CONCERNING PRAYER

From Steve Harper at Oboedire on the Internet (http://oboedire.wordpress.com/2014/01/29/let-us-pray-the-essence-of-prayet/): Here is my distilled essence of prayer.  First, prayer is attitude.  This means it includes occasional acts, but it is actually an ongoing disposition of the heart, not limited to fixed times of devotion. Second, prayer is abandonment.  It is taking every moment and saying, “Not my will but thine be done.”  It is the surrender of egotism and the offering of our lives to God–what Saint Francis called being “an instrument of Your peace.” And third, prayer is attentiveness, so that God can communicate with us as much in the ordinary moment as in the spectacular ones. Almost everything else about prayer emerges from one of these three elements.  In them we find the foundation for both personal and corporate prayer.

This week can you pray like Mary in the Gospel of Luke: “I am the servant of the Lord; let it be according to your word.” (Luke 1:38)

From Oswald Chambers, My Utmost for his Highest:

Am I set on my own way for God? We are never free from this snare until we are brought into the experience of the baptism of the Holy Ghost and fire. Obstinacy and self-will will always stab Jesus Christ. It may hurt no one else, but it wounds His Spirit. Whenever we are obstinate and self-willed and set upon our own ambitions, we are hurting Jesus. Every time we stand on our rights and insist that this is what we intend to do, we are persecuting Jesus.^[1] 

This week have you been set upon your own ambitions, or have you been in prayer with your heart right with God, and with abandonment, letting God’s will be sufficient, and attentive to what God is speaking in your life? Or can you pray like Mary, and being the servant of the Lord, can say “let it be according to your word.”