Encouragement

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We should pray to God for at least two important reasons. First of
all, God has instructed us to pray. Second for a purely selfish
reason, prayer causes things to happen. Another way of looking at
this is “prayer gets results, or cause and effect.”

Several of the scriptures from the bible exhort us to pray to God (I
Thessalonians 5:16-18, James 1:5 – 8, James 5: 13 – 18, and
Philippians 4:6 & 7). This is just a sampling of the verses that
encourage us to pray. Prayer provides a way for us to communicate
with God. We can pray to God by using the Lord’s Prayer (Matthew
6:8-13) or we can merely speak to God. God is constantly aware of
what we do and what we say. He is omnipotent. Yet, we must exercise
our faith by acknowledging God.

Praying is a way that we communicate with and acknowledge God. Of
course, we need to be sincere in our prayers to God. God, unlike man
can not be fooled. This is because God knows all, sees all, and
understands all. God weighs the hearts of men and women. He knows
purity and hypocrisy and degrees in between. A prime example of
God’s ability to determine sincerity occurred when Jesus watched
the people give money to the treasury. Many people gave money based
on their abundance, however one poor widow gave all that she had
(Mark 12:41-44). This is a judgment of the heart. Only God is able
to make a pure judgment about another person’s heart.

Prayer can have a cause and effect impact on our lives. For
instance, when Paul was in prison the people of the church constantly
prayed and God sent an angel to free Paul from prison (Acts 12: 5-
11). In addition, Jesus prayed to God on Peter’s behalf (Luke
22:31 & 32), he prayed for Peter’s faith, that it shouldn’t
fail. Also, Jesus prayed for himself and his disciples (Matthew 26:36-46)

In conclusion, we can see that since God answers prayer then nothing
is impossible. In addition, we can pray to God about any issue that
concerns us. We can give thanks, we can make requests. A great
thing about our prayers is that we don’t have to tell anyone
about what we pray. Pray for yourself, your parents, your brother,
your sister, your boss, your present, your future, your country, and
your “?”. Pray, pray, and pray!!!


Copyright 2003, Stanley T. Crawford, is the editor of, “People of
the Bible,” and webmaster of http://peopleofthebible.com.
All Rights Reserved. Mailto:[email protected]

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