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May 1999 New Horizons

Prayer: Communion with God

 

Contents

Communion with God

Taking a Glance at an Ancient Topic

How Long to Pray

When Preference Becomes Precept

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Communion with God

Prayer is communion with God. You must pray to be saved. Many illiterate persons, unable to read the Bible, have entered into the kingdom of God, but no one has entered without prayer. In prayer you plead before God for the salvation offered in Christ, and come into his presence to love and adore him. Prayer opens to us the treasures of the Christian life. Through prayer, God: supplies the strength to resist temptation and to grow in Christlikeness (Eph. 6:13-20; John 15:1-8), changes the world (James 5:16-18), gives opportunity to confess sins and receive assurance of forgiveness (1 John 1:9), cultivates loving submission to the will of God (Matt. 26:36-46; 2 Cor. 12:7-10), and furthers the proclamation of the gospel (Rom. 15:30-33; Eph. 5:18-20; Col. 4:3-4). Prayer does not bend an unwilling God to be favorably disposed toward us. It is, however, the divinely appointed instrument that God uses to fulfill many of his sovereign plans. Many of God's goals for his creation come to realization ... Read more

Taking a Glance at an Ancient Topic

The Bible is a book saturated in prayer. According to one writer's estimate, there are 800 prayers in Scripture (including the Psalms), 650 of which have definite answers recorded for them. The many godly people who are mentioned in the pages of Holy Writ instinctively looked to God to supply their daily needs, calm their fears, execute justice, and provide salvation from sin. This looking to God comes only by the grace of God the Father, through the Lord Jesus Christ, in the power of the Holy Spirit. As believers, we too should live lives that are steeped in prayer. However, we sometimes take prayer for granted. This is something our Lord, during his earthly life, never did. We often forget what a precious gift God has given to us, his adopted children, by promising to listen to our prayers. Faith should lead us to the throne of grace. As Calvin wrote, "Faith is not true unless it asserts and brings to mind that sweetest name of Father—nay, unless it opens our mouth freely to cry, 'Abba, Father' ... Read more

How Long to Pray

How long do you keep praying the same petition? How long do you pray for your covenant children who have gone astray? Do they ever get too old to pray for? Let me share a remarkable story of answered prayer that should encourage you to keep on keeping on. In 1963, when I came to Pilgrim Church in Bangor, Maine, Tom Littlefield, the older of Jack and Kay Littlefield's two sons, was in his early teens. Since his parents had been part of Pilgrim Church from the very beginning, their boys had participated in the strong program of catechetical instruction that characterized Pilgrim Church in its formative years, and by 1963 Tom was a member of an active group of young people in the church. As he went on into his teen years, however, Tom more and more turned his back on the teaching of his home and church, and he frequently got into trouble at school. His high school experience was so unsettling that his father took Tom to a school near Waterville that specialized in troubled, rebellious, incorrigible ... Read more

When Preference Becomes Precept

I remember my first visit to a Reformed church all too well. There I was, very wet behind the ears. Searching the Scriptures had convinced me that the "doctrines of grace" truly summarized the gospel, and I desired with all my heart to worship the sovereign God. So I searched for a church that confessed these great Reformational truths. I found one. Upon my arrival at the small church, I was "greeted" by a nerdy guy carrying a stack of books. What he lacked in social skills he made up for in aggressiveness. He approached me quickly and started the interrogation: "Are you new here?" Obviously I was. "Do you study theology?" When I said yes, his breathing became labored and he started to sweat. Then came the coup de grace: "Are you infra- or supra-lapsarian?" I replied, "Neither; I'm vegetarian!"—but my humor was lost on this poor fellow. Just What Is Hyphenation? This story illustrates a sometimes humorous, sometimes disturbing phenomenon in today's conservative church circles: the ... Read more

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