Your daily goal:

Philippians 3:14  “I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus.”   

(Monday-Friday, from my morning quiet time, I will write a short thought for that day which I pray God will use to motivate you to ‘GO’ for that day.  Your objective is simple…to GO…to GO OUT and share the love of Christ with someone in that day….to GO and bear fruit …to be light to the world.)

Today’s Daily Light:

This Week:   The Essential Nature of Prayer

(This week, let’s look at prayer and seek to learn the essential necessity of prayer for our lives ‘so that’ we can realize ‘more’ of God’s will in our lives.)

An Article from John Piper from August, 2016:  

God has established prayer as the means by which we receive his supernatural help. And without supernatural help, we cannot live a life worthy of the gospel. Everything that distinguishes Christians from the world in a Christ-exalting way is a work of God’s supernatural grace. And God has ordained that this grace flows to us through prayer. That’s why prayer must be central, not peripheral, in our lives and families and ministries.

Something is amiss when Christians pray the way unbelievers pray. Of course, unbelievers do pray. They pray by the millions. Countless nominal Christians in all the nations of the world pray almost every day.

Just recently I read this about Latvia in Operation World: “Christianity is characterized by nominalism. . . . Although 60% belong to a Christian confession, only a small minority actually practice their faith.” With varying percentages, the same is true everywhere Christianity has spread. The wheat and the tares grow together. And both pray.

This was true in Jesus’s day, as in ours. The Pharisees loved God least, and prayed most. They “devour widows’ houses and for a pretense make long prayers” (Mark 12:40). “They love to stand and pray in the synagogues and at the street corners, that they may be seen by others” (Matthew 6:5). And not only the Pharisees, but the Gentiles pray as well: “Do not heap up empty phrases as the Gentiles do, for they think that they will be heard for their many words” (Matthew 6:7).

It is possible that nominal Christians learn the language of true, Christ-exalting, God-centered, sin-confessing, Spirit-dependent, promise-trusting, holiness-pursuing prayer. But I have found that it is rare for those with little love to Christ to pray as though they love him and his kingdom.  (Continued tomorrow).

Lord…I pray this week…that you will increase our understanding and desire regarding prayer.  I pray that we will learn to pray according to your will ‘so that’ we can  glorify you with our lives.  I pray for all of us that this week we will begin to pray ‘more’.  As always,  I write to myself first, I realize my own faults, weaknesses, not always giving YOU my best…and I realize how paltry my prayer life is at times.   So, for all of us, please help us this week to see why we need to pray more.   Amen

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