Why pray?

We are used to hearing ‘pray more, pray more’ but we do not usually think about why we actually fail to pray. Now the thing about prayer is that it did not begin because of your effort. We have to go back to where it all started. The New Covenant where God turned our hearts back to Him. We were in rebellion and we were restored. It became the most natural thing to pray. Just like we breathe to maintain physical life, we pray to maintain our spiritual. Prayer did not start because we saw that we have needs. Prayer started because our spirit became joined to His. He is now at work in us and our natural response is to pray. It is the work of the Holy Spirit.                  

       Now why is it that we find a lot of hindrance and we struggle to pray? It is mainly because we have not seen all that prayer actually stands for. Why do we actually pray? Let me give you a few pointers.

Prayer shows us that we were made for Him.

Prayer reveals how God longs to have fellowship with us.

Prayer opens out the heavenly invisible realm.

Prayer exchanges our life for His.

Prayer is the Holy Spirit’s way of sanctifying us.

Can you see that prayer is something much more than asking and receiving? We have minimized prayer. We have lowered the greatness of our prayer life. If we can thank God for giving us breath, how much more we should thank God for giving us the privilege to pray. 

We will be judging angels!

The word ‘judge’ is used in the Scriptures with a variety of meanings. In a negative sense, it means to judge and therefore to condemn. But in a positive sense, it can mean to judge for the sake of discernment or to determine.

On one side, we see that we should never judge a brother and yet the church is called to pass judgment over sin in a brother. On one side, we are called to judge righteously and yet, we are told to be merciful and see the log in our own eye first. So, on the whole, we understand that we do not give up judging altogether. Imagine! we will finally be called to even judge the angels.

But while we make a righteous judgment over sin and condemn it, we can never condemn a brother because only God has the right to condemn. We can judge a brother, however it is not to condemn but to extend mercy. Every time we find fault or complain against someone, we are judging to condemn instead of showing mercy. 

All or none!

We are living in a time where a shallow disciple of Jesus won’t be able to succeed for long. Either we are fully committed and have decided to live for Jesus totally or we are soon overcome. Now, it is not that a fully committed disciple is free from trials and temptations. But it is a worse thing to have enemy break in and cause damage when there was no need for it to happen. We cannot afford to think that we can live the way we want and as long as we do not commit any obvious sin, everything should be okay. We have to begin to see that we do not belong to ourselves and work out the practical implications of that. I heard an amazing advice given by a person to his friend about his lack of concern regarding taking care of his body - ‘Does your body belong to you so that you could do (or not do) whatever you want with it’?I have come to a place were I am no longer excited at seeing a new believer full of zeal and boldness for the Lord. The important thing is whether he is willing to yield to the dealings of God so that his zeal can be  exchanged for the Lord’s zeal, his desires for the Lord’s desires.Hardheartedness is one quality a believer cannot afford to have. Hardheartedness is not being able to see and understand the dealings of God because of a resistance inside. It is a stubborn spirit. It is more concerned about self than anything else.