Why Should I Pray? (article) by Stanley T. Crawford on AuthorsDen

This article talks about prayer. 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
Web Site	People of the Bible
f