Great Prayers

In the past week I have been challenged anew to look at the way I am praying. It has been good to examine prayer and to continue learning how the Lord would have me pray. Being a man of prayer is something I hope to be characterized by and continue to grow in throughout my whole life. Right now I am reading Good to Great in God's Eyes by Chip Ingram. In it he gives 10 practices that great Christians all have in common. One of those things is that they pray great prayers. So what, exactly does praying great prayers look like? What are some of the characteristics of great prayer?

First of all, they are deeply personal. Great prayer flows out of a passion to know God. The more we love the Lord, the more intimate our prayers become. Great prayers also come out of being broken. When we are broken, we pour our hearts out to Him. We give Him everything and expect everything from Him because we realize at this point that we are and have nothing. We realize that from Him and through Him and to Him are all things. We base our prayers on who He is. Great prayers also champion God's agenda. People who pray great prayers understand God's will for this world and pray His will be done and wish to see His kingdom come.

Great prayers take God seriously. They call upon God's promises and believe them to be true. They believe the nature of God to be full of truth and to be true to His promises and so they call upon that which He has promised to do. Great prayers also require great courage. They "require great courage because they boldly insist, in spite of natural reservations, on what God has said about Himself." When Abraham calls upon God to save Sodom and Gomorrah for the sake of a few righteous he keeps asking God to save them based on the merit of God's character. He knew God would live up to His character and so called upon God to do so. "Great prayers ask the improbable, expect the impossible, and receive the unthinkable."

There is of course much more to prayer than just this, but it has been so good for me to remember who it is I'm praying to and to call upon Him to do the things He has promised to do. I want to know the Lord better everyday, so that my prayers will reflect that relationship. The prayer of faith is rooted in the life of faith. Do we believe? Do we pray great prayers for His glory and our joy?

GRE, Work, and Life in General

Today I took the GRE. For all those inquisitive folk who may be wondering what that is, it is basically the SATs for grad school. It is filled with many big words which even someone of my immense knowledge and vocab had no idea what they meant. It also has lots of fun math problems, which, even if I didn't know exactly how to figure the problem out, I at least had an idea of what it was asking...more than I can say for some of the vocab questions. Anyways, I ended up getting a 650 on the math and a 560 on the vocab sections and someone has to read the two essays I wrote and grade them. If anyone out there can tell me what a good GRE score is that would be awesome, cuz I have no idea if I did well or not.

I am still looking for a permanent job, although I have found temporary work for the past couple of weeks. I have been working with a geologist whose goes to my church up at an old gold mine building big filters to filter zinc out of the water up there. He is a great guy to work with and for, so it has been a lot of fun. I don't know how long the fun is going to last though, so I'm still praying God allows me to get a job here sometime.

As for life in general, it is good i guess. These past two weeks it seems like most of what I do is work and sleep and just find enough time to get those little things done that you have to do every day. I'm glad to be busy though and making money instead of sitting around all day on my butt. I have also been busy following the election and the debates and stuff. Today I was saying how Obama is such a weasel and my brother Trevor said that he has a much more endearing term that he refers to him as...he failed to say exactly what it was (we were at the dinner table and I'm going to go with it wasn't appropriate at said place and time). All in all I don't like watching the debates because they are so boring and full of lies and half truths, although I thought the saddleback forum was great. Anyways, go McCain!! Well, I gotta go grab my laundry. Peace.