I have recently been thinking a lot about prayer. I am finding as my walk with Christ continues, my need and thirst for prayer continues to grow and also evolve. I want to break down exactly how we pray, what we pray for, and its ultimate effectiveness. Looking back at several of the miracles from the bible I see a couple of similarities between how people pray, and the miracles that happen afterward. First, when we ask God for something are we asking him to fix our “worts” or are we asking him to fix our bones? In other words, are we asking God to fix every petty little thing we see fit to complain about, or are we asking him to recreate the very foundation of our lives! I believe when we pray we first must give thanks to God. This is key. Every miracle Jesus performed happened because under the circumstances the people first gave thanks to God and had faith for what they could not know. Are we praying to some powerful thing? Or are we praying to the Creator of the Heavens, the Alpha and Omega, and the mover of mountains. Let us pray like we mean it. Let us pray like there are peoples lives at stake, and their eternal placement. Let us pray with meaning. This is also a faith thing. Do we have enough faith to trust in God to fix our problems? Do we first go to prayer to fix our problems, or would you rather fix your problems yourself. How cool would it be to hear Jesus say “Your faith has healed You.” I find it helpful to visualize our prayer life as a relationship between a father and son. Well, that is actually exactly what it is. If we have a healthy relationship with our father, we can openly express our thoughts and concerns in a much more effective way. We can go to the father with our problems about anything. What would you bring up in a conversation with your father. World politics, relationships, goals, fights, yes to all. God would love to be that close to you, He wants a relationship with us. God is there for us in all we require. The bible talks about you asking and you will receive, I can’t think exactly where that is right now. I know this is misinterpreted a lot, but this explains that if your request goes along with Gods will and will help in his plan of furthering his kingdom, God would love to help. That leads us to the effectiveness of prayer. Does prayer change Gods mind? I have no idea. Sometimes we pray and we see no results. Seeing results is relative. How am I looking at the situation to judge whether or not anything is happening. We often tend to only think about ourselves and how this effects me. God is bigger then that. God may not “grant” your prayer at that very moment because God may have a bigger, more divine plan. That is more big scale prayer. On a more personal side of prayer we have to think about our relationship with him. Does he know you? If you have a friend that only comes to you when they want something are you going to always help them out? Sometimes our life struggles can really stink, but again, our suffering is relative. God will never put you through something you cannot handle. God does not tempt us, but how cool would it be if the terrible acts of satan could be backfired on him and we could give God the Glory. Lets say you get cancer. You could really feel like God doesn’t care, but what if you still continued to give God glory? You could draw so close to him during that. Not push him away. People around you could see your faith and your continual commitment to God, and through you, they could change. Sometimes it is hard to see at the time but God will work through you if you let him. This is a lot to think about when it comes to changing our prayer life. The truth of it is, it is a lifelong commitment to grow and become deeper in our prayer. God just wants to hear from us. God can move our mountains! Whether our mountain is a financial issue, cancer, family problems, faith problems, or anything at all.
The World Race poses a whole mountain range of obstacles for me but still day after day I am blown away by his grace and power to control every situation. You got this God! This is the Jesus statue in Rio. Not exactly relevant.
