Tag: How to pray

Morning Musing: Exodus 33:12-14

Leave a comment

***As a housekeeping note, this is the last post until at least Monday. Have a good weekend, and if you are in the path of either of the major hurricanes hitting the Pacific coast of Mexico or the Gulf coast of Florida today, stay safe.

“Moses said to the Lord, ‘Look, you have told me, “Lead this people up,” but you have not let me know whom you will send with me. You said, “I know you by name, and you have also found favor with me.” Now if I have indeed found favor with you, please teach me your ways, and I will know you, so that I may find favor with you. Now consider that this nation is your people.’ And he replied, ‘My presence will go with you, and I will give you rest.'” (CSB – Read the chapter)

Have you ever listened to someone else pray not primarily to hear what they said, but for how they pray so you can learn from them? That’s a different thing than just listening to pray with them in your heart and mind. Listening to and reading other prayers is a great way to learn how to pray. Fortunately, the Scriptures contain many examples of people praying for us to learn from. In some cases, they even include God’s answer to the prayer. Over the next handful of posts, we are going to look at some prayers Moses prayed as he interacted with God to see what we can learn from him. Let’s listen in closely.

Read the rest…

Morning Musing: Hebrews 13:18-19

Leave a comment

“Pray for us, for we are convinced that we have a clear conscience, wanting to conduct ourselves honorably in everything. And I urge you all the more to pray that I may be restored to you very soon.” (CSB – Read the chapter)

Why do we pray? What should we pray for? There is wisdom on this throughout the Scriptures. Here, we see a couple of things as specific examples. With only one more stop on our journey through Hebrews, this morning, let’s take a look at the author’s final prayer request and talk about prayer in our own lives.

REad the rest…

Morning Musing: Matthew 6:7-8

Leave a comment

“When you pray, don’t babble like the Gentiles, since they imagine they’ll be heard for their many words. Don’t be like them, because your Father knows the things you need before you ask him.” (CSB – Read the chapter)

This week we are talking about prayer. Specifically, we are looking at some of Jesus’ thoughts on prayer from the Sermon on the Mount. When He starts talking about prayer in the middle of His sermon, His first comments are focused on what not to do. After that He shifts gears to giving us an example to follow in our own praying. Yesterday we looked at the first example of what not to do. Specifically, we are not to use prayer as a means of self-advancement. Prayer is about building and developing our relationship with Jesus. Anything less and it won’t do us any good. This morning, let’s take a look at His second caution. If His first caution was focused on why we pray, this one focuses more on the how.

Read the rest…

Morning Musing: Matthew 6:5-6

Leave a comment

“Whenever you pray, you must not be like the hypocrites, because they love to pray standing in the synagogues and on the street corners to be seen by people. Truly I tell you, they have their reward. But when you pray, go into your private room, shut your door, and pray to your Father who is in secret. And your Father who sees in secret will reward you.” (CSB – Read the chapter)

There are numerous books out there offering readers an intro on how to pray. I even read one simply called that: How to Pray. A quick Amazon search for “prayer books” turns up more results than you can click through. As you read through the Scriptures, there are lots of examples of prayer to study and emulate. Many of these books examine one or another of these prayers. The reason for all of this interest is pretty straightforward: We want to know how to pray. We want to know that our prayers are meaningful and have some reasonable chance of accomplishing their aim. We want to know that when we speak aloud in an empty room we’re not just talking to ourselves. Well, at the risk of doing little more than dripping a drop of water in an already flooded market, let’s take a second this morning and talk about prayer.

Read the rest…

Morning Musing: Mark 11:25

Leave a comment

“And whenever you stand praying, if you have anything against anyone, forgive him, so that your Father in heaven will also forgive you your wrongdoing.” (CSB – Read the chapter)

Yesterday we looked at a few verses in which Jesus seems to give us a blank check to essentially demand whatever we want from God and if we believe we’ll receive it strongly enough, we can expect to get it. We talked about the challenges of those verses and how they are all too often used improperly. The other thing I mentioned then was that in those verses there didn’t seem to be any clear “buts” that would lead us away from a straight line Prosperity Gospel. Well, this verse which follows immediately on the heels of what Jesus said about prayer gives us a bit of a “but.” This exception, though, is pretty important to note because it’s something Jesus said several different times. Let’s talk this morning about the relationship between forgiveness and prayer.

Read the rest…