Follow up to:  http://files.fcbcfv.org/media/sermons/2013_12_01_2.mp3

Since the last couple of messages from Mark 11 have been on prayer, I thought I'd share an excerpt from a book I read - from Richard Foster's book, Prayer and the chapter on Simple Prayer. 

"In Simple Prayer we bring ourselves before God just as we are, warts and all. Like children before a loving father, we open our hearts and make our requests. We do not try to sort things out, the good from the bad. We simply and unpretentiously share our concerns and make our petitions. We tell God, for example, how frustrated we are with the co-worker at the office or the neighbor down the street. We ask for food, favorable weather, and good health. In a very real sense we are the focus of Simple Prayer. Our needs, our wants, our concerns dominate our prayer experience. Our prayers are shot through with plenty of pride, conceit, vanity, pretentiousness, haughtiness, and general all-around egocentricity. No doubt there are also magnanimity, generosity, unselfishness, and universal goodwill. We make mistakes—lots of them; we sin; we fall down, often—but each time we get up and begin again. We pray again. We seek to follow God again. And again our insolence and self-indulgence defeat us. Never mind.  We confess and begin again…and again…and again. In fact, sometimes Simple Prayer is called the “Prayer of Beginning Again.”  

I think of this as addressing God just as we are, warts and all.  After all God already knows what we have been up to as well as what is in our hearts, why try to hide?  

The other side of the coin is addressing God as He really is, as God Almighty.  In adoration sets the foundation for prayer.  We adore God, proclaiming Him in all His attributes and His acts on behalf of creation, and thus have an accurate picture of God, the fullness of His love, the greatness of His power on display for those who love Him.  When we skip adoration in our prayers, then we are often praying to a skewed picture of God who isnot as loving as He really is, and is not a powerful as He really is, nor that holy either.

Discussion Questions from last week's sermon:

1.  What do you like to do to focus on God's attributes and things He has done?  (some like to read the Psalms, others to look at creation, others go back to the cross . . .)

2.  Have you ever prayed what you thought was in faith, and had God answer it?  Was there other times when He said "no."?   How did you grow in faith in either or both incidents?