Blood, Sweat, And Prayers

Blood, Sweat, and Prayers

Luke 19:46 NIV

46 "It is written," he said to them, "’My house will be a house of prayer’

A lack of prayer will results in self-inflicted injuries.

1. We fail to pray and find ourselves at the End of One’s Rope

A number of elaborate devices designed have been invented to give a horse freedom to graze, but not to run away. Intricate hobbles and tethers seldom proved more effective than a length of rope, however.

With one end of a rope fastened to the bridle and the other to a post, a rider could rest while his mount filled its stomach. Many an animal moved to the end of the rope, then strained to eat grass barely within reach.

Like a tethered horse, a human who has exhausted all there own resources, is at the end of his or her rope.

2. The best way to halt your spiritual life, is to stop praying & pull the plug

If financiers or authorities “pull the plug” on a project, there is a good chance it will go down the drain. Still, this way of expressing the idea of bringing something to an end is not indebted to round rubber plugs used in old-fashioned bathtubs.

Rather, it was the pulling of an electrical plug from an outlet that gave rise to the phrase.

Borrowing from everyday experience, early in the electrical age it became common to express the idea of termination by using the phrase spawned by bringing early appliances and machines to a halt.

Just stop praying and see what happens,

A. PRAYER IS NEEDED TO CHANGE US.

THE LATE DR. DONALD BARNHOUSE, greatly admired American pastor and author, once came to the pulpit and made a statement that stunned his congregation: “Prayer changes nothing!” You could have heard a pin drop in that packed Sunday worship service in Philadelphia. His comment, of course, was designed to make Christians realize that God is sovereignly in charge of everything. Our times are literally in His hands. No puny human being by uttering a few words in prayer takes charge of events and changes them. God does the shaping, the changing; it is He who is in control. Barnhouse was correct, except in some minor details.

Prayer changes me. When you and I pray, we change.

B. GOD SEEKS OUR PRAYERS FOR OUR BENEFIT

2 Chron 7:14 (NLT)

Then if my people who are called by my name will humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, I will hear from heaven . . .

1 Peter 3:12 NLT

The eyes of the Lord watch over those who do right, and his ears are open to their prayers.

C. CONFESSING TO GOD RELEASE’S HIS RENEWING.

FRANÇOIS FÉNELON, a seventeenth-century Roman Catholic Frenchman, said this about prayer:

Tell God all that is in your heart, as one unloads one’s heart, its pleasures and its pains, to a dear friend. Tell Him your troubles, that He may comfort you; tell Him your joys, that He may sober them; tell Him your longings, that He may purify them; tell Him your dislikes, that He may help you to conquer them; talk to Him of your temptations, that He may shield you from them; show Him the wounds of your heart, that He may heal them; lay bare your indifference to good, your depraved tastes for evil, your instability. Tell Him how self-love makes you unjust to others, how vanity tempts you to be insincere, how pride disguises you to yourself and others.

If you thus pour out all your weaknesses, needs, troubles, there will be no lack of what to say. You will never exhaust the subject. It is continually being renewed.

D. WE ARE A HOUSE OF PRAYER

Isa 56:7 NIV

7 these I will bring to my holy mountain and give them joy in my house of prayer.

[Even them will I bring to my holy mountain] (See Isa 2:3). That is, they should be admitted to the fellowship and privileges of his people.

[And make them joyful] In the participation of the privileges of the true religion, and in the service of God, they shall be made happy.

[In my house of prayer] In the temple-here called the house of prayer. The language here is all derived from the worship of the Jews, though the meaning evidently is, that under the new dispensation, all nations would be admitted to the privileges of his people, and that the appropriate services of religion which they would offer would be acceptable to God.

PRAYER STRATEGY’S

A. Prayer must be a priority

When You Don’t Feel Like Praying

It is a good thing to let prayer be the first business in the morning and the last in the evening. Guard yourself against such false and deceitful thoughts that keep whispering: Wait a while. In an hour or so I will pray. I must first finish this or that. Thinking such thoughts we get away from prayer into other things that will hold us and involve us till the prayer of the day comes to naught.