Dear Jesus, thank you for this food and bless it to our bodies for our strength and health so that we may bring glory and honor to you. Amen.
This humble dinner prayer pretty much sums up the extent of my childhood prayer life. It’s not that my family didn’t pray. On the contrary, I come from a long line of prayer warriors. My gramma and grandpa are some of the most devoted followers of Jesus, and they modeled prayer well for us growing up. But for some reason the power of prayer didn’t become real for me until I had to face the world on my own as an adult.
I had read that the power of a righteous person was powerful and effective (Jame 5:16), but I didn’t understand the role prayer played in my life. From what I could see, prayer was something Christians reserved for Sunday mornings, mealtimes and before bed. Prayer was that “thing” you had to do to make sure you were paying reverence to God and being a good Christian.
It wasn’t until I joined a ministry team in college that I began to understand more about the role of prayer in our lives.
Here’s some of what I learned prayer is NOT:
- Prayer isn’t frivolous.
- Prayer isn’t wishing upon a star.
- Prayer isn’t a chore to check off our to-do lists.
- Prayer isn’t formulaic.
- Prayer isn’t a shot in the dark.
- Prayer isn’t lip service.
- Prayer isn’t a last resort.
As I surrounded myself with people who were passionate about prayer, here’s what I learned prayer IS:
- Prayer is an invitation to enter into God’s presence.
- Prayer is an act of surrender.
- Prayer is a no-strings-attached conversation.
- Prayer is a gift, and it should be our first response in both times of blessing and great need.
- Prayer is a tangible way to bring joy, love, hope and peace to our lives.
- Prayer is a lifeline when we find ourselves in the darkness.
- Prayer offers our souls space to rest.
- When spoken in faith, prayer works and God answers. This might not necessarily be on our time table, and it might not be the answer we want, but He responds to those who call and faithfully seek Him (Matthew 7:7).
- When spoken in faith, prayer is powerful and effective, just as God’s Word tells us in James 5:16!
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I’ve said this before in a different blog post, but at the risk of being redundant, I want to post the quote here again:
Prayer is not too good to be true. Prayer is the truest and surest thing we have in this life.
If we think our prayers are useless and not worth the effort, they will be useless. They will not make a difference to use one bit. BUT, the moment we choose to believe our prayers have merit in the eyes of the Father … this faith in prayer changes everything.
As followers of Jesus Christ, we don’t have to wish upon a star or cross our fingers like those who do not have hope. Because of Jesus we can know the Father hears us. And we can expect God to answer us because He says He will.
“Call to me and I will answer you and tell you great and unsearchable things you do not know.” {Jeremiah 33:3}
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Next week, we will begin an 8-week journey toward discovering the power of prayer. You’re invited to join us on that journey, and I hope you’ll stop by the blog or sign up to my email list to catch each weekly post!