Encouragements to pray

As Christians we often struggle with prayer. We may find it hard to concentrate or else we may feel that God does not hear us. To help combat this I urge you to re-read what the bible says about prayer and what godly men of old have said about it.

Recently I have been reading The Godly Man's Picture by the Puritan divine Thomas Watson. I find very little to compare with the Puritans' ability to convey truth in a way which is simple yet vivid and powerful. Their writings are redolent with earthy, poetic imagery which anyone could relate to. Watson is a keen example of this with pithy epithets such as "Prayer is a bomb which will make heaven's gates fly open. " When did you last think of your prayers like that? Prayer is the means that God has appointed for us to receive His help and His blessing and if you don't immediately receive an answer often it is because you are not persistent enough. I recently heard a message from Bill Hybels, pastor of the Willow Creek church in Chicago, Illinois who told the story of how he witnessed to his neighbour for six years before he came to faith. Hybels did not explicitly say so but I would be fairly confident that as well as the man being witnessed to by Bill, that Bill was also praying for him fervently during those six years.

Another reason we do not receive what we ask for in prayer is because we ask for the wrong reasons. If you are asking God to bless your finances is it because you want to be able to give more to the Lord's work or because you want to go out and buy a new sports car? God will honour the former but never the latter because you are just seeking to use Him as a cosmic vending machine (thanks to Josh McDowell for this analogy!). Again Watson said "See the reason why men's prayers are not heard. It is because they sin still. Sin clips the wings of prayer so that it will not fly to the throne of grace." This refers to what James calls "asking amiss" and also to the times where we are willfully sinning and slighting God's grace.

For more encouragement to pray you should listen to Leonard Ravenhill's message on Hannah from www.sermonindex.net and Paul Washer and Sidlow Baxter on prayer from the same website. Also read about great prayer warriors like Praying Hyde the missionary to India or of John Smith the great Methodist. There are also some great quotes at http://www.calvarybiblechurch.org/quotations.aspx?keyword=Prayer and at

http://www.bereabaptistchurch.org/banner/PDFs/March2005.pdf

I would encourage you to continue in prayer, even when you don't feel like it and if you feel like it is hard tell the Lord that and ask for His grace to help you to find it profitable. Ask Jesus to intercede on your behalf as you come to pray, for this is His role now, that God would find your prayers acceptable and ask the Holy Spirit to pray with you that He would utter those groans that no man can utter when we struggle for the words to pray.

May God bless you richly.