Learn to develop your skills, desire and ability to join others on their spiritual journeys and take them closer to Jesus. Because ethnicity is part of the good of creation, we seek to honor and celebrate the ethnic identity of those with whom we serve as well as those we seek to reach. The answer lies in understanding what prayer is. If you see prayer merely as a means of taking some level of control of your life and the world — as a means of leverage — then you will inevitably be troubled by what appears to be unanswered prayer.
God might not choose to do what you ask Him to do when you ask Him to do it. But if prayer is first and foremost a conversation between you and God, then His promise to always listen may be the answer your heart needs most. You can interpret this verse as saying if you focus on enjoying God, He will give whatever you want. Or you can understand it to mean that if you take delight in God, over and above anything else in your life, He will shape your heart so it wants the things He already wants to give you.
His desires will become your desires. Scripture does not guarantee God will provide you whatever you want right now. What a great question. Prayer is counterintuitive. In what other situation do you ask for something or plead with someone when you know for certain their mind is already made up about what they will do? He knows the big events and the small moments of each of our lives, and nothing is beyond His control.
Prayer is a process through which we learn to trust God. He listens to us patiently. He takes our requests seriously. Then He considers everything in the context of the bigger picture only He can see. God knows better than you do what the eventual outcomes of every situation will be.
If you pray for dry weather for an outdoor event your church has planned, God might know of another reason why it needs to rain that day. You know when I sit and when I rise; You perceive my thoughts from afar. You discern my going out and my lying down; You are familiar with all my ways. Psalm , NIV. If God knows what you are thinking, why is He so concerned about you talking to Him? Because prayer is one of the main ways you develop a connection with God.
Instead, he suggests that the peace of God in your heart and mind is somehow more likely to satisfy you and ease your fears than if He fixed or explained everything immediately.
Through prayer, you develop a trusting relationship with God. Over time, you also learn to recognize His voice as He speaks to you. The Bible clearly shows Him choosing to act in response to the prayers of His people.
Through prayer, God transforms your heart so that having your requests fulfilled becomes secondary to feeling truly known by God and precious to Him.
God invites you to pray in all circumstances. Prayer is essential to the way He transforms you, and the Bible encourages you that your prayers can have a powerful effect in the world. So what can you expect to see happen as you commit to praying regularly?
You will recognize that you are not God. I need something more, someone else. You gain strength from God Himself. You realize the world does not begin and end with you. Being dependent on someone else to meet your needs is humbling. When infants cry or scream, someone usually comes and meets their needs. Whether you pray for yourself or another person, you acknowledge that someone else — God — is the center of the universe. You acknowledge that He needs to change something about you or the situations you are bringing to Him.
You surrender control to somebody else. Everyone craves control to one degree or another. You communicate your real feelings about a situation. Prayer creates a safe space to process your thoughts and feelings.
Do you feel ready to give God control of your life? Do you feel safe being completely known by God, or does that make you feel exposed? Over time, as you pray, you will feel able to bring the real you to your moments with God. You trust that God is with you. You feel inspired to take steps of faith.
Perhaps you have a desire to be bolder in talking about what you believe. Or maybe you have a neighbor or colleague you feel God nudging you to go deeper with. Praying for that person is a step of faith in itself, because God may invite you to be part of the answer to your own prayer.
Explore what it means to take a step of faith. In Luke 18 , we find Jesus teaching the disciples about persistence in prayer: "Then Jesus told his disciples a parable to show them that they should always pray and not give up" v.
Finally, one of the most well-known instances of Jesus praying is when he went to Gethsemane right before his arrest and crucifixion. Read Luke Here is the question: "Why was Jesus always praying? There's not one thing that Jesus did on his own. It was all in dependence on the Father. He said, "The Son can do nothing by himself; he can do only what he sees his Father doing" John and "By myself I can do nothing" John That really begs the question: If Jesus, God in the flesh, would say, "I could do nothing by myself," then who are you and me to think there is anything in our Christian life we can do on our own?
There is absolutely nothing we can do apart from total dependence on God. This is why the disciples came to Jesus and asked him to teach them to pray. It's not that they had never been taught to pray; they knew to pray in the synagogue and on the Sabbath, and they knew to pray in various circumstances and how to follow religious rituals.
But they saw in Jesus something very different. They saw in his life something more than just a religious ritual. Prayer was something that literally nourished him. It was a necessity for him, and his life was dependent on it. The disciples saw the difference, and they said, "Lord, teach us to pray like you're praying. The early church prayed in total dependence on God. It wasn't just Jesus who emphasized praying all the time; the early church followed his example Acts When the apostles had been persecuted by the Sanhedrin, they didn't get together and complain about how hard it was to be a Christian.
They prayed Acts Later in that same chapter, we see the power of praying with absolute dependence on God v. When was the last time that was said about a prayer meeting that you participated in? When Peter was imprisoned, what was the church's response? Prayer Acts When the church at Antioch wanted to make the gospel known in all nations, how did they start? They started by praying Acts When they needed leaders in the new churches, what did they do?
Do you sense a pattern? The fundamental root conviction of the church in Acts was that they could do nothing without God—so they prayed. That is why we must pray, because we are dependent on God and we can do nothing without him. The early church knew this. What concerns me is that what was essential for the early church has gradually become optional for us today.
In the Book of Acts, they did not just pray before meetings or after meetings. Prayer was the very purpose of their meeting together! In your life, is prayer essential or optional? Some of you might think, I don't need to learn to pray. Prayer is just talking to God.
Well, you're wrong: We need to learn to pray. Here's why: Because if we can do nothing without God, then that means we cannot pray without him, which is why the disciples came to Jesus. You don't see them in the Gospels asking Jesus to teach them to witness or teach or even heal. All you see is them saying "teach us to pray," because prayer is the core upon which our Christianity is dependent. We pray to show we always need God.
Jesus responds to the disciples' request to teach them how to pray by starting with how to address God. We begin by saying "Father" Luke Prayer begins with a relationship with God, and the primary purpose of prayer is to deepen that relationship. It is when we forget that is the primary purpose of prayer that we stop praying except in case of emergency.
Most of us grow up thinking about prayer and seeing prayer as asking for things. We learn to pray by saying, "God, help me with this. God, give me this. God, bless me with this. God, protect me. God, protect them. God, bless them. God, keep them and be with them. If we were just honest with each other this morning, this is probably one reason why we don't pray a lot. Maybe you've stopped praying altogether, because if prayer is asking for what you want and you don't get it, then what's the point in praying?
I am sure that many of us—again, if we were genuinely honest—could tell about a time when we prayed hard for something and we didn't get the answer we wanted. It may have been a prayer for someone to be healed. It may have been a prayer to get a job or to have a baby or to have a relationship restored, and no matter how hard we prayed, the answer didn't come. We began to wonder: Am I asking in the wrong way? Is there some code or combination of words that I'm not using? In response to that line of thinking, I want to ask two questions: What if the purpose of prayer is knowing God, not getting answers?
It's not that asking for what we want and bringing our needs before God is not a part of prayer; it is. But what if prayer was intended to be much more than that? What if prayer wasn't just asking for him to bless us or keep us or protect us or help us?
What if there's a depth of prayer that is much further beyond that? Do you remember what Jesus said in the Sermon on the Mount about prayer? Prayer is where we learn to talk to God, understand him, connect with him, and understand ourselves. Why is it important to pray? Prayer gives us untapped power. It unlocks, ignites, heals, transforms, empowers, and calms. The following are 5 compelling and inspiring reasons why we should pray. When we deal with our sin and our heart, God listens to our prayers and acts on our behalf.
Leaving things unresolved makes it difficult for us to be honest, let down and vulnerable, causing our prayers to be distracted or not genuine. Prayer is a perfect opportunity to explore our hearts, share everything with God and begin relieving ourselves of guilt and other emotions that may be weighing us down. Doing this will attract God and allow him to work in our lives. Therefore, consider the word and understand the vision:. Prayer initiates angelic action on our behalf. This is a concept that can be difficult for us to grasp if we are out of practice seeing the world through a spiritual lens.
Prayer is a weapon that attacks and defeats the spiritual forces of evil. The armor of God offers protection, but it also allows us to take our stand, and fight back against the dark spiritual forces. Prayer unlocks us, but only when we pray truthfully, and acknowledge and confess our sin. When we keep silent, we have no strength and our guilt remains.
When we pray honestly, we are energized and God gives us confidence, trust, and freedom. Prayer refocuses us on God and not on ourselves or other people. Real power comes from God, not our humanistic abilities or talents.
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