Thoughts from Mark "Hat" Rackley

Look to the Lord and his strength;
    seek his face always.

• 1 Chronicles 16:11

Hear the supplications of your servant and of your people Israel when they pray toward this place. Hear from heaven, your dwelling place; and when you hear, forgive.

• 2 Chronicles 6:21

Trust in him at all times, you people;
    pour out your hearts to him,
    for God is our refuge.

• Psalm 62:8

Devote yourselves to prayer, being watchful and thankful.

• Colossians 4:2

I fed you with milk, not solid food, for you were not ready for it. And even now you are not yet ready,

• 1 Corinthians 3:2

For though by this time you ought to be teachers, you need someone to teach you again the basic principles of the oracles of God. You need milk, not solid food, for everyone who lives on milk is unskilled in the word of righteousness, since he is a child.

• Hebrews 5:12-13

“First, let every one in professing to prayer turn thither all his thoughts and feelings, and be not (as is usual) distracted by wandering thoughts; because nothing is more contrary to the reverence due to God than that levity which bespeaks a mind too much given to license and devoid of fear. In this matter we ought to labor the more earnestly the more difficult we experience it to be; for no man is so intent on prayer as not to feel many thoughts creeping in and either breaking off the tenor of his prayer, or retarding it by some turning work digression.
“Our second proposition was, that we are to ask only insofar as God permits. For though he bids us pour out our hearts, he does not indiscriminately give loose reins to the foolish believers their wish, his indulgence does not proceed so far as to submit to their caprice.”

• John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, Volume 2

“A concentrated mind and a sitting body make for better prayer than a kneeling body and a mind half asleep.”

• C.S. Lewis, Letters to Malcolm: Chiefly on Prayer

I apologize for making the statement that the comments on prayer was concluded last week.  This is much like last week’s topic, but it goes into more depth.  Next week, we will look at music as part of worship.

Calvin went on to talk about two factors in successful prayer.  We must not just have our eye on Jesus, we should have a heart for what God wants in this world.

This has little to do with creature comforts.  We should be praising God, but doing what promotes God’s will is important.

What is added here is that while we can pour out our heart, we should not be frivolous or capricious.  Caprice may come up at the spur of the moment.  Being capricious might involve us going different directions as our mood changes.

Odd how I have heard sermons and read articles lately on how we should never rely on our feelings.  It is like that is a common thought with a lot of people at the moment.

Maybe it is because there have been a lot of small outpourings of the Holy Spirit lately.

When I was working lay witness missions in Mississippi, if you felt the emotional high fading from the last mission, you would get it back soon enough.  We had the mission trips every month, but rarely more than once each month.  As lay people, we had other things to do.  I was in college.  Others had a job, family, children.  You just could not be there every month.

But since those days, I have rarely felt the emotions that were constantly pulsing through my body in those days.

But emotions cannot last.  The change in our lives, our lifestyles, and our growth as a Christian needs solid food.

The emotions of the palpable presence of the Holy Spirit needs to be replaced with solid food, found by reading and understanding the Scripture, deep-dive Bible study, and by a baptism of fire.  I look back on my life and I see where those baptisms of fire refined me so that I turned away from worldly things and toward heavenly things.

When you walk with Jesus, the experience is in growth more than it is emotions.  Emotions are fleeting.  Emotions are capricious.  But being deep rooted in faith, that carries us through.

We need to keep our eyes on Jesus, our heart for God, and we need to grow stronger in faith and understanding so that capriciousness does not enter our prayers.

If you like these Tuesday morning essays about philosophy and other “heavy topics,” but you think you missed a few, you can use this LINK. I have set up a page off the home page for links to these Tuesday morning posts. I will continue to modify the page as I add more.

Soli Deo Gloria.  Only to God be the Glory.