This Saturday, Feb. 24th, we continued with the “Life You’ve Always Wanted” series by John Ortberg. We read from and discussed Chapter 6 “Interrupting Heaven”.
Some of the main points from our reading:
1. Many people only resort to prayer when they are desperate but “[desperation] prayers are not sufficient to sustain spiritual life.”
2. Usually we think of life as normal here on earth as being “interrupted” by action in heaven but in the book of Revelation prayers of the saints interrupt heaven and then heaven takes action upon the earth as a result of these prayers. He quotes Walter Wink who says “History belongs to the intercessors – those who believe and pray the future into being.” Real prayer, as depicted in the Bible, is not the religious stylized prayer that we often hear but “impertinent, persistent, shameless, indecorous. It is more like haggling in an oriental bazaar than the polite monologues of the churches.”
3. Prayer does not come automatically upon becoming a Christian but must be learned and practiced. The disciples asked Jesus to teach them how to pray like he did (as observant Jews they already knew how to pray in the religious way) and he did.
Next week we will continue on the subject of prayer, reading from Ortberg’s book and using some of his questions and discussion starters to stimulate our thoughts and reflections.
See you there!
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1 comment:
Prayer has always been tough for me. I get exasperated with people that want to turn every meeting into a prayer meeting. I say "bring on the food!" But seriously, i really appreciate this guidance on prayer cause i know it's important to God and therefore, it's important to us. I think the idea of just being real with God is the most important point for me, that was mentioned on Saturday. Sometimes I think "real" prayers don't go over too big in religious circles. But between me and God ... who cares?
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