While on vacation with my wife, Debi, I’m spending part of my coffeetime with Jesus reading a classic work on prayer by O. Hallesby. In it I read this morning the following:
“A child of God can grieve Jesus in no worse way than to neglect prayer.
For by so doing he severs the connection between himself and the Savior, and his inner life is doomed to be withered and crippled.
We go around at home and in the assembly of believers like spiritual cripples, spiritually starved and emaciated, with scarcely enough strength to stand on our own feet, not to speak of fighting against sin and serving the Lord.
I have sinned a great deal against my merciful heavenly Father since I was converted, and I have grieved Him a great deal during the twenty-five years that I have lived with Him. But the greatest sin that I have committed since my conversion, the way in which I have grieved my Lord the worst, is in connection with prayer, my neglect of prayer.
The countless opportunities for prayer which I have failed to make use of, the many answers to prayer which God would have given me if I only had prayed, accuse me more and more violently the more I become acquainted with the holy realm of prayer.”
May we in the ARC be known for, being a people of prayer; a people who are nurturing, not severing, the connection between God and ourselves. For this to happen, however, I must confess that my life in prayer needs to be transformed. Lord, let this be the year that it is. With the disciples, Jesus, I ask, “Teach me to pray.”
Will you join me in this adventure that we might become more than ever a prayer-saturated people? Let this be the year!
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