![[Graphic of the importance of prayer]](https://www.deankwilson.com/Blog_images/importance_of_prayer.jpg)
| Is any one of you in trouble? He should pray. Is anyone happy? Let him sing songs of praise. Is any one of you sick? He should call the elders of the church to pray over him and anoint him with oil in the name of the Lord. And the prayer offered in faith will make the sick person well; the Lord will raise him up. If he has sinned, he will be forgiven. Therefore confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you may be healed. The prayer of a righteous man is powerful and effective. |
| —James 5:13-18 |
I am fairly certain that every one of us knows at least a little bit about “praying.” We all tend to think of prayer in terms of a quick shout toward heaven whenever we get into a jam. We shouldn’t feel badly about that. God certainly understands that sometimes we only seem to want to talk to Him when we’re in some kind of trouble.
But, the truth is that prayer forms an important foundation for our daily walk of obedience with God. He wants us to learn what He expects by reading our Bible. He also wants to listen to what we have to say through prayer. And, in the quietness of time spent communing with Him, He will often give us a sense of the path He wants us to take for that day.
Whenever we take time to pray, the Holy Spirit—who dwells within the hearts and minds of everyone who believes that God has given us the gift of salvation from our sins through His precious Son, Jesus—nudges us forward in our walk with God. The Spirit lays out the pathway of Christian formation before us. He encourages us to follow that pathway. He empowers us to move ever forward in a walk that leads to holiness. The Spirit uses our times of prayer to teach us the way of trust and faith in the God who loves us with His unfailing, undying love.
If we were fortunate enough to be raised in a Christian home, we likely learned about prayer when we were quite young. For most of our young lives, our moms and dads, or grandmas and grandpas, or our uncles and aunts, taught us about prayer. We watched these dear ones pray. We heard the content of their prayers. We observed the importance that they placed on the role that prayer played in their lives.
When it was time for meals, we were taught to bow our heads and thank God that He had provided the food that we were about to eat. When it was time to go to sleep at night, our moms and dads tucked us into our beds and took time to pray with us, or to listen as we prayed.
In our bedtime prayers we probably thanked God for the day He had given us. We probably thanked God for our moms, our dads, our brothers and sisters, and our grandparents. Maybe we even thanked God for our uncles, aunts, and cousins. We probably asked God to keep us safe through the night. Then, there may have been some other special requests that our moms and dads helped us include in our prayer.
As we grew older, we learned that prayer is a very, very important part of our relationship with God. It’s our opportunity to talk with Him and tell Him what’s on our minds. It’s a time when we can tell Him our deepest feelings. It’s a time when we can tell Him the things that make us worry, or anxious, or feel sad. It’s a time when we can tell Him the things that make us happy or feel joyful. It’s a time when we can express to God the deepest needs that we have in our minds and hearts.
When we pray, it’s a time for us to tell God how much He means to us, how much we love Him, how grateful we are for His Son, Jesus, and how very much we appreciate the leading and guiding of the Holy Spirit in our lives. And, most of all, it’s a time when we can ask Him to help us do the things that the Bible tells us He wants us to do.
Even if you did not grow up in a Christ-honoring home and came to know Jesus after you had grown, you certainly have learned—and continue to learn—the enormous value of prayer.
So, what I want us to remember about our time together this day through this blog post is that prayer must always remain a very, very important part of our relationship with God. He uses prayer in a very powerful way in our lives. Okay?
