Thursday, May 9, 2013

Do you pray out of sympathy?


One of the challenging aspects of prayer for the follower of Jesus is to learn to pray without reflecting one’s own sympathies or concerns about the situation. It is easy to ask God to intervene out of our compassion for someone. The basis of our prayer is not our view of the situation; the basis of our prayer is the Cross and what God did there in and through Christ. The Cross is not a sympathetic response to the human condition; it is dramatic testimony of what God thinks about the human condition. In our prayers we join God’s interests and concerns for those around us. God wants to use the circumstances of people’s lives to bring about spiritual transformation. Prayers out of sympathy hinder what God is working out in another; prayers that seek God’s will bring about God’s purposes. – Ron Friesen

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