I love to read Tozer. He never fails to touch my soul as he writes and it is always practical, something I can practice today! So was this morning's devotional which made me think to share it with you. I will post more later on why this has been such an incredibly difficult week and therefore why this particular devotional meant so much to me!
"When entering the prayer chamber, we must come filled with faith and armed with courage. Nowhere else in the whole field of religious thought and activity is courage so necessary as in prayer. The successful prayer must be one without condition. We must believe that God is love and that, being love, He cannot harm us but must ever do us good. Then we must throw ourselves before Him and pray with boldness for whatever we know our good and His glory require, and the cost is no object! Whatever He in His love and wisdom would assess against us, we will accept with delight because it pleased Him. Prayers like that cannot go unanswered. The character and reputation of God guarantee their fulfillment.
We should always keep in mind the infinite loving kindness of God. No one need fear to put his life in His hands. His yoke is easy; His burden is light."
From: We Travel an Appointed Way, p. 48
13 comments:
hi halfmom, i once again have enjoyed your post:)
have you seen Expelled yet? it's a documentary by Ben Stein. i'm seeing it tonight and i'm thinking it's something right up our mutual alley. let me know if you have/plan to.
:)
The problem I have with prayer is that it has been shown beyond any statistical doubt that fortune and misfortune strikes those who do and don't pray equally arbitrarily.
In my experience it can be more rewarding, and certainly more productive, to get on and try to influence events by your own actions rather than simply to go to church and pray for it.
Dana - a group of friends are going together next Sunday evening - it will be fun to discuss it then.
Maalie - there is not lack of "getting on with it" in prayer - we just wait to find out which directin to get on it in!
I'd like to have the reference of that peer-reviewed literature on fortune and misfortune by the way.
And, as a side note, although it should probably be the main note - prayer is not to change God or to get Him to do things our way - prayer is to get our hearts aligned with His so we hear His spirit and our actions are then in accord with His will. Lots of people pray - but scripture says that it is the prayer of a righteous man that availeth (I do like the King James) that availeth much. So I take that to mean that much prayer is just totally going nowhere!
i'm so glad you are home even if only for a day!!!
pary!!!!!! arghghghghghghgh!!!!
PRAY! sorry!
I dont agree at all... why read other books? Isn't the bible enough?? is it a "jesus plus plan" or something?
I knew a girl who would pary that her cakes would turn out... And she burnt them instead of turning the oven off... stupid girl!
actually maalie i remembered hearing about studies on the benefits of prayer and looked it up for you.
in a study led by Dr. Mitchell Krucoff (Duke University) - 150 cardiac patients scheduled for angioplasty were studied. the study found that those receiving "off-site" intercessory prayer, without their knowledge-had fewer complications than any other group, including those who received other in person "complementary therapies" (guided imagery, stress relaxation, or healing touch) before surgery. this study appears in an issue of American Heart Journal.
in another study - Dr. Rogerio Lobo, chair of Obstetrics and Gynecology at Columbia University's School of Medicine studied the effect of prayer on women seeking to conceive. his research found that women who were prayed for were twice as likely to become pregnant as the women in the control group who were not prayed for. the findings were published in an issue of the Journal of Reproductive Medicine
Jesus prayed to His Father, and this is our greatest example, that we need to pray.
Great quote.
Our heavenly Father surely loves us, and will give us what is for our good, and His glory.
I could pray that I would never feel any pain, and have millions of dollars, and never treat anyone recklessly, and on and on.
But the key to praying is the Lord's prayer, as Susan gave us in her previous post, and all of Scripture really we can glean from of how to pray to God.
And to pray from the heart, which is your whole being, who you are, the deepest longings, hurts, and joys, is essential as well.
also maalie i would urge you to see Expelled. lots of interviews with Dakwins and also Daniel Dennet.
you keep asking us for peer reviewed evidence on God and the possibility of a designer in the universe. this entire film addresses many many well renowned scientists who were fired, did not receive tenure, etc. for merely entertaining the possibility of a designer.
most notable in the film is an article published in Proceedings of the Biological Society of Washington - a peer reviewed journal you will note. Richard Sternberg (then editor of the journal, he has 2 PhDs - in molecular evolution and in systems science) was essentially fired for allowing a peer reviewed article in the journal on intelligent design.
i urge you at least to see the film and the interview of Richard Dawkins at the end. it's more than worth your time and the cost of a ticket:)
Yes, Good thoughts, Susan. Tozer is good in so many ways.
Maalie,
I'd really like to challenge you to read Philip Yancey's book, Prayer: Does It Make Any Difference?
Why not give it a try? If not for your sake, then just for your friends, like Susan?
He asks all the hard questions, but has some interesting, and I think good answers.
I agree with you, Susan, that many prayers are getting no where. But I do think that to pray, really pray to God, even if our prayers are not really according to his will, or revealed will (see the psalms, for example) can help us to find that will as God moves in our hearts to change us and rearrange our lives and priorities.
Another reason I like this book by Yancey on prayer is that he tends to be a sceptic by nature himself. He was burned by the Christianity he grew up in, down south in a fundamentalist church in which African-Americans were not welcome. He didn't come back easily to the faith (I think his wife, before they married, was important in helping him do so).
Yancey asks hard questions that even had me reeling, as a believer now for decades. Yancey asks the hard questions and refuses to settle for easy answers.
Yet in the end, if God exists and Scripture is the revelation of God in Jesus, then there are answers to be found, and indeed God has chosen that humans in our prayer and what comes out of that, can make a difference!
And I want to add it's more than just changing the pray-ers. It's working in God's new creation work in Jesus, to bring in that into this world in everything, in scientific work and a whole host of other things. When done in the Lord (1 Corinthians 15, the end of the resurrection chapter) they're not in vain either in this life, or in the time when all things are made new.
But aside from my words here, I'd say read Yancey's book, even the parts you don't agree with to at least get his or a believer's perspective.
Above all, for me, I have to go back to Scripture, and particularly the gospels, and there I see God in the human Jesus. A god not easy to understand, but a god who seems quite well to back up the claims that are there made.
Okay, I'm a book person. So take all my words with a grain of salt. But don't be afraid to read the books! (N.T. Wright, an Anglican Bishop from UK and his book "The Challenge of Jesus" is another great one, and I like much the one I'm reading now, "Surprised by Hope". Keep getting interrupted, but it is good!)
sadly, I'm not sure when we will have our beloved Maalie back - he is back from Scotland and now headed to Austria.
Simon - you have an excellent point. Nothing is needed besides scripture. However, that does not mean that nothing is helpful in understanding scripture. I, for one, am a global learning - I need to see the big picture and I think in terms of analogy.
So, if you talk to me about agriculture, mountains, growing things, science, fishing - anything I already have experience with, and use it to make an analogy, then sometimes it helps me to understand a scriptural principle better.
I think this also is one of the reasons Jesus spoke so often in parables that used agricultural images. The people were agrarian and they understood what he meant by such word pictures.
I think this is particularly important when we're talking about how to actually apply a scriptural principle to our modern day lives.
But again, nothing else is needed -for me, Tozer's words give me a better understanding and greater ability to walk out what I actually believe
"Then we must throw ourselves before Him and pray with boldness for whatever we know our good and His glory require, and the cost is no object! . . . Prayers like that cannot go unanswered. The character and reputation of God guarantee their fulfillment." -- Right on (for the most part)! Jesus' prayer begins that the will of God be done as his kingship (basileia) is exercised. With this as the source of our requests, we can be assured that we're praying according to God's will and thus receiving (1 John 5).
HOWEVER, the Psalms and other Wisdom literature of Scripture teach us well that many such prayers still go unanswered. Even the godly, faithful men of old "died without inheriting the promises." When God's kingdom fully comes, then we shall have such prayers. But in the meantime, his glory is found most fully in our persistent trust in his goodness, denying ourselves daily, and serving others.
Drew, I must disagree. Promises unseen are not the same things as unanswered prayer.
Just because they died without inheriting the earthly promises does not mean their prayers went unanswered. Prayers are answered on God's timetable, not ours.
I draw your attention to Rom 15:8 where it clearly states that their promises have been received.
For I say that Christ has become a servant to the circumcision on behalf of the truth of God to confirm the promises given to the fathers.
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