PRAYER

PRAYER

Psalm 116:1-2 (KJV)
¹ I love the LORD, because he hath heard my voice and my supplications.
² Because he hath inclined his ear unto me, therefore will I call upon him as long as I live.

The Psalmist is saying that He loves the Lord as a response to the interaction God has shown to His prayers.  Once we have prayed and God interacts with our request; we will be spoiled to say with the Psalmist, “therefore will I call upon him as long as I live.”

Prayer enables and equips us to do the work of God.  Prayer enables us to face things that are perplexing and regretful to face.  Prayer brings us into God’s world and God’s world into ours.

After years of hearing the Word of God we can with our intellect believe that God exist; with prayer to God we are taking the extra step of expressing that belief.  After all, it is not normal to speak to anything or anyone that we do not believe is there.

A child of God that does not pray is missing what the Father of heaven has desired the most from His children.  Prayer brings us into fellowship with our heavenly Father.  Prayer to our heavenly Father is the most basic activity that establishes sensitivity, affection, and the loving awareness that our heavenly Father is as real as an embrace with another human being.

Our heavenly Father is invisible to us; therefore, prayer is the vital connection connecting us to Father God.  Although we cannot see Him, in prayer He is real and present.

Many times in life we as the children of Israel have lived out our lives unaware of His presence, doing whatever we have chosen to do without any regards to His heart or pleasure.  As a result, we find ourselves captive to the things we have wasted our passions on.

This was the case as they found themselves taken from their homeland to be strangers and foreigners beholden to the Persians in Babylonian captivity, and even though their carnal passions had driven them there; Father God extended His love by saying this to them:

Jeremiah 29:11-14 (KJV)
¹¹ For I know the thoughts that I think toward you, saith the LORD, thoughts of peace, and not of evil, to give you an expected end.
¹² Then shall ye call upon me, and ye shall go and pray unto me, and I will hearken unto you.
¹³ And ye shall seek me, and find me, when ye shall search for me with all your heart.
¹⁴ And I will be found of you, saith the LORD: and I will turn away your captivity, and I will gather you from all the nations, and from all the places whither I have driven you, saith the LORD; and I will bring you again into the place whence I caused you to be carried away captive.

Prayer is what God has chosen to bring us into His favor.  As we call upon Him in prayer, Father God will begin to move both heaven and earth to set us free from the entanglements we have gotten ourselves into with our misplaced passions.

Hebrews 11:6 declares this: “But without faith it is impossible to please him: for he that cometh to God must believe that he is, and that he is a rewarder of them that diligently seek him.”

Faith is important, however, faith is not all inclusive to what moves the heart of God towards us.  We can believe that He is, but we also must diligently seek him; prayer is the tool God has given us to seek Him.  “Then shall ye call upon me, and ye shall go and pray unto me, and I will hearken unto you.  And ye shall seek me, and find me, when ye shall search for me with all your heart” (Jeremiah 29:12-13).

Abraham in the scripture is known as the father of faith.  Even Abraham knew that thinking things by faith was not enough to bring our thoughts into being as evidenced in Romans 4:17.  “(As it is written, I have made thee a father of many nations,) before him whom he believed, even God, who quickeneth the dead, and calleth those things which be not as though they were.”

Once again, taking the faith we have in God and expressing that faith in prayer creates an interaction that demands a response.  In the beginning, God said, let there be light and light came into being.  In the Hebrew tongue, when God said let there be light, it was both a command and an invitation, or command as an invitation.

In other words, God was inviting the light to come into being as an interaction to His request.  Likewise, when we pray to God, it too is an invitation; we are inviting God to enter into our world as an interaction to our request.

This is why Abraham’s faith worked for Him.  He called out those things that were not as though they were with an expectation of interaction.  God expected the light to respond and we too must believe that God will respond.

¹ I love the LORD, because he hath heard my voice and my supplications.
² Because he hath inclined his ear unto me, therefore will I call upon him as long as I live.