Prayer Column: October 2012

Dear Lord, ...

I can’t send you a letter, nor email; I can’t phone you or text you. But we can still get through to one another. This prayer thing: I do praise you for devising it in the first place, and teaching us all down the generations how to use it. It grows on you (and with you). So simple: Dear Lord, ... No machinery to go wrong or forget how to use, no one needing paid, no fear of power cuts.

Does it work? people ask. Depends what you mean, I suppose. I can get through to you: I know you’re there. A lot of the time I can feel you, and even hear you whispering, or feel you prompting and teaching
through your word (is that your texting after all?). And even without the electric charge of your presence, I have your promise – you are there.

But then requests: does praying for things work? Again it depends. If I imagined you a Christmas tree, with presents all around just for the asking, I doubt if that would do. But when I see Christmas as part of you
(not the other way round), and ponder your great plan through Jesus, and see where I fit in, and what he’s calling me to do with him – it works then, because I’m asking for what’s needed for your work, and you’re
never going to refuse that.

Well, I know there have been times when it seemed like you’d signed off – brick walls with no way through. But later I saw I’d got it wrong about what you wanted: the refusals were answers, and better than what I
thought. And it isn’t just me, of course. I can ask for others. In fact I often do. Far-away people as well as those close to. And the same rules apply. It’s finding your way for them, and easing their burdens, and
bolding them up to face difficulty, and getting second wind for those long-haul problems you choose to work in and through. I do thank you for the privilege of prayer, Lord.

Roy Lorrain-Smith

A prayer for each week

7 October 2012
Dear Lord of the telling word, thank you for the Bible and all its riches.
Please open us up to your great Teacher, your Holy Spirit, that we may
hear, and learn, and do – all according to your will, through Jesus.
Amen.

14 October 2012
Dear Lord who speaks within, sometimes out loud with a voice one
might know again, or as a whisper, or but the echo of a thought: please
open our inner ear to listen, and respond, and converse. Through Jesus.
Amen.

21 October 2012
Dear Lord who makes yourself known as a real and living presence,
thank you for being our heavenly Father. Please help us to draw near to
you and, finding you drawing near to us, rejoice in being with you.
Amen.

28 October 2012
Dear Lord who makes provision for us – the sun and the rain for all, and
inner gifts and fruit for those who ask in trust – please give us the good
sense to seek for all you long to give us, and so to glorify your name.
Amen.

Your own prayers