WORSHIP-PRAYER
Prayer can no
more be divorced from worship than life can be divorced from breathing. If we
follow his impulse, the Holy Spirit will always lead us to pray. When we allow
Him to work freely, he will always bring the Church to extensive praying.
Conversely, when the Spirit is absent, we will find excuses not to pray. We may
say, "God understands. He knows I love him. But I’m tired…I’m so busy…It’s
just not convenient now." When the Spirit is absent, our excuses always
seem right, but in the presence of the Spirit our excuses fade away.
R.T. Kendall
Praying God’s
Word back to Him in the corporate assembly communicates that we want to
approach Him in His terms, not ours, and according to who
He has revealed Himself to be, not who we would prefer Him to be.
Mark Dever and Paul
Alexander
Applying
the Regulative Principle, taken from The Deliberate Church, © 2005, Crossway
Books, a division of Good News Publishers, Wheaton Illinois 60187, p. 83, www.crosswaybooks.org.
It is not
merely the pleadings of patriarchs and prophets, apostles and martyrs, men
strong in faith giving glory to God. Neither is it the prayers enshrined and
intoned in imposing ritual, rising from the great congregation amid ornate
temples, and borne on the wings of enchanting music – but the groan, the
glance, the tear, the tremulous aspiration of smitten penitents, the veriest lisping of infant tongues; the unlettered petitions
morning and evening of the cottage home, where the earthen floor is knelt upon,
where the only altar is the altar of the lowly heart, and the sacrifice that of
a broken and contrite spirit.
John
MacDuff
Clefts on the Rock – The Believer’s Ground of Confidence
in Christ, 1874.