Prayer

Source: http://www.shepherd-lutheran.org

I have been thinking a lot lately about prayer.

I have so many people that I want to pray for, and things in my life that need prayer, and things to praise God for, that it can get overwhelming whenever I try to pray in the morning or whenever I go to sleep at night.

I feel like I always miss things, and then I feel sad whenever I remember them.  So I was thinking just now that I can make a list of people and things to pray about, and then I can assign them each a different week or day, and just pray about that one thing for that week (or day).

I think that will be an effective way for me to pray.  And also a good chance for me to listen and watch out for God in my life because I will be praying for specific things and not just the usual "lift that person up....bless her...be with so and so..."

I also need to work on confession.  A lot of times, I skip over this IMPORTANT part of prayer.  I think that as humans, who are inherently sinful creatures, we just sin all the time!!  Like we can sin just by thinking something nasty in our heads.  It's hard to realize just how much we sin, and even harder to think about confessing our sins to God.  In the past I've always prayed the same thing:  "Lord, please forgive me for my sins...give me a different attitude towards this person so I won't get like this anymore..."

In church a few weeks ago, Pastor Dennis had a good point.  His point was that there is basically no point in praying this way, asking for general forgiveness, that is.  This is because whenever God sent Jesus to the cross, he forgave every sin that we will ever commit by offering the PERFECT sacrifice to die in our place (because sin separates us from God, and the punishment for sin is Death...).

Here is some good scripture you can read if you want to know more about God's sacrifice for us!

So instead of just asking for forgiveness, we should confess our sins outright to God.  I think God wants us to really think about or lives and each time we sin, so we'll realize just how sinful we are and how much we NEEDED him to send Jesus to die for us.  A lot of times, we might not take the time to sit there and think, "Lord, today I got irritated at work and rolled my eyes at my boss - I'm sorry for this.  Renew my heart, O God, and give me a more Godly attitude tomorrow."  Or, "God, today I got caught up in gossip at work and I contributed to it.  I'm sorry for this.  Please help me to spread good things that encourage others instead of bring them down"

These are the types of things I think we should be praying about!  Because they are issues that deal with the heart, and our attitudes towards other people and our lives in general.  We are supposed to live our lives as Jesus did, with a Godly heart, and I just think that if we keep getting caught up in our sinful ways and then not ever thinking about why it is sin, and asking for renewed hearts that we will never change!  And although we can all rest assured that if we know God and believe in our hearts that he loves us and really did send his one and only son for us then we are saved and will get into Heaven, we should still strive to eliminate sin in our lives!  (Because that's what God commanded us to do - "Be imitators of Christ, therefore, as dearly loved children" - Ephesians 5:1, "Be perfect, therefore, as your Heavenly Father is perfect" - Matthew 5:48)

So anyway, I didn't mean to ramble on about this.  I will keep you posted on how my prayer life grows over the coming weeks and months!

I shall end this post with the Lord's prayer.

This then, is how we should pray:

Matthew 6: 9-13