These verses suggest happiness! Every Sunday, after opening the service, we have a prayer, followed by repeating the Lord's Prayer. This is a good thing to do, but I often wonder whether God is that thrilled with our dutiful rendition. Do we sound like we are happy talking to Him?

And do we pray without ceasing? Do we mumble the first line and die out until about the middle, and then join in for a few words and die out until the final phrase? Is this "without ceasing"? Are we embarrassed about our own voice or about what others will think if we make a mistake? We are talking to God, not the rest of the congregation!

We can quench (extinguish or dilute) the Spirit by making a mumbo-jumbo of the Lord's Prayer, or a responsive reading from the Bible. When we participate joyfully, our life as Christians improves. God will bless all our prayers, but most often, even in a large church, we do not welcome rejoicing through our poor efforts and attitudes. Think what it would do for our church, if even just the officers of the church made this a part of their leadership in God's house.

Revelation 3:15 – I know your deeds, that you are neither cold nor hot. I wish you were either one or the other! (NIV)

Let's use this standard to decide our spiritual level!

Prayer: Father in heaven, we thank you for the many opportunities that we have to talk to you as individuals and as a group of believers. Use every prayer to draw us closer to you, and help us to rejoice in your Son, Jesus Christ, as our Saviour. Give us the confidence and faith to speak to you, knowing that you hear us. Amen.

A number of years ago, I attended many "success motivation" lectures. They taught that for every negative thought we had or accepted, we needed three positive ones to offset our thinking and keep our minds in balance (for success).

I like to move this over to our Christian life and challenge all of us to think of this with regards to our Christian faith and talk. With each negative thought, we need to be reminded that we have three positive forces with us — Father, Son, Holy Spirit. Whenever we have or accept a negative thought, we should recall three positive ones — which we usually call "blessings". Then for each request we make to our heavenly Father, we would give Him praise for three things. It sounds so easy until you try to put this into practice!

In preparation, let us take time to actually list all of the things from our heavenly Father for which we are thankful. I have only known one person who could come up with 100 blessings. In our minds we can say that it is easy, but, let us remember, even as Christians, talk is cheap until we take time to make a list of our blessings. Actions speak louder than words!

I am sure God would love to hear our praise (blessings) and I know that our relationship with the Father, Son and Holy Spirit will be improved.

1 John 4:4 – You, dear children, are from God and have overcome them, because the one who is in you is greater than the one who is in the world. (NIV)

Prayer: Dear Father, we thank you for your Son and that we can come to you boldly and honestly with our needs and requests while at the same time you are glad to hear our praise. We thank you for our ability to think for ourselves. Keep our minds clear and ready to help those not as fortunate. Thank you for doctors and others that you use for healing our bodies. Thank you for giving us a good attitude and help us keep it daily. Amen.