When I forget my adoption into the family of God—I become full of fears. I don’t pray with candor. I lose my confidence. I try to hide my faults from God and myself.

When I forget the hope of my future resurrection—I become afraid of aging and death.

When I forget I’m being sanctified through the presence of God’s Holy Spirit—I give up on myself, stop trying to change.

When I forget I am justified by faith alone—I give place to guilt and regret about the past. I therefore live in bondage to idols of power and money that make me feel better about myself.

An example of meditation is Psalm 103:1–2: “Praise the Lord, my soul; and all my inmost being, praise his holy name. Praise the Lord, my soul, and forget not all his benefits.” Notice that David is not speaking directly to God, though he is aware of being in the presence of God. He is talking to himself, to his soul. He is taking truth down into

understand. To understand a section of Scripture means answering two basic questions about it. First, what did the original author intend to convey to his readers in this passage? Second, what role does this text play in the whole Bible; how does it contribute to the gospel message and move along the main narrative arc of the Bible, which climaxes

There he says, in short, that you should not begin to pray for all you want until you realize that in God you have all you need. That is, unless we know that God is the one thing we truly need, our petitions and supplications may become, simply, forms of worry and lust.

Romans 7 and other passages indicate that while Christians will always be capable of great lapses into sin and battles with doubt, there has been a fundamental change in their primary allegiance. This fundamental change is a requisite for prayer that is not shallow and selfish.

We must avoid extremes—of either not asking God for things or of thinking we can bend God’s will to ours. We must combine tenacious importunity, a “striving with God,” with deep acceptance of God’s wise will, whatever it is.