4. Prayerlessness
“A fourth negative element that steals joy is prayerlessness. Believers who fail to pray inevitably lose sight of God’s sovereignty and His love and care for us. Such believers either give up hope, as Habakkuk did for a while, or else seek help from other sources.” (John MacArthur)
Give me your thoughts on this. Is there a relationship between pray and joy or prayerlessness and bitterness?
4 comments:
i would agree with this statement or stance.. i do believe the less we pray, the less we hear from the holy spirit concerning heart issues.. i know i have seen it in my own life.. thanks for these last few blogs..
I understand what your saying about being lazy with our prayer life, for me, lately I've been neglectful out of grief in the death of my mother in law. Anyhow, I've noticed my lack of conscience prayer yet I find comfort in knowing that God knows my heart and hears the prayers of my heart.
sometimes in our distress we fail to pray.
Rom 8:26 And the Holy Spirit helps us in our distress. For we don't even know what we should pray for, nor how we should pray. But the Holy Spirit prays for us with groanings that cannot be expressed in words.
Rom 8:27 And the Father who knows all hearts knows what the Spirit is saying, for the Spirit pleads for us believers in harmony with God's own will.
Back to your question... prayerlessness and bitterness?... maybe for the unbeliever.
Prayerlessness? Really? The word comes from the old english word "To Ask or Request" as in "I pray thee my lord, don't harm the cattle..." So asklessness is hard to really comprehend...
apart from that, I'm thinking a better word would be connectedness or lack thereof so connectedlessness if you want ;-) I'm not sure not praying robs the believer of Joy but not being connected will. Which in turns, leads us to not talk, ask or inquire anything from Our Father. Not connecting with God, as you would with a close friend, will leave you communicating less with Him.
Your question, though, was Is there a relationship between pray[er] and joy or prayerlessness and bitterness?
I think i'd turn it on it's head. When we have (true) Joy, we will pray and when we are bitter, most likely we won't. It's a question of origin, where does it begin? Are you bitter before you stop talking or asking? Or have you stopped talking then become bitter...my guess more often it's the former rather than the latter. I've read the psalms and you can see David, as well as the sons of Asaph, being bitter yet praying and maybe they weren't Joyful but i'm sure they had Joy that went beyond a fleeting moment as we already discussed.
So to answer the question...
they are connected but like i said, more likely in reverse and yet is bitterness the opposite of Joy?
All ten, maybe with the exception of #5, have to do with connectivity. There is no argument that being disconnected from God will rob us of joy. The idea is what specific things cause us to be disconnected and therefore robbed of joy. I believe prayerlessness is one of them. Why are we commanded to pray in the first place? Does God not know our needs? Of course He does. When we present our requests before Him we are acknowledging that He is our provider, that He is powerful enough to change a situation, that He can comfort us in a time of need and that we trust in His will. If we are not praying who are we relying on? Relying on anything other than God will always result in joylessness.
Do I think bitterness is the only thing that is opposite to Joy? No, but it is in opposition.
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