-
Three reasons we pray before meals
At dining room tables and in kitchens across America, families will take a few moments today to pause and pray before devouring the feast before them.Have you ever wondered why we do this? Or what to say? Whether your family “says grace,” “gives thanks” or “blesses the food,” here are three reasons we pray before meals.
-
But Have You Prayed? by Marshall Segal
What hasn’t yet changed in your life because you haven’t started praying for it?Prayerlessness, of course, comes in varieties. Some almost never pray, proving that prayer is nothing more than a formality, a greeting card to God when they have time. Others only pray when they have some desperate and immediate need, treating prayer like a crisis-response line (and largely neglecting prayer otherwise). Others may pray regularly, but their prayers slowly devolve into repeated phrases that taste stale, impersonal, removed from real life. Even the best among us can sometimes swing between treasuring prayer when we think we really need it and skipping prayer when life seems to be going well.
You May Also Like
Pray Because God Is Sovereign by Marshall Segal
-
God-Centered Prayer by Dr. Derek W.H. Thomas
It is easy to be critical of prayer, particularly the prayers of others. Robert Murray McCheyne’s words are often cited because they remain painfully true: “You wish to humble a man? Ask him about his prayer life.”Our prayers reveal much about us. Prayers with little or no worship and focusing on our needs (usually health) reveal a distorted, Adamic bent. What they reveal is self-centeredness, what Martin Luther labeled homo in se incurvatus: “man curved in on himself.” Listen to prayers at the church prayer meeting (if one still exists). You will discover that the majority of prayers are “organ recitals”—prayers for someone’s liver, kidney, or heart. Not that we shouldn’t pray for medical issues, but a preoccupation with health is itself a reflection of how little we understand why it is we desire good health. We desire it so that the person we are praying for lives for Jesus Christ.
-
12 Reasons Why Prayer Is Important In Your Everyday Life by Jennie McChargue
Jennie McChargue Ever thought about why prayer is important? Wonder no more. Here are twelve reasons, rooted in truth, why prayer is absolutely important!
-
Pray Because God Is Sovereign by Marshall Segal
If seeing and embracing the sovereignty of God causes us to pray less, we have not yet understood his sovereignty, or prayer. Providence does not make prayer optional or incidental, but vital and indispensable. Not because God couldn’t do it another way — God does all that he pleases however he pleases — but because the sovereign God has chosen, precisely and wisely, to hang many of his plans on the prayers of his people.Did anyone love and herald the absolute sovereignty of God like the apostle Paul? And yet he says in 2 Corinthians 1:11, “You also must help us by prayer, so that many will give thanks on our behalf for the blessing granted us through the prayers of many.” He also calls believers to “pray without ceasing” (1 Thessalonians 5:17), and to pray “at all times in the Spirit, with all prayer and supplication” (Ephesians 6:18).
The pages of Scripture, and of history, are filled with the power and necessity of prayer, because the all-powerful God has chosen to hear and answer prayer.
You May Also Like
But Have You Prayed? by Marshall Segal
