Fresh Start on Prayer

If you’re not satisfied with your prayer life, chances are that God is trying to move you on. God is leading you to new things. Not new as in “you are to leave the place you are.” But new as in learning new skills to bridge the gap.

A Bridge is an image I am using to help us visualize. I want us to see that prayer takes us places. Prayer is a key to transformation in our advancement in Christ.  But that movement depends on structures and supports. We don’t move on good intentions or assumptions. God build us and He builds in us certain supports that we can depend on.

The first support in our bridge is loving God. If we love God, we enjoy our time together. If we don’t love God, if we are not emotionally connected to God, we don’t enjoy Him or prayer. We may pretend we do. We may pray out of duty. But we don’t enjoy it. We are not love slaves to God, only slaves.

Obeying God is the result of loving God. Love and obedience are not the same. Love provides the walkway to obey. Obeying God is a heart response to deep love.

Joh 14:21  "He who has My commandments and keeps them is the one who loves Me; and he who loves Me will be loved by My Father, and I will love him and will disclose Myself to him." 

Two ways we are dissatisfied with the Loving God.

• 1.    God is not loving me in a way I value.
• 2.    I am not experiencing God’s love in a meaningful way.

There are more than those two, but these are the more common in our life struggles. Who has not had seasons of sickness, death, sorrow or suffering make us question God's love for us? Who has not head the accusation of the world that since suffering exist, God does not exist, or He is not loving?

But what if we are the evil ones and not God? What if there would be no kindness, no love, no mercy if God was not limiting the amount of evil we do to one another? What if God is the only reason we have what we call good people? What if good people are only good because God has placed some of Himself in them? What if the only thing keeping us from killing one another is that we all have some of His image in our lives?

In the battle to love God and feel connected to Him, these 4 solutions may help you. Remember the issue we are dealing with in not God’s love for you, but our love for God. According to the passage in John above, the key to experiencing God’s love and having God disclose Himself to us is our love for God.

Solutions

1.    Love God for himself and not just how you feel He treats you now.

2.    Humble yourself and give thanks for how God has treated you

a.     Salvation, hope, forgiveness, joy, presence, deliverance from evil

3.    Posture your heat before God with trust, tell God you trust Him

4.    Rejoice that in all things. God will use them for your good and His glory. And in that rejoicing, ask God for grace to enjoy being made into a better reflection of Christ Jesus.

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An EBook with many of these helps and other resources will be coming. This book will help prayer leaders, teachers, and others encourage others.