Prayer

This form of prayer is what most people think of when they think of prayer. Petitions are prayers of request for oneself and intercessions are prayers of requests for others. An intercessor is one who takes the place of another or pleads another's case.Jesus as IntercessorJesus Christ is our model for intercessory prayer. Jesus stands before God and between God and sinful man, just as the Old Testament priests did. 1 Timothy 2:5 says, “For there is one God, and one mediator (intercessor) between God and men, the man Christ Jesus.” Similarly, Romans 8:34 says, “It is Christ who died, and furthermore is also risen, who is even at the right hand of God, who also makes intercession for us.” Because of Jesus being a new sort of high priest, we can approach God boldly without fear (Hebrews 4:14-16). Furthermore, Jesus was an intercessor while He was here on earth. He prayed for those who were sick and possessed by demons. He prayed for His disciples. He even prayed for you and me when He interceded for all those who would believe in Him. Jesus continued His ministry of intercession after His death and resurrection when He returned to Heaven.Praying in this way can be for other’s benefit and our own. Yet, beyond all of that, we pray in this way because that is how Jesus taught us to pray in what we call today “The Lord’s Prayer.”Our Father in heaven,hallowed be your name.Your Kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as in heavenGive us today our daily bread.Forgive us our sins,as we forgive those who sin against us. Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil. For the kingdom, the power and the glory are yours. Now and for ever.Go FurtherKnocking on Heaven's Door: A New Testament Theology of Petitionary Prayer by David CrumpPrayer: Does It Make Any Difference? By Phillip Yancey---Article adapted from http://www.allaboutprayer.org/intercessory-prayer.htm

The Book of Psalms has long been a part of the Christian life of prayer and worship. Yet, today many people do not see them as a tool for their own prayer life. Why should we pray with the Psalms and how do we?Why is praying the Psalms a good idea?The Psalms teach us to pray through imitation and response. Real prayer is always an answer to God’s revelation. The Psalms are both prayer and revelations about God — the perfect ideal soil for learning prayer.The Psalms take us deep into our own hearts 1,000 times faster than we would ever go if left to ourselves.Religious/moral people tend to want to deny the rawness and reality of their own feelings, especially the darkness of them. The secular world has almost made an idol of emotional self-expression. … But the Psalmists neither “stuff” their feelings nor “ventilate” them. They pray them — they take them into the presence of God until they change or understand them.The Psalms force us to deal with God as God is, not as we wish God was. “Left to ourselves, we will pray to some god who speaks what we like hearing, or to the part of God we manage to understand. But what is critical is that we speak to the God who speaks to us, and to everything he speaks to us … the Psalms train us in that conversation” (from Eugene Peterson’s Answering God).How do I pray the Psalms?Linger over a Psalm and investigate it.Is there a particular verse that is particularly relevant to your life right now? Chew on it. Read it aloud over and over, with a different emphasis on each word. Why is this word chosen or important here? What difference would this make in my life if I believed this with all my heart? If I applied this to my life? Pray for yourself and others from it.If you don’t understand, look it up.A commentary is particularly helpful to understand the context of the Psalm (Google can offer lots of help here!) What was the Psalmist going through when he wrote this particular Psalm? The Psalms also point to Christ. Where might this psalm fit into his life?Use the Psalms to praise God.Psalms touch on different aspects of who God is, look for them and then celebrate them.Go FurtherPraying with the Psalms by Eugene PetersonPraying the Psalms by Thomas Merton---Article adapted from http://www.redeemer.com/learn/resources_by_topic/prayer/prayer_and_fasting/praying_the_psalms/

Why should we pray? God already knows our hearts and our desires. So why pray? While the Bible does tell us to "Pray without ceasing" (1 Thess. 5:17)—is that reason enough? Let's explore a few other reasons for why we should pray.Why do we pray?We pray because we love:A relationship of love is one of enjoying each other. If I say I love someone, but never speak to them, it is likely that I don’t have much of a relationship with them. If I love a person, then I will want to talk with them, spend time with them, and desire them. This is why we see Jesus in passages like Mark 1, "rising very early in the morning” to pray. He loves the Father. The Father loves Him, So, they spent time together.We pray out of gratitude:All that we have been given, all that we have received, is a gift from His hands. Prayer demonstrates and provides a vehicle for our offering gratitude. James says, "Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights" (James 1:17).We pray because we want to know God more fully:There is nothing more lovely, nothing greater our hearts can seek, and nothing more fulfilling than God. And as we speak with God, we get to know God more. As the Psalmist says, "One thing have I asked of the Lord, that will I seek after, that I may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life" (Psalm 27:4)..We pray to know our own hearts more fully:There is a real benefit in coming before the Lord in silence. It is true that we get to know Him more fully in prayer, but we also get to know ourselves more fully. It’s common to recognize past misdeeds and sins that we had forgotten as we come before God. Like Peter on the rooftop, we are made aware that what we have believed or practiced or dreamed or sought is not right. Prayer lays open our hearts not only before God, but before ourselves.We pray to be made like God:Some have said that prayer's purpose is not so that we might change God, but so that God might change us. In prayer our hearts are shaped and molded, our affections are stirred, and our minds are transformed. The prayer closet is the school of holiness. One can enter as a slacker and emerge as a scholar.We pray to acknowledge our dependence upon God:We are not independent beings. As Paul preached at the Areopagus, "In him we live and move and have our being." We are and can be nothing apart from God. Prayer recognizes that. Ursinus once commented that, "Prayer is as necessary for us as it is necessary for a beggar to ask alms."We pray to receive from God:Jesus follows his teaching of the Lord's Prayer in Luke 11 with the story of the man who is awoken from bed by a friend who desires three loaves of bread. And Jesus says, "How much more the Father? If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will the heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him!" We have a Heavenly Father, who loves to give.We pray that God might receive glory:When the lame man is healed in Acts 3 by the prayer of Peter, his response is to rise, leap in joy, and praise God. When God answers our prayers, we offer praise. God receives glory as men receive from Him and respond rightly.Prayer is a gift from a God who loves to hear from us., and really there are countless more reasons we could have to pray. Below are a few resources that might help you think through prayer from a wider perspective.Go FurtherPrayer: Experiencing Awe and Intimacy with God by Tim KellerLetters to Malcolm: Chiefly on Prayer by C.S. Lewis---Article adapted from http://www.alliancenet.org/christward/9-reasons-to-pray