15. A Living of Prayer
Luke 21:34-36
34 “Watch out! Don’t let your hearts be dulled by carousing and drunkenness, and by the worries of this life. Don’t let that day catch you unaware,
35 like a trap. For that day will come upon everyone living on the earth.
36 Keep alert at all times. And pray that you might be strong enough to escape these coming horrors and stand before the Son of Man.”
▣ Prayer is the most basic and essential activity of faith.
People who believe in God are people who live by praying.
God loves those who pray, hears their prayers, answers their prayers, and does God's work through prayer.
Prayer is a command, not a mere invitation.
Many Christians think of prayer as just a part of their religious life.
Prayer is an essential and absolute element of faith.
In the Garden of Gethsemane, Jesus commanded the disciples to watch and pray. This sleep is not only a physical sleep, but also a spiritual sleep.
Prayer is spiritual awakening.
Only prayer keeps our souls from falling, paralyzing, and falling into evil.
1. You should set a goal for the amount of prayer.
Prayer has a measure.
No matter how well-directed and good you pray, if you do not have enough prayer, you will not be able to ascend to the throne of the Lord.
Many people do not build up their prayers and pray according to their moods and emotions inconsistently.
Prayers do not accumulate consistently.
The issue of quantity and quality of prayer is actually the most important part of prayer, but finding a balance between the two is not as simple as it sounds.
Many believers tend to place more emphasis on level than quantity of prayer.
In principle, it is correct to point out that level is more important than quantity, but high-level prayer is impossible without accumulating a large amount of prayer.
Great players practice hard to show good performances.
Athletes who need to show great performances in a short amount of time spend hundreds of times more time practicing before a match.
To become a good prayer, you need to practice praying for a long time.
Whether you are just starting out in prayer or starting to learn about prayer after experiencing a new birth, you need to experience prayer consistently over a long period of time.
The life of faith begins with prayer and ends with prayer.
2. There should be regular prayer times.
If our lives as children of the Lord are not abundant, it is because there is no abundant prayer. The Christian body is the temple where the Lord dwells, but if we do not pray, it becomes a den of robbers.
If you do not pray even though you know you need to pray, it is usually because you do not have a set time for prayer.
As Andrew Murray once said, “He who does not have a fixed time for prayer does not pray.”
Moody, Luther, George Muller, John Wesley, Jonathan Edwards, and many others who played a leading role in the revival were all great prayer warriors.
And the secret is that he set his own prayer time and prayed regularly every day.
This is because if you do not set a prayer time, you will never have a continuous prayer life. You must set a certain prayer time and be alone with the Lord at that time every day.
Those who want to pray anytime, anywhere cannot pray at any time or anywhere.
This is because we always spend our time on what is happening right in front of us rather than praying.
Just as we set a meal time to eat, or set a time to go to work and start work, we need to set a time for prayer.
This is because prayer time is more important than meal time than work time.
Instead of praying when there is time, you must first set a time to pray before you can pray.
3. You must have a habit of prayer.
In our lives, 90% of our lives are habitual and only 10% of our lives are conscious. It means that most of the day, we act carelessly and only think about 10% of our lives.
To become a person of prayer, we must cultivate the habit of prayer.
Renowned American consultants Jack D and Hodge, in The Power of Habit, argue that "our behavior is preprogrammed in the unconscious."
What we are today means that we have been created over a long period of time.
A person of prayer must have a habit of prayer.
If you communicate directly with the Lord and live a life led by the Holy Spirit, doubts and shaking will lose their place.
The key to a continuous and deep prayer life is to set a certain prayer time and pray.
Marathon is a sport that requires more persistence and perseverance than any other sport.
You must not stop towards the finish line. Must complete.
Prayer must also not stop toward the finish line of answering.
Jesus also lived a life of prayer from dawn to night.
Sometimes he prayed all night long, and sometimes he prayed in the twilight of dawn.
When Martin Luther became too busy with his own work, he increased the hours of his prayers even more, praying three hours a day.
John Wesley's mother, Susanna Wesley, had nineteen children with her.
That's why I was so busy and hard-working.
Every day she prayed in her bedroom from one to two o'clock.
It is no wonder that great men of God such as John Wesley and Charles Wesley are her children.