One way to work God’s love into your mind is through the Lord’s Supper. At the very centre of Christian worship, God has given us this exercise to keep us in spiritual shape.

We come to a table where we receive bread and wine. They direct our attention to the cross, where Christ’s body was broken, and His blood was shed for you.

God uses the supper to tell us that He loves us. Here is an old hymn that used to be sung at the Lord’s Table: “Give me a sight, O Saviour, of your wondrous love to me. The love that brought you down to earth to die at Calvary. O make me understand it, help me to take it in. What it meant to you, the Holy One, to bear away my sin.”

Come to the table with open eyes, open ears, and a believing heart. The body of Jesus was broken for you. The blood of Jesus was shed for you. Christ invites all His people to take the bread and eat it, to take the cup and drink it. This love that was poured out touches you.

You may go through days when you find it difficult to feel the love of God. Go back to the cross, and say with Paul, “He who did not spare his own Son but gave him up for us all, how will he not also with him graciously give us all things?” (Rom. 8:32).

How might you approach the Lord’s Supper differently in the future?

The Bible talks about the love of God in a number of ways:

1. Providential love is God’s kindness to His enemies as well as His friends. God’s enemies will come under His judgement, but right now they receive good gifts from His hand. Why do good things happen to bad people? Answer: God’s providential love.

2. Saving love is God reaching out to us: “God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life” (John 3:16). Whoever believes is no longer God’s enemy, but His friend. That’s God’s saving love.

3. Covenant love is God’s unshakeable commitment to His own people. God bound Himself to Israel: “I will be your God, and you shall be my people” (Jer. 7:23). Then His people broke that covenant. But God will never let go of His own people. That’s God’s covenant love.

4. Disciplining love is how God forms the likeness of Christ in His children: “The Lord disciplines the one he loves” (Heb. 12:6). The wicked do not experience this love. God allows them to go their own way, but He intervenes with loving discipline when His children go astray.

5. Affirming love is the joyful affirmation the children of God experience when they’re walking with Him. There was no discipline in the garden, Adam and Eve simply enjoyed life under the smile of God. But when they sinned, they found themselves outside of God’s affirming love.

The love of God is free, unchangeable, unconditional, unmerited, and unearned. At the same time, Christ calls us to remain in His love, and we do that as we walk in obedience to Him.

What do you know about the love of God?

Another way to pray in the Spirit is by using the Lord’s Prayer (Mat. 6:9-13). Martin Luther structured his entire prayer life around the Lord’s Prayer:

1. Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name. (6:9)
Luther prayed that God would be honoured in his own life, and in the church, and in the nation where he lived.

2. Your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. (6:10)
He prayed for the advancement of God’s kingdom, and he prayed for what is true, just, and right.

3. Give us this day our daily bread. (6:11)
He prayed about his own daily needs, and for the needs of others that he was aware of—money, energy, peace, direction, patience, and guidance.

4. Forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors. (6:12)
He prayed about his own sins, and he asked for God’s help in forgiving the wounds that were inflicted on him by others.

5. Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil. (6:13)
He asked God to help him identify the activity of Satan, and then he called on God against all of it that he was able to see.

That covers the whole of life. You could pray these five headings every day for the next year, and you would always find something fresh, and you would be praying in the Spirit because you’re praying in line with Jesus Christ.

Take a few moments and try praying through the Lord’s Prayer yourself. Compare this with your normal routine for prayer.

The Bible contains some marvellous prayers that were breathed out by the Spirit of God. You will find many of them in the book of Psalms.

The whole Bible was written as men were carried along by the Holy Spirit, and as you fill your mind with God’s Word, you will begin to think God’s thoughts after Him.

If you learn to form your prayers from the Bible, you will be praying in a way that reflects the heart and mind of God. You might like to begin with the Psalms:

Blessed is the man who walks not in the counsel of the wicked…
Help me to recognise advice that is dishonouring to You today and not to follow it.

…nor stands in the way of sinners, nor sits in the seat of scoffers. (Psa. 1:1)
Lord, keep me from cynicism today. Keep me from looking at any wrong path.

His delight is in the law of the LORD. (Psa. 1:2)
Lord, help me to love You and to love Your law. Help me to see the blessing of walking in Your way, and to have new joy in doing that.

Turning the Scriptures into prayers will help you keep your prayers fresh. Every day you will see something new. More than that, your mind will be guided into the thoughts of God.

This is the difference between eastern mysticism and Christian prayer. Mysticism says, “Empty your mind so you can pray.” God says, “Fill your mind so you can pray.”

Let an open Bible guide your praying, and you’ll find that you begin to think God’s thoughts after Him as you pray in the Spirit.

Does your prayer life tend more toward eastern mysticism or Christian prayer?

Imagine a teenage computer geek writing software in his basement: “How can I get this in the hands of the people at Microsoft?” He doesn’t know anyone there, and he has no idea how to introduce his ideas to them. Who knows how many requests they receive in a day.

One day there’s a knock at the door, and a man in his late sixties, with grey hair and glasses is standing there. “Hi, I’m Bill Gates…” The next thing this teenager knows, he’s sitting at his laptop with Bill Gates at his elbow.

“Let me tell you,” says Bill, “where Microsoft is headed. Move your work in that direction, and maybe we can be partners.”

When this young man eventually sends his proposal to Microsoft, he sends it with great confidence, because he knows that what Bill Gates has prompted, Bill Gates will receive.

God comes to every believer and teaches us what to pray. When that happens, we can pray with confidence, because what the Spirit has prompted, the Father will receive:

This is the confidence that we have toward him, that if we ask anything according to his will he hears us. (1 John 5:14)

Sometimes we’re like the geek working in the basement. But true prayer involves the Father, the Son, the Spirit, and you. There’s a profound sense in which you never pray alone.

Think about the geek’s confidence before and after he talked to Bill Gates. Does your confidence in prayer typically look more like one or the other?

Once you’ve grasped that there’s one God, and that He’s not whoever you want Him to be, the next question is “How do you come to Him?” That depends on what you want to receive.

The Bible uses the picture of a throne to help us understand. There is one God, but more than one throne. That’s easy for us to understand in the United Kingdom. There is one king in Britain, but he has several thrones, and each throne relates to a different function.

Likewise, there is one God, but He has more than one throne. There’s a “great white throne” (Rev. 20:11), where God administers justice. And there’s “the throne of grace” (Heb. 4:16). You can come to the great white throne any way you want. But if you want to come to the throne of grace, you need to come through Jesus.

The Bible tells us to hold firmly to the faith we profess (Heb. 4:14) and to approach the throne of grace with confidence so we may receive grace to help us in our time of need (4:16). Access to the throne of grace comes through our great high priest, Jesus the Son of God.

So “in the name of Jesus Christ” isn’t a tagline at the end of our prayers. It’s foundational. We’re invited to come to the Father through the Son. So, if you’re looking for grace, there’s no other way to pray but in the name of Jesus, because God’s grace comes to us through Him.

When you pray, are you coming to God any way you want? Or through Jesus? What difference does it make?

Imagine meeting with your minister at church. The minister places a number of envelopes in front of you and says, “We can talk about anything you want. But here are some envelopes with questions written on them. Go ahead and pick one.”

The topics range from faith to spiritual growth to fellowship, but you choose the envelope on prayer. The question on the envelope reads: “How would you describe your prayer life?” and inside there are a number of cards with various words—some positive, some negative.

You choose two cards to describe your prayer life: “Irregular” and “Aimless.” Many Christians today would agree, and say, “I’m doing okay in the Christian life, but I’d have to admit—I’m out of shape when it comes to prayer.”

Sooner or later, you will come to a situation in which you will want to call on God to help you. The first question is “Which God?” If you say, “There is only one God,” who is He? And how can we know Him?

Until you’ve settled this matter, your praying will not get very far off the ground. Here’s the reason: If God is whoever you imagine Him to be, then when you go to pray, you are just talking to yourself, or to a figment of your imagination, and that’s not much help.

There is one God, and we can know Him and pray to Him, because He has made Himself known to us through Abraham, Moses, the prophets, the apostles, and supremely in Jesus Christ.

How would you describe your prayer life? (Aimless? Vibrant? Irregular? Consistent? Shallow? Growing? Other?)

Faith grows by looking at Jesus. Faith becomes strong as you fill your mind and soul with how trustworthy He is.

Imagine yourself as a younger child, attending a professional sporting event with your family. Your parents get tickets about twenty-five rows from the game. The people are packed in like sardines, and they’re standing in front of you, so you find it very difficult to see.

You eventually find a solution. Instead of sitting in your chair, you stand on it. It’s a bit shaky, but it’s the best way to get a glimpse of your favourite players in all their glory.

That’s how you must read the Scriptures and come to worship if you want your faith to grow. You must come looking for a glimpse of Jesus and asking the Holy Spirit to open up the Word to give a fresh glimpse of Him to your soul.

Some of us come to church, and to the Bible, like a little boy or girl standing behind a crowd of taller adults. We never see anything, and we no longer expect to see anything. Other people are catching a glimpse of Jesus, but we don’t see it.

If you will come to worship and to the Word with great expectation, you will move from reading about Jesus to knowing Him. You will find yourself feeding on Him, and your faith will grow.

On a scale of 1 (very low) to 10 (very high) what is your expectation of “catching a glimpse of Jesus” in worship? How about in your Bible reading?