tuesday commentary

sunday night i was really blessed to hear my brother in law landon preach the word. although i said that last week we were finishing our series on prayer... i was wrong:) this week we finished it.

He preached from 3 different passages about prayer.

1. pray for your leaders. 1 timothy 2:1-4
two things he said for this that i thought were super helpful were....

• We know God answers prayer so we should be praying all the more for them.
  
• We shouldn't criticize them. We should do what God tells us to do... pray for them.
  

so we did just that ... we are sending these with post-it notes prayers to the president and then we had pictures of the cabinet all over the room that the students went and prayed for. super cool engaging time of prayer.

2. pray without ceasing. 1 Thessalonians 5:17
'prayer shouldn't be a thing that's over.' it should be more like, 'oh, and by the way... thanks for this food.'

if prayer is a highway... there's no stop signs. oh and i loved this.... prayer isn't like taking out the trash (another thing we HAVE to do) but like going to a fountain of living water for rest & peace & hope.

Not only does God want us to pray but he promises he's going to listen without stopping. We have the ear of God by our mouth, that's why we should pray without stopping.


3. pray to get close to God. psalm 145:18
the blood of Christ brings us into the presence of God and prayer brings us into the arms of God.

in Genesis 3, right after adam and eve sinned, God didn't reprimand them but instead said, 'where are you?' He doesn't want to be far from us (by our doing-not by his doing ever) the way that sin has caused...

lastly... some closing things.

• prayer contains talking & listening. psalm 46:10
• Instead of being selfish and always thinking about ourselves and our own needs, we should be thinking of what other people need and how we can pray for them.
• Intentionally enter God's presence

after all... prayer changes things....

drawing near to the living fountain,
kg