The Abiding Life: questions for 12/20/09

The Abiding Life Week 8 – Matthew 6:9-13

Learning What to Pray

1. On a scale of 1-10 rate your prayer life. What is the reason for your rating and what factors hinder your prayer life?
   
2. Have you ever lost focus while praying or just run out of stuff to pray? Why do you think it is so hard to stay focused during times of extended prayer?
   
3. Read through the Lord 's Prayer in Matthew 6:9-13. Is this a prayer we are supposed to say or a guide for how to pray? Justify your answer.
   
4. Our Father in heaven… In what ways does being an adopted child fundamentally change how you view God, the world, and yourself?
   
5. Hallowed be Your name… What does it mean for God's name to be hallowed? If someone were to observe you (as God's child) would they think of God (your Father) as hallowed, or something less?
   
6. Your kingdom come… How are we to pray in such a way to see God's kingdom advanced? How have you seen God answer those prayers?
   
7. Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven… What types of things do you know are God's will? How do you discover God's will? How should that knowledge impact how you pray?
   
8. Give us today our daily bread… Read Matthew 6:33. How does Jesus' admonition to pray for the Father's will to be done relate to the provision of daily bread?
   
9. Forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors… Why is confession and relational harmony essential to advance God's kingdom?
10. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one… How does David's prayer in Psalm 139:23 serve as an example of this aspect of the Lord's prayer?

The Abiding Life questions for 12/13/09

...are available for download here.

Remember your leaders

"It is harsh enough for each man to bear his own wound. But he who leads bears the wounds of all who follow him."

- Lloyd Alexander, The High King, p. 103

Have you prayed for/thanked/supported/blessed your Faith Family Leader recently (I assure you he needs it)? If not, why not today?

Life is a forge

"Life's a forge!" cried the smith, as Taran, his brow streaming, beat at the strip of metal. "Yes, and hammer and anvil, too! You'll be roasted, smelted and pounded, and you'll scarce know what's happening to you. But stand boldly to it! Metal's worthless till it's shaped and tempered!" [emphasis mine]

...

"Life's a forge, say I! Face the pounding, don't fear the proving; and you'll stand well against any hammer and anvil!"

Taran Wanderer, p. 178, 181

Reminds me of an awesome Brooks Simpson sermon from several years back. Give it a listen if you haven't already.

Food for thought...potential is nothing until it is realized by action. And God chiefly does this in our lives through the process of sanctification - when raw metal extracted from the ground is refined and shaped for useful work as a tool. Though it be painful, are you willing to be pounded and thrust into the fire repeatedly to be made useful for the advancement of the Kingdom of God? Is it better to stay unrefined ore in the rock, safe from hammer and fire, having much potential but no present use?

The Abiding Life - Psalm 119: A Heart for the Word (12/6)

Download this week's questions.

1. What is your greatest need? What is the greatest need of the church? Why?
   
2. Read 1 John 2:5-6. What do you think it means to "keep His word" and how would your love for God be perfected if you did?
3. Which of the disciplines associated with the Word - reading, studying, memorizing, and meditating - seem most difficult to you? Why?
4. Read Psalm 119:14-16, 24, 35, and 47. What does it mean to delight? Which comes first, delight or disciplines (reading, studying, memorizing, meditating)? Justify your answer.
5. What would the evidence be of a life that delighted in the Word of God the way David did? Do you delight in the Word as David did? Why or why not?
6. What kind of things do you delight in? Do any of those delights compete with delighting in God?
7. Read Proverbs 3:13-15. What would your life look like if you believed Solomon's statement that nothing you desire compares with wisdom from God?
   
8. E.M. Bounds said, "A sense of need creates or should create, earnest desire. The stronger the sense of need, before God, the greater should be the desire, the more earnest the praying. The "poor in spirit" are eminently competent to pray." Why is that good news for those who lack delight and desire in God's Word?
9. David's Psalm 119 is a prayer. Take time as a Faith Family to read and pray through each verse listed below.
   

• Psalm 119:12 Blessed are you, O Lord; teach me your statutes!
  
• Psalm 119:10 With my whole heart I seek you; let me not wander from your commandments!
  
• Psalm 119:17 Deal bountifully with your servant, that I may live and keep your word.
  
• Psalm 119:18 Open my eyes, that I may behold wondrous things out of your law.
  
• Psalm 119:19 I am a sojourner on the earth; hide not your commandments from me!
  
• Psalm 119:22 Take away from me scorn and contempt, for I have kept your testimonies.
  
• Psalm 119:25 My soul clings to the dust; give me life according to your word!
  
• Psalm 119:26 When I told of my ways, you answered me; teach me your statutes!
  
• Psalm 119:27 Make me understand the way of your precepts, and I will meditate on your wondrous works.
  
• Psalm 119:28 My soul melts away for sorrow; strengthen me according to your word!
  
• Psalm 119:29 Put false ways far from me and graciously teach me your law!
  
• Psalm 119:31 I cling to your testimonies, O Lord; let me not be put to shame!
  
• Psalm 119:32 I will run in the way of your commandments when you enlarge my heart!
  

Close in Prayer…

Psalm

E.M. Bounds

Desire precedes prayer, accompanies it, is followed by it. Desire goes before prayer, and by it, created and intensified. Prayer is the oral expression of desire.

Holy desire is much helped by devout contemplation. Meditation on our spiritual need, and on God's readiness and ability to correct it, aids desire to grow. Serious thought engaged in before praying, increases desire, makes it more insistent, and tends to save us from the menace of private prayer — wandering thought. We fail much more in desire, than in its outward expression. We retain the form, while the inner life fades and almost dies.

The flaming heat of soul has been tempered down to a tepid lukewarmness. This, it should be remembered, was the central cause of the sad and desperate condition of the Laodicean Christians, of whom the awful condemnation is written that they were "rich, and increased in goods and had need of nothing," and knew not that they "were wretched, and miserable, and poor, and blind."