prayers - Fort Hood

Our prayers and sorrow are with the bereaved and wounded of Fort Hood, and we pray as well for the attacker and his family.

See Jesus Creed.

in the midst of troubles

It is often easier to have faith for someone or something that is more or less removed from us, than it is for something or someone more or less near to us. I wonder in part why that is. We ought to be most in prayer for what is going on around us. Surely there are a number of factors at work.

We see the problems firsthand, and indeed are often part of the problem ourselves, perhaps just as often unknown to us. This is the beauty of faith and of God's working. It includes everyone. One of the reasons I love the "Our Father", "Lord's Prayer." Sometimes it takes more faith to believe God will change something we've lived with for a long time, than it does to believe God can change something else removed from us. This is why we need to be praying for others with reference to the troubles they live in, as well as persevering in our weakness to hold before God our own troubles, and not give up. We in Jesus need each other, and we need to persevere in faith ourselves in the midst of ongoing problems.

Of course there's much more to say on this, and draw out on it. What would anyone like to add here?

groans in our praying

Romans 8 tells us that we don't know how we should pray, but that the Spirit helps us with groans that words cannot express. Is this our groans or the Spirit's groans? I'm not sure, though it would seem grammatically that it is the Spirit who both intercedes and groans in us. But it seems that God's work in humans often includes humans so that we take on personally and from our hearts something of what the Spirit is doing, and indeed even the mood of the Spirit. I think I agree with Ben Witherington III who writes:

...Cranfield is probably right that what is meant are utterances or groanings that are imperceptible to the believer. The Spirit groans along with the believer, just as the believer groans as part of fallen creation.

Ben Witherington III, Paul's Letter to the Romans: A Socio-Rhetorical Commentary, 226

N.T. Wright has noted how we as believers in Jesus groan with the rest of creation for God's full renewal of all things, which begins with the redemption of our bodies in the resurrection.

When we seek to pray, just groaning should never be despised. This can be among the most powerful kind of praying and prayers. Even though we may not be uttering a word, not knowing what to pray, just our groans to God can be taken by, and/or come from the Spirit, who intercedes in us according to the will of God.

I often feel near groaning, at least a good part of any given day. And such often is the case when I am troubled in trying to pray for someone or something. But we should turn our groans "upward" in prayers to God, seeing them as something God can take as we think of those in need of God's intervention. And for ourselves as well.

I think I've found this helpful. When my prayer life may seem dormant, groanings may end up finding their way in and out of the throne room of God for the good of others, and the world, as well as ourselves.

How do you look at groaning as potentially being a most powerful kind of prayer? Or any thoughts on this?

letting go

To help others at times, we simply need to let them go in the seeming, or obvious folly of their own way. For me this is hard, especially at first. But when one sees they are intractable, it is actually to their benefit if we let go, in love, and let them experience something of the consequences of their behavior, while we pray.

Sometimes when witnessing another's folly, whether they are simply a person we have close contact with for whatever reason, or if they're a close relative, we are drawn in ourselves to have attitudes toward them which are not Christ-like. I'm thinking of anger, contempt, frustration, attitudes which easily amount to descending to their level. Letting go can then be for our benefit, as well as theirs. We need time to pray for them especially, and seek to be present for them in a way that can be helpful and truly for their good. Love is not to be mushy, because true love wants God's best for the other.

What would you like to share on this?

prayer

An area I want to grow in is prayer. Certainly that includes the prayer we have as we go along throughout each day. And I'm especially thinking about those special prayer concerns we have for others, as well as for ourselves, from time to time.

I think of those regular times when Jesus met with the Father, during his earthly life. And how I want to come to God in prayer for others, and for special situations.

I have found that to do so does seem to take sheer will power and perseverance at times. This is so because I believe faith in prayer involves a time element in God's working. And God's working often involves the one praying themselves, as well as what they are praying for. And we must not forget there is a spiritual battle taking place. One way I see this is simply the difficulty I have sustaining ongoing prayer about any matter. Along with some of the wickedness that can get thrown my way in dreams, and in subtle, and not so subtle ways, which I take as being from the enemy.

But as I persevere in praying, I often arrive at a sense that God is in it somehow, perhaps in the praying, or in what is being prayed about- likely both. Weak though my praying may be.

I do try to pray according to "the Lord's Prayer," along with my understanding of their needs and how I would pray. Bringing in that prayer that Jesus taught us helps us pray God's will into the matter, and not just our own will and concern for that person.

Any thoughts out there related to this that you'd like to share?

quote of the week: Bonhoeffer on intercessory prayer

There is no dislike, no personal tension, no estrangement that cannot be overcome by intercession as far as our side of it is concerned. Intercessory prayer is the purifying bath into which the individual and the fellowship must enter every day. The struggle we undergo with our brother in intercession may be a hard one, but that struggle has the promise that it will gain its goal.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Life Together, 86.