Prayer

A. Why does God want us to pray?

• God wants us to pray not so that He can find out what we need, because Jesus tells us, "Your Father knows what you need before you ask him", but because prayer expresses our trust in God and is a means whereby our trust in him can increase.
• Prayer also brings us into a deeper fellowship with God, and he loves us and delights in our fellowship with him.
• God also wants us to pray because in praying we give glory to God. Praying in humble dependence on God indicates that we are genuinely convinced of his wisdom, love, goodness, and power.

B. The Effectiveness of Prayer

• James tells us, You do not have, because you do not ask". He implies that failure to ask deprives us of what God would otherwise have given us. Jesus also says, "Ask, and it will be given you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you. For every one who asks receives, and he who seeks finds, and to him who knocks it will be opened".
• If we were really convinced that prayer often changes the way God acts, and that God does bring about remarkable changes in the world in response to prayer, then we would pray much more than we do. If we pray little, it is probably because we do not really believe that prayer accomplishes much at all.

C. Some Important Considerations in Effective Prayer

• Praying according to God's will. John tells, us "This is the confidence which we have in him, that if we ask anything according to his will he hears us And if we know that he hears us in whatever we ask, we know that we have obtained the requests made of him." Jesus teaches us to pray, "Your will be done", and he himself gives us an example, by praying in the Garden of Gethsemane, "nevertheless, not as I will, but as you will."
• Praying with faith. Jesus says, "Therefore I tell you, whatever you ask in prayer, believe that you have received it, and it will be yours"
• Obedience. Since prayer occurs within our relationship with God as a person, anything in our lives that despleases him will be a hindrance to prayer. Not to be misunderstood in that we do not need to be freed from sin completely before God can be expected to answer our prayers. If God only answered the prayers of sinless people, then no one in the whole Bible except Jesus would have had a prayer answered. When we come before God through his grace, we come cleansed by the blood of Christ.
• Confession of sins. Because our obedience to God is never perfect in this life, we continually depend on his forgiveness of our sins. Confession of sins is necessary in order for God to "forgive us" in the sense of restoring his day-by-day relationship with us. When we pray, it is good to confess all known sin to the Lord and to ask for his forgiveness. Sometimes when we wait on him, he will bring other sins to mind that we need to confess. With respect to those sins that we do not remember or of which we are unaware, it is appropriate to pray the general prayer of David, "Clear me from hidden faults"
• Forgiving others. Jesus says, "If you forgive men their trespasses, your heavenly Father also will forgive you; but if you do not forgive men their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses"
  
• Humility. James tells us that "God opposes the proud, but gives grace to the humble." "Humble yourselves before the Lord and he will exalt you". It is safe to say that God is rightly jealous for his own honor. Therefore, he is not pleased to answer the prayers of the proud who take honor to themselves rather than giving it to him. True humility before God, which will also be reflected in genuine humility before others, is necessary for effective prayer.
• What about unanswered prayer? We must begin by recognizing that as long as God is God and we are his creatures, there must be some unanswered prayers. This is because God keeps hidden his own wise plans for the future, and even though people pray, many events will not come about until the time that God has decreed. Prayer will also be unanswered because we do not always know how to pray as we ought, we do not always pray according to God's will, and we do not always ask in faith.

D. Praise and Thanksgiving

• Praise and thanksgiving to God are an essential element of prayer. The model prayer that Jesus left us begins with a word of praise: "Hallowed be your name". Paul also tells the Philippians, "In everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made know to God", and the Colossians, "Continue steadfastly in prayer, being watchful in it with thanksgiving."