Echoes From the Campfire

[Don Adkisson]

       "I think that God allows things to happen because of our stupidity, then we have to pay the cost, or someone does."       --D.C. Adkisson  (Redemption)

       "Continue earnestly in prayer, being vigilant in it with thanksgiving."     --Colossians 4:2 (NKJV)

     One thing for sure you need to survive in this wicked world is prayer.  Prayer keeps the communication line open with God.  There are many books on how to pray, a method of prayer, etc.  The thing that must be done is to pray.  James Moffat said that, "Prayer is love in need appealing to love in power."  We are most surely a needy people in many, many ways, and God is the power.  In fact, that is one of His names for Jesus is sitting on the "right hand of Power."

     Matthew Henry wrote that, "Prayer is the nurse of faith."  We stay strong in the faith through God's Word and through communication with Him.  Part of our communication with Him is His Word.  We must realize and understand that.  We know Him by His Word.  Also because of His Word we know how to pray, and I don't just mean the Lord's Prayer.  We must pray according to His will which we find in the Word.  The better we know the Bible, the better we can pray, and we must pray to get through this life.

     We must communicate with God to get through this wicked world.  When things are lurking ready to pounce on you, when obstacles arise in your path that you were not expecting, when things don't go as planned, when there seems to be no understanding we must go to the Lord in prayer.  Paul, Peter, John, and Jude all speak about false teachers and prophets.  We need to know the Word of God to recognize who these are.  Contemplate on the words of Jude, "But you, beloved, building yourselves up on your most holy faith, praying in the Holy Spirit" (vs 20, NKJV).  Notice, we build ourselves up.  We build on our faith, but we do it.  Works?  Of course it is, it is faith that is alive and active.  It is growing in grace.  Now the question is how hard do we want to work.  There are sluggards in the world, you have worked with some of them, but remember, there are also believers that are spiritual sluggards as well.  They have a "ho-hum" type of Christianity.

     So how do we pray?  How do we keep the messages flowing back and forth from heaven and the throne?  First, test everything that comes your way by the will of God, therefore you must get into the Bible to know the will of God and take everything that comes your way to God for His approval.  Second, we are insufficient and weak, we must take that insufficiency to the God of sufficiency.  He is the One who takes care of our need.  Third, we are admonished to pray in the Spirit so that our prayers are right.  I remember a preacher one time asking his aunt why she moaned so much when she prayed.  She told him that one day he'll get to the place where his prayers are filled with moans.  The Holy Spirit can interpret those moans.  And fourth, we must know the Word of God to pray properly.

            "Pray, no matter how bad the chances,/Pray, whenever the foe advances,/Pray whatever the circumstances,/God has got to come through."     --Ralph Carmichael

D.C. Adkisson