April 2013

Positioning yourself for effective prayer

2 Comments / Prayer /

Probably the most common struggle that people have in attempting a focused, sustained and meaningful prayer time is dealing with distractions associated with a wandering mind. Throughout the ages, one of the great secrets for engaging in effective prayer has been connected to the position a person chooses to assume while praying. By position I mean the posture or attitude our body takes while we communicate our innermost thoughts through prayer to God.
While we commune with God out of our spirit through both words and sighs too deep for words, there is also an important role our bodies can and should play in expressing our prayers. In a very real sense this is a tangible expression of loving the Lord our God through prayer “with all our heart, soul, mind and strength (body).”
The more that prayer can engage the entirety of who we are, spirit, soul and body, the more focused and engaged we will be – and in the end the more effective our prayer times will be. When we exercise our body by taking appropriate prayer positions as we express our hearts to Him, we are making our body, His temple, a holy habitation of worship for His glory and praise.

Positioning yourself for effective prayer Read More »

Two ways to be a house of prayer for all nations

2 Comments / Prayer /

And He was teaching them and saying to them, “Is it not written, ‘My house shall be called a house of prayer for all nations’? But you have made it a den of robbers.” Mark 11:17

What did Jesus mean when He said “My house shall be called a house of prayer for all nations”? This is a most critical question. If as Jesus’ teachings and the New Testament indicate, that His “house” over which He is the head is “the church which is His body,” then the church must be sure to make it a priority to be about that which He has called it to be. (Ephesians 1:22-23 & 1Timothy 3:15)

In order to understand this mandate for the church more clearly we must look at the context in which Jesus said this and specifically what He meant by the phrase “for all nations.”

This call for the church to be a house of prayer is recorded four separate places in the Scriptures: three times in the synoptic Gospels (Matthew 21:13, Mark 11:17 & Luke 19:46) and once in the quote to which Jesus is referring, when He says “is it not written”, in Isaiah 56:7.

Two ways to be a house of prayer for all nations Read More »

Scroll to Top