Prayer: It's been a while

“The one concern of the Devil is to keep Christians from praying. He fears nothing from prayerless studies, prayerless work, and prayerles religion. He laughs at our toil, mocks at our wisdom, but trembles when we pray.” –Samuel Chadwick

Do you have a daily holy time with God? Do you pause in the day that God gave to you and spend time quietly with Him? Do you do so consistently? Do you spend your day doing things as usual including facebook, catching your favorite television programs and talking on the phone to friends and yet lie down at night to think, "oh shoot I didn't spend time with God today."? I was reading a piece from a book that someone printed for me, and it asked these questions. It asked “do you even have a prayer life?” If the answer is sometimes, I don’t know, or no, then you need to be convinced of the importance of prayer.

Prayer is supernatural. It gets so overlooked or tossed to the side in the list of things we should do, need to do, claim to do, etc…but really, it is the most AMAZING SUPERNATURAL EXPERIENCE. You get to talk to God – the one and only true God. Just think: You actually have access to the throne of grace to make your requests known before God. You can worship and praise Him through prayer. You please and honor him simply by pausing in prayer. And guess what, he actually wants to listen. He hears you. He is sitting on the other end, NO MATTER WHEN OR WHERE OR UNDER WHAT CIRCUMSTANCES you come. I don’t know a human being alive today who is ready and willing to have conversation with me in an instant, but my Heavenly Father is. And to think, we don’t access that throne of Grace but sometimes, occasionally, sporadically, etc. Why?
We are commanded by God’s word to pray. 1 Thessalonians 5:17 “Pray without ceasing.”
There are so many verses dedicated to prayer: how to pray, why to pray, what to pray. The Bible tells us clearly that we are to pray James 4:2, we are to pray God’s will be done James 4:3, we are to pray without ceasing 1 Thess. 5:17, we are to confess sin before we pray Psalm 66:18, we are to pray fervently James 5:16, and pray in faith Matthew 9:29 to name a few.
I want to be a prayer warrior so badly. It is a goal of mine that people will know they can turn to me when they need prayer because I want to pray the fervent effectual prayers that God hears. I am so far from that, but I am "praying" that I can become such. Let’s not disqualify ourselves by not asking at all, asking amiss that we consume our lusts, asking with a lack of faith, or giving up too soon. Commit to making sure that when asked about your prayer life you can give an answer that is honoring to God. I am sure all of us would see tremendous changes in our lives if we would commit to praying the Biblical way God commands us to. I have already found that in keeping a list of prayer requests (I’m talking about the big things in life…not every daily needs that I should pray for anyway…) and committing to praying through that list each week, I have been BLOWN AWAY at seeing the magnitude of God at work.

Finally, an AMAZING thing to practice along with all of the faithful outpouring you will be doing in your new commitment to a consistent prayer life is the practice of being still and knowing that he is God.
Psalm 37:7
Be still before the LORD and wait patiently for him;

Ah, it is incredible to pause and be in awe of the Lord. Sometimes, just letting him search your heart and know your thoughts is the best way to pray. The words are not always there to express my heart, but our Heavenly Father, the one true God, he knows my and your life like an open book. Surrender to him in prayer.