What are you getting out of your prayer life, what are you putting into it? Are you trying to rush through the times of prayer. (I admit I have been guilty of that myself) Are you expecting more than you are willing to give? I wonder how much you are willing to put into your prayer life, or for that matter how much am I? I am guilty of letting myself getting rushed through life, I live in a fast pace society, and at times I feel like I am going a million miles an hour. Go, go, go that is the pace of our society, and things are not seeming to slow down, at times I have to remind myself to take the time out to pray. Praying can be done anywhere, I often find myself praying as I go on with my day to day life, that way I am getting what I have to get done, but more importantly I am letting my relationship with Christ grow, and that is the most important thing in my life, my relationship with Christ.

I believe that prayer needs to be a constant part of our life, because prayer is our way of talking to our Lord, just think of how broken our relationship with our family and friends was as strained as we let our relationship with our Saviour get. It is important that we put Christ in the center, and I must admit I have been guilty of not doing that of pushing Christ to the sidelines and I have dealt with the consequences of my actions, so right now I am trying to focus on prayer and using my gifts to glorify the Lord, which is what I have been trying to focus more on lately, whether my pieces are fiction or true pieces, I aim to get the truth of the love of Christ out, and I pray that I am doing that.

I am working on growing in faith. I want to let myself become a better Christian, no I know I am not a perfect Christian, but I have covered myself in Christ's blood, and I wear the honor of being able to pray to the one true Savior, and for that I know I need to be thankful.

Prayer truly does have the ability to change our lives, it has the ability to save our lives, and as we pray, we grow.

I find that prayer does not have to be done in any certain place or certain way, although we should set aside a time for prayer and reflections daily. I do that as I lay in bed at night, that's my time with the Lord, to think and to reflect, and to thank God for my many blessings, but others may choose to do so early in the morning or whenever.

As a little girl my Nonna taught me the Lords prayer, and how to pray before bed and with meals, but as I grew older, I was able to create my own prayers, and after I gave my heart to the Lord;

 

In Pat Robertson's segment Bring it On which can be found at http://www.cbn.com/700club/features/BringItOn/bible-index.asp#19 he brings some questions on Prayer and time with the Lord to light:

 

How much time each day should a Christian spend in devotions to God? I would like to start doing devotions, but I don't really know what to do. Would you give me some guidelines on how a Christian can grow closer to God? Thinks like what to do, where to do it, and how long.




That is a good question. I am not sure I can answer all of it in a short length of time. I have made a practice over the years to have a quiet time with the Lord. The Bible says David the psalmist said, 'Early will I seek thee.' I think you need to get to the Lord before all of the hustle and bustle of the day begins. You don't turn on the television. You don't turn on the radio. You don't start thinking of your business. You don't check your computer and read your e-mail. You get before the Lord. I believe the most important thing first of all is just to worship Him. Just tell Him how much you love Him. Just talk to Him and think about how great He is. Just meditate on Him, and then worship Him. Just adore Him and thank Him. Thank Him for everything He has done. Review in your mind the good things He has done for you, so you are thankful to Him.

So you have worship, which is how great You are, how big, how wonderful, how powerful. Then you are thanking Him. Then you can begin a systematic study of the Bible, or else you can ask Him to lead you to a passage in the Bible. You begin to read the Bible and that begins to feed your soul as you read the Bible and meditate on what it means and let it sink down deep in your heart so that He gives you something you can go on. It is like food for the soul.

That length of time could be half an hour or an hour or two hours or whatever. I don't think this business about taking 5 minutes at 12 is very honoring to the Lord. You ought to spend at least 30 minutes in worship to the Lord.

If you want to sing a hymn, sing. If you want to speak in tongues and you have been filled with the Spirit, pray in tongues, pray in the understanding. But spend time praying and don't go through a whole rote list: 'God bless Mom and Grandmother and Aunt Susie.' Worship Him, and then if you have a prayer request, bring your prayer request to Him: 'Today, Lord, I have a big business meeting and I ask that You give me wisdom and help me.'

Bring before Him your petitions. With thanksgiving let your request be made known unto God, and the Bible says that the peace of God that passes all understanding will keep your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.

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Someone told me that when we pray, we should thank God for our blessings and if there is a specific need, we should ask for it and then assume our prayer will be answered. He said we should not continue to pray for the same thing because that indicates a lack of trust and would be "nagging" God. What do you think?




What I think really isn't important; it is what Jesus said that is important. He said keep on asking, keep on knocking, keep on seeking. He told a story about a man who pounded like crazy on the door of a neighbor to get bread to feed some guests. All of that was over and over again asking, so it is a continuing action in the Greek: keep on asking and keep on knocking and keep on seeking.

'With prayer and supplication with thanksgiving, make your requests known to God.' But you don't just do it once. Once God says yes, of course you stop asking for it, but until then, you come to Him with praise, you come to Him with thanksgiving, you come to Him with a grateful heart. You let Him know what you want and then lay hold of Him. The Bible talks about how they prayed for Peter. They really laid hold of God, and God answered. I have heard that business of if you pray once, anything else is lack of faith. That is not biblical.

I believe that we have power with our words, and the Lord wants us to use those words to pray, he needs us to lean on him, and we need to lean on him. Without that time in prayer we will find that we have a dry faith, or we will loose that faith, and we need to hold on to that Faith as if our very lives depended on it, because the truth of the matter is that they do.

In the Bible there are many examples of answered prayer? In Genesis 25:21:

 

Isaac prayed to the LORD on behalf of his wife, because she was barren. The LORD answered his prayer, and his wife Rebekah became pregnant.

In Exodus 9 Moses prays:

29 Moses replied, "When I have gone out of the city, I will spread out my hands in prayer to the LORD. The thunder will stop and there will be no more hail, so you may know that the earth is the LORD's.

On cbn.com an article is found on an amazing answer to prayer that shows just what the Lord is capable of doing today:

 

And She Spoke to the Waters

By Ken Hulme
The 700 Club

CBN.com – It’s been a tough decade for 75-year-old Lois Ryder of Rainier, Oregon. She and her family were running an RV park and marina when the Columbia River flooded its banks in 1996.

Lois says, "That afternoon of February, the water came over the bank and it came fast. Really fast. Because it started over the bank at 2:00 in the afternoon, by 10 that night we had five feet of water out here."

Floodwaters filled the RV parking area and their small convenience store, causing about $200,000 damage.

 

Lois had actually gotten an early copy of the book because she is a 700 Club partner.

"Then I sat up about half of that night reading over half of the book. When I got to page 46 where it told about him dealing with hurricane Esther, I said, ‘This is what is happening to me!’ Then a couple of pages farther than that, he tells when Mrs. Robertson went over to Taiwan with a group of missionaries, and they had to deal with a typhoon over there. I thought, ‘I can’t go through this again, so I’ve got to do something that is going to keep it from happening.’"

That "something" was a trip down to the river the next morning after a time of prayer.

"I had a talk with the good Lord, and I had a talk with the river. I said, ‘You cannot come any higher than you are right now. You can go down and come back up, but you can’t go one inch higher.’"

Lois says, "It stopped. It never went higher. Everyday, every morning when I came down and looked at the river and every evening before I left I looked at the river to make sure it was behaving itself. It never went over the spot where it was when I said, ‘You can’t come any higher.’"

To this day, the water has not risen above that line in spite of the fact that it rained and flooded for weeks afterward.

"It kept flooding all around us here. It flooded in Portland. It flooded in Oregon City, but the Columbia River at Goebal never came any higher than it was when I said, ‘You can’t come any higher.’"

As for the skeptics out there (and there have been a few), what does Lois say to them?

 

 

"Now I know a lot of people would say, ‘Well, it just happened.’ But I don’t think so. Because I’ve been through this before, and it was doing exactly the same thing that it did in ‘96," Lois says. "I think it’s a little like Pat said with the hurricane. The Lord’s hand was there and kept it from going any farther, because it didn’t make sense otherwise. Everybody else was flooding."

So Lois and the family keep pressing on confident in the miracle that God did for them.

"I’ve always believed in miracles, but I’ve never had anything happen quite in the way that made me feel like I was right in the middle of a miracle like I was this time," Lois says.

"I believe that it is really necessary to have faith. You don’t have to talk a lot; you don’t have to do a lot, but you gotta mean what you say and you gotta believe in it."

http://www.cbn.com/700club/features/Amazing/Lois_Ryder042806.asp

The Lord is still in the buissness of answering prayers, all we have to do is take the time to pray, and he truly does hear and answer our prayers...So don't give up on prayer, it's an important part of our life and our faith.

Copyright Michelle R Kidwell

May.05.06