Speaking of Prayer...
- date:
- July 26, 2012
- by:
- James Firnstahl
- topic:
- Choices
In CBMC we acknowledge that Jesus Christ and His Gospel are the foundation of our faith; but prayer is the foundation of our Ministry (service) with God. So how would Jesus describe the essence of prayer?
For God's Son, prayer appears to be at all times a reflection of one's faith position in Christ and unwavering commitment to a mighty God who loves us more than we can imagine. Therefore we ought to pray for Godly, righteous things and in righteous ways which the Father can agree with: our love relationship with God and others, loving others, helping others, sharing His Gospel, revealing and doing the work of His glorious Kingdom of heaven at home, work and church; for His Holy Spirit to have wisdom to know and do and ask the right thing, for peace, strength and courage. We ought to pray with single-mindedness (James 1:5-8) in purity, impartially, humbly, submissively and persistently as these are the hallmarks of prayers desired by our heavenly Father.
Our first priority may be to receive an answer to prayer, a solution, resolution; God, who knows our needs even before we pray, desires our attention, fellowship, deeper relationship, faith and trust. In this way our earthly needs and trials serve to draw us out of ourselves and this world to God, the one for whom "nothing is impossible". God's answers to our prayers are never a question of capacity to answer but of alignment and proximity to the perfect will of God. God is perfectly responsible in what and how He answers our prayers. He controls the outcome of prayer as He should. We can only control how, in what attitude and circumstances we pray, and what we pray for. If prayer causes us to genuinely and earnestly seek God and His will, it has already accomplished much. As in most things, we focus on outcomes while God remains focused on the deeper elements of life such as our love relationship with Him. He hears our prayers with a sensitivity and compassion we can scarcely imagine and almost always brings His unsurpassable peace to us as evidence of His hearing.
In the end, He alone can and must shape His final response to these prayers with a depth, insight and foreknowledge only He possesses. There is no magic formula to prayer taught in the Scripture. The Father's love for us allows for His precious children to approach him honestly and in whatever circumstances they find themselves: anxious, upset, impatient, troubled as well as peaceful, trusting and perfectly submissive.
The perfect prayer? Jesus said "Pray then like this:
"Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name. Your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread, and forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil." (Matthew 6:5-13 ESV)
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I accept to join in prayer with you. cf. James 5:16
so plz help us for our church and our poor pepoles .... may God bless you
We don’t know specifically how prayer works. We understand what it does, and what we may expect from using it, but as to the actual mechanics of it, we’re in the dark. This is where we rely upon faith and trust in the promise from Heavenly Father that our prayers will be answered. We also don’t know how gravity works. We understand what it does, what the general effects are that flow from its operation. But we still don’t know precisely what generates gravity. We simply trust that it works because it always has, back to the beginnings of human history. The interesting thing to consider in this example is that I believe that when the day comes that we trust in prayer as unfailingly as we trust in gravity, we’ll begin to find answers to these and many more questions we’ve been researching through the centuries. I also believe that Heavenly Father is eagerly anticipating that day.
Well said .
Dear friend I am a Barrister Beneth Eke. There is a dormant account here in Bank amounting to(US$10.5 million) which was deposited by a LATE Clant who died From my inquiry, I discovered that he has no child who supposed to inherit this fund and I found out that his wife has died many years ago. I have tried my best to trace his relatives so that they will come and claim the fund but all my efforts was in vain and if we don't claim this fund now, My intention is to work with you secretly as a team so that the fund will be released to you as his relative after which you and me will share the money at the ratio of 50% to me and 50% to you. I want to assure you that this money will be released to you without any problem on your side after claim, and I will guide you properly on how to submit your application letter to our Bank for immediate release of the fund to you as his relative. Be informed that I have already studied this transaction completely before contacting you and I want to promise you that you will never regret your involvement in this transaction and you will never be disappointed at the end. Reply me on this email address ( beneke1@live.fr) for more Information. Best Regards, Barrister Beneth Eke phone +228 90676489
Beneth you need to be ashamed of yourself. I pray for forgiveness for you and your family. You should know that the world at this stage are very aware of the scamming that Nigerians have been doing across the earth, it is people like you that gives Nigerians a bad name. How dare you post you scam letters here or anywhere the children of God are collaborating to do the work of God. DO YOU NOT FEAR GOD. Repent now before it is too late. I sincerely hope nobody has responded to the Scam post by Beneth. I would like to apologize on behalf of all African out there for the shameful post from Beneth Eke, for His total disregard for the sacred people of God and trying to Scam us.
All Christians without exception, at least I cannot imagine a Christian who would say otherwise, agree that prayer is vitally important to the Christian life. There should be no disagreement on this point because the Bible is packed full of verses that not only tell us of the importance of prayer but also exhort us to pray, and pray often. Christ prayed often (Lk. 5:16), He taught us to pray (Mt. 6:9f.), the apostles were committed to prayer (Acts 6:4), so was the early church (Acts 2:42), and we are exhorted to be devoted to prayer and to pray without ceasing (Rom. 12:12; 1 Thess. 5:17). So the disturbing question is: "Why don't we pray more than we do?"