The Best of the Portals of Prayer

Read: James 2:21-26

“Wisdom says, blessed is the one who listens to me, watching daily at my gates, waiting beside my doors.”
Proverbs 8:34

Attentiveness

Happy is everyone who hears, watches, waits on the Lord. As we gather for our family devotion or when we worship in privacy, we speak to Him by means of our prayer. He in turn, speaks to us in His Holy Word. When we read our Bible or when it is read to us at home or in Church, let us pay the closest attention. Remember, God is speaking. It is our privilege, as God’s children, to hear.
How often have we heard that what some people hear “goes in one ear and out the other”. Such people sit through the family devotion and have their minds so fixed on something else that they scarcely hear one word that is red to them. They listen to the sermon on Sunday, but they do not concentrate on what was said; by Monday, even before Monday, it has gone out the other ear.
The great and important lesson for every Christian to learn is to pay attention to what they hear, to try to understand what it means, and to carry out in this daily life what has been taught him by the Word. Being attentive is not enough; for we must hear and learn it.

Jesus, grant us both to will and to do according to Your good pleasure. Amen.

August 03, 1943