Tuesday, May 27, 2008

Blogger Small Group

This week's reading was James Chapter 5. I'm not sure why, but I haven't been good about reading the scriptures and then studying them for the week...I think I'm suffering from a mid-year crisis. Kids out of school, tons of activities outside of the house, lessons galore...bear w/ me.

The part of James 5 that hit me the most is The Prayer of Faith.

"Is any one of you in trouble? He should pray. Is anyone happy? Let him sing songs of praise."

First of all, I am the piss poorest example of this. I'm definately all about praying when I'm in a slump. I'm also great about praising when things are going fabulously. What I'm not good about is the other 80% of my life. The norm, mundane, day in & day out bull honky that IS my life...I'm horrible at praising / prayer during that time.

Doesn't the bible also say the if we ask, it will be given to us (if it's God's will of course)? But doesn't that require some effort on my part? Not only to ask, but to believe that he will do it and also believe that he CAN do it?

I'm so guilty of praying empty prayers. "God can you ________?"

OF COURSE HE CAN! HE IS THE GUY THAT CREATED ME FROM A RIB & SOME WORM POOP FOR GOODNESS SAKE!

This week starts a new chapter for me. I'm going to be more aware of my prayer habits (horrible as they are) and turn them around. I think he'd be happy to hear from all of us this week, if we'd just trust and know that he CAN do what we ask and not pray empty prayers out of obligation.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

One thing I've been doing recently is praying when lead and not out of what you say, "obligation". Too often I pray for my food, because it's tradition to do so as a "christian". Well recently I have decided that if I'm not feeling lead to pray over food, I won't. Why go to him in prayer if you don't mean a word you say. At that moment, I believe God is going, "are you kidding?! i know you dont mean anything, so why should i listen to a word you're saying". It seems simple but we have to remember that he knows everything already, so we're not "telling" him, we're simply recognizing these things on are own and telling him we need him more and less of us, when we pray.

Thanks for the post Mandy.

www.vagabondrunn.wordpress.com

Michael said...

Totally agree with vagbondrunn... I tend to pray without thinking... not all the time, but over food - well yes, and then to top it all off I have done the same thing with my girls. They know pray just to pray - not always but sometimes. It is always refreshing and humbling to hear them say a prayer over dinner and then add something in that is totally showing me that they are understanding it - they are getting that prayer isn't about repeating something but thinking it and offering it up.

Anonymous said...

I'm with you on not praying about 80% of the time. 80% of the time I feel like I don't have anything to say except thank you. So I don't want to keep saying thank you over and over. So I end up not praying. Lame I know but it's where I'm at right now.