Real Praying

'PRAYER, without fervour, stakes nothing on the issue, because it has nothing to stake.It comes with empty hands. Hands, too, which are listless, as well as empty, which haven ever learned the lesson of clinging to the Cross.

Fervourless prayer has no heart in it; it is an empty thing, an unfit vessel. Heart, soul, and life, must find place in all real praying. Heaven must be made to feel the force of this crying unto God.'

Quoted from- 'THE NECESSITY OF PRAYER  By E.M. BOUNDS' (Excerpt 22)

*******Jas_5:16  ...The effectual fervent prayer of a righteous man availeth much. 

A heartless prayer - what does it mean? Saying a prayer without heart is truly empty, truly meaningless, it's worthless and yet how many of us mouth words by rote, with just barely a thought to the God we are praying? Seriously! When we invoke the name of our God, our Heavenly Father, do we do it with heart? With true heart? Are we realizing that we are seeking the CREATOR when we pray? Are we realizing that we are seeking to gain the attention of our LORD?  Seriously, we tend to stand in awe of being in the presence of other human beings who have gain notoriety of some sort. An actor passes by us and we are quick to take pictures, to tell all our friends and family about the encounter. Others are envious of us and our brush with the famous. You know what I'm talking about. Even when someone we know pops up on the local news channel, we are busy recording it and pointing it out to others. We do these things for human beings just like us and yet when we bring ourselves into the presence of our LORD in prayer, we seek Him, really seek Him to hear us to acknowledge us, and yet why aren't we praying in awe of Him? Why aren't we praying with fervor as we implore our GOD in prayer?

'Crying unto God' -  

Exo_2:23  And it came to pass in process of time, that the king of Egypt died: and the children of Israel sighed by reason of the bondage, and they CRIED, and their CRY came up unto God by reason of the bondage. 

Exo_3:7  And the LORD said, I have surely seen the affliction of my people which are in Egypt, and have heard their CRY by reason of their taskmasters; for I know their sorrows

Exo_3:9  Now therefore, behold, the CRY of the children of Israel is come unto me: and I have also seen the oppression wherewith the Egyptians oppress them. 

God HEARS our CRIES to Him!

1Sa_7:8  And the children of Israel said to Samuel, Cease not to cry unto the LORD our God for us, that he will save us out of the hand of the Philistines.

The people wanted Samuel their priest, their prophet to cry to the LORD for them. 

1Sa_9:16  ... for I have looked upon my people, because their cry is come unto me. 

Again… 'their cry' is heard.  Why do we imagine we don't need to cry out to God?

2Sa_22:7  In my distress I called upon the LORD, and cried to my God: and he did hear my voice out of his temple, and my cry did enter into his ears. 

1Ki_8:28  Yet have thou respect unto the prayer of thy servant, and to his supplication, O LORD my God, to hearken unto the cry and to the prayer, which thy servant prayeth before thee to day

In distress we cry, we make supplication, we cry and pray!

Psa_5:2  Hearken unto the voice of my cry, my King, and my God: for unto thee will I pray. Psa_9:12  When he maketh inquisition for blood, he remembereth them: he forgetteth not the cry of the humble. 

Cry!

Psa_27:7  Hear, O LORD, when I cry with my voice: have mercy also upon me, and answer me.

Psa_28:1  A Psalm of David. Unto thee will I cry, O LORD my rock; be not silent to me: lest, if thou be silent to me, I become like them that go down into the pit. 

Psa_34:15  The eyes of the LORD are upon the righteous, and his ears are open unto their cry. 

Psa_119:169  TAU. Let my cry come near before thee, O LORD: give me understanding according to thy word. 

Luk_18:7  And shall not God avenge his own elect, which cry day and night unto him, though he bear long with them? 

Rom_8:15  For ye have not received the spirit of bondage again to fear; but ye have received the Spirit of adoption, whereby we cry, Abba, Father. 

We need to cry to our God, we need to pray with fervor! Please, Lord, please help us to be on fire for You! Help us to realize that You are everything! Help us Savior, help us to seek You with all our heart! Please, Satan would have us dead inside, Satan would have our prayers lifeless, empty, meaningless, void of all things real and sincere, all things that would have us on fire for YOU! 

Bless us in Your mercy!

Thank You, Lord!

Hunger and Thirst After Christ's Righteousness

'In the Beatitudes Jesus voiced the words which directly bear upon the innate desires of a renewed soul, and the promise that they will be granted: "Blessed are they that do  hunger and thirst after righteousness, for they shall be filled."

This, then, is the basis of prayer which compels an answer -- that strong inward desire has entered into the spiritual appetite, and clamours to be satisfied. Alas for us! It is altogether too true and frequent, that our prayers operate in the arid region of a mere wish, or in the leafless area of a memorized prayer. Sometimes, indeed, our prayers are merely stereotyped expressions of set phrases, and conventional proportions, the freshness and life of which have departed long years ago.'

Quoted from- 'THE NECESSITY OF PRAYER  By E.M. BOUNDS' (Excerpt 21)
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HUNGER and THRIST.   We all know what it means to hunger and thirst, don't we? It's not something you ignore, it's something you desire to be sated. You want your hunger to be filled, you want your thirst to quenched, you don't desire to keep hungering and thirsting you seek to take care of that. When we hunger and thirst after CHRIST'S righteousness, we are seeking for that to filled. And this hunger and thirst is something we must CONSTANTLY FEEL and FILL!  Christ will fill our need with HIS righteousness, but we have to truly desire it, it has to be a HUNGER in us, it has to be a THIRST in us!

Do our prayers 'operate in the arid region of a mere wish'?  Are we simply wishing for things without any REAL desire, real thirst and hunger?  You know what I mean, we wish for various things, and then we desire things. You've wished for things, most of us have wished upon blowing out birthday candles, but do we truly wish with a fervent desire? I can wish for a nice day outside, but unless I have something truly important planned for outside, I seldom wish for a nice day with a fervent desire.  So, I ask again, do our prayers 'operate in the arid region of a mere wish'? Are we wishing without any real conviction?

Or do our prayers operate 'in the leafless area of memorized prayer'? When we are growing up our parents will often teach us to pray by using memorized prayers, you know what I'm talking about- 'Now I lay me down to sleep…' and 'God is good, God is great…' Then as we get a little older we learn the Lord's Prayer- 'Our Father which art in heaven…'  And even more prayers we can learn by heart and find ourselves using as we communicate with our Lord and Savior. But we need hunger and thirst, we need DESIRE in our prayer.

Please LORD, fill us with the desire we need to hunger and thirst after You, after Your righteousness! We would be filled by YOU! Please LORD, by YOUR GRACE! YOUR LOVE, YOUR MERCY! ALWAYS!

Chilly Days

'Nothing short of being red hot for God, can keep the glow of heaven in our hearts, these chilly days.

The early Methodists had no heating apparatus in their churches. They declared that the flame in the pew and the fire in the pulpit must suffice to keep them  warm. And we, of this hour, have need to have the live coal from God's altar and the consuming flame from heaven glowing in our hearts.'

Quoted from- 'THE NECESSITY OF PRAYER  By E.M. BOUNDS' (Excerpt 20)

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'These chilly days.'

WE ARE SLEEPING!
WE ARE LUKEWARM!

DON'T YOU FEEL IT?!

YES! I'M YELLING!

WAKE UP! WAKE UP! We need to wake up out of the awful slumber we are in. We need to get out of the comfortableness of being lukewarm! We have to STOP believing that we have need of nothing!  More than ever we have to realize that we are POOR, we are WRETCHED, we are MISERABLE, we are BLIND, and we are NAKED!

WAKE UP!
RIP THE BLINDERS OFF OUR EYES!

We've placed God behind Self not in front of Self. We've put ourselves FIRST in so much.  We put ourselves in the place of God when we adjust the blinders on our eyes that allow us to place God behind our comforts, our desires, our needs, our wants. The idea that God should be in the forefront of our lives, that heaven should be a reality desired desperately daily,  is foreign to us! We save all that for those called to be preachers, and teachers, evangelists, and prophets. We regulate ourselves to a lower place and content ourselves that it is not up to us to be truly on fire for God, that's for others.  And when we put ourselves down on the rung of those called of God to be His, we fall into a deadly sleep, a sleep without any extra oil in our lamps, a sleep that has us putting blinders on our eyes so no real light can get in.  We LOVE our lukewarmness, and we should despise it, repent of it! We need to pray for that LIVE COAL from  GOD'S altar! WE need HIM IN US, alive, on fire! We need Him REALIZED in our LIVES as our SAVIOR.

Please, LORD, wake us up!

Please.

Christ prayed in agony

Taking yesterday's excerpt and expounded on it--

'True prayer, must be aflame.'

Quoted from- 'THE NECESSITY OF PRAYER  By E.M. BOUNDS' (Excerpt 19)

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A prayer of desperation certainly seems to contain the fire we are talking about, however is all prayer, prayer of desperation? Should it be? Seriously. A lot of people, people who aren't even prone to praying will find themselves calling out to God for help in time of need, you know what I'm talking about. And yet people who are prone to praying, those who are truly seeking a daily, living, breathing walk with their Savior, do they pray with intensity, with desperation?  When we have a desperate need, such as an medical emergency where a lot of non-praying people begin to pray, they are invoking God's mercy because they recognize He has power, they are hoping He has power to intervene on their behalf. We who daily strive to be Christ's during times of no emergency, shouldn't we still be desperately seeking our God's intervention in this world on behalf of everyone. I say everyone because how could we leave even a single person out of the desire for them to find salvation in Jesus Christ, our Lord, and for those who have found Him already- to keep strong in Him while the enemy attacks them with subtle and not so subtle desperation of his own. True prayer being aflame, is something real. Our Savior taught us how to pray and it was with sincerity, it was in truth. When our Savior prayed in the Garden of Gethsemane he sweat blood!

Luk 22:44  And being in an agony he prayed more earnestly: and his sweat was as it were great drops of blood falling down to the ground.

Such prayer!

Truly this was the time of the greatest temptation of our Savior. Facing the great temptation to save Himself, to call ten thousand angels to His aid, He knew He had to resist the temptation. The temptation is NOT the sin! It's consenting to the temptation, it's giving temptation a realization, making it something desired, something desperately wanted more than to obey God! 

Our Savior prayed so desperately, He prayed in agony! He knew what was to come, He knew the worst thing imaginable in all of mankind and He was a man, was to happen to Him. It wasn't the torture to come, it wasn't even the physical pain of death He was going to face, it was the separation from His Father! To be separated from God, this was the agony He faced!

Do we realize how horrific it truly would be to be completely and utterly separated from God?!  This is what we all face should we fail to accept the great sacrifice made by our Savior. Is it any wonder we too need to pray with a flame, with a fire, with a desire for salvation?  Are we desperate to be saved from sin's evil? Are we? Shouldn't we be?!  This is REAL.  Salvation and damnation are REAL, and we must pray as if they are real and not some mere possibility of being real, with the equal chance of it not being real.

Please, LORD, please help us to comprehend the enormity of what is at stake here. You prayed in AGONY, You sweat great drops of blood, all because You knew if You did not give into temptation then You were going to be separated from Your Father, Our Father, God. That temptation had to be more than we can imagine, more than anything we'll face in our entire lives. Help us LORD, help us to pray with a fire, pray with desire, pray with true heart conviction and not by rote, not without the love we need to truly have in our hearts for You. Please, let the Holy Spirit be in us when we pray because we truly do not know how we are to pray acceptably to You.

All in YOUR LOVE! Your amazing, amazing love!

'There is no incense without fire'

'True prayer, must be aflame.
Christian life and character need to be all on fire.
Lack of spiritual heat creates more infidelity than lack of faith.
Not to be consumingly interested about the things of heaven, is not to be interested in them at all.
The fiery souls are those who conquer in the day of battle, from whom the kingdom of heaven suffereth violence, and who take it by force. The citadel of God is taken only by those, who storm it in dreadful earnestness, who besiege it, with fiery, unabated zeal.
Nothing short of being red hot for God, can keep the glow of heaven in our hearts, these chilly days.
The early Methodists had no heating apparatus in their churches. They declared that the flame in the pew and the fire in the pulpit must suffice to keep them  warm. And we, of this hour, have need to have the live coal from God's altar and the consuming flame from heaven glowing in our hearts.

This flame is NOT mental vehemence NOR fleshy energy. It is Divine fire in the soul, intense, dross-consuming -- the very essence of the Spirit of God.

No erudition, no purity of diction, no width of mental outlook, no flowers of eloquence, no grace of person, can atone for lack of fire.

Prayer ascends by fire. Flame gives prayer access as well as wings, acceptance as well as energy. There is no incense without fire; no prayer without flame.

Ardent desire is the basis of unceasing prayer. It is not a shallow, fickle inclination, but a strong yearning, an unquenchable ardour, which impregnates, glows, burns and fixes the heart. It is the flame of a present and active principle mounting up to God. It is ardour propelled by desire, that burns its way to the Throne of mercy, and gains its plea. It is the pertinacity of desire that gives triumph to the conflict, in a great struggle of prayer. It is the burden of a weighty desire that sobers, makes restless, and reduces to quietness the soul just emerged from its mighty wrestlings. It is the embracing character of desire which arms prayer with a thousand pleas, and robes it with an invincible courage and an all-conquering power.'

Quoted from- 'THE NECESSITY OF PRAYER  By E.M. BOUNDS' (Excerpt 18)

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More intense study of this tomorrow… for now please, reread and reread this.   Truly there is no incense without fire, and remember this…

Luk 1:8  And it came to pass, that while he executed the priest's office before God in the order of his course,
Luk 1:9  According to the custom of the priest's office, his lot was to burn incense when he went into the temple of the Lord.
Luk 1:10  And the whole multitude of the people were praying without at the time of incense.
Luk 1:11  And there appeared unto him an angel of the Lord standing on the right side of the altar of incense.

Prayer and incense- the whole MULTITUDE of people were PRAYING without at the time of the INCENSE.

And this…

Isa 6:5  Then said I, Woe is me! for I am undone; because I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips: for mine eyes have seen the King, the LORD of hosts.
Isa 6:6  Then flew one of the seraphims unto me, having a live coal in his hand, which he had taken with the tongs from off the altar:
Isa 6:7  And he laid it upon my mouth, and said, Lo, this hath touched thy lips; and thine iniquity is taken away, and thy sin purged.
Isa 6:8  Also I heard the voice of the Lord, saying, Whom shall I send, and who will go for us? Then said I, Here am I; send me.

Holy fire!

Yes, more tomorrow by the grace of our glorious God!

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!