How to pray

Dear brothers and sisters in Christ, may I borrow a few minutes of your precious time. I would like to share with you here that I feel touched up and moved by the words in a phrase that says, “I would rather teach one man to pray than ten men to preach.” –Charles Spurgeon.

I found this phrase in a Christian News “Christ Is Victor” that was given to me by a staff working in Alleluia Bookstore as I last came to the Bookstore on 28.5.13 to buy a Bible (NIV). On the way back home, I was reading it in a car while my son was driving for me. As I came to the phrase, my eyes lingered on it, and I pondered on the reflection. The Bookstore is in The Ecumenical Church Association of Sarawak at Jalan Laksamana Kuching. What could touch your heart and mind on the implication of the phrase???

Based on my own perspective, we are encouraged to pray in a complete and spiritual way as refer to John 4:21-24 (LB) “..For it is not where we worship that counts, but how we worship…..is our worship spiritual and real? Do we have the Holy spirit help? For God is spirit, and we must have His help to worship as we should. The Father wants this kind of worship from us……..”.

This is how we pray in a complete way;-

1. Our Father in heaven, we thank thee……
2. We ask thee…………
3. In the name of Jesus Christ. Amen.

1. We must give thanks to God first for what He has given us in life before we could ask Him for something in our prayer. Most of us think that thanksgiving is not so important but if we refer to the Bible in Numbers 20:12 (NIV), The Lord said to Moses and Aaron, “Because you did not trust in me enough to honor me as holy in the sight of the Israelites, you will not bring this community into the land I give them.” Here we know that God not allowed Moses and Aaron to enter the promised land because of that one sin, not the sin that Moses killed the Egyptian while he was in Egypt  BUT the sin that Moses did not give thanks and glory to God when he struck the rock with his staff at Kadesh for water.

2. We must ask for what we want from God then He will give us. Refer Matthew 7:7 “Ask and you will be given, seek and you will find, knock and the door will be opened.”

3. Jesus asked us to ask God the Father using His name as refer to John, 14:13-14 (NKJV) “And whatever you ask in My name, that I will do, that the Father may be glorified in the son. If you ask anything in My name, I will do it.”

To make our prayer effective, we must think deeply first in our mind on what we want to ask God, then we say our prayer slowly with our mouth, from the bottom of our heart (Wholeheartedly). This is what the sign of cross means when reading the Gospel in the church (On the forehead, mouth and heart).

FGJ