June. 22nd The ‘What’ Of Prayer I
Bible Reading: Gen. 22:9; Mat. 16:24
Gen. 8:20
‘then Noah built an altar to the Lord, and took of every clean animal and of every clean bird, and offered burnt offerings on the altar’
Prayer is the meeting place between man and God that can otherwise be referred to as the ‘prayer altar’. In the Old Testament, altars where physical and visible but in the New Testament they are spiritual and invisible. Folks, your heart is your prayer altar.
Altars are places of sacrifice to God and prayer is a spiritual sacrifice. Heb. 12:29 says ‘our God is a consuming fire’ and the altar of prayer, once activated, invokes God’s divine fire to purge, purify and perfect whatever concerns us.
No one becomes an effective prayer warrior without being willing to make sacrifices. You have to come to a place of self-denial and put ‘the flesh’ in its place. Paul said ‘I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that you present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable to God, which is your reasonable service’ Rom. 12:1
The sacrifice of prayer will demand less sleep, reduced leisure and more discipline in the use of limited free time. This is the ‘what’ of prayer. Raise an altar in your heart and remember ‘Jesus said to His disciples, if anyone desires to come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow me’
Prayer:
i. Pray that the Lord will grant strengthen to re-build your prayer altar and make the necessary sacrifices
ii. Resist diabolical forces that make prayer laborious, ineffective and petulant Jam. 4:7
Thought for the Day:
There is no better time to start praying than ‘now’