Sam Abernathy on Prayer

So Ben asked me to write a thing about prayer. This is hard for me because its hard to communicate to people something thats so ingrained in everything I do. Its like if you asked me to write about the breathing, sleeping, or studying the word of God. I can’t imagine not doing it, so to even find a starting place is hard. However I figure I would let whatever come and if this sucks, blame Ben he gave me like 3 days.

First things first, what is prayer? Now like any topic in the bible this can be a huge answer but for the sake of a 3 minute read, I will break it down Barney (you know the purple dinosaur) style. Its a conversation with God. This in and of it self is amazing because it assumes a lot: It assumes God wants to talk to you; it assumes you want to talk to him; it assumes you can talk to him; it assumes your worthy to speak to him. So now that we have made these assumptions, lets move on.

Why do we need this conversation with God? The answers fairly simple, the heart of man is deceitful and wicked above all else. My heart is naturally inclined to not want Jesus things. Prayer re-calibrates me. While speaking to the person of God, the spirit of God works within you to change your heart and desires so that you come away from prayer wanting the things of God. We find that prayer is less and less about what God needs from us and more about what he wants to do in us.

Prayer is also the second peddle of the bicycle of knowing God. On one peddle is the Word of God and we must all be students of the word. Yet on the other peddle is prayer. It is this second peddle that keeps us from being crazy christians. See, the spirit of God never contradicts his word. So when someone says “I really feel the spirit saying xyz” and that doesn’t line up with the Word of God, he’s wrong. It is not the spirit, its probably gas. The spirit testifies to the Word and the Word testifies to the Spirit. They cannot be separated from each other and prayer is the pragmatic expression of that relationship.

I know when I’m confused by what the Word says, or I hear something that sounds almost right but don’t know what exactly is the problem(Which happens a lot more than you would think), or even when I don’t know what to pray for, the Spirit teaches me the Word through prayer. He interprets my tongues (prayer language) while I pray, He shows me visions and prophesy while I pray.

So prayer is a conversation with God that brings you into a deeper understanding of who he is, better revealing our relationship to the trinity. Its the closest you will get to heaven this side of the border.

Sam