Prayer

I am a person who truly believes in the power of prayer.  I have sensed the importance of prayer for many years but recently I have felt the need to focus more on the call from God to pray and seek after His heart for my life.  There are people who may consider prayer one of the least attractive characteristics of the Christian way of life but in reality it is simply the opportunity to have a line of communication with our Heavenly Father.  I have been sharing about the need for prayer during our adult discipleship classes on Wednesday night at New River Worship Center.  I know that God is calling me as a Minister of the Gospel to lead by example when it comes to prayer.  There are times that we spend more time in conversation about prayer than we actually spend time in prayer.  I desire to reverse that trend among the family of God that I can influence.

I asked this question last night; "What makes many people afraid to pray or at least what makes them afraid to develop a consistent prayer life?"  I want to share a few of the answers because I found myself not only learning about the concerns of others but I also learned that I feel some of the same concerns that they expressed.  1)  We feel that our prayers are boring to God because we say the same things over and over.  2)  We have trouble accepting the fact that God is truly our Father; we fail to realize that He has given us the authority to cry out "Abba, Father" (Daddy, God).  3)  We fail to remember that we are praying for God to hear us and not for man to hear us.  4)  We fail to remember that our Father will respond to the simplicity of our prayers as we release our faith through our prayer efforts.  5)  We must remember that he allows each of us to honestly express our concerns, fears, disappointments, etc. with him as we pray.  We must remember that He is already aware of them even if we try to hide them from Him.  6)  We need to remember to be our self when we pray.  God is not looking for us to imitate someone else as we spend time in conversation with Him.  7)  We need to remember that prayer is a time to have a conversation with God.

Hopefully the above mentioned thoughts will help each of us move past the concerns that we have regarding our own prayer life.  I truly believe that God is calling each of us into a deeper season of praise, prayer, and intercession.  Let us respond to that call in obedience and reverence and once more become a people of prayer.