Prayer Health Check (Part-2)

"...and golden bowls full of incense, which are the prayers of the saints." - Rev 5:8

Prayers are liken to burning incense to God... it should be sweet smelling and pleasant to the Lord. Abraham is an excellent example for all. As he move around in the land of the Canaan, at every resting place that he stops over, he built an altar to burn offerings to God.

In my previous posting, I mentioned that our prayers tend to be like a repetitious recital that we do, every time we kneel down to pray. Well, we may defense ourselves saying that it is a set of items that we always pray to God e.g. for people that are sick, weak in faith, those we know who are currently in trouble, for peace and for our family members, etc.

These became standard features in our prayer and we practically recite them over for each and every prayer that we made to God with minimal variation. Is this wrong?

I’ve no answer.

Guess each of us had to dig deep into our soul to search for sincerity in each item that we pray for. Ask ourselves… “Is it just a repetitious recital? OR did we really pray with sincerity and faith?”.

Unfortunately, mine is a recital… I don’t even need to think (not to mention feel) and I could recite my entire prayer near to 15mins! Is my prayer a sweet smelling incense to my God? Will my prayer be despised by Him, just like Cain's offering?

“…unto Cain and to his offering he had not respect. And Cain was very wroth, and his countenance fell.” – Gen 4:5

How then shall I pray, that will be an acceptable offering to Him?

After assessing the problem…I realized that I do have quite a sizable list of items that I did pray for and b’cos of time, I tend to rush thru’ the list and thus, losses its sincerity. To remedy this, I shall do the following:

1. Break up my list and assign an importance rating to each item
2. Group 2 – 3 items as one. Depending on its importance, item can be assigned to more than one group.
3. Put each group into its priority.
4. For each prayer take one group and sincerely pray for each item.

Aaaaahhh NO – is this REPETITIOUS?!! Ooh… :{

What do you think?

If you have better ideas or suggestions, I would like to hear from you.
Thanking you in advance. God bless.