SPIRITUAL PRAYER CARDIO

DON'T FORGET TO HYDRATE

I love thinking about prayer in this way, as a spiritual cardio workout. When we pray we are massaging our hearts with the pressure of God’s eternal perfections and subsequently producing in us the enduring praise to the glory of his grace.

In Jonathan Edwards’ book Religious Affections, he lobbies for the premise that Christians operate chiefly as pilgrims here on earth, with our hearts passionately enflamed from heaven. Even further, Edwards argues that God supernaturally keeps “making up the difference” of our earthliness and his heavenliness. In speaking of this grace Edwards writes: “their grace is the dawn of glory; and God fits them for that world by conforming them to it.”

One of the ways in which Edwards suggests that God does this conforming is through the privilege of prayer. When we pray we are not to think that we are somehow informing God of his perfections, as if he was not aware of his prevailing holiness, goodness, justice, love, mercy, & all sufficiency!

Nor are we telling God something he does not know in terms of our finiteness, dependence, and unworthiness that we might somehow convince God to do the things that we ask.

But rather, prayer is used by God in the lives of believers to mold, prepare and affect the hearts of his children “with the things we express, and so to prepare us to receive the blessings we ask.”

Edwards is connecting a pivotal dot here for us. So often we see in the Psalms, the Psalmists bemoaning their respective plights, only to meditate and extol God’s attributes, with the result being a worshipful recognition of divine goodness upon the receipt of answered prayer, whether or not the answer is ‘favorable’ to the petitioner (cf. Ps. 116; 118; 121; 123; etc..).

Prayer both prepares and sustains affections. In preparing our hearts it works to mold our imperfections closer to the perfect image of Christ and in sustaining it ignites within us an enduring passionate appreciation and pursuit of the glory of God.

So, your "praying" isn't really for you, prayer is for God.

This lays out the powerful privilege of prayer. Prayer is not only about making requests to God, praising God, or conversing with God – though all are great and biblical purposes for prayer. Prayer ultimately draws us to God and shapes us, by the grace of God, into a closer and closer expression of His Son, Jesus Christ (c.f. 2 Cor. 3:18).

One of the great tools for this kind of “prayer cardio” is praying the Scriptures, (sometimes called lectio divina.)

I have found great power in simply opening up the Bible (whether in the Psalms or simply where I am in my current reading) and praying God’s Word. This practice (spiritual workout discipline) helps me to tap into God’s written and revealed heart in Scriptures, allows the words of God (and His kindness through the gospel) to saturate my heart, and opens the door for God to use His Word to speak to me as I converse with Him and meditate in prayer over the Bible.

Beckoning you all to clear a place for a Bold Roast, the Elbows and the Book.

Working out daily,
RobbRobb