The NIV 365-Day Devotional Reading Planનમૂનો

No Bad Prayers

Many struggle with [prayer] because they aren’t aware that in the freedom of the Spirit there are as many ways of praying as there are individual believers. The cardinal rule in prayer remains the dictum of Don Chapman, “Pray as you can; don’t pray as you can’t.”

Let us suppose you give your three-year-old daughter a coloring book and a box of crayons for her birthday. The following day, with the proud smile only a little one can muster, she presents her first pictures for inspection. She has colored the sun black, the grass purple and the sky green. In the lower right-hand corner, she has added woozy wonders of floating slabs and hovering rings: on the left, a panoply of colorful, carefree squiggles. You marvel at her bold strokes and intuit that her psyche is railing against its own cosmic puniness in the face of a big, ugly world. Later at the office, you share with your staff your daughter’s first artistic effort and you make veiled references to the early work of Van Gogh.

A little child cannot do a bad coloring; nor can a child of God do bad prayer . . . Jesus’ tenderness is not in any way determined by how we pray or what we are or do. In order to free us for compassion toward others, Jesus calls us to accept his compassion in our own lives, to become gentle, caring, compassionate and forgiving toward ourselves in our failure and need.

Taken from NIV Ragamuffin Bible