OVERCOMING WRONG ATTITUDES IN PRAYER

Be careful for nothing; but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known unto God. – Philippians 4:6

“Prayer is communication and communion with God. It is God talking to us and we having the privilege of talking to Him. Our Christian life must be sustained by prayer, just as our body exists on food. Prayer is another key to growing more devoted to God.

In prayer, God reveals Himself as a Personal God Who sees, feels, knows, understands and acts. He reveals Himself as the infinite, supreme authority in the universe. He shows Himself as understanding everything and having a better plan for our lives than we have for ourselves.

Prayer should be a happy time for us. If we find it hard to pray, one possible reason is that we are approaching prayer with wrong attitudes. Examples of such wrong attitudes are:

• We wrongly think that if we don’t pray, God will punish us by sending some tragedy. This is prayer out of devilish fear, instead of reverence and love for Him.
• We are treating prayer as a duty or a chore, instead of a means of getting to know and love Him more.
• We wrongly think that we are not worthy enough to communicate closely with Him. We wrongly think that only ministers, pastors, bishops or special so-called “holy” men or women of God are really accepted by Him into His presence in prayer.
• We are too conscious of our past sins. We are born-again and have confessed and turned from past sins, but we wrongly think that He is angry with us. We wrongly believe that He is displeased with us and condemns us.
• We wrongly think we have to use special words, special religious phrases such as “Thee” or “Thou”, use a special tone of voice or kneel or sit in some special way before He will listen to us.

Prayer is not just asking God to give us things. Prayer includes this, but it is much more. Prayer is communicating with Him about everything in our lives.

Prayer not only involves talking to Him. It also involves listening to His Holy Spirit speaking to us.”