A Prayer

Commentator Paul Harvey aired this prayer on his radio program, "The Rest of the Story", and received a larger response to this program than any other he has ever aired. With the Lord's help, may this prayer sweep over our nation and wholeheartedly become our desire so that we again can be called "One nation under God".
"Heavenly Father, we come before you today to ask your forgiveness and to seek your direction and guidance. We know Your Word says, "Woe to those who call evil good", but that is exactly what we have done. We have lost our spiritual equilibrium and reversed our values. We have exploited the poor and called it lottery. We have rewarded laziness and called it welfare. We have killed our unborn and called it choice. We have shot abortionists and called it justifiable. We have neglected to discipline our children and called it building self-esteem. We have abused our power and called it politics. We have coveted our neighbor's possessions and called it ambition. We have polluted the air with profanity and pornography and called it freedom of expression. We have ridiculed the time-honored values of our forefathers and called it enlightenment. We have become sexually deviant and called it a type of lifestyle. Search us, Oh God, and know our hearts today. Cleanse us from every sin and set us free. Amen."

How To Pray

You ask me what this voice of the heart is. It is love which is the voice of the heart. Love God and you will always be speaking to Him. The seed of love is growth in prayer. If you do not understand that, then you have neither loved or prayed. Ask God to open your heart and kindle in it a spark of His love and then you will begin to understand what praying means.

If it is the heart that prays, it is evident that sometimes, and even continuously, it can pray by itself without any help from words, spoken or conceived. Here is something in which few people understand and which some even entirely deny. They insist that there must be definite and formal acts. They are mistaken, and God has not yet taught them how the heart prays. It is true that the thoughts are formed in the mind before they are clothed in words. The proof of this, is that we often search for the right word and reject one after another until we find the right one which expresses our thoughts accurately. We need words to make ourselves intelligible to other people, but not to the Spirit. It is the same with the feelings of the heart. The heart conceives feelings and adopts them without any need of resorting to words, unless it wishes to communicate to others or to make them clear to itself.

For God reads the secrets of the heart. God reads it's most intimate feelings, even those which we are not aware of. It is not necessary to make use of formal acts to make ourselves heard by God. If we do not make use of them in prayer, it is not so much for God's sake as our own, in that they keep our attention fixed on Him in His presence.

Imagine a soul so closely united to God that it has no need for outward acts to remain attentive to the inward prayer. In these moments of silence and peace, when it pays no heed to what is happening within itself, it prays and prays excellently with a simple and direct prayer that God will understand perfectly by the action of grace. The heart will be full of aspirations towards God without any other clear expression. Though they may elude our own consciousness, it will not escape the consciousness of God.

This prayer, so empty of all images and perceptions...apparently so passive and yet so active, is as far as the limitations of this life allow-pure adoration in spirit and in truth. It is adoration fully and worthy of God in which the soul is united to Him as it's ground, the created intelligence to the uncreated, without anything but very simple attention to the mind and as equally simple application of the will. This is what is called the prayer of silence, or of quiet, or bare faith.



Written by: Jean Nicholas Grou - "How To Pray"

A Grateful Heart

Believe it or not, some of my most intimate moments with the Lord happen when I am in Abigail's room, rocking her to sleep. Sometimes I sing to her quietly, or sometimes I whisper to her and tell her over and over how wonderful she is. But most of the the time, I pray. Tonight, I realized why my prayers in her room are different than my prayers most any other time. My prayers in her room are ALWAYS prayers of thanksgiving. I hold her and squeeze her tight, and I thank my Heavenly Father who lovingly created her. I search my heart each night for words to express how grateful I am for the life that I have with my family, and the life that He has planned for us that we don't even know about yet.

I found myself praying for her spouse tonight. No, I am not trying to rush her out of the house just yet, but I think about all of the temptations that children go through in our world today and I want her to have a husband that respects her decisions. Even if they aren't the same as his. I want her to know that she is worthy of things that are good and she doesn't have to settle for anything less than extraordinary. I even pray for her teeth to grow in straight. I know that sounds funny, but I don't want to forget about her teeth by leaving them out.

It's during these quiet times of reflection that I am reminded of what's most important. I need God's grace to get through every moment of the day. I need it in order to handle my emotions, and I need it so that I can respond in a godly manner towards my husband and daughter. Sometimes I don't always exercise my ability to be graceful, but He knows I am trying.

When I lay her down in her bed, kiss her goodnight, and leave her room, I know that He is the keeper of her health. He holds what is in her dreams, and the breath that gives her life. I haven't always prayed, but I have always needed to. Knowing this, I thank Him again...for second, third, and even fourth chances.

Ever Let Us Pray...

My Michael is a psalmist. He loves Jesus and because of his deep love, his prayers are like love songs. For me, it hasn't come so easily. There have been times in the past where I found prayer to be boring, and even strenuous and scary. Real prayer is serious business.
When I pray, I do not often pray out of worry because I honestly trust in the Lord and His plan for my life. I also know that He knows what I need before I can even ask for it. Please don't misunderstand me, I do pray and I do it fervently, I just don't often bring to Him my "greeds". And during those times when I can't find the words, I know that my heart is heard just as loud as my words could be. Prayer is very evident in our lives and the lives of those around us on a daily basis. When we meet people that are not involved in church, or even when we spend time with our own families, we often find ourselves praying them through certain situations in their lives. This has helped me a great deal in learning just how powerful prayer can be in the lives of believers and non-believers alike, and in doing so, I continue to rediscover it's importance.
Mike has been involved with ministry nearly all of his life, in one way or another. It comes very naturally and easy for him to pray publicly amidst a large assembly of people, where I am usually the introverted one that prays silently. I have often admired those who are called to be intercessors because they can pray for hours and hours on end and have no knowledge of time passed, watchmen pounding on the doors of heaven for answers on behalf of God's children. The truth is, we often think of prayer as preparation for battle, but Christ showed us that it is the battle itself. Prayer is the heart of His work.