Walk with P & me 12

Walk with P & me  12

Another weekend of net mending and To Do’s.  But what’s new is prayer. 

We had been remiss in our prayers together and had been talking about fixing that and we did.

Patti is a silent prayer and I, being used to offering public prayer, am not – but I can be.  So we hit the middle ground.  We discuss what we have on our hearts and then we kneel together and pray silently yet simultaneously.  It’s a meaningful time for us and it’s without struggle.  We are blessed.

I have just finished reading Let Us Pray which is a book of articles from various sources like R.C. Sproul, John MacArthur and John Piper.  It has been a real blessing is getting my focus back on prayer and back in prayer. 

The one thing that really stands out is that all the authors touch on the model prayer.  Now I know this isn’t news to most of you and it wasn’t “new’ to me but reading through this work crystalized a very important point.  It is the context set in that model that needs to be in our minds as we pray.

It begins with “Our Father in heaven.”  That’s the “to.”  He’s the one to whom we take our prayers.  I know – duhhhh.  But I had never thought of praying about that short phrase and it meaning and import.  So I began to take time in prayer to actually pray about my Father in heaven. 

It is interesting to me how all the “needs” on the list want to get out in front of doing that.  It takes work – at least for me – to focus on Him and tell my “needs” to hang on.  But it has been a great help in calming my head and heart and focusing on all the blessings I have.  Doing this even brings one to the point where in light of all the blessings I’ve enjoyed and in some cases abused I am a little abashed when I get to my “needs.”

Next I pray about, “Thy Kingdom come.”  That’s kind of a two pointed prayer.  It brings to mind His Kingship in and over me as well as the promise of being in His eternal Kingdom for real one day.  This too brings thanksgiving and conviction.  Thanksgiving for the eternal security I have in Him and conviction concerning my struggle to live as a good citizen of His Kingdom.

Finally I pray, “thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.”  Here I am amazed at the conundrum of His will being done.  Greatly thankful for His sovereign will,  I struggle against my flesh wanting my will to be done or at least His will to be done my way in my time. 

Through this I find I am able to get myself out of the way and then pray without pretext.  I am able to yield (?) – yeah, yield my petitions to Him knowing He know and will do what is best.  Don’t get me wrong, I still make suggestions but He and I don’t pretend they are right –  they are just my ideas – or struggles.

I am growing more convinced that we can never pray too much and we tend towards doing way too much.  I used to read of the old saints and the time they spent in prayer and thought they were – well, kind of weird, kind of monkish.  But I am growing more and more jealousy of time to pray – to sit and shut out everything and take the cares on my heart for His people and His work to Him and have a talk.

Well, that’s where we are in net mending – pray we will grow more and more jealous of time to pray and that we will indeed stay in Him as we do so.

Here’s a prayer that I find very helpful when I have too much on my mind to pray well.

From:  Puritan Prayers

Holy Lord, I have sinned times without number, and been guilty of pride and unbelief, of failure to find Thy mind in Thy Word, of neglect to seek Thee in my daily life. My transgressions and short-comings present me with a list of accusations, but I bless Thee that they will not stand against me, for all have been laid on Christ.  Go on to subdue my corruptions, and grant me grace to live above them. Let not the passions of the flesh nor lustings of the mind bring my spirit into subjection, but do Thou rule over me in liberty and power.

I thank Thee that many of my prayers have been refused. I have asked amiss and do not have, I have prayed from lusts and been rejected, I have longed for Egypt and been given a wilderness. Go on with Thy patient work, answering 'no' to my wrongful prayers, and fitting me to accept it. Purge me from every false desire, every base aspiration, everything contrary to Thy rule. I thank Thee for Thy wisdom and Thy love, for all the acts of discipline to which I am subject, for sometimes putting me into the furnace to refine my gold and remove my dross.

No trial is so hard to bear as a sense of sin. If Thou shouldst give me choice to live in pleasure and keep my sins, or to have them burnt away with trial, give me sanctified affliction.  Deliver me from every evil habit, every accretion of former sins, everything that dims the brightness of Thy grace in me, everything that prevents me taking delight in Thee. Then I shall bless Thee, God of jeshurun, for helping me to be upright.

Anonymous (2010-07-01). Puritan Prayers (Kindle Locations 5-15).  . Kindle Edition.