kellym40 General

Creating and Sustaining a Life of Prayer, Part 4

This is part four of my prayer series. I hope you’ve enjoyed it and have been able to take away helpful information about your own prayer life. This series was built on the foundation of learning about prayer, how to use it in your daily life, and, today, learn to create and sustain a life of prayer.

A helpful way to do that is to break down the way in which you pray. Let’s take the word PRAY and make an acronym. By doing this, it makes praying more meaningful.

The first letter in our acronym (P) stands for PRAISE. Let praise begin your prayer. Be thankful. Psalm 100:1-4 says, “Make a joyful noise to the Lord, all the earth! Serve the Lord with gladness! Come into His presence with singing! Know that the Lord, He is God! It is He who made us, and we are His; we are His people, and the sheep of His pasture. Enter His gates with thanksgiving, and His courts with praise! Give thanks to Him; bless His name!”

For the third letter (A) we ASK. Ask God for good things. Matthew 7:7-11 tells us, “Ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives, and the one who seeks finds, and to the one who knocks it be opened. Or which one of you, if his son asks him for brad will give hi a stone? Or if he asks for a fish, will give him a serpent? If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father who is in heaven give good things to those who ask him!” And remember, God wants you to ask. He will answer, but remember to give thanks to God, glorify Him. (John 14:13). Whatever you ask should be consistent with His word. (John 15:7). And what you ask of the Lord, should bring you joy. (John 16:23-24).

The second letter is (R) and stands for REPENT. Be sorrowful for whatever wrong you have done, even if you don’t know if what you did was wrong. Ask God to help you see whatever wrongdoing you may have done and be sorrowful and show remorse. Repent. Ask for forgiveness. Refer to Psalm 19:12, 14, where it says, “Who can discern his errors? Declare me innocent from hidden faults. Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be acceptable in your sight, O Lord, my rock and my redeemer.”

The final letter (Y) represents a time to be still. It means to YIELD. This is when you pause and stop talking, and you wait, listen, and seek to hear from God. How do you practice yielding to God when you pray? Psalm 37:4 says, “Delight yourself in the Lord, and he will give you the desires of your heart.”

So use PRAY when you pray. Let it help you continue your prayer life and you may see the goodness and wonders of God. Romans 12:12 tells us, “Rejoice in hope, be patient in tribulation, be constant in prayer.”

One of my favorite passages in the bible is from Psalm 63. In verses 1-4 it says, “O God, your are my God; earnestly I seek you; my soul thirst for you; my flesh faints for you, as in a dry and weary land where there is no water. So I have looked upon you in the sanctuary beholding your power and glory. Because your steadfast love is better than life, my lips will praise you. So I will bless you as long as I live; in your name I will lift up my hands.” This also refers to another Psalm, as in Psalm 141:1-2, “O Lord, I call upon you; hasten to me! Give ear to my voice when I call to you! Let my prayer be counted as incense before you, and the lifting up of my hands as the evening sacrifice!”

Again, I hope you’ve enjoyed this series. I will pray that you may keep that focus to Christ Jesus and the heavenly Father. Remember also that God hears us and knows what may be in the silence of our hearts. So take comfort in knowing that, as it says in Romans 8:26, “Likewise the Spirit helps us in our weakness. For we do not know what to pray for as we ought, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us with groanings too deep for words.”

Take care and God bless you!

kellym40 General

Creating and Sustaining a Life of Prayer, Part 3

This week is part three of my four-part series on prayer. How are you doing on your prayer life? Prayer is essential for our relationship with God. I have already said it is a conversation with God, so open up to Him about anything.

Last week, I talked about sin and confessing those sins to God. He is good and he hears what we have to say. If we are truly sorrowful, He will surely heal a contrite heart.

This week I want to talk about being thankful in your praying. So when you pray, you can also be intentional. Count your blessings to cultivate a grateful a heart. Some ways you can do that is to stop and smell the roses (thank God for creation), smile (thank God for what we have), don’t stop believing (remember what Jesus did for us, keep the faith).

Here’s a little exercise for you to do over the course of five days. In those five days, begin thanking God for your blessings. Do this by organizing circles of people to pray for. Divide them into three groups – Inner Circle, Middle Circle and Outer Circle.

Your Inner Circle should be your smallest circle and should consist of a close group of friends and family. Your next circle – the Middle – should be a little bigger and would consist of good friends, acquaintances and extended family. Your largest circle would be your Outer Circle. This circle is comprised of people we don’t know or have few interactions with. For example, these people could be a celebrity, delivery person, neighbor down the street, etc.

Spend time organizing your circles and make a plan to go to God on their behalf regularly. Once you make a plan to do this for five days, then make it part of your daily prayer routine. Keep this in mind as your are creating your circles and forming your daily prayer life, Philemon 1:4-6 says, “I thank my God always when I remember you in my prayers, because I hear of your love and of the faith that you have toward the Lord Jesus and for all the saints, and I pray that the sharing of your faith may become effective for the full knowledge of every good thing that is in us for the sake of Christ.“

Another note on prayer is that God answers our prayers. Sometimes, though, it may not seem like it. So the important thing is to remember to not be negative if it doesn’t appear your prayer was answered in the way you wanted. God has a plan. Change your “why” into “how.” Ask yourself, “How am I going to use this?” The objective, remember, is to have an intimate relationship with God. Philippians 4:6-7 says, “Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God. And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.”

I will conclude this series next week. Be sure to follow my YouTube channel as I post a short video there on every topic that’s talked about here on my blog. I also post other short videos throughout the week and share a verse of the day. I usually post a new video on Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday.

Until next week, have a good week and may God bless you!

kellym40 General

Creating and Sustaining a Life of Prayer, Part 2

This week I am continuing my four-part series on prayer. Last week I introduced prayer as a communication between you and God. Prayer can take many forms, but it is essentially a conversation to have with God.

I stated last week in part one to go to God about everything. Use it as a way of getting to know God, communicating our desires to God, listening to God speak truths to our spirit, voicing our needs for God to help us, observing God in creation and praising Him, sitting with God in our pain and asking Him to comfort us, and expressing our gratitude by thanking God. And you can simply do this by keeping prayer as an open-ended conversation with God. Another important part of prayer is confessing our sins. So the topic this week will be about confession/sin as part of praying. Psalm 103:11-12 reads, “For as high as the heavens are above the earth, so great is his steadfast love toward those who fear him; as far as the east is from the west, so far does he remove our transgressions from us.”

He does remove our transgressions. He cleanses us from our sins through the blood of his son Jesus Christ. We are not perfect. Therefore, we can come to God messy, in our impure, sinful state. C. S. Lewis said confession is like “the threshold of prayer.” We should confess first. Pray and confess for all sins and transgressions, be sorrowful, and ask for help to move away from those sinful ways.

If there is an issue that keeps tripping you up, what do you need to adjust, remove, or add to halp you turn from it?

I know in my life, there have been some things where I seem to keep repeating. I prayed to God for guidance and courage to break away from those sinful ways. I have also tried saying little prayers when I might have felt the urge to commit a sin. I ask for peace to flow over me so that I can turn away. It has helped. I know I just need to be persistent in my desire and need to change. John 3:16, “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.” We know that, through Jesus Christ, we have eternal life with God.

As it says in 1 John 1:9, “If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.” We have a forgiving, loving heavenly Father. When we fall, he can pick us up. God gave Jesus as the final covenant for all mankind.

“Learning to pray doesn’t offer us a less busy life; it offers us a less busy heart.” – Paul E. Miller.
Praying helps us stay on track. It helps guide us in our ways. It helps us sustain our relationship with our God.

kellym40 General

Creating and Sustaining a Life of Prayer

Throughout this month, I am going to do a series on prayer and cover such topics as what prayer is, how we use prayer, how to create a consistent prayer life and more. This will be a four-part series.

In today’s lesson, I will touch on what prayer is and how important it is to us as Christians to have some kind of prayer life.

First of all, the definition(s) found in the dictionary are put as “A devout petition to God or an object of worship,” “A spiritual communion with God or an object of worship,” or “The act or practice of praying to God or an object of worship.”

Simply put, “Prayer is simply two-way conversation between you and God.” – Billy Graham.
It is the “most important conversation of your day. Take it to God before you take it to anyone else.” – Anonymous

You can also look at prayer as getting to know God, communicating our desires to God, listening to God speak truths to our spirit, voicing our needs for God to help us, observing God in creation and praising Him, sitting with God in our pain and asking Him to comfort us, and expressing our gratitude by thanking God. And you can simply do this by keeping prayer as an open-ended conversation with God.

Here are some questions to reflect on:
– What is your earliest memory of prayer/praying?
– What is a time when you might have been surprised because God answered your prayer?

Psalm 55:1 says, “Give ear to my prayer, O God, and hide not yourself from my plea for mercy!”
Prayer is vital to our growth as Christians. The Gospels are filled with moments with Jesus in prayer – when he was alone and with others, before and after healing someone, before meals, and even after being nailed to the cross and as he was dying. Prayer is connecting with and growing with God. Treat prayer as a close relationship you might have with another person. Prayer can be filled with moments of gratitude, praying for others, or just sharing our needs, fear, or insecurities. Just open up a conversation and go to God about everything.
“Prayer is putting oneself in the hands of God.” – Mother Theresa

In 1 Thessalonians 5:16-18, Paul writes about prayer, “Rejoice always, pray without ceasing, give thanks in all circumstances; for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you.”