Friday, September 27, 2013

Develop a Conversational Relationship with God (PrayerLife)

Jerusalem
"It is faith in Him that we must rediscover" - Martin Luther King Jr. (In Lewis Baldwin, Never to Leave Us Alone: The Prayer Life of Martin Luther King Jr., 53))

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., had a deep prayer life. King described prayer as "conversation with God."

King scholar Lewis Baldwin says that "King was thoroughly convinced that it took fervent and persistent prayer to pastor a church, and his own life bore the stamp of that conviction... [King] sought to deepen his own conversation and walk with God through prayerful reflections on life." (Ib., 54)

I was attending a Protestant theological seminary at a time when courses on spirituality and prayer were not only not required but were nonexistent. I have long since come to see the primordiality of praying. I agree with King who "understood that his seminary trainng and intellectual gifts, though necessary and significant, could not guarantee what was called in black circles "power from on high." This view helps explain why King, in both his private and public lives mastered prayer asthe art of pastoral conversation with God." (Ib.)

Where prayer focuses, power falls. Have a conversation with God today.