What Prayer can be! Part I ...

Monday, April 4, 2016. People of all nations know prayer. Prayer in the first place means to ask God for something. We all know that our life is not only influenced by what we do and want, but also by many other people and by forces far beyond our direct reach. So it is natural to search to influence what we cannot directly control - and prayer has always been a tool chosen by many.

Christians and Prayer …

Christian faith knows prayer. We do not pray to the forces which might influence our fate, but we pray to our heavenly father, the God and creator of this world, and our father and friend in faith. There is a deep and intimate relationship between a believer and his God in the Christian faith. We will come back to this, since it is a very important part of prayer.

When you are in trouble, it is natural to pray. Many people do it, we all do it. We call for help. And it is fully OK to pray when you are in trouble. The bible shows us many examples of such prayer, and it can be answered, God wants us to pray. But when we pray only when we are in trouble, it might depend on our overall attitude, whether or not we will be heard.

But prayer is much more. It is not just asking God for things when we are in trouble. Prayer starts with recognizing who God is, it has to do with our attitude to faith, it is about God's agenda with this world, it is about his majesty. And it is about our particular situation, about our life and our goals. It is about his word, about his wisdom, about his mercy. It is about politics, about other people, about forgiveness, about our active behavior. Prayer is much more!

Prayer Styles …

There are different ways you can approach prayer. Of course there is this urgent prayer in trouble. But there is also the daily prayer, where you come to the Lord and focus on him. There is the prayer of thanks, before you eat and any time where you realize that you have been richly blessed by others or by things in your life. There is the prayer for others, the prayer for his guidance, his help, his healing.

There is prayer which meditates, which becomes calm before him. This can be completely quit, completely listening in faith and in the spirit. It can also be sitting there with his word, asking for wisdom and understanding. Prayer can be a tuning of our own soul to his soul, a tuning of our spirit to his Holy Spirit. Prayer can open a whole world for us - his new world, his kingdom of heaven!

Praise and worship is part of prayer. We sing songs to him, we pray to him. Many Christians see worship as a core activity, to come to the Lord, to enter his presence. Of course, he is always there, we do not have to sing songs in a particular environment. But the bible talks about his angles being there and worshiping him, and we hear about many images of worship. God is fantastic, and what else would we do than to sing songs about him and towards him? All this is part of the world of prayer … let us learn more, talk more about it, and pray more, to experience the full majesty and brilliance of our God, the father, the son and the Holy Spirit. (RWEP) ... more texts