Ephesians 6:18: The discipline of prayer
Outline
- Praying at all times
- Praying in the Spirit
- Praying with all prayer
Introduction
Prayer is the easiest thing and the hardest thing for the believer. It is easy for Christ has opened up the way, we have the Spirit to help us, the Word to inform us and the Father warmly welcomes us; but we are sinners and prayer is unnatural to fallen man as doubting and self-sufficient. Prayer is the most pleasant and most painful experience for the believer. It is pleasurable because of the rich spiritual experiences of peace, assurance, love, faith and joy; but it is painful because of the sight we have of ourselves, how serious our sin is and how deep the need of our broken world is. Prayer is full of paradoxes because we are saved but still in a fallen world, and another tension that we need to consider is the fact that prayer is both a duty and a delight. These words duty and delight have often been seen as contradictory for how can one delight in something if you don’t want to do it but have to do it. In Eden our duties would have been our delights and we would not have been dragged to them but would have run to them, but now on account of our sins we realise that discipline and duty precedes delight. So today as we continue thinking deeply about prayer we want to consider the deliberate disciplined duty of prayer and will look at the various types of prayer in Ephesians 6:18 in order to better facilitate the delights of prayer.
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