Higher Ground | Day 9
PRAYER
John 4:24 – God is Spirit, and those who worship Him must worship in spirit and truthfulness.
Heb. 10:19 – Having therefore, brothers, boldness for entering the Holy of Holies in the blood of Jesus.
Prayer is for contacting God and having fellowship with Him. The emphasis here is not on asking God concerning different matters. Prayer is a means and a way of fellowship. Fellowship with God must be by prayer and through prayer. The real meaning of prayer is to contact God and absorb Him.
First, prayer that contacts God consists of words spoken genuinely from the heart. We must pray according to our inward feeling. We should not exercise our mind like a student taking an exam. Neither should we focus on the wording of prayer as if we are writing an essay. Such prayers are not very genuine; they are rather pretentious. When we come before God to pray, we should not be pretentious. We should speak what we feel within. When we are angry, we should voice our anger before God. When we are happy, we should voice our happiness before God. When we are sad, we should voice our sadness before God. When we are under pressure, we should speak of this pressure before God. When we sense that we are sinful, we should confess it before God. We should speak what we feel within, speaking genuine words from our heart.
When we come before God without being pretentious or memorizing the things we need to pray for and we simply place ourselves before Him and let the Holy Spirit shine in us, He causes us to sense and see certain sins or mistakes that we have committed. At that time, we should confess the sin according to this sense. We should confess only as much as we sense. We do not need to take care of what we have not sensed. While confessing, we need to receive the precious blood, rely on the blood, and apply the effectiveness of the blood. If we continue praying in this way, we can be assured that we will touch God’s presence and contact Him. (Lessons for New Believers, pp. 324-325, 328-329)