Seven Pathways by Mary Carmen Englert

Author:Mary Carmen Englert
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Forefront Books
Published: 2023-08-02T00:00:00+00:00

We become active in changing society and caring for culture as God called humans to do, after we are changed by the Scriptures. We are to be fair in wage, expectations, and treatment. Remember God gave you all that you have and holds you accountable for how you care for your employees.

Experiencing God Through Prayer

Prayer is instinctively a human response, but there are differences in what is the essence of prayer, its priority, and the growing in its practice and experience. To reflect God’s image means that we are designed to image his likeness to the world in our thoughts, words, and actions and to relate to God and worship Him. Therefore, since all humans are made in God’s image, humans innately have an awareness of their Creator. The sixteenth-century reformer John Calvin called this divinitatis sensum, the sense of God that all humans have. “There is within the human mind, and indeed by natural instinct, an awareness of divinity.”148 Experiencing the power, beauty, and brokenness of creation triggers the awareness of God (Rom. 1:19–20) and His presence. So prayer is communication with God in response to the knowledge of Him or an awareness of Him. There can be prayers of adoration, confession, contrition, entreaty, intercession, petition, and more. But with a general and limited knowledge of God, one will also miss what prayer is: a conversation with God. You can’t easily have a conversation with someone you don’t know. However, God does sometimes, in His mercy, answer the prayers of unbelievers as He did for the Ninevites in Jonah 3 and King Ahab, one of the cruelest kings in the Old Testament (1 Kings 21:27–28). Engaging in a conversation with God through prayer activates the Holy Spirit to clear the fog of unbelief. “For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God” (Eph. 2:8 NIV).

What fundamentally happens when a person comes to faith is that they have responded to what God has already done by paying for the sin of humanity in full (because He loved us) so that our relationship with Him might be restored. So, in that sense, hearing from God precedes asking in prayer. Now, all who believe are sons and daughters of God:

You are all sons of God through faith in Christ Jesus…. If you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham’s seed, and heirs according to the promise. (Gal. 3:26, 29 NIV 1984)

It is not natural children who are God’s children, but it is the children of the promise who are regarded as Abraham’s offspring. (Rom. 9:8)

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