What is Prayer?

"The heart is deceitful above all things , and desperately wicked: who can know it? I the Lord search the heart, I try the reins, even to give every man according to his ways, and according to the fruit of his doings."
—Jeremiah 17:9—10, KJV.

However, anyone in a place of total sincerity before God will discover a blessedness in prayer beyond anything he had hitherto dreamed. But there is a cost involved—the cost of commitment, of time.


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The time to begin praying is not when you are in trouble as so many folks do
(I call this "foxhole praying").

The summary of Jesus' parable in Luke 18:1 revealed that "men have been condemned to prayer" so Apostle Paul could boldly say "pray without ceasing." We do not and should not pray because we feel like praying but we should pray because we ought to pray always. I find it expedient to mention at this point that God loves and responds to persistence and consistency. And consistency in prayer begins with committing yourself to praying. It entails falling in love with God that you cannot do without communing with Him for a second.

In Acts 6:4, the Apostles said to themselves;
"...we will give ourselves to prayer and to the ministry of the word." And as such it was their habit to pray.

See Acts 10:9

"On the morrow, as they went on their journey, and drew nigh unto the city, Peter went up upon the housetop to pray about the sixth hour."

It was Jesus' custom to pray.

Mark 6:46
"And when he had sent them away, he departed into a mountain to pray."

A life well-planned in and developed by prayer becomes a great life eventually. Prayer puts an indelible stamp upon every thought and action of the one who makes it a vital part of his life. The inevitable result of making prayer a way of life is the change of one's very being, the reshaping of his personality into the shape of God. The power of prayer is as real as the unseen—but also very real—terrestial gravity; a force with which everyone contends every hour of the day. No one can deny the existence or power of gravitational force. Quite the contrary, prayer is a sort of spiritual gravity and magnetism. Even as a magnet draws atom particles to itself, so God draws people to Himself. And when, through the dynamism of prayer, we turn to God, we find that He responds to us as we respond to Him.

Please, stop and think!

I'll drop my pen now. I hope this writeup was a blessing to you. I will continue on "Prayer" in my next post. I will be writing on "The Influence of the Knowledge of the Word of God in our praying."