By prayingJust as we learn a foreign language by using it - we might read about it, know how to pronounce words, build sentences etc. - but ultimately we have to speak out the language - HSp helps us in this, Jn 16:13 But when he, the Spirit of truth, comes, he will guide you into all the truth.

Tuesday 8 May 2012

By meditating on scriptureMeditation is the missing link between Bible intake and prayer. Reading the Bible should lead us into prayer, should help us to pray. After reading the Bible meditation allows us to take it deeper into ourselves, to digest it - then we can take it back and talk to the Lord about it in a meaningful way. What we read has now become more meaningful and purposeful in our lives.

Tuesday 8 May 2012

John Owen: “Pray as you think. Consciously embrace with your heart every gleam of light and truth that comes to your mind. Thank God for and pray about everything that strikes you powerfully”Matthew remarked on Psalm 19:14 “David’s prayers were not his words only, but his meditations; as meditation is the best preparation for prayer, so prayer is the best result of meditation. Meditation and prayer go together.”

Tuesday 8 May 2012

Thomas Manton, Puritan pastor said “God’s Word feeds meditation and meditation feeds prayer. These duties go hand in hand; meditation must follow hearing and precede prayer. To hear and not to pray is unfruitful. It is rashness to pray and not meditate. What we take in by the Word we digest by meditation and let out by prayer. Men are barren, dry and sapless in their their prayers for want of exercising themselves in holy thoughts.”

Tuesday 8 May 2012

William Bates, Puritan pastor indicated “What is the reason that our desires like an arrow shot from a weak bow do not reach the mark? But only this, we do not meditate before we pray. Our prayers are ineffectual if we don’t meditate before we pray.”

Tuesday 8 May 2012

Speaking of the puritans Peter Toon wrote, “To read the Bible and not to meditate was seen as an unfruitful exercise: better to read one chapter and meditate afterward then to read several chapters and not to meditate. Likewise to meditate and not to pray was like preparing to run a race and never leaving the starting line. The three duties of reading Scripture, meditation, and prayer belonged together, and though each could be done occasionally on its own, as formal duties to God they were best done together.”

Tuesday 8 May 2012

Whitney finishes this section with some insight from George Muller,“It has pleased the Lord to teach me a truth, the benefit of which I have not lost, for more than fourteen years. The point is this: I saw more clearly than ever that the first great and primary business to which I ought to attend every day was, to have my soul happy in the Lord. The first thing to be concerned about was not how much I might serve the Lord, or how I might glorify the Lord; but how I might get my soul into a happy state, and how my inner man might be nourished...Before this time my practice had been, at least for ten years previously, as an habitual thing, to give myself to prayer, after having dressed myself in the morning...

Tuesday 8 May 2012

Now, I saw that the most important thing I had to do was to give myself to the reading of the Word of God, and to meditation on it, that thus my heart might be comforted, encouraged, warned, reproved, instructed; and that thus, by means of the Word of God, while meditating on it, my heart might be brought into experiential communion with the Lord...I began therefore to meditate on the New Testament from the beginning, early in the morning. The first thing I did, after having asked in a few words the Lord’s blessing upon his precious Word, was, to begin to meditate on the Word of God, searching as it were into every verse, to get blessing out of it; not for the sake of the public ministry of the Word, not for the sake of preaching on what I had meditated upon, but for the sake of obtaining food for my own soul.

Tuesday 8 May 2012

The result I have found to be almost invariably this, that after a very few minutes my soul has been led to confession, or to thanksgiving, or to intercession, or to supplication; so that, though I did not, as it were, give myself to prayer, but to meditation, yet it turned almost immediately more or less into prayer.The full story is well worth reading: http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:lHJJhsc8TlEJ:www.connsbrook.org.uk/George%2520Muller%2520and%2520Bible%2520Reading.doc+&hl=en&gl=uk

Tuesday 8 May 2012

By praying with othersOne of the great learning experiences for the disciples must have been being with him and hearing Jesus pray.Find good models in prayer and learn from them.Do not repeat their habits but learn from their insight, passion, use of scripture etc.Do not repeat their words - or repeat the same words over and over Matt 6:7Make it a habit to pray with other people - many great movements have started in this way

Tuesday 8 May 2012

By reading about prayerRemember Proverbs 27:17 & 13:20Take time to read of the “great” prayer warriors - learn from their struggles as well as their successes. Almost every great man or woman who achieved things for God were people who prayed and prayed and prayed.

Tuesday 8 May 2012

By reading about prayerRemember Proverbs 27:17 & 13:20Take time to read of the “great” prayer warriors - learn from their struggles as well as their successes. Almost every great man or woman who achieved things for God were people who prayed and prayed and prayed.

As iron sharpens iron, so one

person sharpens another.

Walk with the wise and become

wise, for a companion of

fools suffers harm.

Tuesday 8 May 2012

By reading about prayerRemember Proverbs 27:17 & 13:20Take time to read of the “great” prayer warriors - learn from their struggles as well as their successes. Almost every great man or woman who achieved things for God were people who prayed and prayed and prayed.

Tuesday 8 May 2012