Luke 11:9-13
New International Version (NIV)
9 “So I say to you: Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you. 10 For everyone who asks receives; the one who seeks finds; and to the one who knocks, the door will be opened.
11 “Which of you fathers, if your son asks for[a] a fish, will give him a snake instead? 12 Or if he asks for an egg, will give him a scorpion? 13 If you then, though you are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him!”
Day Twenty- Four
The Power of Prayer
Usually when we think of praying we associate it with what can only be term selfishness. We pray will we want and/or need something. We pray when we are hurt or in trouble and need to help. We even pray when we are lost, spirituality, and want to be found or save. All of these prayers are selfish because they are gear towards our own desires.
Before I go any further let me state that there is nothing wrong with any of the prayers above. Jesus himself tells us in the text above tells us ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened for you. For everyone who asks receives; the one who seeks shall find; and to the one who knocks, the door will be opened. So Jesus is telling us to pray will we want and /or need something; pray when we are hurt or in trouble, and to pray when we are lost and need to be saved. He says that God will answer our every need. So being selfish in prayer is not a bad thing like being selfish in the world. God wants us to ask so He can answer our prayers.
However just as we learn yesterday about the different types of love, to walk closer with God we must learn that there are also different types of prayers. Knowing these different forms of prayers us mature spirituality and make our relationship with God grow closer. For the better we understand how to talk to God the more we stay in His presence. And as 1 Chronicles 16:27 says, Glory and honor are in His presence; strength and gladness are in His place.
There are five different types of pray that we will talk about today. They are Prayer of Praise and Adoration, Prayer of Penitence, Prayer of Supplication or Petition, Prayer of Thanksgiving and Prayer of Intercession. We relate with God in different ways through each of these forms of prayer.
The prayer of praise and adoration is just what it sounds like, this centered completely upon the goodness of God and His holy characteristics like his power, His Grace, His mercy, His faithfulness, His everlasting Love, His Glory, His strength, and everything about Him. This should be a prayer that we pray when we are having a daily devotion with the Lord. We exalt Him not only in our public praise and worship services but also in our private prayers as well. Prayers of adoration and praise bring us closer to God because we are acknowledging that without Him we are nothing.
The Prayer of Penitence is another daily prayer that we should have with God. With this prayer we are asking for forgiveness of our sins and shortcoming. Though we pray this prayer when we invite the Lord into our hearts, this is not a onetime only prayer. For we fall short of the glory of God daily even after we accept Christ as our Lord and Savior. When we pray for penitence daily we do so not only asking God to forgive our sins, but it tells Him that we are grateful that His only begotten Son died on the cross so we could have the opportunity forgiven of our sins.
The Prayer of Supplication is the pray when we petition God with our wants, needs, and desires. This is the selfish pray that we talked about above. This is the most use prayer when the prayer of praise and adoration should be first. As previously stated there is nothing wrong with this prayer when we pray it correctly. First we must remember that when we petition God for things, especially material things, we must do so with His will in my and not our own. This can be a very difficult thing to decipher and it even more difficult when we are only communicating with God through a prayer of petition. This is because we do not have a relationship with Him we only talk to Him when we need something. I’m pretty sure that we all know someone like that. They are the ones that never just call or come by to see you without having an underlying motive. We don’t consider our relationship with them to be close and personal; God feels the same way when we only talk to him when we need something. Think of it this way if we only make withdrawals from our bank account sooner or later it is going to be empty, however the more money that we continuously put into the account, the more that is going to be available for us in times of need.
The prayer of thanksgiving is another daily and powerful prayer. This is when we thank God for all of His wonderful blessings seen and unseen. Constantly praying this prayer can help fight feelings of depression and self-pity, because when you are repetitively reflecting on how blessed you are focus on the positive and eliminating the negative. The enemy gets confuse when you pray a prayer of thanksgiving in the middle of him trying to ruin our lives, this what makes this prayer so powerful. We also need to know that this prayer is more than about material things. We can give thanks about anything that is going on in our lives.
The last form of prayer is the prayer of intercession. This is the prayer for others and this prayer perhaps brings us the closest to God, because God cares for us all and He wants us to do the same to. When we intercede for others we are mirroring His heart. Jesus gave the most powerful intercession prayer for us when He cried out on the cross Father forgive them for they know not want they do. (Luke 23:34) Though He was unjustly dying for our sins, Jesus still cried out to the Father on our behalf and He is in paradise today still doing the same thing. When we pray others we are making His ways our own.
Please note that these prayers do not have to be separated. They can all go together in a singular prayer. When praying please note that it doesn’t matter whether we are standing, kneeling, laying down, sitting, or if we have our eyes open or close, because God cares more about what is in your heart when you pray. We don’t have to use eloquent words when we are talking to God, for He is more our honestly rather than our vocabulary. There is also no time limit when you are praying to God, whether the prayer lasts one minute or one hour just make it heartfelt and the Spirit will move you.
No matter what happens, Always Pray!
Please join us tomorrow as we continue our journey. Until then God Bless.
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