What Exactly is Prayer?

What Exactly is Prayer?

Power of Prayer

Understanding the awesome power of prayer, more precisely Christian prayer, means going beyond one’s own limit of understanding.  It means a change of perspective, a willful decision to place not only one’s life but their eternity in to the hands of a creator one has never physically seen in this realm of understanding.  Impossible you might be thinking, but ah, this journey of submission testified in the Bible time and time again is the very core of intimacy with our beloved Creator God.  This is God the Father; His Son, our Lord Jesus Christ; and, God, the Holy Spirit.  The Holy Trinity –three in One.

Prayer and water baptism

There are five KEY treasures of prayer that every Christian should know.

Jesus and prayer
1.   The most important is the opportunity to dialogue with God. This is not just a monologue of wants and needs, but a powerfully intimate occasion to learn and listen to God.

PRAYER KEY:  This is a two-way conversation – opening the doors to the renewal of the mind, the heart and the life for eternity.

In Luke 6:12 Jesus shows us the way.

In these days He went out to the mountain to pray, and all night He continued in prayer with God.

2.  From dialogue comes intimacy, surrender, and most importantly TRUST.  How can we really trust someone we have never even talked with or really gotten to know them personally?

PRAYER KEY:  This is a divine love story between Jesus, our Lord and His church –the born again Believers in Him.  The more this intimacy matures the more we experience a taste of divine unconditional love called Agape love.  The void-filler.

From Revelation 3:20, we learn:

If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in to him and eat with him; and he with me.

Prayer on the hillside of Scotland
Prayer in an Asian church
3.  With trust we begin walking in type of faith that only comes by Divine intimacy; and with this obedience comes naturally.  We trust Him and He trusts us enough to pour powerful insight and revelation through His Holy Spirit into us.

PRAYER KEY:  A form of surrender (a.k.a. obedience) transcends the perspective of this temporal world because it is built on Divine love.  A clear understanding of wisdom is imparted by the Holy Spirit that begins bringing every piece of the puzzle of life together.

We see in Proverbs 3:5-6 that the Lord says:

Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and do not lean on your own understanding. In all your ways acknowledge him, and he will make straight your paths.

4.  From this powerful connection through prayer true insight about the world, the flesh and the devil are revealed. The power to overcome through Jesus Christ belongs to His church.

PRAYER KEY:   It is not through our power, but faith in Him that gives us the ability to achieve the impossible.  When Peter stepped out the boat to walk on water he achieved the impossible by focusing on Jesus.  It was when he lost focus and gave his focus to the wind, waves and even the voices still back in the boat that he sank.

In the Old Testament in Jeremiah 33:3 God tells us:

Call to me and I will answer you and I will tell you great and hidden things that you have not known.

 

In the New Testament in John 15:4-6 we read:

Abide in me and I in you… As the branch cannot bear fruit by itself, unless it abides in the vine, neither can you, unless by abide in me.  I am the vine, you are the branches.  Whoever abides in me and I in him, it is he that bears much fruit, for apart from me you can do nothing.

Prayer in a Middle Eastern church
Indian girl in prayer
5.  Intercessory prayer by the power of the Holy Spirit becomes the prayer warriors’ privilege.  Praying on the behalf of others and standing in the gap for them is the ripple effect of an effective prayer warrior.

PRAYER KEY:  All Christian prayer becomes intercession since it is offered to God through and by Christ Jesus who closed the gap between us and God when He died on the cross. 

From Romans 8:26-27 we are told:

Likewise the Spirit helps us in our weakness.  For we do not know what to pray as we ought, but the Spirit Himself intercedes for us with groanings too deep for words.  And He who searches the heart knows what is the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for the saints according to the will of God.

Now is the Time...

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