BIBLICAL PRAYER: includes the dimension of the fact of being troublesome importunity and of submission.
It is both wrestling with God in the darkness and resting in the stillness.
There is a time to argue and complain to God, but there is also a time to sumit.
Biblical faith sees submission to the will of God coming after the attempt to discover His will through heartfelt supplication.
Prayer is both a pleading with God that he will hear and act upon our requests and a trusting surrender to God to the confidence that he will act in His own time and way,.
But the confidence comes only through the struggle.
CHRISTIAN PRAYER IS BOTH CORPORATE AND INDIVIDUAL.
- We find God in solitariness, yes, but we never remain in this state. Instead, we seek to unite our sacrifices of praise and our petitions and intercessions with those of the company of fellow believers.
The man or woman of prayer may find God both in solitude and in fellowship.
We are called to present personal and individual needs to God, but at the same time we are urged to interceded for the whole company of the saints in John 17:20-21 and Ephesians 6:18, and also for the world at large in 1 Timothy 2:1-2.
BIBBLICAL SPIRITUALITY: entails not withdrawal from the turmoil's of the world but identification with the world in its shame and affection.
PERSONAL PETITION WOULD BECOME EGEOCENTRIC IF IT WERE NOT HELD IN BALANCE WITH INTERCESSION, ADORATION, AND THANKSGIVING.
In psychology, egocentrism is defined as
- the incomplete differentiation of the self and the world, including other people and
- the tendency to perceive, understand and interpret the world in terms of the self.
