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What burdens, what 'trash,'
are you carrying around with you? How is it weighing you down? What keeps
you from placing this trash at the feet of Jesus? Set aside a good chunk
of time today. Bring all of this trash to Jesus. Spent at least one-half
hour in prayer, confessing whatever you need to confess and asking the
Lord to carry your burden for you. Close your prayer time with healthy
praise for the One who offers to carry your burdens. -- Max Lucado
Who
is God?
Guidelines For Prayer and Meditation
If your pray right, your prayers are answered. If your pray wrong,
they're answered too. Praying right is praying daily for help from
addiction, coupled with gratitude for the help received. God is unlimited
in His ability and desire to bless your life and answer your prayers.
As you continue to honor the Lord, you will see miraculous things take
place in your life. Keep trusting in the Lord and praising Him for His
loving kindness. The wisdom and guidance contained in God's
Word is available to us any time - day or night.
As a child you learned
to say "please" and "thank-you". Let your first prayer
of the day be a "please" for food sobriety, and your last prayer
of night be a "thank you" for the progress you made, the abstinence
for the day. We can ask God for help, but the job is ours to do.
Prayer and meditation are our principal means
of contact/communication with God. All those who have persisted have found
strength not ordinarily their own. They have found wisdom beyond their
usual capacity. And they have increasingly found a peace of mind which
can stand firm in the face of difficult circumstances. It is through prayer
and meditation that we reestablish our desire to do God's will. Prayer
is speaking to God, whereas meditation is listening to God. We need to
ask God to reveal His will to us, but we must also listen in order to
hear the answer (in everything we do).
An overview of prayer and meditation for a given day may be outlined
as possible:
First, let's define:
- Prayer:
(1) The act of making a reverent petition, or act of communion to God,
such as in devotion, confession, praise, or thanksgiving ~ Speaking
(2) A specially worded form used to address God
- Meditation: Meditation is often
misunderstood as some difficult, mysterious practice by isolated monks
or mystics. Christian meditation is different from Eastern meditation.
The meditation of the Eastern religion relies on emptying the mind of
conscious thought. Christian meditation is (1) Listening to God
(2) The discipline of growing in your knowledge of God by contemplating
the Bible and the attributes or the acts of God.
- Praising God helps us to grow and change.
We need the humility that occurs when we
acknowledge God as God.
- Praying for a knowledge of God's will
and the ability to obey His will is important for our recovery.
- One way to establish a relationship
with God is by thinking about His Word throughout your day. The Bible
urges us to meditate on who God is, what He has done, and what He has
said. Meditation is simply focused thinking, a skill you can
learn and use anywhere. When you think about a problem over and over,
that's 'worry'. When you think about God's
Word over and over, that's 'meditation'. If you know how to worry
- you know how to meditate! Just switch your attention to Bible verses.
The more you meditate, the less you worry. SIMPLE!
- Purpose of Bible Study is Application.
It is important for our growth that we apply the truth of the Bible
to change our lives.
Never let your head hang down. Never give up and
sit down and grieve. Find another way. And don't pray when it rains
if you don't pray when the sun shines.
--Sachel Paige
At the beginning of the day, review your plans and:
- Ask God for direction in your thoughts and
actions
- To keep you free from self-pity, dishonesty, or selfishness
- To provide the guidance needed to care of any problems
- Ask God for inspiration, an intuitive thought or decision. We relax
and take it easy -- do not struggle. Don't be surprised how the right
answers come after we've tried this for awhile
- Ask God for freedom from self-will
- To prevent making requests unless others will be helped
- To avoid praying for our own selfish needs
- What used to be a hunch, or occasional inspiration gradually becomes
a working part of the mind
- Dr. Bob's morning devotion consisted of a short prayer (many on this
website), 20 minutes of verse study from the Bible, and a quiet period
of waiting for directions as to where he, that day, should find use
for his talent.
During the day, in moments of indecision or fear:
- Ask God for inspiration and guidance
- Make a decision to turn your will and your life over to the care of
God (step 3)
- Relax and breathe deeply several times
- Be aware of any desire to struggle with a situation or person
- Pray (talk)to God as often as necessary during the day
- "God, please remove this (feeling, obsession, addiction, etc.)"
- "Lord, not my will, but thine will be done
- If possible, call a support person to identify and share what
is happening
- As we go through the day we pause, when agitated or doubtful, and
ask for the right thought or action. We constantly remind ourselves
we are no longer running the show
At the end of the day, review the events that happened and:
- We constructively review our day. Were we resentful, selfish, dishonest,
or afraid? Do we owe an apology? Have we kept something to ourselves
which should be discussed with another person at once? Were we kind
and loving toward all? What could we have done better? Were we kind
and loving toward all? What could we have done better? Were we thinking
of ourselves most of the time? Or were we thinking of what we could
do for others, of what we could pack into the stream of life?
- Now we ask God for guidance in taking corrective action
- Ask God for knowledge of His will for you
- Ask God's forgiveness where needed, and acknowledge that this review
is not intended to cause obsessive thinking, worry, remorse, or morbid
reflection
- Give thanks to God for guidance and blessings that were part of the
day
Our prayers can seem repetitive or empty at times. They are like the
dry dust of the desert and we have trouble reviving our words or putting
our true feelings into words that we feel are worthy of God's ears.
What Should We Pray For?
Dr. Samuel
Shoemaker said that a person "must grow up and stop using
God and begin to ask God to use him or her. Real prayer is not
telling God what we want. It is putting ourselves at His disposal so that
He can tell us what He wants. Prayer is not trying to get God to change
His will. It is trying to find out what His will is, to align ourselves
or realign ourselves with His purpose for the world and for us.
Our prayers can seem lifeless and even be boring. What can we do at times
like these? I have a suggestion for you. (Try this. It really works).
Pick a Psalm, any one of your favorites will do. Read a few verses and
then pause, think. Let your mind ponder the words of the Psalm. Then use
the words of those lines as a springboard to pray. Then read a few other
verses in that same Psalm. Think quietly on those. Then pray using those
words and thoughts as seed for your own words and prayer to the LORD.
What
should we pray for? The
Bible says to pray for the courage to speak up, for those who will believe,
for the spread of the message, and for more workers. Prayer makes you
a partner with others around the world. You should also pray for missionaries
and everyone involved in the global harvest. When you read and watch the
news where there is global conflict, pray that God will use it to bring
people to Him. Ask God to tell you who you should pray for.
Prayer
is the most important tool for your mission in the world. People may refuse
our love and message, but they are defenseless against our prayers. --
Dr. Rick Warren
An excellent, and very practical book on praying is:Breaking
Free from Spiritual Strongholds: Praying God's
Word, by Beth Moore
Source of content: "The
Twelve Steps for Christians", Based on Biblical Teachings, RPI Publishing,
Inc. and "Twelve Step Sponsorship - How It Works" by Hamilton
B.
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