PRAYER

The practice of prayer in our lives is one that may often be neglected and yet can be a tell tale sign of spiritual weakness on our part. If we are to draw closer to God, we must be a people devoted to prayer. It is our means of talking to our Heavenly Father. It is also one of the acts of worship that we engage in in our public worship services. We also notice that prayer was an important part of many OT characters as well as the early Christians.

Prayer, when properly offered is offered to God, our Father in heaven. On some occasions prayer was offered to Jesus (Acts 7:59,60). Nowhere in scripture do we have an example of prayer being offered to the Holy Spirit, but He helps us in our prayers (Rom. 8:26). We also understand that prayer is to be offered in the name of Jesus (Jn. 14:13). In our public worship we should offer our prayer to God the Father since Jesus is now our Mediator (1 Tim. 2:5; Heb. 7:25). Some have advocated that we should pray regularly to Jesus as well. I would have no problem with this in private prayers, but that should be left to the realm of opinion.

Prayers can be designed to accomplish different things in our conversations with God. Often we get into the "give me" rut in our prayer life. All we do is ask God for what we want or need. Our prayer life and our prayers ought to be well rounded and contain the elements of acceptable prayer. Having said that, though, we can dedicate some prayers to one particular thing such as praying for someone who is ill, or spending an entire prayer praising God. Just as a person who only talks of one thing constantly can bore us, God certainly is not pleased if we only ever speak to Him about one thing or are just simply asking for the things we want. Variety in our prayers is certainly a good thing.

A good, well rounded prayer will contain most, if not all of these elements:

ADDRESS – Our prayers must be addressed to the proper person. As already suggested, they should be addressed to God the Father, while on some private occasions we may want to pray to Jesus. A prayer addressed to anyone else certainly would not be acceptable to God. And we need to make sure that we show the proper respect to God in our prayers. Some advocates of modernism have suggested that we call God "Big Guy" or "Daddy" or some other nonsense such as that. Those terms of address are not respectful of our Creator and Savior.

SUPPLICATION - We certainly have times of need when we must make request to God for the things we need. We also need to keep in mind that God gives us everything and we need to ask Him for the continued blessing of those things.

THANKSGIVING – Since God is the giver of all good things we need to give Him thanks for these things. Not only has He given us all physical blessings, but the spiritual blessings that we so often take for granted.

PRAISE - God is the Creator of this world and all that is in it and He is also the author of our salvation. We need to praise God for His magnificence and His wonderful works done on our behalf. God is the ruler of this universe and deserving of our praise.

We should "pray without ceasing" (1 Th. 5:17) because it is such a wonderful privilege to talk to our Heavenly Father. Another reason for prayer is because of the power that is behind it. Many people speak of miracles and yet, we understand that miracles have ceased today (1 Cor. 13:8-13). However, God still works in the affairs of men. He does so partly because of the request made of him by men and women of faith. Who is to say what disease God will cure or what terrible circumstance He will help us overcome even though it seems impossible. Prayer is a powerful tool available to those who believe.

How is your prayer life? Has your spiritual life slipped a notch? If so, maybe you should take a careful look at your prayer life.

Bobby W. Schrimsher, Jr.

Minister

Westview Church of Christ