Devotionals

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At the end of a sermon in an upscale church, Mark Twain told the pastor, "I
enjoyed your message. I have a book at home with every word of your sermon."
Pastor's reply, "How did you get that?" Twain's retort, it's called a dictionary."

In Matt. 6:7 (nlt), Jesus himself said, "When you pray, don't babble on and on as
people of other religions do." We may feel that if we beg God over and over and
over with the same words that we will wear him down and He will finally give in?
If we do that, we may be psyching ourselves into believing that He will answer
because we don't have enough faith otherwise.

In the same manner, I have heard preachers do essentially the same thing -- they'll
say the same thing in six different ways, supposedly assuming that we weren't
listening the first five times. One popular TV preacher does this all the time. The
Biblical phrase, "vain repetition" comes to mind. A good sermon is one that is
carefully edited to avoid redundancy. Someone said, "The mind will rarely retain
more than the seat can endure."

A really good speaker is one who communicates with the recipient's needs in
mind. It may be well when we speak to God in prayer that we do it considering
what He may prefer to hear from us -- genuine praise, humble repentance, sincere
intercession for the needs of others, and a simple declaration of our own needs
without "babbling on and on" as Jesus said. This is only my suggestion because
prayer is a personal conversation between you and God -- do it your way, but
consider God's side.

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