Priority of Prayer
Every Christian needs to have as his or her goal to– develop and maintain a healthy prayer life. A strong prayer life is essential in our journey toward spiritual maturity. Prayer has been defined as a process of communicating with God. When we communicate with another person, we talk and listen to them. We also spend time in their presence. Our communication can become as intimate and as passionate as we desire it to be. The more we invest in good communication, the better our relationships will be. This is true in our relationships with the people in our lives. It is also true in our relationship with God.
We should commit to a regular habit of praying. Jesus is our model in how we should keep prayer as a priority in our lives. The Scripture says , “But Jesus often withdrew to lonely places and prayed.” (Luke 5:16). If Jesus needed to make it a regular habit to pray, how much more do we need to find time to make this a consistent practice in our lives. A lack of communication continues to be one of the top reasons why people get divorced. When communication between two people is cut off, it often results in the death of a marriage. Likewise, when we fail to communicate with our Heavenly father on a regular basis, our relationship and fellowship with Him suffers, and our spiritual progress is limited.
Another important thing about prayer to remember ,especially in the early stages of our Christian experience , is that we need to be committed to growing in this area. While the basic idea of prayer comes natural, prayer as a spiritual discipline requires that we become a student of prayer, and learn all we can about the subject so that our prayers can be more effective. As Jesus’ disciples observed his prayer life, they requested of him that he teach them how to pray (Luke 11:1). They wanted to learn to how pray better. As new and growing Christians, we will need to learn how to pray better. This will involve learning how to incorporate in our prayers the principles found in the “Lord’s Prayer.” (Mt. 6:9-13) Learning how to pray also means engaging in spiritual warfare (Ephesians 6:10-18). Another important truth about prayer is that when we learn how to abide in Christ we will see results that come in direct response to our specific requests (John 15:7-8).
A light bulb comes on when it is charged with a current of electricity. Without the electricity there will be no light. Prayer in the life of a believer is what electricity is to a light bulb. If we want power to energize our lives and do the things that reflect Christ-like living, it is essential to turn on the power source through prayer. Prayer is so important to the Christian life that Jesus made a point of emphasizing that we should always pray and never give up. He does this by telling a story of a desperate widow in Luke 18:2-5, “In a certain town there was a judge who neither feared God nor cared about men. And there was a widow in that town who kept coming to him with the plea, ‘Grant me justice against my adversary.’ “For some time he refused. But finally he said to himself, ‘Even though I don’t fear God or care about men, yet because this widow keeps bothering me, I will see that she gets justice, so that she won’t eventually wear me out with her coming.” The point of the parable is that, despite the resistance of the judge, this widow was persistent in her plea for help. And just like this widow, though God is not resistant to us ,we are to pray to God persistently without giving up.
E. Trice
SoulPower 