By Ben Bailey through the Gospel of Christ
“Men ought to pray always, and never lose heart” (Lk. 18:1). In this passage, Jesus teaches us about the power of prayer in our Christian lives. Ask yourself today, “How often do we really use prayer?” Do we see prayer as a powerful tool that is able to help us through this life? Do we use the power of prayer in the everyday struggles that we face? We talk about prayer. And I believe that we really do understand what the Bible says about prayer. But do we really use prayer as God wants us to? If we are going to make it through this life and go to Heaven, and if we are going to defeat the devil and all the fiery darts that he throws at us, we must realize the power of persistent prayer. And we must take advantage of every opportunity serve God, using prayer as a tool to help us do that. Christians must realize exactly how important prayer is in their lives. The text of 1 Thessalonians 5:17 teaches us to “pray without ceasing.” That text does not mean that everything in our life is a prayer. But it does mean that there should never be a time in our lives when we cannot come to the throne of God and ask Him for help. I think of Matthew 14:23. In this context, Jesus had gone away from the multitudes, and had gone up to the mountain by Himself to pray. Jesus realized the importance of prayer in His personal ministry. He realized the power of prayer, for it says in Matthew 26:53 that He could pray and that God would send angels to help Him in His time of need. We need to realize how important prayer is in helping us overcome the difficulties that we face in life. Notice what James said about prayer. In James 5:16, we have these words recorded:
“Confess your trespasses to one another, and pray for one another, that you may be healed. The effective, fervent prayer of a righteous man avails much.”The idea of “effective and fervent” carries with it the idea of continual petitioning of the throne of God. That type of prayer, James teaches us, overcomes much in this life. But to really understand the power of prayer, we need to know about some of the prerequisites of prayer. We need to know how to pray. We need to understand what the Bible says about prayer, and that there are conditions that we must meet in order to pray properly. The Bible does teach us that there are certain prerequisites to prayer. There are some things that we need to understand ahead of time if we are going to pray as God wants us to.
For example, not every person can simply stand up to pray and say whatever he wants to say. A person needs to be taught how to pray according to the Scriptures. In Luke 11:1, the disciples of Jesus came to Him with this request: “Lord, teach us to pray, as John also taught his disciples to pray.” Oh, how we today need the same attitude that Jesus’ disciples had. We need to want to learn how to pray according to the Scriptures. We need to learn to pray biblically! We must not pray selfishly, but instead we need to pray as God would have us to pray.
This article is part of a transcript from The Gospel Of Christ. To read the rest of the text please visit this link.
