The Privilege of Prayer

By: Kathy Brott

            We are so geared to live in the moment.  That is quite convenient for the enemy of our soul.  If he can make us think that nothing is more important than us being able to do what feels right, he can derail us from doing what’s important for Eternity.

Do you have a “whatever” attitude when it comes to the things of God?  It is a spirit that tries to attach itself to all of us at one time or another.  We can shake that attitude off in prayer and ask God to help us establish spiritual disciplines in our lives that will help us.

For instance, if you have trouble praying and reading the Bible in the morning before starting your day, go to bed ten minutes earlier and set your alarm to get up for ten minutes earlier to pray and read. Start doing something and go from there, but by all means, start!

One of the things that keep Christians from prayer is trying to go from where we are to where we think we should be.  God is more patient with us than we are with ourselves.  If we are faithful with our daily devotions, then we will eventually draw closer to God and desire more,  As that happens He will then help us do more.  But if we never learn to consistently pray and read God’s word, then we will be weak and frustrated in our walk with God. We can sincerely ask God to help us in this area of devotion to Him. He will hear and He will answer. 

As we have our daily devotions, let’s go beyond the “me, mine and ours” kind of prayer. Let us learn to pray big prayers, prayers with eternal significance.  This is an excerpt from author Mike Macintosh’s book, Falling in Love with Prayer. “The Apostle Paul said: “If we have food and clothing, we will be content with that” (1 Tim. 6:8). In our society, with its wealth and free-enterprise system, we can work to obtain nearly anything. If the material world has a draw for us then we can work hard and accumulate all kinds of toys and luxuries.  But in societies with more oppressive forms of rule and less abundance, acquiring “goodies” is not even an option.  Christians in that kind of situation are free to pray because they love God, not because they view prayer as a catalog to present to the “great Santa Claus” in the sky.

The bottom line is this: Prayer really does pay off for us personally, but it depends largely on what payoff we are expecting.  If we are expecting a new car, a new house, a new wardrobe and other such new “stuff”, we may not get that kind of payoff.  But if we are expecting joy and contentment, we can count on those things.”

Personally, I have found prayer to be liberating, exhilarating, and tremendously adventurous!  Believe me; I didn’t start out feeling that way.  As a young woman, I desired to pray more because I honored God, and I knew I should pray.  Just duty, period.  As I began my prayer journey the enemy of my soul attacked me from all sides.  I was quite unaware of the spiritual ramifications of prayer at this point.  I thought of myself as a little nobody.  Not realizing that as a child of God, His indwelling spirit within me was making the devil tremble. 

Satan made prayer seem unattainable, dark, dreary and hard.  What a difference in the way I feel about prayer now that I have broke through that erroneous picture the enemy had painted for me!

When a person discovers firsthand what prayer can do for the well being of their own mind, body and spirit and they experience their prayers making a difference in the lives of others and where they will spend Eternity…well, that changes everything, including the way you see prayer! 

Talking to God is not the chore it used to seem to be, it is a wonderful, intimate, loving, powerful, adventurous and necessary!

We have this express privilege, as a child of God, to influence eternity.  Through prayer we can help our family, friends and those we haven’t even met.  Prayers reach around our home, neighborhood, city, nation and the world.  They work now and will continue to work in the future. 

Prayer is amazing because we are communicating with our amazing, awesome, living God! 

Invest in prayer…the dividends are out of this world!