Friday, August 30, 2013

As believers in Christ we should be always thinking "am I doing this to be impressive, or am I doing this because He’s impressive?"-She Reads Truth: Prayer in the Bible. Why are we sharing that verse on facebook, twitter, instagram, google + or other social media sites? are we being selfish and trying to make ourselves look good or are we trying to make God look good.

We need to take time out of our day and have private prayer time with God. We need to have our own time with God, spend time with just him. But we also need to take time and pray together. We need to confess our sins to each other, pray for each other corporately.

"16Confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you may be healed. The earnest prayer of a righteous person has great power and produces wonderful results" -James 5:16
-Tiff

The last 17 days, we have been focusing on the different types of prayer.  We have learned all about praise, petition, intercession and Kingdom praying.  Today was the beginning of a challenge of who, where and when.
It is very important that we don't spend our prayer time seeking to glorify ourselves.  We also need to be aware of our motives when we are praying.  The attitude in which we pray is very important to God.  The Pharisees would pray like they did everything else, self-important and judging other people.  There is the story about the Pharisee and the tax-collector who were both praying in the synagogue.  The tax-collector was humble and his conversation was meant for himself and God.  He was praying with an attitude of submission.  The Pharisee, however, was praying with an attitude of self-importance and was judging the tax-collector in his very public prayer.  Jesus, telling this story to His disciples, told them that the tax-collector was the one who was justified before God, rather than the Pharisee.
Praying in private is an important part of our walk with God.  We want to be in constant communication with Him, but it's not a thing that we need to be proudly broadcasting to the world to make ourselves feel important.  When we're approaching it with an attitude of self-glorification, we are not pleasing God.  When we approach Him humbly and seek His will and His glory, then He is pleased.
Praying corporately is also important.  Praying together with other believers for things to happen is a powerful weapon against our enemies.  The attitude is also very important, but getting to know our King corporately through prayer is not wrong.  The Bible actually tells us to confess our sins to each other.  When our attitudes are right, and we are gathered together with other believers who have the same attitude, God is listening.
-Meg