What is the value of prayer?

Sometimes it is very hard to pray - it can feel so lame and repetetive. I once read an exhortation to "let your praying become doing, and your doing praying."

(I've never been able to find where this qote came from, so if any of you can help me out, I'd be grateful!) For some reason it has stuck with me, and I've spent the past few years trying to "go and learn what this means." It is a hard lesson. Colossians 4:2 says we should be devoted to prayer - so, as a first point if we are doing what the Word says then doing does become praying. And prayer, I've noticed, is convicting. Yes, that ugly word. But conviction leads to action, and that is how praying becomes doing. There is another side to the coin though; if you don't do one, you will undoubtably fail to do the other (even if you don't notice that you're failing). Letting your praying become doing is a way of communing with God in all things, not just during your devotional time; instead, it moves that devotional time into every moment of your day because everything falls under the category "doing." ... more

[This was written four days ago for my personal blog (xanga.com/meaganpeters). When I refer to ''you'' in this post I am referring specifically to the members of my church and the friends who have known of my pursuit of some kind of missions in Alaska, and I refer also to previous posts on my xanga site. But I think these two references can easily be applied to the general readership of this blog, and some of my previous posts here as well. Thanks for reading.]

Proverbs 3:13-26

...she will not be great now. 

I recently read End of the Spear by Steve Saint, in which he shares the story of how the Waodani people of Ecuador came to be God-followers, as well as his own story, which is intimately bound up with the Waodani. In this true story, Steve takes his family to the jungles of Ecuador to live among the people who speared his father to death when he was just a boy...most of you probably know the story. What struck me was that Steve Saint constantly battles the ''cause'' mentality he knows all outsiders and even he himself is prone to.

I don't want to be like this - I feel like screaming like a screamer I CAN'T TAKE THIS! I'm controlling, judgmental, hot tempered. I don't respect or love, I do not trust. I am becoming what I have set out not to be! I want to blame everyone else . . . but I can only blame myself.

My heart cries: ''Who will rescue me from this body of death?''

Here is a poem by John Milton (1608-1674). Please read it at least three times before giving up, it's worth it:

WHEN I consider how my light is spent

Ere half my days, in this dark world and wide,

And that one talent which is death to hide

Lodged with me useless, though my soul more bent

To serve therewith my Maker, and present

My true account, lest He returning chide,-

''Doth God exact day-labour, light denied?''

I fondly ask:-But Patience, to prevent

That murmur, soon replies: God doth not need

Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Though wise men at their end know dark is right,
Because their words had forked no lightning they

Do not go gentle into that good night.

Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright
Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,

... more