Philippians Ch4 v6-7: Do not be anxious about anything, but in every situation, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God. And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.

When you’re in a conversation with a friend it’s usually a two-way communication process, one person talks while the other listens (in theory) and they will respond while the other person listens. Now when you pray to God is it two-way or just one-way?

Do your prayers resemble a ‘shopping list’, are your prayers the same prayer which you’ve repeated since time began?  Or does your prayer life resemble a crises control centre ‘only pray in emergencies’?

In the above Bible verse it does say that we are to give God our requests, and be persistent but it also instructs us to thank God for his blessings and for answering our prayers which we can take for granted sometimes.

We should seek God’s heart in our prayers and ask him to reveal to us what he wants us to pray and intercede on his behalf. For example if God puts on your heart to pray for a friend or family member, you can ask him for guidance on your prayer rather than pray a ‘carte-blanche’ prayer.

We shouldn’t try to pray like other people; as we should learn to pray in our own style using methods which suit our personality and character. For example I’ve known people who pray for 2 hours every day, I do not have the concentration or discipline for a daily 2 hour prayer session. Personally I tend to pray 2-3 short prayers during the day with a longer prayer in the evening. 

We shouldn’t treat our prayers as ‘brownie point scoring’ with God as our prayers to him will be meaningless, similar when we ask for forgiveness and repent our sins only to blatantly reoffend renders our repentance meaningless.

When we pray together we’re in partnership with God as his church and in partnership with each other.

When we pray it draws us closer to God, it helps us to go deeper in our relationship with him; similar to the depth of a friendship with someone we’ve known for years will be different from a friendship with a new acquaintance.

Jesus would often go off on his own to pray to his father, so if Jesus needed to spend time alone praying to his Father it’s safe to say that for us it’s essential that we pray on a regular basis as a true and honest relationship needs a two-way communication process. 

General Knowledge: In the Bible there are approximately 650 prayers ‘recorded’. 

Thought for the week

A healthy prayer life  will help us to go deeper with God and give us peace during times of persecution, life’s curve balls as we need to remember that if we’re a praying Christian our faith will carry us. On a scale of 1 -10 how would you rate your prayer life?