Concrete Prayer

Recently I've discovered the power of praying for specific things. In a book I recently read by Sproul, Does Prayer Change Things?, the author describes how the vague prayer can debilitate our prayer life:

"We pray in vague generalities. When all our prayers are either vague or universal in scope, it is difficult for us to experience the exhilaration that goes with clear and obvious answers to prayer...Having a broad scope of interest in prayer is not wrong, but if all prayer is so general, then no prayer will have specific and concrete application."
- R.C. Sproul

I was pretty angry with God for the way some situations had gone down a couple of weeks ago, and I shared this in prayer group - I told them I was angry and bitter about certain situations and having a hard time talking to the Lord about it. When the prayer for spiritual healing wasn't answered within a week, when I sat down and prayed and spent time with the Lord and I wasn't instantly better.... I grew even angrier. Seriously - was God not going to honor my request for a peaceful spirit not warring with my Creator?

I continued reading the Word, despite my frustrations, and sure enough, the Lord cleared some things up with me.But it wasn't until I came back to school that I noticed I wasn't angry anymore. It happened gradually, but God restored me. And, out of curiosity, I spoke with my friend, a sweet prayer warrior from my group to see if she'd continued praying for me. She said she had specifically thought of me during a sermon and lifted my angry self up in prayer.

Prayer works. Specific concrete prayer for the things that seem unchangeable works. I am currently challenging myself not just to pray for "wisdom for so-and so" and "trust in suffering" and whatnot, but for specific everyday situations - focus during studying, guidance in conversations with various people, etc.

I wish we could all sit here and glorify God by sharing how He has answered our prayers and also encourage one another to fight the good fight and pray continuously. I hope that you, whoever you are, are seeing the Lord answer prayers in His sovereignty.

And in that same vein of thought -
I encourage everyone to be praying for Japan - for the people, for the government, for the world - that all would see and recognize and depend on the Lord's movement through this difficult time.

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Like I did with the picture/colorful post, I will start tagging these sorts of posts. I will be tagging them truth nugget, as they are generally my reflections on the Lord's work in my life - little morsels of the Truth in my life. I'll go back into the archives and tag the older ones at some point as well. If you want to filter these sorts of posts, you can go down to my tags at the bottom of the page and click truth nugget to find them.

-bRob