The last time I spoke it was about a picture this time it's about sound.
Prayer is a sound. A sound of one person speaking to God. Either ones self or one chosen to speak on our behave.
If you pick that sound apart, split it, you can hear /see it constitute parts, made up of thanksgiving, praise, confession, petition, ect, one of these things or all of these ...
and within the prayer there is also something else it's the thump, thump, thump sound of our own beating hearts. For surely if we can say it's the condition of the heart always towards God wouldn't that heart be part of the conduit that the prayer travels, woven into our communication with God.
Prayer has the potential to be anything from a healing balm for sin to a displacer of time.
Jas 5:16 If you have sinned, you should tell each other what you have done. Then you can pray for one another and be healed.
Joshua 10:12 So about noon, Joshua prayed to the LORD loud enough for the Israelites to hear: "Our LORD, make the sun stop in the sky over Gibeon, and the moon stand still over Aijalon Valley." So the sun and the moon stopped and stood still until Israel defeated its enemies.
We make use of prayer as those before us to call upon the God of all creation and ask him to bring into being things not yet happened and or to maintain by our petitions things that have the possible potential to change, in short we try to have an effect on the future solely by prayer, among the other things we use prayer for.
And God affords us an active part in his plans. We know that by our evangelism we participate but we also participate by our prayers. So therefore Prayer is a doing word. We effect change when we weed the garden, by the act of weeding. But we also effect potential change when we pray for the garden to be fruitful.
Prayer is doing.
Gods plan is elastic enough for us to have some leeway. And prayer in worship offers us an opportunity as a family to play our part but also to have union with God.
In our worship prayer we stand together one voice, one nation, one people, under the banner of God, communicating with our maker. And all of it heard by God and all of it to be acted on at God discretion. Thank God.
God is capable of saying yes, capable of saying no, and also wait and see. Your no may well mean yes for the rest of creation. Your request, our requests have to be weighted against a much vaster complex world, the whole cosmos even. But request are only a part of it.
We realise what a thing it is to participate in Gods plan in some way shape and form. So our prayers in the worship should be earnest and in the full understanding or at least in trust, that we ask as Gods people who draw near to the creator of all things and the things we ask and request can and do happen. And from these prayer there is a knock on effect within the world, God willing.
Knowing God and having the right heart are all part of it.
But do we realise like the 100s and 1000s of missionaries who go out into the world we can and do play our part right here with our prayers, that we participate by our heartfelt communication.
Which is good but more than that we have the opportunity collectively to praise Gods.
The emotional God who when his people, Israel, left him to follow other gods spoke about his broken heart. Surely our praise must swell his inner most being.
Every meeting we have the opportunity to come into his presence to dedicated ourselves.
To make request.
To ask for for forgiveness.
To forgive others and to ask for what seems like at times impossible thing.
But prayer is more than a list of wants and needs, prayer is admitting we can't do it alone and that we need reinforcement or at least reinforced. And prayer puts God at the centre of things.
Prayer is something.
And this collective prayer in worship says something about us and says something about God. It's connected to our picture of God. Are you speaking to a God of love who posses such unthinkable un-graspable power who knows every inclination of our hearts. Man I'm almost scarred to go there. The potential of prayer we tend to forget or at least I do, but the minuet I open up that communication line I better be careful.
Eph 6:18 says Never stop praying, especially for others. Always pray by the power of the Spirit. Stay alert and keep praying for God's people.
Our prayer is in conjunction with the spirit, we have the freedom to ask / say what we want and our guide to all this and life, is His spirit.
Man you got to wonder why?
I don't know why, I just know is .
It 's the way God wants it.
And so through the wonders of prayer one man takes us into the throne room of God speaks on our behave. In the firm knowledge of being welcomed.
In reverence we go
Confessing our sins
Bringing our thanks
Bestowing our adoration
And praising his name and
Leaving our petitions.
It's worship, it's God centred worship.
And at the end we all add our Amens.
In conclusion what can I say?
Prayer is something!
Every uttered word God hears, he knows your joys and he knows your pains and on every uttered word God could act, it's just we don't fully grasp the complexities or for some thing's we wouldn't ask for.
But when it comes to worship and thanks and praise I'm very sure that fits in with His plan nicely.