Newfrontiers Leadership Conference 2006 - Leadership Seminar 05
Outline in program:
Focus on personal intimacy? Need to live from his presence?
- Time to pray—set times and practising the presence of God
- Place to pray—set place and continual abiding
- Way to pray
- in the Spirit—importance of tongues
- with understanding—Bible prayers and special focus on the Lord’s Prayer
David Smith began by saying that we all desire to have a good prayer life, and if we have one it will be a delight. But the gap can only be bridged by discipline. He then went on to describe what to do under three headings:
- Time. This was a great section, very practical and helpful. I really appreciated what he had to say.
- Place. Even better—I don’t remember hearing any other discussion on prayer that dealt so well with this aspect.
- How to pray. I found this less helpful than the other parts. He used 1 Cor 14:15 to divide prayer time into two parts: “praying in the Spirit” and “praying with the understanding”. Whilst I agree that by “praying in the Spirit” Paul means “praying in tongues”, it seems to me that the whole point of 1 Cor 14:1-20 is that there is little value in praying in tongues in public worship if we do not understand what is prayed. The way to pray with both the Spirit and understanding is if the tongues are interpreted. I simply don’t thing the intention of the passage is to tell us that there are two types of private prayer.
Having said that, Paul clearly did use tongues in private prayer and much of what David says under this point is still very useful and helpful.
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