Too Busy To Pray: Part Three

In the eighteenth Psalm and the first verse David begins his prayerful psalm with these beautiful words, "I love you, O LORD, my strength." The immediate question that raised in my mind was, "when was the last time I started one of my prayers expressing my love for God?" After all, I love him because He first loved me, I love him because he created me and gave me the capacity for love, indeed, in God alone I discover what true love is, so is it too much for me to take time in my prayers throughout the day to say, "I love you, O LORD, my strength." So may I ask you, have you told God you love him recently?

Too Busy To Pray: Part Two

The following is a quote from R.C. Sproul's book, "Following Christ." This has several excellent chapters on prayer that I would suggest anyone to read.

"Looking at the issue from another perspective, however, we ought to be surprised every time we experience forgiveness. We ought never to take God’s mercy and forgiveness for granted, even though we live in a culture that does. It is terrifying to consider the ease with which we take God’s grace for granted. I occasionally ask collegians, seminarians, seminary professors, and ministers the questions, “Is God obligated to be loving? Is he bound to forgiveness and grace?” Again and again their answers are in the affirmative: “Yes, of course, it’s God’s nature to be loving. He’s essentially a God of love. If he didn’t show love, he wouldn’t be God. If God is God, then he must be merciful!”
He must be merciful? If God must be merciful, then his mercy is no longer free or voluntary. It has become obligatory; if so, then it is no longer mercy, but justice. God is never required to be merciful. As soon as we think God is obligated to be merciful, a red light should flash in our brains, indicating that we are no longer thinking about mercy, but about justice. We need to do more than sing “Amazing Grace”—we need to be repeatedly amazed by grace."

R.C. Sproul, Following Christ (Wheaton, IL: Tyndale House Publishers, 1996, c1991).

Too Busy to pray: Some Food For Thought

Have you ever thought to yourself at any time that you are too busy to pray? Be honest, even if you can trick others you can't trick God. Now that your being honest with yourself, lets be even more honest. This idea that we are too busy to pray is a sinful thought manifested from our selfish lusts and desires. We have too many things crammed into our life that we think we must do that God just gets pushed out the time frame. By the time we are finished doing everything that we wanted to get done, there is no time left to pray.

The key word to catch in that phrase is "wanted." In reality, if we "wanted" to pray to God, we could never be "too busy." That whole phrase "too busy to pray" is just ridiculous and reflective of our self indulging society. Stop and give this some food for thought: God is our Creator, in Him we live and move and have our being. We enjoy today and are busy today because God has given us life! Can we not then at the very least take a few moments each and every day to stop thinking about ourselves and thank God for the busy day? That would at least be a good first step.

John Wesley once remarked that he didn’t think very highly of ministers who didn’t spend at least four hours per day in prayer. Luther said that he prayed regularly for an hour every day except when he experienced a particularly busy day. Then he prayed for two hours. We need more Christians like that in today's world; Christians who breathe prayer like they breathe air.

Probably more to follow...

Prayer

I would ask for your prayers as I will be preaching this Sunday, January 14th, at Wayside Gospel Chapel. I will be speaking from Matthew 18:1-6. Thank you much!

Careful what you pray!

I can't count the number of times I have heard someone address God as Father in their prayer, and then moments later, thank the Father for dying on the cross for their sin. This is a heresy known as "Patripassianism." Our prayers must not be vague, rambling and poorly reasoned but rather specific, clear, and well reasoned. After all, God is to be worshipped "in spirit and in truth" (John 4:24).