A hard important truth about prayer is:
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From E.M.Boounds:
Prayer which does not result in right thinking and right living, is a farce. We miss the whole point of prayer if it fails to purge character and change conduct.
The character of the inner life is a condition of effectual praying. As is the life, so will the praying be. An inconsistent life obstructs praying and neutralizes what little praying we may do. It must be fortified by a life aiming, unceasingly, to obey God.
Praying must come out of a cleansed heart. The fruit of real praying is right living. “
Here are my thoughts about what E. M. wrote today. There were certainly some tough words, huh?
My Take
I had a hard time with the first two sentences myself. But as I reread them, however, I knew them to be true.
For example, why do we pray if we don’t expect to see a change in our lives? Also, it seems to me, that the more we lead a righteous life, think righteous thoughts, our prayer life gets stronger. So it’s kind of like a circle of righteousness. This is one of those hard truths.
Righteous prayer leads to righteous living and righteous living then leads to righteous praying.
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Righteous living and righteous praying
That word, righteousness, is one we don’t use often these days. Maybe we should. If we are living righteous lives, it will be reflected in righteous praying. This is what E. M. Bounds is saying.
Maybe we should take stock of the changes in our lives. Are there any? Any spiritual discipline we take place in should result in a changed life. Otherwise, we’ve just been playing at it.
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Tracking the changes
I’m a big believer in monitoring my life. A self-examined life is important. How else will we know if we are improving in some areas or not if we don’t run a self-check now and then?
For me, I’m going to use my Bullet Journal for this. I have two ways I track my prayer life. One entry is “rising prayer”. This refers to prayer before my feet ever hit the floor. It definitely does not take the place of my what I call regular prayer time. It ends with quoting
“May the words of my mouth and the meditations of my heart be acceptable to you, O, my LORD.” Psalm 19:14
If I’ve prayed during the night, which is very common, this counts as a rising prayer.
Finally,
We shouldn’t get discouraged, though, when we fail. Because we all do. But that doesn’t mean we quit trying.
God bless you as you grow in prayer. God bless me as I grow in prayer as well.
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