Prayer to me is…

“Our heavens and hells are so few inches apart”.  I am fragile.   I can waver between experiencing the fullness of the kingdom of God and being enveloped in the darkness that comes from disobedience and fear. 

Yet all throughout Prayer is my anchor!    Prayer is being with Jesus.  I am learning to respond with my life to Jesus’ initiating work, Jesus is God with us, always present and always desiring to meet with us, we need only the desire to be with Him, An image that helps me with this is the clasping of the hands.  (Jesus’ part and our part)  

How I am learning to be with Jesus is changing, for a long time I limited how and where I met with Jesus.  This brings me back to the clasping of hands (or better yet the unclasping).   Jesus was not only in the prayer meetings and in the worship service.  I became free as I began to live out the reality that Jesus is also waiting to meet with me in the everyday interactions with my neighbors, in dance-parties with my kids, while capturing His beauty with my camera, and in times of silence and solitude.  I am also learning a special place of being with Jesus is among the suffering, weak, and despised of this world because they because of desperation experience His nearness as their greatest treasure!     

As I am learning to be with Jesus I am steadily becoming more like Him and my very life becomes a prayer, so that how I see, think and act is in tune with the heart of Jesus.   

Prayer is being with Jesus, in him we move, breathe and have our very being and in Him our lives and prayers are transformed! 

Apostle’s Creed

1. I believe in God the Father, Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth:

2. And in Jesus Christ, his only begotten Son, our Lord:

3. Who was conceived by the Holy Ghost, born of the Virgin Mary:

4. Suffered under Pontius Pilate; was crucified, dead and buried: He descended into hell:

5. The third day he rose again from the dead:

6. He ascended into heaven, and sits at the right hand of God the Father Almighty:

7. From thence he shall come to judge the quick and the dead:

8. I believe in the Holy Ghost:

9. I believe in the holy catholic church: the communion of saints:

10. The forgiveness of sins:

1l. The resurrection of the body:

12. And the life everlasting. Amen.

Helpful Definition of Spiritual Formation

When Paul said to the Galatians, “I am in the pain of childbirth until Christ is formed in you”  he was speaking of Spiritual Formation.  When he told the Romans, “Those whom God forknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his son,”  he was speaking of Spiritual Formation.  When he reminded the Corinthians that “All of us, with unveiled faces, seeing the glory of the Lord as though reflected in a mirror, are being transformed into the same image” he was speaking of Spiritual Formation (Galatians 4:19, Romans 8:29, 2 Corinthians 3:18).  So what is Spiritual Formation? 

Spiritual Formation is the continuing process of life and experience through which we are progressively formed, conformed, and transformed into the image of Jesus Christ.

- Richard Foster

Frank Laubach Quotes

Dr. Frank C. Laubach (September 2, 1884—June 11, 1970) was a Christian Evangelical missionary and mystic known as “The Apostle to the Illiterates.” In 1935, while working at a remote location in the Philippines, he developed the “Each One Teach One” literacy program, which has been used to teach about 60 million people to read in their own language. He was deeply concerned about poverty, injustice and illiteracy, and considered them a barrier to peace in the world.

One of his most widely influential devotional works was a pamphlet entitled “The Game with Minutes.” In it, Laubach urged Christians to attempt keeping God in mind for at least one second of every minute of the day. In this way Christians can attempt the attitude of constant prayer spoken of in the book of Colossians. The pamphlet extolled the virtues of a life lived with unceasing focus on God.  Laubach tried to call the attention of Christians to this fact. Any one of us can spend his day in Christ’s presence, he observed. And yet we do not. He urged us to think to Christ instead of thinking to ourselves. And he suggested turning to Christ constantly for advice on what to do next 

 If you are weary of some sleepy form of devotion, probably God is as weary of it as you are. 

All during the day, in the chinks of time between the things we find ourselves obliged to do, there are the moments when our minds ask: ‘What next?’ In these chinks of time, ask Him: ‘Lord, think Thy thoughts in my mind. What is on Thy mind for me to do now?’ When we ask Christ, ‘What next?’ we tune in and give Him a chance to pour His ideas through our enkindled imagination. If we persist, it becomes a habit.

The trouble with nearly everybody who prays is that he says “Amen” and runs away before God has a chance to reply.  Listening to God is far more important than giving Him your ideas.  

Richard Foster Quotes

Richard J. Foster is a Christian theologian and author in the Quaker tradition. His writings speak to a broad Christian audience. He has been a professor at Friends University and pastor of Evangelical Friends churches. Foster resides in Denver, Colorado.Foster is best known for his 1978 book Celebration of Discipline (ISBN 0-06-062839-1), which examines the inward disciplines of prayer, fasting, meditation, and study in the Christian life, the outward disciplines of simplicity, solitude, submission, and service, and the corporate disciplines of confession, worship, guidance, and celebration. It has sold over one million copies. It was named by Christianity Today as one of the top ten books of the twentieth century.   

We are working with God to determine the future!  Certain things will happen in history if we pray rightly.  We are to change the world by prayers

                                                                                                          

 In our day heaven and earth are on tiptoe waiting for the emerging of a Spirit-led, Spirit-empowered people.  All of creation watches expectantly for the springing up of a disciplined, freely gathered, martyr people who know in this life the life and power of the kingdom of God.  It has happened before.  It can happen again…

                                                                                                      

 “So how do we pray in Jesus’ name, that is, in conformity to his nature?  Jesus himself says, “If you abide in me, and my words abide in you, ask for whatever you wish, and it will be done for you” (John 15:7).  This “abide in me” is the all-inclusive condition for effective intercession.  It is the key for prayer in the name of Jesus.  We learn to become like the branch, which receives its life from the vine: “Abide in me as I abide in you.  Just as the branch cannot bear fruit by itself unless it abides in the vine, neither can you unless you abide in me” (John 15:4).  Nothing is more important to a life of prayer than learning how to become a branch.”      

 Nothing is more crucial to our lives or more central to the heart of God than the transformation of the human personality.  Paul, that great advocate of human transformation, once spoke of being “in travail until Christ be formed in you” (Gal. 4:19).  And in another letter he says, “Those whom God foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son” (Rom. 8:29)

 “Superficiality is the curse of our age.  The doctrine of instant satisfaction is a primary spiritual problem.  The desperate need today is not for a greater number of intelligent people, or gifted people, but for deep people.”                                                            

What is Prayer

Prayer is doxology, praise, thanksgiving, confession, supplication and intercession to God. “When I prayed I was new,” wrote a great theologian of Christian antiquity, “but when I stopped praying I became old.” Prayer is the way to renewal and spiritual life. Prayer is aliveness to God. Prayer is strength, refreshment, and joy. Through the grace of God and our disciplined efforts prayer lifts us up from our isolation to a conscious, loving communion with God in which everything is experienced in a new light. Prayer becomes a personal dialogue with God, a spiritual breathing of the soul, a foretaste of the bliss of God’s kingdom.  As we pray deeply within our hearts we grow in prayer. By the grace of God we suddenly catch a glimpse of the miracle of the presence of the Holy Spirit working within us. At first it is only a spark but later it becomes a flame freeing and energizing our whole being. To experience the fire of God’s holy love, to give it space within us to do its cleansing and healing work as a breath of the Holy Spirit, and to use it as light and power for daily living — such are the goals as well as the fruits of true prayer.

Amy Carmichael Quotes

Amy Beatrice (a.k.a. Wilson) Carmichael (December 16, 1867–January 18, 1951) was a Protestant Christian missionary in India, who opened an orphanage and founded a mission in Dohnavur. She served in India for fifty-five years without furlough and authored many books about the missionary work there.Amy Carmichael was born in the small village of Millisle in Northern Ireland to David and Catherine Carmichael. Her parents were devout Presbyterians; she was the oldest of seven children. She was adopted and tutored by Robert Wilson, cofounder of the Keswick Convention. Her father died when she was eighteen. In many ways she was an unlikely candidate for missionary work. She suffered neuralgia, a disease of the nerves that made her whole body weak and achy and often put her in bed for weeks on end. It was at the Keswick Convention of 1887 that she heard Hudson Taylor speak about missionary life. Soon afterward, she became convinced of her calling to missionary work.  

Your path, with its unexplained…turmoil, and mine with its pain…they are His paths, on which He will show himself faithful.

                                                                                              

 Our Lord Jesus spent much time in healing sick people, and in the natural course of events it happened that the last thing He did with His kind hands was to heal a bad cut.  (I wonder how they could have the heart to bind His hands after that.)  In this, as in everything, He left us an example that we should follow in His steps.  Do the thing that this next minute, this next hour, bring you, faithfully and lovingly and patiently; and then the last thing you do, before power to do is taken from you (if that should be), will be only the continuation of all that went before.”       

Prayer of Abandonment to God:  Father, I abandon myself into Your hands. Do with me what you will.  Whatever You do, I will thank You.  I am ready for all.  I accept all.  Let only Your will be done in me, as in all Your creatures, And I’ll ask nothing else, my Lord.  Into your hands I commend my spirit;  I give it to You with all the love of my heart,  For I love You, Lord, And so need to give myself, to surrender myself into Your hands  With a trust beyond all measure, Because You are my Father. From prayer that asks that I should be Sheltered from winds that beat on Thee.
from fearing when I should aspire, From faltering when I should climb higher, From silk and self, O captain, free Thy soldier who would follow Thee.  From subtle love of softening things, From easy choices, weakenings…Not thus are spirits fortified, Not this way went the Crucified…From all that dims Thy Calvary O lamb of God, deliver me.
Give me a love that leads the way, The faith that nothing can dismay, The hope no disappointments tire, The passion that will burn like fire.  Let me not sink to be a clod.  Make me Thy fuel, O Flame of God.

 

Exiled to Siberia, by Leo Tolstoy

http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Exiled_to_Siberia

Where Love is, There God is also, by Leo Tolstoy

http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Where_Love_is%2C_There_God_is_Also

Karl Barth Quotes

Karl Barth (May 10, 1886 – December 10, 1968) (pronounced “bart”) a Swiss Reformed theologian, was one of the most influential Christian thinkers of the 20^th Century, Barth spent his childhood years in Bern. From 1911 to 1921 he served as a Reformed pastor in the village of Safenwil in the canton Aargau. In 1913 he married Nelly Hoffman, a talented violinist. They would have four sons and a daughter. Later he was professor of theology in Göttingen (1921–1925), Münster (1925–1930) and Bonn (1930–1935) (Germany). While serving at Göttingen he first met Charlotte von Kirschbaum, who became his long time secretary. He had to leave Germany in 1935 after he refused to swear allegiance to Adolf Hitler. Barth went back to Switzerland and became professor in Basel (1935–1962).Barth was originally trained in German Protestant Liberalism under such teachers as Wilhelm Herrmann, but reacted against this theology at the time of the First World War. His reaction was fed by several factors, including his commitment to the German and Swiss Religious Socialist movement surrounding men like Hermann Kutter, the influence of the Biblical Realism movement surrounding men like Christoph Blumhardt and Søren Kierkegaard, and the impact of the skeptical philosophy of Franz Overbeck.  

In general terms, service is a willing, working, and doing in which a person acts not according to his own purposes or plans but with a view to the purpose of another person and according to the need, disposition, and direction of others.  It is an act whose freedom is limited and determined by the other’s freedom, an act whose glory becomes increasingly greater to the extent that the doer is not concerned about his own glory but about the glory of the other…It is ministerium Verbi divini, which means, literally, “a servant’s attendance” may call to mind the fact that the New Testament concept of Diakmos originally meant “a waiter”.  We must wait upon the high majesty of the divine Word, which is God himself as he speaks in his action.

                                                                                               

 Look once again to Jesus Christ in his death upon the cross.  Look and try to understand that what he did and suffered he did and suffered for you, for me, for us all.  He carried our sin, our captivity and our suffering, and did not carry it in vain.  He carried it away.  He acted as the captain of us all.  He broke through the ranks of our enemies.  He has already won the battle, our battle.  All we have to do is to follow him, to be victorious with him.  Through him, in him we are saved.  Our sin no longer has any power over us.  Our prison door is open…when he, the Son of God, sets us free, we are truly free.

                                                                                           

 The Gospel falls upon man as God’s own mighty Word, questioning him down to the bottom of his being, uprooting him from his securities and satisfactions

                                                                                 

Not man’s word about God, but God’s word about man.

                                                                                                                       

We must read the Bible through the eyes of shipwrecked people for whom everything has gone overboard.