CHILL AH’T
Usually, pretty much from when we first become Christians, we all have the undeniable biblical truth that prayer is a massively important activity for us to take part in every day constantly underlined to us. How it basically goes throughout our lives, the Bible and church history is…
God engages with us (Romans 5 verse 8)
We engage in the experience of prayer with God the Father, in the name of God the Son, through the empowering, indwelling enabling of God the Holy Spirit, to seek God for both ourselves, others and his work on the earth (1 Timothy 2 verses 1 to 4)
God then changes things in our world because of our praying to Him (1 John 5 verses 14 to15)
Clear as crystal, sussed and sorted then eh? Well, yes… and no. You see, just like we all agree that a balanced diet, regular exercise, and the reduction of foods with high levels of fat, sugar, and additives in them is very much the right way to go, it actually ain’t that easy in our real-world experience sometimes, is it?
Learning to pray is a lifelong training course that often brings with it challenges, gaps in our positive experiences of it, and times when we forget what we have learned already, leading to us effectively drifting off from what we know we should be doing on many occasions.
This reality should not surprise us or cause us to beat ourselves up about it. It’s life, we’re human, God knows us inside out and longs to take us on the type of prayer journey that benefits both our relationship with him, and which will also lead us to making an impact in this real world that we all live in.
In the upcoming blogs that I write, it would be great if first of all we start to “chill ah’t”, as our cockney friends would say! Let’s stop worrying about not being capable of running a marathon right now. We need some of the ‘Couch to 5K’ perspective here. Key point coming now! As we go on this journey together, please don’t think I’m an expert on praying, I am going to use what we learn together as a catalyst to grow in prayer too, I near to hear this stuff and think it through and apply it again in my life as well.
As the great philosopher of life Julie Andrew’s once sang in the old movie, ‘The Sound of Music’, “Let’s start at the very beginning, a very good place to start!” As it says in Zechariah chapter four,
“Do not despise the day of small things…”
The best is yet to be.
by Fred Wright 14th June 2023
