Ziklag R6.13 - Denial

Bad Men, Worse Ills and Learning to Pray

SOS Discipline - Daily Proverb and Red Letter Reader

A bad man tells you what he is doing. cf Pr. 10:10

The greatest ill is denial. cf Mt. 9:12

Gentle, unnoticed, unheard: mastery. cf Sun Tzu 6:9

From Today’s Stack

Learning to Pray

Jesus taught his disciples to pray. He taught them what they were not capable of learning on their own. It is not strange that man must learn to pray. The heart does not overflow with joy and love on its own. It is a very wicked and dangerous error, a poisoning leaven, to think that the sinner can know how to pray by himself.

By himself, Man confuses prayer with his wishes and moanings, his dreams and woes, his excitements and fears, which are all matters of instinct, the fallen nature of the Adamic heart. We replace holy with the profane. We switch around heaven and earth. We suppose man to be like God.

“To pray” is not the same as “to pour out your heart,” nor is it so narrow a thing as “to worship.” To pray is to find the way to God, the truth of His Word, the life of His Spirit, and so to speak with him, as it were, face to face.

Such praying happens even when the heart is empty, even when the soul is sick, even when the spirit languishes. Because such prayer is rooted in the Words of God. But no man may find these Words by himself. For this, he must meet the revelation of Jesus Christ.