Good Wednesday morning! Is there any value in prayer? What do we gain for all those hours spent on our knees during our lifetime? Can we calculate an hourly wage from the material gains? Prayer is one of the first things we do in our Christian life. The first time you bowed your head to ask God for His forgiveness, and then in lifting up your head to praise our Lord for His grace; you prayed. Prayer is communicating with God, not only talking, but listening as well. Jesus engaged in prayer daily and spent many nights alone in prayer. Prayer is a part of meditation and a part of calling out for help when in distress.
Our prayers might include material needs and wants, but there is no earthly paycheck for time spent in prayer. However, there is most definitely a fulfilling of our material needs through prayer and I suspect that most of us could point out many examples of prayers answered that involved something material that we simply wanted. We do not calculate the value of prayer in earthly terms, even though our blessings, materially speaking, can indeed overflow. Neither a rich person nor a poor person can be judged as praying or non-praying persons on the basis of their material wealth. Prayer returns several answers from God, from the complex to the simple, involving "yes", "no", and "wait." Prayer may direct us to answers of faith and emotion in the Bible, and sometimes those answers may raise more questions. Prayer brings peace to our troubled minds as we pour out our hearts to God. Prayer brings quiet amid the raging storm of emotion. Prayer facilitates our growing relationship to God as we learn to listen better for His quiet voice.
Once it was necessary for priests to intervene for the people, now we can come before God without fear through the sacrifice of Jesus. In prayer we are allowed to ask "why?" Prayer brings healing, renewed faith, trust, hope, joy, and peace. We need not fear a rebuke from God when praying in the Holy Spirit, who guides us to ask of the Father in faith. One of God's great gifts to us is that He, the Creator, listens to us. Our Creator, the same who created all of the universe, is not too busy or off supervising construction of a new galaxy somewhere, He is actively engaged in listening to all of us and each of us, at all times of the day and night. Pray in faith and confidence. Does prayer have value for us? Oh, yes! I would say that prayer is of great value, whether we put a lot of time and effort into it or only spare a quick moment before some difficult task we must perform. Prayer is the spiritual and mental bread that we need to sustain us in our journey toward God in this life.
Pray earnestly for each other on this fine day,
Bucky
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