Pray for yourself

Good morning everyone,

Our theme for this month: “Personal Responsibility”

Our Bible verse for today: “Create in me a pure heart, O God, and renew a steadfast spirit within me.” Psalm 51:10 (NIV)

Our thought for today: “Pray for yourself”

I have a book about prayer called “All the Prayers of the Bible”. It was published in 1959 by Dr. Herbert Lockyer and over the next twenty years had to be reprinted twelve times in order to meet the demand and to fill all the orders.

In the book Dr. Lockyer records and then comments on every prayer in the Bible, beginning with Genesis 4:26, “At that time men began to call on the name of the Lord”, and ending with Revelation 22:20, “Come, Lord Jesus”.

There are more than 650 prayers in the Bible with over 450 recorded answers. Knowing that is helpful and instructive. Evidently prayer matters to God. Apparently, He wants us to pray or He wouldn’t have given us so many examples of it. God has made prayer a matter of personal responsibility for us. He calls us to pray; He teaches us to pray; He gives us hundreds of examples of prayer; He listens when we pray; and He answers our prayers.

Interestingly, of all the subjects the pray-ers in the Bible could have addressed in their prayers, one of the most frequent is themselves. Very often the pray-er is praying for him or herself. This is helpful to know because too often we accept the false notion that it’s selfish to pray for ourselves. That’s simply not true. In fact, as David modeled for us in Psalm 51:10, prayer is often when God does a lot of the molding and shaping in our lives. During our prayer times God is busy shaping, changing, and refining our heart.

The Christian life is lived from the inside out. What’s true of the heart will be true of the person. When a person spends long periods in deep prayer asking God to change his or her heart, the results of that prayer will show itself in outward ways in things like love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control (Galatians 5:22-23). That’s the outward evidence of a rich inward prayer life and it’s what David was praying for in Psalm 51:10.

In the Bible God has revealed to us that prayer, for ourselves, is not only needed, it’s a matter of personal responsibility. We need to do this for ourselves. I encourage you to spend some time today praying for yourself.

God bless,
Pastor Jim

2 thoughts on “Pray for yourself”

thefathersfeet says:

January 18, 2022 at 8:18 am

So true. Thanks for a good word today. Your blogs are very much appreciated. May the Lord continue to do a fantastic work in you. May you experience the fullness of His joy (John 17:13). In Jesus’ name.

1. oakhillcrossville says:
  
  January 19, 2022 at 5:57 am
  
  Thank you. Thank you for your writing ministry as well.