Prayer lifts us up!

Good quote today...

Gregory Palamas, a fourteenth-century monk of Mount Athos, said, “This is the nature of prayer: that it raises one from earth to heaven, higher than every heavenly name and dignity, and brings one before the very God of all.”

Seasons

As the mornings grow a bit colder and the evening comes quicker, I have been reflecting on the last several weeks.  I've handled about 4 funerals.  I officiated a wedding.  I'm facing my last class needed to complete a Masters degree and my daughter got married.  My son will have his license soon and he's got a car.  In all this, my wife is back at full time work and we're getting more used to our new smaller house.   Tomorrow I'll have another coaching session with a guy who moved his family to New Zealand to plant a new church.

In the midst of all this I realized that I have probably prayed more this year than any previous year.  God is still in charge and He still speaks in the quiet.

What will the fall season bring?  This past Sunday, in speaking about being devoted to prayer, I shared this statement taken from Paul E. Miller's book A Praying Life:

If you are not praying, then you are quietly confident that time, money and talent are all you need in life. (p49)  This is functional atheism.  You simply cannot do this life alone.  Jesus knew this, so, MAKE TIME TO PRAY.

Whatever comes, I know that staying close to the Lord in prayer will be the rock for this guy!

On Prayer...can't lose!

There was a TV series a few years ago that was about high school football in a small town in Texas called Friday Night Lights.  I don't really remember much of the individual episodes but one mantra was repeated by the coach and the team before every game.  It was:

CLEAR EYES, FULL HEART, CAN’T LOSE! 

Now, if you were to ask me what spending time in prayer does - well, that might be my answer most days.  The Holy Spirit just resets my life in those moments...

Preparing for September's Prayer [devoted to] series...

In Paul E. Miller's book, A Praying Life, he notes how prayer is essentially getting to know a person (God), and, in our fast paced culture, he writes, "Learning to pray doesn’t offer us a less busy life; it offers us a less busy heart." (Miller 2009, 23). 

So, we lean in to discover the heart of God Himself.  Exciting journey ahead!