Growth A good article: On the Practice of Prayer

[Ella Mo]

On the Practice of Prayer

In your daily life, you attach no importance to prayer, and you neglect the matter of prayer. When you prayed before, you did it before God in a perfunctory and careless way. None of you gave your heart completely to God and made genuine prayers to God, but you only prayed to God when you had troubles. Over such a long time, have you ever made a genuine prayer to God? Have you ever wept bitterly before God? Have you ever known yourself before God? Have you ever made an intimate prayer to God before God? Prayer requires gradual exercise. If you do not pray at home at ordinary times, you cannot pray in the church. If you do not pray in small meetings at ordinary times, you cannot pray in big meetings. If you do not draw near to God or ponder God’s word at ordinary times, you won’t have anything to say when praying, and even if you pray, it will be on your lips but not a genuine prayer.

What is a genuine prayer? It is to tell God what is in your heart, fellowship with God by touching God’s heart, and fellowship with God concerning God’s word, feeling that you are very close to God, that God is before you, that you have things to tell God and you are very brightened in your heart, and that God is very lovely, and thus you feel very encouraged and the brothers and sisters have enjoyment when hearing your prayer and feel that what you are saying is what is in their heart and is what they want to say and what you are saying substitutes for what they want to say. This is a genuine prayer. After you make a genuine prayer, you will have peace and enjoyment in your heart, your strength to love God will be stirred up, and you will feel that loving God is the most worthy and meaningful thing in life. This is proof that your prayer has produced results. Have you ever made such a prayer?

What is the content of prayer? You should pray step by step according to the true states of your heart and what the Holy Spirit is doing and fellowship with God according to God’s heart and God’s requirements for man. When you first begin to exercise to pray, you should first give your heart to God, and do not expect to touch God’s heart but only try to tell God what is in your heart. You can come before God to pray like this, “God! I disobeyed you before, and I have just realized it today. I’m really corrupt and hateful. Before, I wasted all my time. From now on, I will live for you and live out a meaningful life to satisfy your heart. May your Spirit work on me all the time and enlighten and inspire me all the time, so that I can bear strong and powerful testimony before you, so that satan can see in us your glory, your testimony, and the evidence of your triumph.” When you pray like this, your heart will be completely released. After you make such a prayer, your heart will be closer to God. If you can often pray like this, the Holy Spirit will surely work on you. If you always pray like this and make resolutions before God, one day your resolutions will be accepted before God, and your heart and your whole being will be gained by God, and in the end you will become a person perfected by God. Prayer is really too important to you. When you pray and receive the working of the Holy Spirit, your heart will be moved by God, and your inner strength to love God will be stirred up. If you do not pray with your heart and do not fellowship with God with an open heart, God will have no way to work on you. If after you pray what is in your heart, God’s Spirit still has not worked on you and you still do not feel encouraged within, it shows that your heart is not earnest and your words are not truthful and are mixed. If you have enjoyment after a prayer, it means that your prayer has been accepted by God and God’s Spirit has worked on you. As a person who serves God before God, you cannot lack prayer. If you really consider fellowship with God a meaningful and worthy thing, will you give up prayer? No one can lack fellowship with God. If you lack prayer, you will live in your flesh and live in satan’s bondage. If you do not make genuine prayers, you will live under the power of darkness. I hope that brothers and sisters can make genuine prayers every day. But this is not observing a regulation. You must be able to achieve some result. Are you willing to sleep less and enjoy less and make a prayer in the morning and then enjoy God’s word? Praying and eating and drinking with a pure heart like this will be more acceptable to God. If you practice that every morning and exercise to give your heart to God and fellowship and commune with God every day, your knowledge of God will surely increase, and you will be better able to touch God’s heart. You can say, “God! I’m willing to fulfill my duty. In order that you can gain glory through us and you can enjoy testimony through us, all that I can do is to dedicate my whole being for you. May you work on us, so that I can love you and satisfy you with a true heart and pursue you as my goal.” If you have such a burden, God will surely perfect you. You should not only pray for yourself but also pray for carrying out God’s will and for loving God. Such prayer is most genuine. Are you a person who prays for carrying out God’s will?

In the past, you did not know how to pray, and you neglected the matter of prayer. Now you need to exercise properly in prayer. If you cannot have strength to love God in your heart, what should you pray? You can say, “God! My heart cannot truly love you. I want to love you, but I have no strength. What should I do? May you open my spiritual eyes and your Spirit move my heart, so that I can be free from all my passive states before you and won’t be restrained by any person, matter, or thing but completely open my heart before you, and so that my whole being can be consecrated before you and I can obey you no matter how you try me. Now, I won’t consider whether I will have a future, and I won’t be bound by death. I’m willing to seek the path of life with a heart of loving you. All things are in your hand, my destiny is in your hand, and my whole life is even more in your hand. Now I will pursue to love you. No matter whether you let me love you and no matter how satan disturbs, I will surely love you.” You can pray like this when you encounter such a thing. If you pray like this every day, your strength to love God will be stirred up gradually.

 

[Ella Mo]

How to enter into genuine prayer?

When you pray, you have to have a heart quiet before God and have a sincere heart and have genuine fellowship with and make genuine prayer to God, and you should not say nice words to cheat God. When you pray, you should center on what God wants to accomplish now, ask God to inspire and enlighten you much, and bring your actual states and difficulties before God and pray, including making resolutions before God. To pray is not to go through a process but to seek God with a true heart and to beseech God to keep your heart, so that your heart can often be quiet before God and you can know yourself, hate yourself, and forsake yourself in the circumstances God arranges for you, so that you can have a normal relationship with God and truly become a person who loves God.

What is the significance of prayer?

Prayer is a path for man to cooperate with God, a way for man to call on God, and a process for man to be moved by God’s Spirit. It can be said that one without prayer is a dead man without a spirit and that shows that he does not have the organ to receive God’s moving. Without prayer, one cannot have a normal spiritual living, much less follow the working of the Holy Spirit. Without prayer, one is cut off from his relationship with God and cannot receive God’s approval. The more a believer in God prays, the more moving he will receive from God, the stronger will he will have and the more he will be able to receive the newest inspiration from God. Thus such a person can be perfected by the Holy Spirit sooner.

What results should prayer produce?

One can practice prayer and understand the significance of prayer, but it is not a simple thing to achieve results in prayer. To pray is not to go through a formality, go through a process, or recite God’s words. In other words, to pray is not to parrot or imitate. When one prays, he must be able to give his heart to God and must commune with God so as to receive God’s moving. To achieve good results in prayer, one must pray on the basis of reading God’s word. Only if one prays in God’s word can he receive much inspiration and light. The manifestations of a genuine prayer are: having a thirst for the requirements given by God and wishing to meet them, hating what God hates and trying to know it on that basis, and having knowledge of the truth God speaks about and not being unclear about it. After a prayer, if one has the will, faith, knowledge, and ways of practice, it is a genuine prayer. Such a prayer has produced results. However, when praying, one must pray on the basis of enjoying God’s word and fellowshipping with God in God’s word and be able to quiet his heart before God through seeking God. Such a prayer has entered into the stage of genuine fellowship with God.

The most basic things about prayer are:

1. You should not pray some words aimlessly and mindlessly. You must pray with a burden in your heart, that is, pray with a goal.

2. You must pray with God’s words and on the basis of God’s words.

3. You should not pray about the same old things and should not pray about the obsolete things but only exercise to pray the present words of the Holy Spirit. Only in this way can you be connected with God.

4. You must pray with a focus when praying together, which must be the present work of the Holy Spirit.

5. You all have to learn to intercede and must find in God’s word the things to intercede for and have a burden for them on that basis and often pray for them. This is a manifestation of caring for God’s heart.

 

[Ella Mo]

Personal prayer life is built upon understanding the significance of prayer and the basic things about prayer. In your daily life, you should often supplicate and pray for your defects, and you should pray for being transformed in your life nature and on the basis of knowing God’s word. Everyone has to build his own prayer life, praying for gaining knowledge of God’s word and praying for seeking to gain knowledge of God’s work. Commit your actual situations before God, truthfully without caring about the way. The most important thing is to gain true knowledge and have practical experience of God’s words. Praying in various ways is what a person who pursues to enter into a spiritual living must achieve. All such purposeful spiritual fellowshipping works as praying silently, pondering God’s word, and knowing God’s work are for the purpose of entering into a normal spiritual living, so that your condition before God can be better and better and your life can grow more and more. In a word, all that you do, whether eating and drinking God’s word, praying silently, or declaring loudly, is for the purpose that you can have a clear seeing of God’s word and God’s work and of what God wants to accomplish in you and more importantly for the purpose that you can meet the standard God requires you to meet, so that your life can reach a higher level. The minimum standard for people required by God is that they can open their heart to him. If people give their true heart to God and speak their heart to God, God is willing to work on them. What God wants is not people’s crooked heart but their simple and honest heart. If people do not speak their heart to him, he will not move their heart or work on them. So, the most important thing in praying is to speak your heart to God, telling God your defects or disobedient nature and opening yourself to God completely. Only if you do so will God be interested in your prayer. Otherwise, God will hide his face from you. The minimum standard for prayer is that you must be able to keep your heart quiet before God and keep your heart from leaving God. Maybe in this period you do not have newer or higher seeing, but you must maintain your present situation with prayer and keep yourself from backsliding. This is what you must at least achieve. If you cannot even achieve this, it is proof that your spiritual living has not entered the right track. As a consequence, you cannot hold on to the vision you originally have and will lose faith in God and your resolution will also disappear. Whether you have entered into a spiritual living is judged from whether your prayer has entered the right track. Everyone has to enter into this reality and has to do the work of exercising consciously, not waiting passively but consciously seeking the moving of the Holy Spirit. Such is a person who truly seeks God.

When you begin to pray, do not be unrealistic, wanting to grow up on one mouthful. You should not have extravagant desires, expecting to be moved by the Holy Spirit or receive inspiration and enlightenment when you open your mouth or expecting that God will bestow great grace to you when you open your mouth. That is impossible. God does not do supernatural things. He has his time to fulfill man’s prayer. Sometimes God tests your faith to see whether you are faithful before him. When you pray, you have to have faith, perseverance, and will. When you begin to exercise, most of you become discouraged easily when you cannot touch the moving of the Holy Spirit. That won’t do! You have to be persistent and pay attention to touching the moving of the Holy Spirit and pay attention to seeking and groping. Sometimes your way of practice is wrong, and sometimes your own intents and notions cannot stand before God, so God’s Spirit does not move you; sometimes God wants to see whether you are faithful. In any case, when you exercise, you have to pay much price. If you find that your way of practice is wrong, you can pray in a different way. As long as you seek truly and thirst to gain, the Holy Spirit will surely lead you into this reality. Sometimes you may not touch much moving even though you pray with a true heart. At such times, you should pray by faith and believe that God examines your prayer. You should have perseverance in prayer.

Be an honest person and pray to God in order to remove your crafty heart. Purify yourself through prayer at any time and seek to be moved by God’s Spirit through prayer. Then your nature will be gradually transformed. A true spiritual living is a life of praying and a life of being moved by the Holy Spirit. The course of being moved by the Holy Spirit is a course for one to be transformed in his nature. A life without being moved by the Holy Spirit is not a spiritual living but a religious ritual. Only a person who often has the Holy Spirit’s moving and has the Holy Spirit’s inspiration and enlightenment is a person who has entered into a spiritual living. One’s nature is transformed continuously as he prays. The more one is moved by God’s Spirit, the more positive and obedient elements he will have. Then his heart will be gradually purified, and his nature will be gradually transformed. These are the results brought by genuine prayer.

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