ABOUT PRAYER
Prayer is communicating with God. Prayer can be for praise, worship, confession, thanksgiving,
supplication, fellowship and other purposes and Yeshua taught his disciples how to pray and how
not to pray. Our prayers are essential and they are powerful, both for us and for others. They shine
outwards and at the same time reveal our innermost qualities.
When we pray we are interacting with a higher dimension, outside the limits of space and time. We
are greatly blessed to have been given this privilege of initiating contact with that higher dimension.
The component within each individual that is capable of prayer is the part that will endure past the
death of the body, that is, the part or parts that are eternal. We pray with our hearts. Our souls cry
out to God. It is our minds that formulate the content of our prayers.
David is known for writing down beautiful and effective prayers, prayers from the heart in which he
“bares” his soul to the Lord, confesses his sins and lays upon the Lord the things that are
occupying his mind. His prayers are known to start and end with praise and adoration,
acknowledging God as supreme and all powerful. Psalms 51 is a treasure and well worth the time to
read.
Our motivation to pray can be the joy within that we are loved by so great a God. Sometimes we are
motivated to pray from a need to confess our sins, failures, inadequacies or lack of understanding.
Sometimes we just want to thank God for all he has done for us and we can never thank him more
than we should. Most often though we come to God when we need something from him,
forgiveness of sin, help with understanding his words, help with loving our brothers, neighbors, and
enemies, healing of our bodies or patience with our children. Our list of needs seems to have no
end.
In Matthew 6:5-15 our Lord Yeshua teaches his disciples how to pray, and how not to pray. We do
not pray to demonstrate our righteousness to other people. We are to approach him one-on-one in
a private conversation. We should not inflict many words upon God out of doubt that he will
become aware of our needs. He knows our needs better than we do.
When we pray let us seek first the Kingdom of God. If we are citizens of that Kingdom then it is our
highest priority, even above our physical needs. The Kingdom of God deserves all of our loyalty and
we should disown any loyalty to the kingdoms of this world for they stand in opposition to the
Kingdom of our God. This is demonstrated in Matthew 6:9-10, the first sentence of the Lord’s
Prayer.
As to our physical needs, we are to ask only for those of the present day. We are not to be greedy
or selfish and we know that abundance has a way of making us arrogant toward God.
We are to ask that we be forgiven of our sins with the same measure that we use when we forgive
those that have wronged us. How could we expect better treatment than we give others? How
could we have a pure heart if we harbor resentment against other people? Would we want others to
ask God to hold our sins against us? If we do not forgive we are asking God to hold their sins
against them! To not forgive is to condemn. If God asks us to be a witness to the character of
another person what will our testimony be?
When we pray we should ask God for guidance and protection from the evil one. Implicit in this
request is our agreement to actually heed that guidance. Why ask God for guidance if we do notwant it? His guidance, his leading, protects us from the evil one, if we follow where he leads. God,
the Father, sent his son to Shepard his flock. The Good Shepard leads his flock away from danger
and fights to protect the sheep.
Yeshua had much more to say about prayer and he prayed much. In John chapter 17 he actually
prays for us, disciples of today that have believed through the testimony of those that were
eyewitnesses to all that he said and did in his ministry on earth. Their testimony is for our benefit.
And his prayer specifically included us as he prayed for those eye-witness disciples.
When we pray we open a communication with the realm of God and it is a two way communication.
We should listen to what God wants to tell us. Never think that He has nothing to say, he sent his
Son into this world to deliver a message! That message tells us how to have a relationship with God
the Father. He wants a relationship with me and He wants a relationship with you. In our relationship
God wants to hear from us and he wants to talk to us, as much as we desire! We do not need to
wait for a certain day or time or setting. Seek God and you will find him.
Sometimes God will tell us something we do not expect or do not want to hear. The things we need
to hear may not be the things we want to hear. Maybe He wants us to go talk to someone we would
rather avoid or He wants us to correct a behavior or attitude in our lives. Maybe He wants to show
us how to have better communication with him. Be careful to not close your ears because closed
ears end the conversation!
As we seek to talk to God and to hear his voice, be aware that other voices sometimes pretend to
be the voice of God. Just know that the true voice of God will never tell you something that
contradicts the teachings of his Son, Yeshua, because Yeshua spoke only what the Father
commanded him to say. For this reason it is imperative that we study and know the words of
Yeshua above all others. If we have a good working knowledge of what Yeshua taught and did not
teach we will not be led astray.
Sometimes we are not sure what to pray about or what to pray for. When opening a conversation
with the Father (or anyone else for that matter) it is not wrong to begin with a compliment. We can
comment on how awesome his creation is, how beautiful are the words of Yeshua or how
magnificent is the kingdom that is his.
Perhaps a simple “thank you” is a good starting point. You can begin with,
”Thank you Father for this day, sunshine or rain. Thank you for your word that goes with me
throughout the day. Thank you for guiding my every word and action as the day passes.”
As to the things of this world, we can thank God for a good home, food to eat, people in our life and
work to do that is pleasing to God. If we thank God for these things we show our appreciation and if
we appreciate these things we will be careful to take care of them, to treat them as good gifts from
the Father. This demonstrates that we can be trusted with more good gifts in the future. We can
never run out of things to be thankful for, the more we thank God the more we will find to be
thankful for.
As we give thanks for the blessings from God we begin to realize how generous he has been to us,
how he has blessed us with abundance. This realization allows us to move on to spiritual matters.
So what spiritual things should we pray for? We can start by praying;
*for the advancement of his kingdom,
*that men will learn to do his will here on earth as it is done by the angels in heaven,
*that He will increase our understanding of his word,*that He will increase our faith,
*that He will cleanse our minds of all wicked imaginations and sinful desires,
*that He will create in us a pure heart and a willing spirit,
*that He will help us forgive others that we may be forgiven,
*that He will help us to love others, not just in thought or word, but in deed and action,
*that He will lead us away from temptation and deliver us from the evil one. If you pray these things
with a sincere heart you will be well on your way to being a real life disciple of Yeshua.
We should also pray for others. This keeps us from being self-centered and is a good first step
toward keeping the command to “love your neighbor as yourself.” The spiritual requests listed
above are appropriate for others just as they are for ourselves. We can pray for others to have;
*increased understanding of God’s word,
*increased faith,
*clean minds,
*pure hearts and willing spirits,
*help forgiving others,
*help loving others,
*guidance away from temptation and deliverance from the evil one. All these are good things to ask
God to provide for other people.
And certainly it is appropriate to pray for God to supply their physical needs of healing, deliverance,
strength, patience and so on. As to the needs of the body such as food, water, clothing, shelter, etc,
remember that the second greatest command is to love your neighbor as yourself. You may be
God’s answer to their need.
As we pray for others let us not forget the children for they are precious in His sight. Pray that they
will have loving parents, guardians or other adults to care for and protect them and teach them
about the Kingdom of Heaven. And, once again, you may be God’s answer to their needs.
Blessings are a special form of prayer. “God bless you!” Is a basic blessing, wishing good into the
life of another person. It is a prayer in that we are asking for an action on the part of God. But it is
different from other prayers in that we are speaking to another person. This has the effect of
preparing the other person to receive a blessing from God. In this we possess, within ourselves, a
great power or ability to bring about good things for others.
We must be extremely careful in the application of this power as it also works in the negative, that is
to say that we can just as readily bring curses into people’s lives. And we have all done this very
thing, pointing out their faults, giving them a dose of “the truth” as we see it or maybe just making
them feel inadequate by our boasting. The mouth speaks from the overflow of the heart so what we
speak into the lives of others reflects what is in our hearts.
The wording of a blessing can take many forms. Numbers 6:24-26 is a blessing that Moses
commanded Aaron to speak over the Israelites. Matthew 5:3-11 is a list of blessings spoken by
Yeshua. You can always say, “Have a blessed day” or, “May your heart be filled with the love of
God.”
Prayer is communication with God. Prayer is also a window through which we may observe the
deepest parts of our inner man. If our prayers are shallow, materialistic and selfish then we can be
sure that our heart is shallow, materialistic and selfish. However, if we pray sincerely for the
advancement of the Kingdom of God and that his will is carried out on earth as it is in heaven then
we can be sure that we have a heart that loves God. If we pray, from the heart, good things for other people then we can be sure that we love our neighbor.
Listen to Yeshua,
DB
12-15-24