The battle of prayer is against two things in the earthlies: wandering thoughts and lack of intimacy with God’s character as revealed in His word. Neither can be cured at once, but they can be cured by discipline.
Prayer (this side of heaven) will always be hard and will always take discipline, but when I see it as a means to communion with God, it feels more like a “get to” than a “have to.”
Abide and Obey by Kevin DeYoung taken from The Hole in Our Holiness by Kevin DeYoung, copyright 2012, Crossway Books, a division of Good News Publishers, Wheaton Illinois 60187, www.crosswaybooks.org, p. 131.
In every good work, we must depend on the Lord. If anyone rises so that he may give the time which he takes from sleep to prayer and meditation, let him be sure that Satan will try to put obstacles in the way.
The Autobiography of George Muller, 1984, p. 119. All quotations taken from books published by Whitaker House are used with permission of the publisher. Whitaker House books are available at Christian bookstores everywhere. Get this book!
It is not possible to live in sin, and at the same time, by communion with God, draw down from heaven everything one needs for this life.
The Autobiography of George Muller, 1984, p. 42. All quotations taken from books published by Whitaker House are used with permission of the publisher. Whitaker House books are available at Christian bookstores everywhere.
Our trouble is that so often we come to God with our greeds rather than our needs. Already having everything we need, we pray for what we want. This becomes the source of our discontent: we desire things that God has not promised.
Philip Graham Ryken Give Us Today Our Daily Bread from When You Pray by Philip Graham Ryken, © 2000, Crossway Books, a division of Good News Publishers, Wheaton Illinois 60187, www.crosswaybooks.org, page 112.
It was a great breakthrough to realize that God was not necessarily leading me to pray for everything with equal intensity. To try to do so will kill a prayer life. To learn to let God set the agenda of our prayer life will resurrect it.
A Journey to Victorious Praying, Moody Publishers, 2003, p. 54.
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The highest position, in the greatest and most complicated monarchy, did not keep Daniel from daily, frequent supplication.
All hindrance to prayer arises from ignorance of the teaching of God’s Holy Word on the life of holiness He has planned for all His children or from an unwillingness to consecrate ourselves fully to Him. When we can truthfully say to our Father, “All that I am and have is Thine,” then He can say to us, “All that is Mine is thine.”
The Kneeling Christian
