A thermometer

I've been reflecting on prayer quite a bit of late.
In australian ministry and churchianity it seems like it just doesn't happen all that much.

"What a man is alone on his knees before God, that he is, and no more" - Robert Murray M'Cheyne

The power in your spiritual life for resisting sin, for changing to become more like Jesus, for being fruitful in all your efforts, seeing souls turned from dark to light... All these can only be a result of answered prayer.
Just pray.

Be obedient to the Word of God, and know His will through it, then mountains can be moved, the heavens can stop sending rain [James 5], solar bodies and systems can be changed etc.
Just pray.

The very essence of sin is independance from God. Rebellion against Him can be simply ignoring His word, leaving righteous works undone or not considering Him first in the smallest endeavor.


The thing about prayer is that we never know how much more fruitful, how much more satisfying, our ministry and joy in Christ can be, because we never taste it.
We kid ourselves that what we are seeing is the full blessing of God upon our works when in fact it is most likely crumbs compared to the power of the divine hand we could witness if we exercised more dependance.

Reading Esther, Nehemiah, Isaiah... prayer was such a fundamental aspect of each account, I don't think these stories would be in the bible except for the prayer. They wouldn't have occured. Not worth dwelling on hypotheticals though. Lets just pray.

God has been answering lots of my prayers lately and its such a great encouragement and source of spiritual strength. All praise to Him.

I'm grieved for those who never know these joys because they never trust enough to experience them. How many of God's uncounted spiritual blessings in Christ [Eph 1:3] are similarly unexperienced. A.W.Tozer calls it the second greatest tradgedy of mankind, the first being our fall and rebellion toward God.