About our meeting...
The Ojai Friends Worship Group is a small, unprogrammed group under the care of Santa Barbara Monthly Meeting with an average attendance of about seven.We meet Sunday at 10 AM at 506 Crestview Drive, Ojai.
For more information about our group, send an e-mail to Val Schorre:
or phone him,
Listen to them over the phone
Isaac Pennington
as read byMartha Churchyard
Friend, some questions about prayer may arise in your mind as you have begun to sense the Truth, or have been touched by the Truth from God’s Holy Spirit. Since you have operated so long from a fleshly mind and ungodly nature and not in the leading of the Spirit, you may have some doubts about the practice of prayer.
Those people who doubt the power of prayer will never have their questions answered until the Lord opens their spirits and teaches it to them. Herein is the truth: all true prayer is in and from the Holy Spirit.
The promise of God concerning prayer (that is, the certainty of prayer being answered) is referring to the kind of prayer that is in faith and to the Holy Spirit. It is not, however, dealing with the prayers that come from the flesh or will or human wisdom. Therefore, the great care and concern in prayer is that it be of God in the quickenings and motions of his own Spirit. For the dead cannot praise God, nor can the dead truly pray to him.
We must not pray in a way that lacks life, that lacks God’s Spirit (who calls us to pray, teaches us to pray, and makes intercessions for us). True prayer is not in the time, in the will, or in the power of the person praying. Rather, it is a gift of God that resides in his Spirit. It is not ours, but it is given to us. Therefore, it is ours to wait upon the Spirit, to wait for the Spirit to move and breathe in us, and to give us the ability to call upon the Father and give us the power of prevailing with the Father, in the name and through the life of the Son.
Isaac Penington
Letters on Spiritual Virtues
More information...
The following are some other areas of interest for Friends and those who would like to learn more about the Religious Society of Friends (Quakers):
11/16/2008
by Val Schorre for
Ojai Friends Worship Group