Parables of the Kingdom and Prayer

What we are looking at when we look at prayer in this way, what I have called "deliberate prayer" but you could also call it preparatory prayer, is the prayer we engage in order that we would be ready to engage in the issues of life. We desire, when we pray this way, to pray according to the Word of God. Consequently this kind of prayer is a discipline; it goes along with the other disciplines of the Christian life. Why do we have disciplines? [We do so] because, particularly as you walk down the road a little while, you realize left to our own spontaneous preferences we will lose the battle against the flesh. Even as saved Christians if we do not exercise forethought, if we don't make a plan to meet the eventualities of the day, then it is a certainty that at some point the demands of life are going to sweep up, grab us, twist us around and under the impulse of those sudden necessities we will fall back into the patterns of the flesh instead of staking our ground on the certainties of God's Word. We must be disciplined. The prayer that I am talking about, I think the prayer that Jesus intended, would be built upon the model of this brief Lord's Prayer. It is preparatory prayer. It is getting ready for each day.