Prayer: General Introduction

Prayer defies definition just as love defies definition.  The two are very much related to one another.  Prayer and love permeate the whole of the Bible and will not be boxed in.  They are open to all: rich, poor, educated, uneducated.  Prayer is the most powerful love gift of all.  It enables us to talk with and to hear our Creator.  It allows us to work with the Lord to shape the destiny of the nations. Yet it’s probably the most misunderstood gift God has ever given and the most under-used.

Hearing God’s Voice

“In the beginning was the Word…without him nothing was made that has been made.”  (John 1:1-3).

The Word is a person – Jesus Christ.  The Word was in the beginning of everything.  Nothing is made without him.

Some things look as though they are real, but if the Word is not in them, they won’t last.  Christian work can look good for a while, it can have all the right trappings, and it will seem to be successful, but unless the Word is at the foundation, it will collapse.  It is the same with a life.  Someone can look as though they have everything going for them, but if their life is not based on God’s word, it will come crumbling down.  See Jesus' parable in Matthew 7:24-29. 

Prayer is listening

What is the first thing that comes to mind when you think of prayer?  For many of us it is asking.  This comes from a basic misunderstanding of the nature of prayer.  We often think of prayer as persuading God to do something for us, yet He knows what we need before we ask and He doesn’t need us to tell Him. (Matthew 6:7-8)

The essence of prayer is finding out what is in God’s heart.  He wants us to discover what He desires to do in the world so that we can do it with Him.  Prayer is all about RELATIONSHIP.   Jesus demonstrated his own dependence on revelation from the Father when he prayed.  He spent long hours alone with the Father:

The Art of Listening

Prayer is first of all to do with listening.  Our destiny as people has to do with how we respond to God’s word.  “Faith comes by hearing and hearing by the word of God”  (Romans 10:17).

Jesus describes four ways of receiving His word, in the parable of the sower.  Each time we receive a word from the Lord our response will be one of these. Luke 8:4-15.

4. And when a great crowd was gathering and people from town after town came to him, he said in a parable, 5. “A sower went out to sow his seed. And as he sowed, some fell along the path and was trampled underfoot, and the birds of the air devoured it. 6. And some fell on the rock, and as it grew up, it withered away, because it had no moisture. 7. And some fell among thorns, and the thorns grew up with it and choked it. 8. And some fell into good soil and grew and yielded a hundredfold.” As he said these things, he called out, “He who has ears to hear, let him hear.”