Category: prayer

Fight on Your Knees

John Eldredge has a “daily prayer” on his Ransomed Heart website that I *highly* recommend.

https://www.ransomedheart.com/prayer/daily-prayer

This is my favorite section:

Dearest God, holy and victorious Trinity, you alone are worthy of all my worship, my heart’s devotion, all my praise, all my trust, and all the glory of my life. I love you, I worship you, I give myself over to you in my heart’s search for life. You alone are Life, and you have become my life. I renounce all other gods, every idol, and I give to you, God, the place in my heart and in my life that you truly deserve. This is all about you, and not about me. You are the Hero of this story, and I belong to you. I ask your forgiveness for my every sin. Search me, know me, and reveal to me where you are working in my life, and grant to me the grace of your healing and deliverance and a deep and true repentance.

I usually start by repeating the written prayer out loud and pause often to interrupt with my own thoughts, pleas, and praises to the Lord. I love this as a guide because it is *filled* with Scripture and radically focused on truth. It focuses my mind and heart on what is true about God and what is true about myself. In this way the entire prayer IS spiritual warfare: fighting against the lies and accusations that Evil uses to plant unbelief in my heart and mind.

I love that it guides me in repentance every single morning. Repentance is the only way to have more of Jesus. If you desire to be near to him, to hear his voice, to feel his presence and love, it will only come through the brokenness and humility of repentance.

I ask your forgiveness for my every sin. Search me, know me, and reveal to me where you are working in my life, and grant to me the grace of your healing and deliverance and a deep and true repentance.

Let us be a people who love repentance… this is a battle that we must fight on our knees.

Is your life characterized by a love of repentance?

Is your church a community of people who love repentance?

Acts 11:18- “… God has granted repentance that leads to life.”

Psalm 51:17- My sacrifice, O God, is a broken spirit; a broken and contrite heart you, God, will not despise.

Isaiah 66:2- “These are the ones I look on with favor: those who are humble and contrite in spirit, and who tremble at my word.”

 

 

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The Morning Watch

For my first post on prayer, I want to make a simple entreaty: Let us drop the term “Quiet Time.“

Doesn’t “quiet time” sound very … soft? A bit too dispensable?

Think this through with me: what images and connotations does “quiet time” conjure up in your mind? Slippers? Coffee? A plush cushy chair?

No wonder we drop it when other things feel more pressing. Morning “quiet time” sounds and feels like a luxury… when we have time. The language we use matters; our choice of words informs our attitudes and actions.

Can you imagine Jesus or the Apostle Paul having “quiet time”? It’s a bit ludicrous, right? Really to the point of being offensive.

My suggestion is that we replace “quiet time” with “The Morning Watch.”

“The Morning Watch” brings in the idea of spiritual warfare. This is TRUE prayer. And this is a necessity. We DO have an Enemy. And he is prowling, watching and looking for whom he can devour. We ARE in a war… or we’ve been taken captive.

Are you living in defeat? Anxiety? Addiction? Escaping and numbing? How is your marriage? Are you experiencing “abundant life” and “freedom” that Jesus came to bring?

Perhaps you’ve gone AWOL.

“Prayer is a wartime walkie – talkie for spiritual and missional warfare; Not a domestic intercom to increase the comfort of the saints. And one of the reasons prayer malfunctions in the hands of so many Christian soldiers, is that they have gone AWOL.” ~ John Piper

Are you dressed for war?

Do you have a sword? How sharp? How skilled?

“If you can’t run with horsemen, how can you run with horses?” ( paraphrase Jeremiah 12:5)

“You CAN get better.” ~ Dan Allender

Let’s do it together. As iron sharpens iron, so one person sharpens another. ~ Proverbs 27:17