whypray – The Kedge Anchor

Welcome back. If you were here last week we defined prayer as “an address (such as a petition) to God”… “a set order of words used in praying.” Prayer is a conversation with God. God created us to commune with Him. Not because He was lonely, but because He loves us and wants to be a part of His creation’s lives, to be a part of our lives. (That could be another post) After all He did create them, shouldn’t they get the chance to know their creator? God wants us to know Him, to know who He is and what He has for us as His creation.

But prayer isn’t a wish list. God isn’t a genie. That isn’t His purpose to prayer. He wants to hear from us, He wants us to tell Him every detail about our day, how we are feeling, what we have going on, the good, the bad, the ugly, all of it. And by now you may be saying “But He knows all about us and knows everything why do we need to tell Him?” Because God is love. God loves us, He wants His children to talk to Him. Yes, He knows. Don’t you want to hear from the people you love? For those of you who have friends, family that you are really close to, or are married you are so close, you can finish each other’s sentences. You know what they will say next, but you still want to hear from them, right? You want your children to ask you for help, you want to give them the things they want and you provide for them the things they need. So it is with our Father.

Our Father will provide what we need and He does want to bless us. Maybe not necessarily with material things, although He does grant us those things sometimes according to His will. He provides when we don’t know what we need sometimes we don’t have to ask. Like salvation. God knew before He created the world that man would need to be restored. He knew man would fall and all His creation would become sinful. But He had a plan long before the Garden of Eden. All we need to do is ask. He provides salvation, He freely offers it, we just need to ask and receive it.

James 4:2 says “You desire but do not have, so you kill. You covet but you cannot get what you want, so you quarrel and fight. You do not have because you do not ask God.” The people James was speaking to were asking for thing for the wrong reasons. God will judge our motives and only give us what He sees will benefit us and glorify Him. So it is through prayer, communicating with our Father that we can align our will and hearts with His so that those things our hearts truly desire.

We pray to listen to what our Father has to say to us. He does respond, just sometimes not right away, and sometimes not the way we expect and sometimes right away. Sometimes we need to be patient. When there’s a silence sometimes I think He’s preparing me for what He has to say about something. It may be something to correct me so He’s lovingly giving me time to be receptive to His words. I just may not be ready yet. “The teacher is usually silent during a test.” It’s during those silent moments that God may be teaching me something before He tells me something. : )

Thank you for stopping by. Please stay tuned and if you liked this post please leave a comment about your thoughts, prayer requests and be sure to like and share this post.

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Prayer can sometimes be a little daunting. We so often don’t know what to say. We have no words to express how we feel or what we want to see happen. We can feel inadequate, sometimes unworthy. We often feel uncomfortable praying in front of others and worse asked to pray on the spot. We can feel lost and start to question our faith when our prayers go unanswered.

We wonder, is God hearing me? Where is He? Why aren’t my prayers being answered? I’ve been praying for ______ fill in the blank, for years, what’s taking so long? We ask, “where are you God?” These are normal responses. We are after all human. We don’t have all the answers to anything. We don’t have infinite knowledege. We were not present when God created the universe.

So, let’s find out and dig a little deeper into what prayer is and isn’t. Let define prayer, practice it, share it. I am no expert on prayer. I have probably just as many if not more questions than you do about prayer.

Jesus gave a perfect model of prayer in Luke 11:1 and in Matthew 6:5-15. And that is just what it is a model prayer. It illustrates how to pray rather than dictating the necessary words to use. Even as a model prayer I still find myself praying it from time to time when I am at a loss for words, sometimes I pray it to calm my mind. I do believe God still hears my words, my unspoken words.

When writing about something, in some cases I was taught to start by defining what it is about I am writing. So let’s define prayer.

The Merriam – Webster Dictionary defines prayer as:

1a(1): an address (such as a petition) to God or a god in word or thoughtsaid a prayer for the success of the voyage

(2): a set order of words used in prayingb: an earnest request or wish

2: the act or practice of praying to God or a godkneeling in prayer

3: a religious service consisting chiefly of prayers —often used in plural

4: something prayed for

5: a slight chancehaven’t got a prayer

In Biblical terms, prayer can be defined as a conversation with God. However, I do believe that God has a love language and we need to know what that is. Just like your spouse or your family members, friends, boss, co-workers, anyone in who you have a realtionship with has a love language and to communicate best with them, learning their love language can make a difference. But, I still believe that God hear us when we can seem to find the words. Romans 8:26 – “In the same way, the Spirit helps us in our weakness. We do not know what we ought to pray for, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us through wordless groans.“

So you maybe asking, “why pray?” Stay tuned as we try to gain some insight to prayer. Please like and share and if you have any comments please share them.

Tag: whypray

Teach Us to Pray – Part 2

“Teach Us to Pray”- Luke 11:1 Part 1

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