tried to make it overwhelmingly plain to us that through the blood of the everlasting covenant He is able to act toward us exactly as if we had never sinned.
Unbeknown to the understanding of a Pharisee, God communes with His redeemed ones in an easy, uninhibited fellowship that is restful and healing to the soul.
The God who has redeemed us in love, through the merits of the Eternal Son, is not unreasonable. He is not selfish. Neither is He temperamental. What He is today we shall find Him tomorrow and the next day and next year.”
A. W. Tozer
Whatever Happened to Worship? 28-29
Compiled and Edited by Gerald B. Smith
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The twenty-four elders fall down before him who is seated on the throne and worship him who lives forever and ever.
Revelation 4:10 (ESV)
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Simple Short Prayers
Posted by jerrywhite on Aug 18, 2010
And when you pray, do not heap up empty phrases as the Gentiles do, for they think that they will be heard for their many words. Do not be like them, for your Father knows what you need before you ask him.
Matthew 6:7-8 (ESV)
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“Short prayers are long enough. There were but three words in the petition which Peter gasped our, but they were sufficient for his purpose. [Beginning to sink, he cried, saying, Lord save me, Matthew 14:30] Not length but strength is desirable. A sense of need is a mighty teacher of brevity. If our prayers had less of the tail feathers of pride and more wing they would be all the better. Verbiage is to devotion as chaff to the wheat. Precious things lie in small compass, and all that is real prayer in many a long address might have been uttered in a petition as short as that of Peter.”
Charles H. Spurgeon
Morning and Evening, January 14, P.M.
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“ Many words in our prayer come from our flesh. Our prayer may be long-draw-out with many words which are not real or effective. Frequently, in our time of prayer we circle around the world several times, using up time and energy without obtaining any answer to real prayer. Though you have prayed much, your prayer will not be answered nor will it be effective. You simply expend your time and strength ill-advisedly. Prayer need not be too long. There is no necessity to insert many speeches into it. Be careful lest you have too much argument in your prayer. We need only to present our heart desire before God. That alone is enough.”
Watchman Nee quoted by Nick Harrison
Magnificent Prayer, 156
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Note the model prayer the Lord Jesus taught. It was simple, brief, intimate and trusting.
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The Rest Of God
Posted by jerrywhite on Aug 16, 2010
“There is a rest of God. That rest, through the ministry of our High Priest, we are invited to share. Cleansed and empowered within, we can live within the Holiest of all in the Presence of God where there is rest.
Some have lived in the atmosphere of the Divine Serenity. The son of the scholarly and saintly Bishop Wescott said concerning his father, ‘In his later life my Father obviously lived in two worlds at once. While his feet were set in the world, his spirit was in the presence of God. Everything that came to him was met in that presence. Nothing could ever surprise him from that attitude.’
That is what life in the Holiest means—and it is always restful.
The inspired writer of the Epistle to the Hebrews speaks of it as a life anchored within the veil, kept steady and secure in times of storm.”
G. H. Morling
The Quest for Serenity, 42
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It is possible to live on two levels at once. It was the way of the Lord Jesus when He walked the earth. Sometimes His inner conversation with His Father broke forth in voiced prayer for others to hear. Saints down through the ages discovered that one is able to live in both the inner sanctuary of the soul while outwardly attending to the necessary responsibilities that come with every day life. Brother Lawrence is an example. He wrote the letters we know as The Practice of the Presence of God. While doing his duties in the kitchen, he enjoyed the Lord’s presence and fellowshipped with Him. This is a practice we must learn to do, but it can be learned. As we learn how to do this, we enter into the Lord’s rest and we are not so distracted by our external demands. Our inner man can rule our outer man rather than our outer man overruling our inner man. As this occurs, His peace reigns.
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So then, there remains a Sabbath rest for the people of God, for whoever has entered God’s rest has also rested from his works as God did from his.
Hebrews 4:9-10 (ESV)
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