What Are You Praying About?
This morning I read the following in Skip Hertzig's book, When God Prays: "Our true priorities--the things that are really important to us--will show themselves in our prayer life."
This gets me thinking that if we want to do a self-diagnostic about what's at the top of our personal "to do" lists we might ask the following:
--First, do I actually even have a prayer life? Do I make prayer a priority? Do I think I spend adequate time praying? How can I carve out a larger space for prayer in my busy day? Could I ever get to the point where I pray without stopping like God, through Paul, urges us to do?
--Second, how do I feel about my prayer life? Am I comfortable praying? Do I look forward to it? Do I dread it? (Last night I suggested to my 13-year-old that she pray about something that worries her. I said that praying about things helped me feel calmer about them. She replied, "That's because you are a good pray-er." I think that response says less about the way I pray than it says about the way she feels when she prays--awkward, ineffective, less good at it than others--in fact, the way we all feel sometimes.)
--Third, when I pray, what do I pray about? Do my prayers reflect an appropriate mix of the issues and concerns as we see, for example, reflected in the prayer Jesus taught His disciples to pray? My daily physical needs, my need to be forgiven by God, my need to forgive others, my need for His constant protection from temptation and evil, my desire to see His will accomplished on earth, and my recognition of His holiness, authority, power and glory?
"Ask and it will be given to you: seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives; he who seeks finds; and to him who knocks, the door will be opened." Matthew 7:7
posted by Catherine Reid @ 9:55 AM
2 Comments:
This is really quite good, I enjoyed some of the Christian readings on this website!
My feeling is that we all want to live like Christ did, even our own family as we attend Mass most Sunday mornings, however, a lot of church attending Christians, their writers and even our high priests, pastors and delegates do not practise what they claim to believe in,that is the problem!
Our Father and his son never lied, Jesus was unselfish.
It is imperative to not only believe and pray, but to live like Christ did, and to live like God, Allah, Jehovah, The Creator, expects us too!
I am not sure why we so often miss the “just do it” point as it relates to living our everyday lives the way Christ lived and taught. “Doing” is a constant theme in Christ’s teachings and the letters to the early Christians. Christ said, “Anyone who has faith in Me will do what I have been doing.” John 14:12. He also said that anyone who heard His words but did not do them would be like a foolish man building his house on sand. On the other hand, He said that people who heard His words and actually did them would be like people who wisely built on a firm and lasting foundation. Matthew 7:26-27.
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