Prayer Life

What is Prayer? Why do/should we pray?

Prayer is communication with God.

Prayer is a neglected spiritual discipline in most believers' experience at one time or another. Prayer is a privilege that "Christians" abuse through neglect or through misuse.

Even believers who are knowledgeable in a large amount of doctrine are sometimes guilty of neglecting to exercise their privilege of prayer. Regardless of how much Biblical knowledge a believer has, they will never reach a point where they don't need to communicate with God. Prayer has a way of humbling a believer in that, when speaking with God, that believer sees that they still don't fully know Him and that there is still a need to communicate. Also, when praying in the format the Jesus presents in Matthew 6, the believer follows this pattern:

1. Praising God. (v.9)
2. Praying for work in the world. (v.10)
3. Praying for daily needs (v.11-12)
4. Daily struggles/repentance (v.13)

When a believer prays in this format, they can become humbled through the even just the first step of prayer, and that's in giving praise to God and seeing how He works in your life.

God hears the prayers of His own --- both the mature and immature. For prayer to be effective, it must be consistent with the Truth of Scripture and must also be in accordance with the Will of the Father.

So, some may ask the question: "If God has already determined the outcome of the course of human history, if the unbeliever is truly a creature of free-will and can choose to become a believer of his own determination, why pray?" There are at least 3 answers to these questions.

1. If prayer wasn't important to God, why are there so many examples and exhortations for prayer?
2. If we don't pray, that is an event that an omniscient God could not have addressed from eternity past as He predetermined a course of events for human history that allowed for both the free-will of man and God's own sovereignty to function in perfect harmony.
3. The believer who prays to the Father has a changed perspective on life as a result.

Below are some verses that are fine examples of prayer and the importance therein:

Matt. 4:2
Luke 5:16
Luke 11:1
Luke 23:34, 46
Luke 24:30, 50-51
John 17
Acts 1:14

Make sure your prayer life is consistent with the Truth of the Scriptures, and make sure it is a daily commitment. The only way to build a relationship with someone is by talking with them, so make sure you're speaking regularly with God.