Time with Abba, Singing Praising 親親爸父，唱詩歌頌 : OT DAY 489 - Follow The Posture Solomon Prayed (Please click here for English podcast)

Wednesday, May 25, 2016

OT DAY 489 - Follow The Posture Solomon Prayed (Please click here for English podcast)

Silence

1. Put on your “brakes” and stop for a moment of silence

2. Wait for God. Breathe deep for God's peace and feel His presence. Exhale your worries.

Praise and Thanksgiving

1. Think through your day, all the times that made you smile

2. Thank God for all those moments, and for all those people

3. Open your heart to praise the Lord

Be exalted, O Lord, in your strength!
We will sing and praise your power.

Psalm 21:13

Confession and Repentance (Subjective Shifting Devotion Method http://bishopsilas.blogspot.ca/2009/08/count-down-5-subject-shifting-devotion.html)

1. Pray for the Holy Spirit to work in you:

“Dear Holy Spirit, shine your light into the places of darkness in my life. Show me my sins, everything that blocks me from encountering God. In Jesus’ name I pray, Amen.”

2. Through the Holy Spirit, examine yourself for a short silence and then pray:

"Dear Lord Jesus, thank you for dying on the cross for our sins and being victorious over death and sin. I confess my sin to you(pause, to tell Jesus what the Holy Spirit has shown you). Forgive my sins by your blood and help me follow you. Holy Spirit, fill me that I may be able to receive your gift to love God and His people. In Jesus Name I pray, Amen."

The Word (1 Kings 8:54)

English(ESV): https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=列+王+紀+上+6&version=ESV

54 Now as Solomon finished offering all this prayer and plea to the Lord, he arose from before the altar of the Lord, where he had knelt with hands outstretched toward heaven.

1 Kings 8:54

Let's have a time to be still and give the Holy Spirit space to speak through the passage we have just read. Offer this time up to Jesus as you listen to him, while listening to "Gabriel's Oboe"

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jmax47l2hLU

My Listening

Does the posture of how you pray affects your effectiveness of your prayer?

Let's see how Professor John Goldingay tells us:

(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Goldingay) :

The close of Solomon's prayer indicates that his posture was very different, with a rationale of its own. Praying involves laying flat on the ground. Sometimes the Old Testament speaks of licking the dust, meaning you have your face right on the ground, as if you were trying to eat the dust. That is the appropriate posture before a king, from whom you are asking favours; it is therefore a telling posture for one who is himself a king. Yet it can't imply lying flat all the time, because apparently it also allows for having one's hands stretched out to God in the heavens, with your palms open because they demonstrate their emptiness and your need that God should fill them. That, too, would be a posture that a suppliant adopted to a king. Having bowed down as an act of obeisance, a suppliant would also look to the king, and in prayer your eyes would be open in appeal to God, like a servant looking to a master (Psalm 123).

John Goldingay. 1 and 2 Kings for Everyone. Louisville,KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 2011, p.45.

So, what is your posture when you pray to God? How about learning from Solomon to try his method. I have been using his method for more than 30 years and it is very powerful and effective!