PRAYER
Updated: Sep 6, 2021
I listened to an awesome sermon last night about prayer. Prayer has been one of the things I've been longing to write about, but it is such a huge umbrella and such a vital part of the christian walk that it has taken me this long to get to it. In Matthew 6 Jesus teaches us how to pray. He says, "(v.6) But when you pray, go into your room, close the door and pray to your Father, who is unseen. Then your Father, who sees that which is done in secret, will reward you." The sermon that I listened to made some very unique point about this verse, that we should all have a designated room to pray and talk to God, with no distractions. He called it a "War room." This idea of having a specific room, and a specific time, set apart to be with our creator, inspires me. Like David, we should pour out our soul to God (See Psalms 51). God longs to hear from us, whatever it may be (Ephesians 6:18). Where sitting down with God, and telling Him everything on your heart is precious to Him, it is easy to just make that a weekly thing instead of a daily thing. In 1 Thessalonians 5:16-18 it says “Rejoice always, pray without ceasing, give thanks in all circumstances; for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you”, so to pray without ceasing would literally mean to never stop praying, which God knows and we know thats not to be taken literally as in every second of every day, but what God is trying to tell us, from what i can see, is that we should acknowledge Him in everything we do, every decision, every word that comes from our mouth should bring glory to Him because in Matthew 12:36 Jesus says, "But I say unto you, That every idle word that men shall speak, they shall give account thereof in the day of judgment." Wow, how powerful is that? Everything we say we will give an account for on the day of judgement. Jesus doesn't say this to scare you into being scared to speak but He says this to encourage everyone to be prayerful and to set your mind on things above. If your mind is set on things above then you won't have a problem with what comes out of your mouth. But anyways, back to prayer! In my experience, I never knew what it meant when people would use the phrase "Oh Im growing closer to God" or "I wish that I could be closer to God." Like what is that supposed to mean? I thought you just read your Bible and followed the rules and you were saved, nothing else to do, but man were my eyes OPENED. I recently went to a summer camp and I heard this great sermon on Psalms 51 and about how David was a man after God's own heart. Why was David so "close" to God? What made him so special? And this is what the preacher said that opened my eyes, "David hid nothing from God, oh to have a prayer like David." How freeing to hide nothing from God. We can't anyways but to be able to confess it to Him, and ask for forgiveness, knowing that God, in His mercy, will be forgiving. Prayer is POWERFUL. Another aspect of prayer that is huge in my life is being able to sit down at any place at any time, and be able to know that you can pray at that very second and God is listening attentively. Ask for direction, He will give it (1 John 5:14). Being led by God and His spirit is the best GPS there is. This all comes from prayer, you can't sit back and wait for God to do everything for us, we must actively trust Him and pray to Him. Another thing that goes hand in hand with prayer is faith. You can't have faith without prayer, and you can't have effective prayer without faith. Think how hopeless you would feel if you were pouring your heart out to God but were terrified that he wasn't listening and had a constant worry in the back of your head that God couldn't hear you. Believe it or not that is how a lot of Christians think because of the lack of faith in their hearts. The only way to grow that faith is to pray more and read your Bible often, and watch God give you direction. If you don't know what to pray for or don't know where to start here are some things
That God's will be done, even if it isn't comfortable.
For your future spouse (Blog coming soon about this)
That He would help you break any bad habits
That He would help you forgive
Confess
Repent
Pray for your family
Pray for your friends who may be lost
Pray for the sick
Pray for our country
Pray for wisdom