For the next # of weeks I will share some thoughts by D.A. Carson that come from his book A Call To Spiritual Reformation (subtitled: Priorities From Paul and His Prayers).
“The one thing we most urgently need in Western Christendom is a deeper knowledge of God. We need to know God better.
When it comes to knowing God, we are a culture of the spiritually stunted. So much of our religion is packaged to address our felt needs – and these are uniformly anchored in our pursuit of our own happiness and fulfillment.” (p. 15)
“One of the foundational steps in knowing God, and one of the basic demonstrations that we do not know God, is prayer – spiritual, persistent, biblically minded prayer. Writing a century and a half ago, Robert Murray M’Cheyne declared, “What a man is alone on his knees before God, that he is, and no more.” But we have ignored this truism.” (p.16)
“When was the last time we came away from a period of intercession feeling that, like Jacob or Moses, we had prevailed with God? How much of our praying is largely formulaic, liberally larded with cliches that remind us, uncomfortably, of the hypocrites Jesus excoriated?” (p.17)
“J.I.Packer writes “I believe that prayer is the measure of the man, spiritually, in a way that nothing else is, so that how we pray is as important a question as we can ever face”. Can we profitably meet the other challenges that confront the Western church if prayer is ignored as much as it has been?” (p.17)
Hmmmm!
I’m just sayin’!
Like doesn’t work here. Resonates, yes. Humbles, yes.