Praying for regeneration

To argue that someone who is not born again cannot pray for regenerating grace because of the sin in his soul is wrong. If it was true, the same argument could be applied to a born-again person praying for holiness. The prayers even of those who are born again are mixed with sin. If you cannot pray until rebirth because your prayers are sinful then you cannot really pray until you are perfectly holy either. If the presence of sin is a reason for not praying in one case, it is in the other.
Therefore we urge anyone who is not born again to pray for it to happen, not because new birth is obtained by prayer as such but because there is no better way to prepare for it. It is better to pray than do nothing. The prayer of the unregenerate is marred by sin, but not necessarily any more than any other prayers.

From my book What the Bible teaches about being born again, p 152

Squeezing out prayer

The easiest thing to squeeze out of a busy day is prayer - Don't!

Prayer and theology

The elements of true prayer
Match the elements of true theology

To do - Prayer

How come prayer is always bottom of the "to do" list?

Reading and Prayer

Reading is feeding
And prayer is air.
Miss one you're bleeding,
Miss both, you're in a snare.

In extremis

A man will try anything in extremity - even calling to God in prayer!

Busyness

When you are too busy
Rushing off here and there
The things that go, sadly,
Are the quiet and solitary
Like planning, thinking, reading, prayer.

Prayer again

Pray specifically,
Pray expectantly

Prayer

Remember to pray when you're praying - and when you're not!

Prayer - the lack of it

Prayer demands faith and brokenness to feel
So we are reluctant to bow or kneel

Morning Communion 04

To go from sleep to prayer
Is not an easy thing
The posture's too akin
Stand up and take in air
And then "thy suit prepare".

Morning communion 03

The joy of meeting God
At the start of the day
The self-denial required
Will always far outweigh

Morning communion 02

I eventually found my missing notebook of maxims, compiled many years ago (the first entries must be from October 1991 and I think the final entries are from September 1998). See the right hand column of this blog. It actually contains some 245 maxims. This will keep us going for a while then.
The first is a sort of syllogism:

For communion with God,
Silence is desirable.
The best way to find this is to rise early in the day.

Extremity

A man will try anything in extremis - even praying to God!

Morning communion 01

There's nothing like the silence of a brand new day
For getting on your knees and starting to pray