i read a quote.
i can't remember who said it or the exact wording of it, but the jist of it is quite disturbing to me and i'm struggling to find the balance between the truth it holds and my way of life.
it goes something like this... "how sad is it when our prayers for needs of self grossly outweight our prayers for forgiveness."
the writer (or speaker if that was the case) recognizes how often we pray for physical things and not for spiritual things. i can see what he saw. whenever i hear 'prayer request', i immediately think about what that person 'needs'. these are legitimate concerns; real people, real problems. job searches are real. diseases like cancer are real. travel mercies are real.
but, how much more should we be praying, asking God for forgiveness?
how much more should we be bringing the names of lost friends to the Lord?
how much more should we focus our divine conversations on eternal things, not on temporal, fleshly things?
a lot more, i dare say.
that's my struggle: i agree 100% with the quote i read, but it goes against everything that well-intentioned prayer warriors have been telling me for the last 34 1/2 years. any prayer list i've ever seen or prayed over is almost exclusively about health concerns.
rare is the occasion that...well, you see what i mean.
got any thoughts on it? please let me know. i need wise counsel on this one. i'm really struggling with it.
1 comment:
yeah, it's a shame, eh? i'd like to think that prayers for forgiveness take place more at home, less public, since we don't want to admit to much or allow people to think we must've done something really bad to be praying publicly for forgiveness. you know what i mean, like we've forgotten the reason we're allowed to step before Him in the first place...
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