Like many of you, I struggle with faithful praying.  My soul needs solitude and quiet to seek the face of the Lord with a mind saturated in His word and a heart groping toward intimacy with my Redeemer.  I want to model this better for my home and our church body, though it will probably be “seen” more in it’s results than its exercise.  I know that there has been a burgeoning movement in the body to seek to pray more.  I wanted to offer a few thoughts on this…

1. Prayer is communing (not just communication) with the Father, through Jesus Christ, by the powerful working of the Holy Spirit.
2. Prayer is NOT about telling God what we want.  Prayer IS about getting our hearts in line with the will of the Father.
3. Because the Spirit interprets according to the will of the Father (Romans 8:26-27) we should pray with the Sword of the Spirit  (Ephesians 6:17) opened before us.
4. While we definitely talk more about praying, than actually praying, there is still a need to be taught on the subject.  Much in the same way we must preach the gospel to ourselves, we need to receive biblical instruction on both the need and method of biblical prayer.  Christ taught His disciples and Paul regularly told the church and pastors he served just how to pray for him, as well as imploring them to pray.
5. Because of #4, we are going to begin (TONIGHT) teaching through varied Psalms that deal with prayer and its elements, then spending time together in prayer.

I encourage you to come this evening and engage in prayer with the church body, as we seek to more fully embrace our passion of glorifying God, treasuring Christ, and reaching others for joy in Him.