What Is Prayer?

Posted on January 23, 2017 by

“Trust in him [God] at all times; ye people, pour out your heart before him: God is a refuge for us. Selah [Rest]” Psalm 62:8.

God’s desire in prayer is that we pour out our hearts before Him. Share with Him your worries and your thoughts. Prayer is you speaking to and fellowshipping with God…communicating with your Heavenly Father regarding the details of your life in light of His Word to you.

Prayer to God must hold great importance to those who would be truly spiritual. While God’s Word to us is always to have first place in our lives, prayer must certainly have second place. We must even study God’s Word with prayer for understanding and willingness to obey (Ephesians 1:17).

The Scriptures everywhere exhort God’s people to pray, and in the Epistles of Paul we find greater cause, greater reason and greater incentive than ever to pray — to pray “always,” “in everything,” “without ceasing” (1 Thessalonians 5:16-18). The example of our Lord and of His apostles — particularly Paul — is a call to prayer. Every need, every anxiety, every heartache is a call to prayer. Every temptation, every defeat — yes, and every victory is a call to prayer.

Pray in accordance with God’s will by placing your faith in what God says He is doing today, and then by faith, pray for those things.

Yet, merely praying, or even spending much time in prayer, is not in itself evidence of true spirituality. Many carnal Christians, still “babes in Christ,” and even many unsaved people, spend much time in prayer. But the truly spiritual believer will join the Apostle Paul in saying:

“I will pray with the spirit, and I will pray with the understanding also” (I Cor. 14:15).

“With the spirit”: earnestly, fervently, pouring out to God my adoration, my supplications and my thanks. And “with the understanding also”: intelligently, with a clear grasp of what the Scriptures, rightly divided, say about God’s will and His provisions for my prayer life in this present dispensation of grace.

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