Everyone knows that if you want to be a good Christian there are 3 things you have to do: read the Bible, worship, and pray. While there is a lot of sarcasm in that last sentence, those things are important to having a relationship with God. The worship part is the easiest for me. I listen to worship music a lot (I am as I write this) and love worshiping at church. Reading the Bible would be number 2. I am still trying to get better about reading it every day but I do it on a pretty regular basis. Prayer would definitely be at the bottom for me. It is by far the toughest of the 3. I have a short attention span and that does not help when it comes to prayer.
Angela and I host a Bible study at our house, and we are doing a study on prayer. We were all sharing about awesome prayers we had seen answered. I have stories about how God has healed me, how God has provided for me, and how God has done so many other things for me. I am living in my house because God answered my prayer to provide money for a down payment on a house. You would think with all the answered prayers I’ve seen it would motivate me to spend a lot more time in prayer. I wish it was that easy for me. Sometimes I feel like the nation of Israel in the Old Testament. God would answer their prayers and they would worship Him for a bit after and then soon forget and fall back into their old ways. God will answer my prayers and it will be awesome but then soon after I’ll fall back into my habit of not spending time in prayer.
Prayer is such a powerful tool. Prayer has the ability to change the outcome of things. James 5:16b says, “The earnest prayer of a righteous person has great power and produces wonderful results.” Jesus tells us in Matthew 21:21-22, “Then Jesus told them, “I tell you the truth, if you have faith and don’t doubt, you can do things like this and much more. You can even say to this mountain, ‘May you be lifted up and thrown into the sea,’ and it will happen. 22 You can pray for anything, and if you have faith, you will receive it.” Throwing mountains into the sea is pretty powerful. I don’t think my faith is there yet, but how cool would that be!
Going through this Bible study on prayer has convicted me to make it more of a routine in my life. I need to make it more than just something I do in passing to check it off my list. There is so much power in prayer that I am missing out on. There is a depth to my relationship with God that I am not reaching. I need to bring an end to that.
until next time…