That is  a great thought, making your life a prayer, could make a nice song
Brad, or maybe a poem.
Rhonda
----- Original Message -----
From: "lelia" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Wednesday, January 07, 2004 11:33 PM
Subject: Re: Bible Reading Verses Prayer Time


> Hey that's what I want for God to be my all.
>
> Thanks
>
> Lelia
>
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "j.ireland" <[log in to unmask]>
> To: <[log in to unmask]>
> Sent: Wednesday, January 07, 2004 8:45 PM
> Subject: Re: Bible Reading Verses Prayer Time
>
>
> > Beautiful.  Great examples.
> >
> > Vicki
> >
> > ----- Original Message -----
> > From: "Phil Scovell" <[log in to unmask]>
> > To: <[log in to unmask]>
> > Sent: Wednesday, January 07, 2004 3:59 PM
> > Subject: Bible Reading Verses Prayer Time
> >
> >
> > > Speaking of the different ideas of Bible reading and study, puts
> > > me in mind of the same principles relating to figure out how much
> > > to pray.  Pray without ceasing, comes to mind from 1 Thessalonians
> > > 5:17 and as Kathy said earlier, this is one of those verses that
> > > you can meditate on for the rest of your life and still not come
> > > to the end of it.  I mean, it is like the old preacher said, I
> > > meditated on that for so long, my meditator fell out on the floor.
> > > The two words in this passage, without ceasing, is a single Greek
> > > word and means exactly what it says; praying without stopping or
> > > ceasing or quitting or without interruption or without
> > > termination.  I mean, I have met a lot of Godly men and women in
> > > my travels and I have heard some of the greatest preachers alive
> > > today but I have never once met, or even heard of, somebody who
> > > prayed without ceasing.  So wrestling with that concept could
> > > drive you crazy until you eliminate all the other possibilities.
> > > For starters, there seems to be no way to fulfill that command.
> > > Jesus, for that matter, didn't pray 24 hours a day either.  In
> > > light of that, it cannot mean what it seems to say on the surface.
> > > The Lord led me to this conclusion one day about First
> > > Thessalonians 5:17 and it is this.  I was complaining to the Lord
> > > that He commanded me to do something humanly impossible.  After
> > > spending time in prayer about this little issue, He told me that
> > > all I had to do is make my life a prayer to Him.  Then it began to
> > > come into focus.  Back in the summer of 1982, I was asking the
> > > Lord a lot of big questions.  I was not reading my Bible every day
> > > and I was not doing a lot of other things.  In fact, I had given
> > > up trying to make myself spiritual by performing acts of
> > > spirituality.  Not because those acts weren't, in fact,  good
> > > things to do but because they were not making me more spiritual,
> > > bringing me closer to God, or even making me feel any better.  I
> > > went to God at this time to find out why and praying was the only
> > > way I knew to find the answers to my questions.  At that time, the
> > > Lord began to teach me how to pray perpetually and continually
> > > without ceasing.  I know some will not believe this but He taught
> > > me back then even how to pray when I was asleep.  On the other
> > > hand, there are times for dedicated focused prayer.  Read about
> > > all the great revivalists in the world.  They all prayed huge
> > > amounts of time.  They were also called to what they were doing,
> > > if I may point out, so that doesn't mean you should be doing the
> > > same thing they did.  However, every single Christian can pray
> > > without ceasing.  Basic prayer, or communication with God, is
> > > simple.  It is exchanging your thoughts for God's.  Praying
> > > without ceasing means that prayer has to be something so simple,
> > > you can do it without thinking.  Like breathing, for example.  We
> > > never think about breathing unless somebody holds our nose for a
> > > few seconds and then we start thinking about it pretty seriously.
> > > If we are going to pray perpetually, something has to change in us
> > > and that something is what we think prayer is.  Any time I begin
> > > thinking this way, I usually begin thinking about it in reverse
> > > and especially if I am getting no where with the concept by
> > > thinking about it from its face value standpoint.  So, in this
> > > case, I began thinking about what prayer was not.  Prayer is not
> > > time.  That is, God is not interested in how much time you pray.
> > > I know.  I prayed once for eight hours, all night in fact, and
> > > felt worse after it was over than when I started.  The only thing
> > > I learned about praying for eight hours was that I didn't really
> > > know how to pray at all.  The thing I really did learned through
> > > that over nighter was I was going about it all wrong.  In Bible
> > > college, I heard a pastor say once that he never prayed longer
> > > than 10 minutes and never went ten minutes without praying.
> > > That's getting a little closer to the truth.  Prayer is also not
> > > what is said, or more specifically, how you say it.  Prayer is not
> > > where you are.  Prayer is not candles, stained glass windows, pipe
> > > organs, or well orchestrated oration punctuated with vibrato.  It
> > > isn't how loud you can get or how many words you can cram into
> > > your prayer.  It isn't repetition.  It isn't a morning, noon, or
> > > night, or middle of the night regiment.  Well, you get the idea.
> > > I kept this up until I felt confident I had eliminated everything
> > > concerning prayer, that is, what prayer is not.  When the Lord
> > > touch me one day and explained to me that prayer should be as
> > > natural to the Christian as breathing was to the body, my concept
> > > of prayer instantly changed.  The Lord further tightened down on
> > > this concept buy making me understand that what He wanted was for
> > > my life to become a prayer to Him.  I am still working at that, by
> > > the way, but I am a lot further down the road now than I was when
> > > He showed this to me more than 20 years ago.  What I mean is this.
> > > I find it almost impossible to do anything without acknowledging
> > > the Lord and this is about nearly everything.  There are some
> > > things the Lord expects me to handle for myself.  Like when to get
> > > my hair cut, when to watch TV and when not to, when to eat, or not
> > > eat would be more like it for me, when to get up, when to go to
> > > bed, when to pay my bills so they are paid on time, and, well, you
> > > get the picture.  these are normal every day secular mundane
> > > things that everybody must do.  During all these things, and more
> > > importantly, in between these things, is the background sounds of
> > > God in our ears.  No, not literally but spiritually.  God should
> > > be our background noise, sort of speak, in all things.  Let me
> > > take a stab at a simple illustration of what I am talking about.
> > > A friend of mine here in Colorado was not born again.  His wife
> > > was but he wasn't.  Nor was he interested in becoming a Christian
> > > no matter how hard I tried to bring him to Christ.  One day he,
> > > decided he was not getting what he thought he should be getting
> > > out of his marriage, so he had an affair.  For some unknown
> > > reason, he even brought her to Denver once so Sandy and I could
> > > meet her.  This affair lasted off and on for about two years.
> > > Then he went back to his Christian wife.  A couple of more years
> > > passed and I thought they had worked all this out.  I was wrong.
> > > For two weeks my friend's name kept coming to my thoughts and I
> > > couldn't figure out why.  It was just below the level of my every
> > > day thinking.  It was, in fact, the background sounds of the Lord
> > > in my spirit.  As I said, this kept happening for about two weeks
> > > until one day the Holy Spirit said, Pray for Larry.  He is having
> > > another affair with Jenie.  Yes, these were actual words in my
> > > thought patterns.  In other words, it was no longer background
> > > sound.  My heart sank.  I began to pray specifically worded
> > > intercessory prayers and within a couple of days, Larry called me.
> > > He was a broken man and desperate for help in finding answers.
> > > For the next three months, Larry called me almost nightly.  Some
> > > nights we talked for a half an hour while other nights we talked
> > > for three and four hours.  Just before he called me, he had been
> > > led to Christ by someone over on the western slopes of Colorado
> > > where he lived.  He was going to church, mens Bible studies, and
> > > seeing a Christian marriage counselor.  He was still full of fear
> > > and crippling anxiety.  Why?  The woman with whom he had the
> > > affair was quite strange, to say the least, and she had a lot of
> > > demonic activity around her.  By the way, anybody living immorally
> > > has a lot of demonic activity around them.  Jesus wasn't joking
> > > when he said a man and a woman become one flesh.  This is a soul
> > > tie, or a bond, between a man and a woman which is reserved only
> > > for marriage and nothing else.  If oneness occurs outside of
> > > marriage, it is an unholy bond or unholy covenant, or an unholy
> > > soul tie and it doesn't go away simply because you prayed and
> > > asked for forgiveness of your sin.  Why?  Because God takes
> > > covenants more seriously than anything else in the Bible.  Our
> > > salvation, for example, is a holy oneness covenant with the
> > > Creator God.  Furthermore, One flesh means one.  The sin is
> > > forgiven upon confession but the bond has become a bondage and
> > > that needs special attention to settle once and for all.  Anyhow,
> > > I got to preaching there so forgive me.  Back to my story about my
> > > friend.  My whole point is this.  My spirit, the real me, which
> > > has the Holy Spirit dwelling within it, was communing with God
> > > about my friend Larry for two weeks.  I knew it but I didn't, if
> > > you know what I mean.  The day the Holy Spirit actually spoke to
> > > me and said, Pray for Larry.  He's having an affair with Jenie
> > > again, was my prompt to begin intercessory prayer for Larry.  So
> > > what was going on for those two weeks?  I was praying without
> > > ceasing for my friend.  How?  The Holy Spirit was in agreement
> > > with my spirit and He, the Holy Spirit, was helping me pray for my
> > > friend.  When Larry was ready for help, the Holy Spirit prompted
> > > me to pray specific prayers to bring it to pass and it came to
> > > pass.  Why was I prompted to pray specific prayers out loud?
> > > Because I am in the natural, or physical realm, and what was going
> > > on with the Holy Spirit and my spirit and the Heavenly Father was
> > > in the spiritual realm.  For the things that are occurring in the
> > > spiritual realm to come into the natural, or physical, realm, one
> > > has to be in the natural realm to speak the will of God into the
> > > physical world.  That's way too much theology for this single
> > > message so maybe I'll come back to that Biblical principle later.
> > > In short, as I said already, the background noise we hear in our
> > > daily lives should be the sound of God speaking.  No, this is not
> > > accomplished by going into a meditative state of consciousness and
> > > conjuring up God.  It is getting to know God better than you know
> > > anybody else.  How do you get to know God?  Two ways.  Through His
> > > Word and through prayer.  How do you pray?  Think God.
> > > Specifically, become aware of God in your life.  John 15:7 says,
> > > If you abide in me, and my words abide in you, you shall ask what
> > > you will, and it shall be done unto you.  That's Jesus speaking,
> > > of course.  If you read this verse in context, it is clear that
> > > Jesus is talking about prayer and how to pray.  I was teaching on
> > > this one Wednesday night when the Holy Spirit spoke to me as I
> > > taught and said, "If you do what I say, I will do what you say."
> > > This made John 15:7 clearer in my mind than I had ever seen it
> > > before.  This interpretation of the verse made me clearly see
> > > Jesus was talking of the covenant relationship which we have with
> > > the Father through Him.  If you don't understand Old Testament
> > > covenants, you are missing a great deal of insight to the New
> > > Testament relationship we have with God through the finished work
> > > of His Son.  The bottom line is this.  Jesus said that if we abide
> > > in Him and His Words abide in us, there is an exchange going on.
> > > So let's talk about falling in love now.  I got to know my wife by
> > > first being introduced to her by someone else.  I then got to know
> > > her by talking.  Our first real chat lasted 4 hours on the phone.
> > > The second night we talked nearly as long.  One night, as I
> > > recall, we literally talked all night for a good 8 or 9 hours.
> > > You know what?  If you talk to someone long enough and frequently
> > > enough, you'll get to be friends.  Why?  Because you have gotten
> > > to know them.  What happens next?  Well, in this case, we talked
> > > so much, we finally decided to meet in person.  Why did we want to
> > > meet in person?  Because, talking on the phone was fine but it was
> > > not like being in the same room with each other.  Once we started
> > > seeing each other, something else happened.  We wanted to make
> > > physical contact so we held hands and sat close to each other.  We
> > > still talked, of course, but we grew even closer through
> > > closeness, if you get my meaning.  Then one day, something strange
> > > happened.  Our togetherness and our communication with each other
> > > no longer was fulfilling.  We knew there was more, much more, but
> > > we could not go there.  Why not?  Because we were not one.  We
> > > both knew there was only one way of being one, according to God's
> > > Word, so we became engaged and made plans.  When that day came, we
> > > were married and because we now could express our love in the
> > > deepest and most intimate of terms, we became one flesh.  What
> > > does all of this have to do with prayer?  Everything you just read
> > > is how prayer works.  You get to know God by talking to Him and
> > > thinking about Him.  The closer you get to Him, the closer you
> > > want to be.  Now, for example, in my marriage of 32 years, Sandy
> > > is always in my background and I am always in her background.
> > > Even when we are apart, we are together, because we are now one
> > > flesh.  We think alike, we talk alike, we act alike, we sleep
> > > together, eat together, and do everything else together.  Do we
> > > talk about how much we love each other every minute of the day and
> > > night?  No, because we are one.  Love is always in the background
> > > of our thinking and has now become a part of our minds and our
> > > bodies.  So how does all this relate to praying without ceasing?
> > > It is spending so much time with God, exchanging your thoughts for
> > > His, that God is always on your mind even if you are not
> > > consciously thinking of Him at any given moment.  It is also a
> > > matter of learning how to listen to your spirit.  And, pray tell,
> > > how do you listen to your own spirit?  Remember what everybody
> > > says about a sea shell?  I remember, as a kid, the first time
> > > someone said, "You can hear the ocean in an empty sea shell."  To
> > > prove it, they held it up to my ear.  "Can you hear it?" they
> > > asked.  I could hear the soft rushing sound.  At the time, of
> > > course, I didn't realize it was just the acoustical audio
> > > differences generated by the sound waves produced by the close
> > > proximity of a hollow object placed near the ear.  However, the
> > > principle is the same.  If you get closer to the Lord by talking
> > > with him, He gets closer to you.  Eventually He is so close, the
> > > sound of God is always heard in the background of your life.  Yes,
> > > He wants to be that close to you.  Is He?
> > >
> > > Phil.
> > >
> > > Crazy For Jesus
> > > www.SafePlaceFellowship.com
> > >
> >