Vomited Out and Totally Unaware

'A lack of ardour in prayer, is the sure sign of a lack of depth and of intensity of desire;  and the absence of intense desire is a sure sign of God's absence from the heart! To abate
fervour is to retire from God. He can, and does, tolerate many things in the way of
infirmity and error in His children. He can, and will pardon sin when the penitent prays, but two things are intolerable to Him -- insincerity and lukewarmness.

Lack of heart and lack of heat are two things He loathes, and to the Laodiceans He said, in terms of unmistakable severity and condemnation: "I would thou wert cold or hot. So then because thou art lukewarm, and neither cold nor hot, I will spue thee out of My mouth."

This was God's expressed judgment on the lack of fire in one of the Seven Churches, and it is His indictment against individual Christians for the fatal want of sacred zeal.

In prayer, fire is the motive power. Religious principles which do not emerge in flame,
have neither force nor effect.

Flame is the wing on which faith ascends; fervency is the soul of prayer.

It was the "fervent, effectual prayer" which availed much.

 Love is kindled in a flame, and ardency is its life. Flame is the air which true Christian
experience breathes. It feeds on fire; it can withstand anything, rather than a feeble
flame; and it dies, chilled and starved to its vitals, when the surrounding atmosphere is
frigid or lukewarm.

True prayer, must be aflame.'

Quoted from- 'THE NECESSITY OF PRAYER  By E.M. BOUNDS' (Excerpt 17)

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'I will spue thee out of My mouth.'

He will THROW US UP! He will VOMIT US OUT! Why? Because we do not believe we have an real NEED of our SAVIOR. Seriously. We may mouth the words but our hearts are saying otherwise. It is our heart, it is our desire for Christ that matters. He would rather we be HOT or COLD, but not this LUKEWARM being who is neither. Lukewarm and believing they have no need of Christ, seriously. They believe they are rich in and of their own accord, when they are destitute! They believe they can see when they are really blinded by their own delusions.  They believe they are clothed but they are really stark naked! What sort of delusions are they under that that can believe all that when it's untrue?

Rev 3:17  Because thou sayest, I am rich, and increased with goods, and have need of nothing; and knowest not that thou art wretched, and miserable, and poor, and blind, and naked

They don't KNOW they are WRETCHED, they are MISERABLE, they are POOR, they are BLIND, and they are NAKED.  This could be US! Because these people don't know their own awful condition!

Are we those blind, wretched people?! Are WE?! GOD FORBID!

We need to BUY from our SAVIOR that which will keep us from being those MISERABLE people!

Rev 3:18  I counsel thee to buy of me gold tried in the fire, that thou mayest be rich; and white raiment, that thou mayest be clothed, and that the shame of thy nakedness do not appear; and anoint thine eyes with eyesalve, that thou mayest see.

How do we buy anything of our Savior? What sort of currency can we use? FAITH!

Our currency is believing in CHRIST FOR ALL THINGS, FOR ALL OUR NEEDS! HE gives us the GOLD, He gives us the WHITE RAIMENT, He gives us the EYESALVE.  Just like forgiveness we cannot earn these things! We have to get them from our SAVIOR! We have to ACTIVELY get them from Him DAILY. Seriously, DAILY!

And we PRAY DAILY, we must seek our SAVIOR DAILY and seek Him in faith, in hope, in His righteousness, in HIS giving us the HOLY SPIRIT, and we must BUY this from HIM. To BUY this means it is something we are seeking to obtain desperately enough to pay for it, it is a want, a need, we must give all our ourselves to HIM, for HIM to give all of HIMSELF to us. He will not force anything of HIMSELF upon us, not a single bit. But we must BUY of Him all that would keep us from being lukewarm, miserable, poor, blind, and naked.

PLEASE LORD, we would be on FIRE for You! We don't want to be lukewarm! We don't want to be blind!  Please, Lord, please we don't want to be poor or naked! We want to be RICH IN YOU!  By YOUR LOVE, we thank You! We praise Your Holy NAME!

'Have we the desire which presses us to close communion with God?'

'Do we really feel these inward pantings of desire after heavenly treasures? Do the inbred groanings of desire stir our souls to mighty wrestlings?

Alas for us! The fire burns altogether too low.

The flaming heat of soul has been tempered down to a tepid lukewarmness.

This, it should be remembered, was the central cause of the sad and desperate condition of the Laodicean Christians, of whom the awful condemnation is written that they were "rich, and increased in goods and had need of nothing," and knew not that they "were wretched, and miserable, and poor, and blind."

Again: we might well inquire -- have we that desire which presses us to close
communion with God, which is filled with unutterable burnings, and holds us there
through the agony of an intense and soul-stirred supplication?

 Our hearts need much to be worked over, not only to get the evil out of them, but to get the good into them.

And the foundation and inspiration to the incoming good, is strong, propelling desire. This holy and fervid flame in the soul awakens the interest of heaven, attracts the attention of God, and places at the disposal of those who exercise it, the exhaustless riches of Divine grace.'

Quoted from- 'THE NECESSITY OF PRAYER  By E.M. BOUNDS' (Excerpt 16)

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It Is true- 'Our hearts need MUCH to be worked over, not ONLY to get the EVIL OUT of them, but to get the GOOD INTO THEM.'  This is truth! And our hearts need to be cleansed by our SAVIOR, a cleansing that removes all that is evil and allows all that is good to take its place. We need this and it can be found through PRAYER, intense prayer, prayer of the type we so seldom experience.

Please, God, may we have this experience in praying to You. May our souls be filled with You, as we are renewed in You through prayer. Our Savior prayed constantly, should we do no less?

Please, Lord, please save us from our own lukewarmness. We are POOR, BLIND, and NAKED- we need You because You are our riches, our sight, our clothing! You are all we need! Please, save us from ourselves!

Is Heaven our Earthly Treasure?

'We fail much more in desire, than in its outward expression. We retain the form, while the inner life fades and almost dies.

One might well ask, whether the feebleness of our desires for God, the Holy Spirit, and for all the fulness of Christ, is not the cause of our so little praying, and of our  languishing in the exercise of prayer?

Do we really feel these inward pantings of desire after heavenly treasures? Do the inbred groanings of desire stir our souls to mighty wrestlings?

Alas for us! The fire burns altogether too low.

The flaming heat of soul has been tempered down to a tepid lukewarmness.'

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Mat_6:21  For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.

Mat_13:44  Again, the kingdom of heaven is like unto treasure hid in a field; the which when a man hath found, he hideth, and for joy thereof goeth and selleth all that he hath, and buyeth that field.

Is HEAVEN our EARTHLY TREASURE?

How much do we contemplate our treasures?  Do you have an earthly treasure? What DO you spend most of your time thinking about? Before you say, 'nothing', think about it, you must think, right? What things in your life would you be devastated to lose?

I ask again, Is Heaven our Earthly Treasure?

Heaven is the only treasure that we cannot lose. Yet we keep making earthly things our treasures.

Do we live with the DESIRE for heaven in us? Is this desire a part of our real, every day lives? Do we LONG for heaven?  Honestly, we must have this desire real inside of us. A desire for the heavenly, not the earthly. A desire for Heaven's will to be done on earth, not our earthly will to be done in heaven.  All too often we are putting our earthly desires far in front of our heavenly, this has got to change! By the grace of God this has to change now! Heavenly desires begin here and now. Our Savior came to bring us the good news of our salvation, of His preparing a place for us IN HEAVEN.

Please, LORD, please create a desire for the heavenly in us! Please, LORD, make this desire something REAL, something that consumes us beyond any earthly treasure.

All BY YOUR GRACE let our prayers be filled with the desire for the heavenly, by faith believing in YOU for ALL things we need. Guide our prayers, fill our prayers with YOU, YOUR LOVE!

We need our earthly treasure here and now to be heaven!

Quoted from- 'THE NECESSITY OF PRAYER  By E.M. BOUNDS' (Excerpt 15 from 2 days before)

Thoughts wandering during prayer?

Yesterday I didn't expound on what I'd read at all so we're doing that today, by the grace of God. So let's read this again pausing here and there to contemplate what is being said…

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'Holy desire is much helped by devout contemplation. Meditation on our spiritual need,  and on God's readiness and ability to correct it, aids desire to grow. Serious thought  engaged in before praying, increases desire, makes it more insistent, and tends to save us from the menace of private prayer -- wandering thought.'

Quoted from- 'THE NECESSITY OF PRAYER  By E.M. BOUNDS' (Excerpt 14 from yesterday

******* Who among us hasn't had our minds wander during prayer? Seriously. I'd love to be able to say my mind has never wandered, my thoughts have never taken any wrong turns while I was praying, while I was speaking to my God, but I wouldn't be telling the truth.

If we were talking with someone and suddenly we started doing something else, that person we were talking to would be a little confused, wouldn't they? They'd wondered why we stopped talking to them. They'd wonder why we were suddenly ignoring them in favor of doing something else. They might even ask us what we are doing, why we are doing it. Then again they might get angry and not say a word. If we were in the habit of behaving that way, they'd most likely accept that we are in the habit and shrug it off if our friendship meant something to them. However, if we simply let our minds wander away to something else during prayer we are stunting the communication we are having with our Father God, GOD, Our HEAVENLY FATHER! We are present before our Creator, our Savior, our King, our Everything, the most important Being we could ever be in audience with and we let our minds wander?!

Satan will do everything he can to get us to let our minds wander, to lose focus on God.

Here, E.M. Bounds is saying that we need to spend time in 'devout contemplation'. We need to meditate on our 'spiritual need'. We need to meditate on God's willingness, His readiness, His ability to fix our 'Holy Desire' to heal us, to help us desire HIM.  If we THINK about praying, about our prayers before we actually pray perhaps it will be true that our thoughts won't tend to wander. This is something very worth trying, isn't it?

To think, truly think about praying is this something we need more of?  I know forms of prayer that aren't said with true heart feeling are wrong, and I know we shouldn't always think about what we are going to say, we must leave room to let the Spirit guide us, but perhaps we need to think more. We are seeking an audience with God. We are believing He hears our prayers.  We honestly need to think on this MORE.

Php_4:8  Finally, brethren, whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things are honest, whatsoever things are just, whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever things are of good report; if there be any virtue, and if there be any praise, think on these things.

Thinking on our GOD and our communication with our GOD cannot be a bad thing, all by HIS GRACE, by HIS LOVE!

'Alas for us! The fire burns altogether too low'

'Holy desire is much helped by devout contemplation. Meditation on our spiritual need,  and on God's readiness and ability to correct it, aids desire to grow. Serious thought  engaged in before praying, increases desire, makes it more insistent, and tends to save us from the menace of private prayer -- wandering thought.

We fail much more in desire, than in its outward expression. We retain the form, while the inner life fades and almost dies.

One might well ask, whether the feebleness of our desires for God, the Holy Spirit, and for all the fulness of Christ, is not the cause of our so little praying, and of our  languishing in the exercise of prayer?

Do we really feel these inward pantings of desire after heavenly treasures? Do the inbred groanings of desire stir our souls to mighty wrestlings?

Alas for us! The fire burns altogether too low.

The flaming heat of soul has been tempered down to a tepid lukewarmness.

This, it should be remembered, was the central cause of the sad and desperate condition of the Laodicean Christians, of whom the awful condemnation is written that they were "rich, and increased in goods and had need of nothing," and knew not that they "were wretched, and miserable, and poor, and blind."

Again: we might well inquire -- have we that desire which presses us to close
communion with God, which is filled with unutterable burnings, and holds us there
through the agony of an intense and soul-stirred supplication?

 Our hearts need much to be worked over, not only to get the evil out of them, but to get the good into them.

And the foundation and inspiration to the incoming good, is strong, propelling desire. This holy and fervid flame in the soul awakens the interest of heaven, attracts the attention of God, and places at the disposal of those who exercise it, the exhaustless riches of Divine grace.'

Quoted from- 'THE NECESSITY OF PRAYER  By E.M. BOUNDS' (Excerpt 14)

'We Ought to Pray' Even when we have no desire to pray

'The deeper the desire, the stronger the prayer. Without desire, prayer is a meaningless mumble of words. Such perfunctory, formal praying, with no heart, no feeling, no real desire accompanying it, is to be shunned like a pestilence. Its exercise is a waste of precious time, and from it, no real blessing accrues.

And yet even if it be discovered that desire is honestly absent, we should pray, anyway.

We ought to pray.

The "ought" comes in, in order that both desire and expression be cultivated. God's Word commands it. Our judgment tells us we ought to pray -- to pray whether we feel like it or not -- and not to allow our feelings to determine our habits of prayer. In such circumstance, we ought to pray for the desire to pray; for such a desire is God-given and heaven-born. We should pray for desire; then, when desire has been given, we should pray according to its dictates. Lack of spiritual desire should grieve us, and lead us to lament its absence, to seek earnestly for its bestowal, so that our praying, henceforth, should be an expression of "the soul's sincere desire."

A sense of need creates or should create, earnest desire. The stronger the sense of need,
before God, the greater should be the desire, the more earnest the praying. The "poor in
spirit" are eminently competent to pray.

Hunger is an active sense of physical need. It prompts the request for bread. In like manner, the inward consciousness of spiritual need creates desire, and desire breaks forth in prayer. Desire is an inward longing for something of which we are not possessed, of which we stand in need -- something which God has promised, and which may be secured by an earnest supplication of His throne of grace.'

Quoted from- 'THE NECESSITY OF PRAYER  By E.M. BOUNDS' (Excerpt 13)

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Truly our adversary, the devil, will do all he can to keep us from praying! The belief that we must feel like praying to pray is one of those tricks he uses to keep us from communicating with our Father God.  The knowledge that we should pray regardless of our feelings is what we need embedded in us.  We most definitely shouldn't wait till we are trouble to turn to God in prayer, yet that's exactly what a lot of people do. Waiting until they have a need for help, not realizing that we have a desperate need of prayer daily. We need daily spiritual bread as well as daily physical bread.  Only one of those two things are within our power of enacting. We cannot always supply daily physical bread but we can daily supply spiritual bread because that spiritual bread is just a prayer away from us. We can open the lines of communication in our happiest and our most desperate of hours. There is never a time we are forbidden to pray because prayer is so incredibly important and special. We can pray in complete silence without anyone knowing, or we can choose to be outspoken and loud in our prayer.  If we choose to be outspoken and loud we may be asked to stop, but even if we do stop the noise of our prayer, inwardly no one can stop us from praying - not a single person. Spiritual sustenance is extremely necessary. We no more can keep living without physical food than we can keep spiritually alive without prayer.

Here, E.M. Bounds speaks of desire and lack of desire in prayer. When our hearts are sometimes at their lowest point and life has tormented us with it's evils, the slicing arrows of satan cutting us to the quick, the poison tipped barbs infuse us with a desire to turn from God, not towards Him, it is then we need to take that lack of desire to pray and pray even harder!

We will not be left to a life filled with wondrous and constant joy despite life's hardships, not if Satan has anything to say about it, and truly...not if God has anything to do with it as well.  We are being refined! Our patience is being perfected! These awful trials and tribulations are ripping our hearts out and wringing the evil from them by the grace of our GOD.  Satan would turn that grace into disease, wanting us to shun it at all cost, but our God is greater than the evil one!

Please, LORD, please SAVIOR, please HEAVENLY FATHER live in us and us in You!  We need You more than anything else! We need YOU!

Job was tortured physically, mentally, emotionally, spiritually tortured as Satan tried his best to rip him from God's love.  All by God's grace that wasn't possible! Please, LORD, keep us in YOU, in YOUR grace no matter what. We don't want pain and heartache, we don't want to be tortured in any way at all, our desire is to be kept in YOU free from all that, but we know that this world is filled with pain and heartache that You cannot keep us from, but You can keep us from EVIL that would destroy us by wresting us permanently from You! Please, we pray the desperate prayer to be kept from EVIL! Deliver us, LORD, deliver us from evil, lead us not into temptation, not into despair!  You have the POWER, You have the GLORY, Yours is the KINGDOM forever and ever.  All in YOU in YOUR grace, YOUR mercy, YOUR love… we PRAY.

Prayer- Hope, Trust

'Do we believe, without a doubt? When we pray, do we believe, not that we shall receive
the things for which we ask on a future day, but that we receive them, then and there?

Such is the teaching of this inspiring Scripture. How we need to pray, "Lord, increase our faith," until doubt be gone, and implicit trust claims the promised blessings, as its very own.

This is no easy condition.

 It is reached only after many a failure, after much praying, after many waitings, after much trial of faith.

May our faith so increase until we realize and receive all the fulness there is in that Name which guarantees to do so much.

Our Lord puts trust as the very foundation of praying.

The background of prayer is trust.

The whole issuance of Christ's ministry and work was dependent on implicit trust
in His Father.

The centre of trust is God.

Mountains of difficulties, and all other hindrances to prayer are moved out of the way by trust and his virile henchman, faith.

When trust is perfect and without doubt, prayer is simply the outstretched hand, ready
to receive. Trust perfected, is prayer perfected. Trust looks to receive the thing asked for
-- and gets it. Trust is not a belief that God can bless, that He will bless, but that He does
bless, here and now.

Trust always operates in the present tense.

Hope looks toward the future. Trust looks to the present.

Hope expects. Trust possesses.

Trust receives what prayer acquires. So that what prayer needs, at all times, is abiding and abundant trust.'

Quoted from- 'THE NECESSITY OF PRAYER  By E.M. BOUNDS' (Excerpt 12)
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Is this truth?

Maybe I've spent so much time hoping I've forgotten about trust.  Am I so timid in my faith I just stop at hope?  Do my own doubts rear up their ugly little heads so that I'm not able to trust fully? I don't want to believe that it could be true, I want to trust. I want to ask and trust. But… see, there's one of those doubts already. The 'but' says all too loudly, 'What happens if you trust and it doesn't come to pass? Doesn't hope leave room for a little doubt so that there's wiggle room to pacify self by saying, 'I hoped but I knew it could go either way.'  Trust on the other hand doesn't say at all that it could go either way, I WILL get what I prayed for beyond doubt.  Do we truly believe we get what we pray for WHEN we pray for it, or are our prayers always geared towards a future response?  The … 'I'll pray for you.'  That's a promise for a future prayer for someone that might need prayer right then and there.  We pray for someone and we continue to pray for them asking God over and over to grant their petition- all the while not believing the very first time we asked for that particular petition that it was answered.  We don't believe because results aren't immediate in our understanding. That job we pray for that never seems to come, is it God not hearing so we keep praying?

What about this parable of our Savior's...

Luk 18:1  And he spake a parable unto them to this end, that men ought always to pray, and not to faint;
Luk 18:2  Saying, There was in a city a judge, which feared not God, neither regarded man:
Luk 18:3  And there was a widow in that city; and she came unto him, saying, Avenge me of mine adversary.
Luk 18:4  And he would not for a while: but afterward he said within himself, Though I fear not God, nor regard man;
Luk 18:5  Yet because this widow troubleth me, I will avenge her, lest by her continual coming she weary me.
Luk 18:6  And the Lord said, Hear what the unjust judge saith.
Luk 18:7  And shall not God avenge his own elect, which cry day and night unto him, though he bear long with them?
Luk 18:8  I tell you that he will avenge them speedily. Nevertheless when the Son of man cometh, shall he find faith on the earth?

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We ought to always pray- NOT FAINT.

God will avenge His own elect… THOSE crying to Him DAY and NIGHT, THOSE He bears long with!

We must keep praying with hope not lamenting our lack of the described trust above because we must cry day and night for our Savior to Save us, even as we know He is willing to save us. We must keep praying for His return, though we KNOW He will return.   We must keep praying because WE BELIEVE, and we need His bearing long with us, helping our unbelief!

That job, that healing, that helping all that left in God's hands to provide as He sees fit IS an ANSWERED prayer if we are praying for HIS WILL BE DONE.  We WANT HIS WILL, and He who sees the end from the beginning knows what is best, this is what we must TRUST, not that we will see the immediate results we DESIRE! This isn't about our desire, or at least it isn't supposed to be about what we want. Our desire must be HIS WILL and this we can trust in! His Will Be Done!

Let us TRUST in HIS WILL, believing when we pray all our prayers are answered according to HIS will, not our fleshy, finite, limited, lowly manner of comprehension of how we think things would be best- how can we ever truly know.  We have our hopes and a lot of them are based in selfishness, not God.  We must HOPE IN GOD, we must TRUST IN GOD!

IN HIS LOVE!