Irish Breakfasts - and Prayer

Joel Vaughan kindly spoke at devos yesterday. As we got started, it was noted that Friday is St. Patrick's Day. I showed ignorance of my own Irish heritage when I wondered aloud, "What do the Irish have for breakfast?" Our guest speaker suggested Lucky Charms...which somehow doesn't seem like a legitimate answer to the question.

Here's a link to see what the Irish REALLY eat for breakfast. CIO - very impressive line up of wonderful foods. Inspiring, really. So, beginning this weekend, I am going to get in touch with my lost roots and start to enjoy a HUGE meal to start my day!

Here's a summary of Joel's main points, about a Christian's conversations with God:

Nature of Prayer:
• Refuse to accept unjust situation
• Rebellion against a fallen world
• Refusal to accept as normal what is abnormal
• Refusal of everything that is at odds with the norm as established by God
• Expression of the chasm that separates good from evil / that evil is the antithesis of good
• Nothing hinders prayer as quickly as resignation. Luke wrote that we must pray at all times that we may not lose heart (Luke 18:1)
• Prayer flourishes where there is a belief that God can change the situation

Practice of Prayer:
• Persist despite discouragement
• Why don’t we pray as persistently as we talk about a problem?

o Simply don’t think it will make a difference
o Accept the situation as unchangeable
o Easily come to terms with an unjust world
o Feel impotent to change things and, therefore, strike a truce with evil
o Lose our anger against unrighteousness.
o But God does not lose His wrath against unholiness. His wrath seeks the ascendancy of truth, so we must pray

• Be prayed up: Acts 3 – gate called Beautiful; cf Jn. 5:17, 19
• Pray in faith: Jas 4; Heb 11

Scope of Prayer:
• Our prayer should look beyond our private world to include the wide horizon of all human life in which God is concerned
• The world is a courtroom where a case still may be made against what is unjust, evil and wrong, and for what is right, just and holy.
• Our Judge will bring about justice for His chosen ones – quickly (Luke 18:8)
• Proverbs 15:8: God delights when we pray

Taken from Prayer: Rebelling Against the Status Quo, by David F. Wells, as included in Perspectives on the World Christian Movement.

Thanks for the insights and exhortation, Joel!

And, please, skip the Lucky Charms tomorrow?