Meditation

Among some Christians today, meditation has negative connotations. It makes them think of New Age gurus and yoga classes. Actually meditation is as old as the Old Testament. People have always meditated, and always will.

Meditation is simply this—it is sitting quietly and listening for what God has to say to us

Before we learn to pray, we must first learn to meditate.   We need to seek out a quiet place to spend time alone with God.  If we want to hear God, we need to listen.

So find a time and a place to be alone with him, away from the distractions of the world.  Don’t allow yourself to be put in a position of constant business. Take the time and the place to be alone with him.

This week, before we pray, we will meditate on what God says about prayer in His word.  Get alone in a place with your Bible and spend time learning from His word.

Then, get in a comfortable position—sitting, kneeling,  prone, are all the same as far as God is concerned. Think of your position in prayer as a kind of dance—physical posing for spiritual results.  Don’t be shy before God. Remember, he is the One person before whom you can be completely yourself.

Then, take a moment to quiet yourself before Him.  “I have composed and quieted my soul” Psalm 131.  One way to do this is to breathe slowly and deeply a few times, allowing your mind and body to relax. Once you have done this,  begin to concentrate on who God is, this is called praise.  We will talk more about that next week. But for today, let’s just look at the following Scriptures.

Setting up your prayer palatte

Before an artist begins to paint a picture, he must first prepare the palette.  He takes the paint he needs for the first section and squeezes some on a board, so he can mix the colors as he needs them. 

Think of the five kinds of prayers as colors on a palette. In life, you will be mixing them freely, sometimes with a greater emphasis on one, and sometimes on another. But all five are needed if the
picture is complete.. 

In this training, we are going to look at them one by one.  They are:

Praise—Praise is focusing our attention on who He is.  In praise, we remind ourselves of the majesty, love and greatness of the personage we serve.  Praise draws our attention away from the everyday and on to the eternal, omnipotent, awe-inspiring nature of our Lord.

 Thanksgiving—Thanksgiving is recognizing the goodness of what God has done for us, and all the many gifts He has given. It is an attitude of gratitude for what God has done for us. In thanksgiving, we review our lives and see God’s grace and generosity.

Confession—this is a reality check before God.  We admit to God who we really are.

Confession has two parts. First, it is recognizing the things we have done wrong. Confession is also  recognizing the reality of the promises of God alive in our lives.  We confess to God His faithfulness in blessing and forgiving. 

Asking—God already knows what we need, and what we are going to ask for. Nevertheless God wants us to ask, not for His sake, but for ours.  Asking reveals our concerns to Him,

We do not just ask for ourselves, of course. We also ask for needs all across the world.  This is the greatest aspect of petition—taking ourselves away from our own problems and onto the problems of others. 

Listening— Prayer is a two-way street. We cannot be effective at it if we have only one lane, from us to Him. We have to have two lanes, listening as well as sending. Hearing what God is saying to us in the Spirit is more important than what we say to Him.

prayer is not just asking. Prayer is a lifestyle.  During the next few weeks, we ae going to discover that lifestyle together.

Lord,  help us to learn the richness of a life lived in your presence.  Help us to experience you love and grace in a brand new way.  In Jesus' Name, Amen.

Confessions of a Failed Prayer Warrior

Confessions of a Failed Prayer Warrior

As a pastor, I have preached and taught hundreds of times on prayer.  The problem is I haven’t always practiced what I preach.

Why? I get busy. I get distracted.  I get bored.  Other people experience God’s majesty and joy—more often I have fallen asleep. Other people write of their closeness to God—my prayers seem to hit the ceiling and bounce off, without ever having seemed to contact the Divine Listener.  

When it comes to prayer, I can be a real hypocrite.

I think part of our (by that I mean my) problem with prayer is that we have heard much of prayer, but have never actually learned how. Prayer is not a subject to be studied but a skill to be learned. When Jesus’ disciples asked Him “Teach us to pray”, they did not have in mind “Teach us about prayer.”

It’s not that we don’t know what prayer is—we know very well. It’s the practice of prayer where we lack. We have heard sermon after sermon on prayer, but we do not know what to do.  In Jesus’ day, rabbis didn’t just teach on prayer, they were trained to pray. We have been taught, but not trained.

For most of Christian history, people were trained as well as taught to pray.  From their earliest years we learned sample prayers. We learned to fold our hands, bow our heads and recite “now I lay me down to sleep”. In our more individualistic times, we tend to avoid such ritualistic prayers.  We fear (and rightfully so) that prayer will become an empty ritual. But in avoiding methodology, we have allowed prayer to become an intellectual exercise or an emotional exercise, rather than a life skill. We learn prayer by doing, not studying.

How do we learn to play a musical instrument?  We practice! If we continue to practice, eventually we get better. Prayer is the same.  Effective prayer requires that we develop the necessary skills to get the most out of our time with God.

That is the goal of this series of lesson—to train in the necessary skills to become effective warriors. These skills do not come easily.  The only come with concentration and practice.  No one conquers the mystery of prayer easily or quickly, any more than we can learn to play the piano or solve differential equations easily.  It requires time and effort. We must set aside time and expend energy learning how to pray.  Only then will we experience the full measure of our life with Him. 

Consider the next six weeks basic training in prayer. We are going to start with the very beginning, learning the meaning and the potential of prayer in our lives.  We will learn to pray not the ritualistic prayers of childhood, nor in the lackadaisical prayers of a casual church attender, but to pray fully and seriously, with a vision towards finding the fullness of our wonderful God.