September Meeting Notes

Hello everyone!  Hope you all had a great weekend.  Our September GLAM meeting on Sunday was really great.  We had a lot of good discussion and suggestions on the topic. 

I wanted to get the notes out for those of you who were unable to make it and want to follow along.

Our September GLAM meeting topic was: What is Prayer?

Brittany included her definition of prayer.  She listed that prayer is simply talking to God, building that relationship with him and speaking to him as a friend or a parent. 

1st John 3:1 states, "The Father has loved us so much that we are called children of God.  And we really are his children."

Therefore prayer should be just as easy as a conversation between us and our parents.  God is our parent. We should feel comfortable and enjoy praying to him. 

In the meeting we focused on 3 great truths about prayer.

1st Truth:

It is the nature of God to hear and Answer prayers. 

There were two verses Brittany had found to really confirm that God is there for us, to hear us, and answer our prayers.

Psalm 65:2 - "You hear our prayers, all people will come to you."

Hebrews 12:6 - "So we can be sure when we say, 'I will not be afraid, the Lord is my helper.'"

Both are great examples of how God hears us, protects, us, helps us, and answers us.


2nd Truth:

It is impossible to know God or please him without believing and trusting in the fact that he hears and answers prayer. 

 

If we don't believe or trust that God answers prayers then how will we ever really know him or have a relationship with him where we can rely on him to help us?

Isaiah 40:25-28 - "God, the Holy One says, 'Can you compare me to anyone? Is anyone equal to me?'  Look up to the skies.  Who created all these stars?  He leads out the army of heaven one by one and calls all the stars by name.  Because he is strong and powerful not one of them is missing."

Genesis 28:15 - "I am with you and will protect you everywhere you go and will bring you back to this land.  I will not leave you until I have done what I have promised you."

God is so amazing.  He has created EVERYTHING and is so powerful.  Why would be not believe that he can answer prayers?  That last line of the Genesis verse is so powerful.  He will not leave us until he has done what he promised.  If our prayers don't seem answered yet, he must not be done!

Another great scripture Brittany included for believing in God was Hebrews 11:6.

Hebrews 11:6 - "Without faith no one can please God,  Anyone who comes to God must believe that he is real and that he rewards those who truly want to find him."

It is important to believe he will, and he will!


Third Truth:

Every attribute of God is implied in the fact that he hears and answers prayer.

Four man attributes confirming this are:

1. God is a living God
2. Gos is all knowing and omniscient
3. God is all powerful and supernatural
4. He is a God of miracles

It is impossible to know or believe without trust.  God is ours for all eternity.  We can have a rock solid foundation for a relationship because he never changes.  He is always there for us and loves us. 

We ended the discussion with a powerful reminder.  God is knocking on our heart's door waiting for us to let him in. 


September Challenge:

Pray at least once a day to get in the habit of setting time aside for you to speak with God and build on your relationship with him!

After best practices from the group, some of us also decided to add the challenge of starting each day by naming 3 things we are thankful for!

I will add our next meeting and volunteer opportunities to the blog here soon as well as prayer requests.