Prayer

Are you weary of praying? Do you ever feel that your prayers are ineffective? Do you ever wonder if God is really listening? Why pray? What's the purpose? Prayer doesn't really work, it's just a unique coincidence. I believe that at some point in our walk with Christ we feel this way about prayer. The last few months have been emotionally, physically and spiritually challenging on me. I have asked some of these challenging questions a lot during this time, and the funny thing is, is that God keeps revealing Himself to me in new ways everyday.

Through prayer God gives us His peace, He comforts us, and He even helps us understand things. But those reasons are enough for self-sufficient people to fall on their knees and pour out their hearts to God. I believe that there is something more that draws people to pray. I believe that people are drawn to prayer because they know that God's power flows primarily to people who pray. The bible is full of passages teaching us that God is ready, willing and able to answer our prayers.

One of my favorite stories in the bible that shows how prayer works is found in Exodus 17:8-13 and it's about a battle between the Israelites and Amalekites. Moses takes his main man Joshua and tells him this, "Hey here's the plan, you take our best men and meet the Amalekites in battle and Aaron, Hur and myself will watch and pray on this hill and we'll see what happens." Sounds crazy right? Not to Moses, because he knew that God would fight for them. The moment that Moses lifted his hands, the Israelites began to win. The moment that he dropped them, they became overwhelmed, overrun, beaten down, pushed around and defeated.

Such is true to those who live a prayerless life. If you don't pray, you choose to cut yourself from God's prevailing power, and what's sad to me is that there is a surprising number of people that are willing to settle for lives like that. I may be tired, I may feel defeated, but I choose to pray because I serve a VICTORIOUS God that is ready and willing to answer me.