“Lord, teach us to pray.” Jesus’ disciples saw the value of His prayer life and they wanted to learn to pray as He did. If Jesus needed to pray, they certainly needed to pray, and so do we. Prayer is not something that we should take lightly, for it is our pipeline to the Lord. When we pray in the name of Jesus, we are opening up the power of heaven in our lives. Prayer is always important.
Prayer is important when we are going through tough times. What a comfort it is to know that all I have to do is to begin talking to God and immediately know that He is listening and has already given me a solution that I will discover in time. Sometimes it seems when we pray that God is not listening. We are going through some tough problems and they just continue on and on. It seems that God has not heard and is not acting on our behalf. We need to remember that these are the times when Jesus is “taking us to school.” I know that when I had a long period of illness, and it seemed that God wasn’t there, that He revealed to me that he was “taking me to school.” I will call it prayer school. There are things that God is working out in our lives that we were unaware of, and while God has our attention, He is revealing them to us and pulling these things from our subconscious minds to our conscious minds. There are things that we are aware of that we are not doing anything about, and, while He has our attention, the Lord is leading us to confession and repentance. Prayer is important when we have decisions to make in our lives. There are some decisions that are easy to make and we know that it is the right decision. There are other times, however, when the decision is not as clear cut, and we have to literally agonize before God before we can reach the decision. This is especially true when a decision will bring about a change in our lives and in the lives of our families. At these times, we need to know with assurance that we have God’s approval for that which will bring change, not just to us, but to our families as well. Perhaps you are reading this now because you have such a decision to make and you do not know which way to turn. I can assure you that God knows what the right decision will be, and He will lead and guide you to the right answer and will be with you in the process. It has always been interesting to me that Jesus in His infinite wisdom spent all night in prayer the night before He called out His twelve disciples, and with the exception of Judas, made them apostles who shared His word all across the Roman Empire and beyond. (Luke 6:12) If you have a decision to make, take it to the Lord in prayer, hear His answer and do what He tells you to do. I don’t know how, but you will know the answer when it comes. God has a way of making Himself clear to us in our minds and hearts. I have found this to be true and I know that you will find it to be true as well. Prayer is important when things are going well in our lives. When things are going well we have the tendency to relax and think that we can make it on our own. This is part of being human, but it is also part of the devil’s work. When everything is going our way, the devil will lull us to sleep if we let him. If we aren’t careful in these times, we will not pray as we should. If things are going well with you at the present time, go immediately to God in prayer, thank Him for the good times and ask Him to help you to stay away from temptation. When I was an Associational Missionary, and working primarily with pastors, I always told the preacher whose church was thriving that I had put him at the top of my prayer list. Why? Because the devil was aware of the successes of his church and was not happy about it. We need to take Paul’s advice in 1 Thessalonians 5:16: “Pray without ceasing.” I hope that you get the point that it is always important to pray. There is never a time when prayerlessness will make our lives better. Bro. Joe
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AuthorDr. Joe Beauchamp is the author of this blog and website. Categories
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