We Have Not Because We Ask Not.
Aug0
One of our great privileges as a child of God is the ability to now take our petitions right to the throne of God. Sadly, I must confess, I drop the ball in the area of my life. The Bible tells us that “you have not because we ask not,” (James 4:2) and even when we do ask, we ask for the wrong thing and the wrong way. Now certainly not all the time but many times we just don’t ask or ask the right way and we wonder why God doesn’t hear our prayers. I believe that is a good reason for corporate prayer meetings. Why? Well when we gather together to pray and you pray openly before other believers they can be that objective intercessor. What does that look like? Well, say for example you pray openly for your spouse and your prayer is solely focused on the Lord doing the work in them. I don’t want to say that this is prayer amiss because certainly the Lord does want to do a work in each of us but it does have somewhat of a self serving nature and by this I mean we are focused on changing our spouse rather than ourselves. Enter the objective prayer warrior. Someone in the crowd can be silently interceding for you, that the Lord will actually change your heart and do a neat work in you so that even though your spouse may not change, you will because someone has asked the Lord. Don’t get me wrong, even an objective prayer warrior can pray out of a self righteous attitude thinking they know what is best for you, but at least it gives the body and opportunity to cover all the bases because you have more than one person praying for all aspects of whatever the situation may be. My point is that corporate prayer is beautiful in that we come together praying together, sometimes for one another and for others and there is great strength because we are in the presence of the Lord. (Matthew 18:20) Not only that but we have the assurance that our prayers are being heard, answered, effective and able to affect our community, lives and the lives of those around us. (James 5:16) Prayer also increases our faith. As we enter into prayer our spirit bears witness with His Holy Spirit that we are His children and as we see Him answer our prayers we are encouraged to pray even more. Paul tells us to pray without ceasing. (1 Thess 5:17) I have to admit, I have not arrived nor do I believe that any of us will in this life, but we should certainly strive to enter into a robust prayer life. We want to cultivate hearts devoted to prayer and that is why we placed an online prayer chain on our website. If you would like to pray for other or have others pray for you simply go here and take advantage of corporate prayer. Let’s minister to one another and watch what the Lord will do
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