Wednesday, November 4, 2009

How Should We Pray?

How interesting it is to talk about prayer with your friends. I did that yesterday at Bible study and I feel like I learned so much through my wonderful Bible study friends. We talked about the affects of praying and here's some of the things we discussed:
  1. Through prayer, you get a sense of peace.
  2. Through prayer, you may receive signs from the Lord.
  3. Through prayer, you can expect to see miracles.
  4. Through prayer, sometimes you get a delayed response from the Lord, but His timing is always perfect!
  5. Through prayer, sometimes the Lord will send others to encourage you.
  6. Through prayer, sometimes you get an unexpected solution or answer.
  7. Through prayer, sometimes you get a direct answer.

We also talked about how we should pray. One of the things I think I failed to mention but should is that the best way to learn to pray is by praying! An example of this is my relationship with my parents. The older I get, the better I am at communicating with them. That is because I know them better and better the more I communicate with them. It's the same with God. The more we pray and communicate with Him, the better we get at it.

Communicating with God doesn't have to be a recited prayer every time. As a matter of fact, it's good just talk to God and share your thoughts with Him. Now, it's not bad to recite prayers such as the Lord's Prayer found in Matthew 6. I'm sure the Lord delights in us praying that prayer! However, I feel He wants more from us, not just the same recited prayer over and over. And speaking of The Lord's Prayer, it's a great guideline for things we need to remember in prayer...

  • Give honor to God
  • Ask for blessings on our world and others
  • Ask for our needs
  • Ask for forgiveness
  • Ask for deliverance

And how do we remember to pray? One thing I've started doing is making myself a reminder for prayer. I heard someone say one time that they decided to pray at every red light they were sitting at in traffic. I thought that was a grand idea. I'm sure we could all come up with some reminders for prayer.....maybe prayer praying for a specific friend with cancer every time you see the color pink....maybe when you cross a bridge you pray for a friend that is at a crossroads in life...maybe when you see an ambulance or emergency vehicle you pray for the health care workers. If we put our minds to it, we can always come up with some reminders for prayer.

We need to get our minds in the right position for prayer. A good way to do this is to start with Praise. I feel all our prayers should begin with saying thanks to God. Thanks for our world. Thanks for our family and friends. Thanks for dieing on the cross for us. Thanks for the food we eat and the homes we have. This humbles us and focuses our minds on God at the beginning of our prayers. And honestly, we should be singing praises of thanksgiving all day long to our Savior and our King!

If you have some thoughts on prayer, please post them on this blog or email them to me and I'll post them for you. stephieb@swbell.net

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