Psalm 62:8
Trust in Him at all times, O people;
pour out your heart before Him;
God is a refuge for us
Psalm 51:12
Restore to me the joy of your salvation,
and uphold me with a willing spirit.
John 16:24
Until now you have asked nothing in my name.
Ask, and you will receive,
that your joy may be full.
Recently more than ever the importance of prayer has become extremely clear to me. We cannot delight in the Lord if we are not fellowshipping with Him. If we are not coming to God in prayer broken and contrite, humbled before our majestic Creator we will lack the joy salvation. God desires for our hearts to be near Him, but our hearts are prone to wander. If we honor Him with mere duty, but are hearts are far from Him we are no better than the Pharisees. It is essential for us as Christ followers to cast everything upon our Lord and to take refuge in His promise to deliver us.
My prayer life has suffered due to an obvious lack of discipline. To improve our prayer life spiritual discipline is a must. We must learnt to love it. In Psalm 50 God speaks against the wicked "for [they] hate discipline," and He promises to reveal salvation "to the one who orders his way rightly. (Psalm 50:17,23 ESV) It is no wonder that in our present generation that despises authority that we also reject the need for discipline, but it is impossible to live a righteous and holy life without making priorities. We like to do things whenever we are in the "right" mood or have until we have "enough" time, but until we realize that we need to cry out to God even more when we don't "want" to we will always lack the joy of a mature Christian.
The more I have been thinking lately about the spiritual state of America and the more I have been reading Scripture the more I come to believe that we as a church are far too content with spiritual infancy. What I mean by this is that we are far too pleased with only a little Jesus. We do not give God all the glory and majesty due to His name, and our faith reflects it. Our relationship with Christ is shallow, like that of an infant with his father, because we are not unified and we are not growing up into Christ. Yes, we are told to receive the kingdom of God like a child, but we are not called to be spiritually immature. In fact it is quite the opposite in Ephesians Paul tells us that "we are to grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ" (4:15-16)
I believe this is directly related to our prayer life. We don't struggle in prayer like Epaphras so that we may be "mature and fully assured in all the will of God" (Colossians 4:12). We don't prioritize prayer in our life and as a result we don't grow up, we don't have hope in God's promises, and worst of all we don't know Jesus as we should. All throughout Scripture there are commands to pray. I pray and long for us all to understand the sincerity of the importance to cry out to God. It is through prayer that we receive joy from God and that God is glorified in us. God is glorified when we come to Him broken so that He may restore us and fill us with Him. The joy of being filled with the fullness of God is indescribable and it is what compels us to outwardly share God with others. When we are filled with joy and love God we cannot help but to let overflow into every part of our lives bringing Christ with us everywhere shining as a light for the world to see.
My prayer for us is to become a people committed to spiritual discipline. Committed to growing up into spiritual maturity by devoting time to prayer and God's word. The Bible teaches us to pray all we need to do is open it up to the psalms and the Lord's prayer. Truthfully any passage of Scripture can guide is in prayer and we need to use it as such. Through all of this we will become a people filled with the joy of the Spirit and we will become a people anxiously awaiting the return of our Savior.
Ephesians 3:14-21
14For this reason I kneel before the Father, 15from whom his whole family in heaven and on earth derives its name. 16I pray that out of his glorious riches he may strengthen you with power through his Spirit in your inner being, 17so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith. And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, 18may have power, together with all the saints, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, 19and to know this love that surpasses knowledge—that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God.
20Now to him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to his power that is at work within us, 21to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, for ever and ever! Amen.
Oh wow! This is so powerful! Thank you for posting this, Geoff; I really needed to be challenged and encouraged to intensify my prayer life...
ReplyDelete1 Timothy 4:7-10 has also really encouraged me regarding discipline:
Have nothing to do with irreverent, silly myths. Rather train yourself for godliness; for while bodily training is of some value, godliness is of value in every way, as it holds promise for the present life and also for the life to come. The saying is trustworthy and deserving of full acceptance. For to this end we toil and strive, because we have our hope set on the living God, who is the Savior of all people, especially of those who believe.