Walking The Walk in Prayers.
Prayer has been defined as a solemn request for help or an expression of thanks addressed to God or an object of worship. A prayer meeting is a religious service, especially a regular one at which people gather in order to pray together.
Prayer can be said by an individual and by a group as stated above. Jesus probably meant prayer to be a personal spiritual exercise involving the individual and God. He taught,
“When you pray, do not be like the hypocrites, for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and on the street corners to be seen by men…but when you pray, go into your room, close the door and pray to your father who is unseen.” (Matthew 6: 5–8).
Prayer has been made the main focus of some ministries and congregations.
As a platform for expressing individual requests for help, prayer centers easily attract people needing help to meet physical, material, spiritual, and emotional needs. In most cases, help is sought against the backdrop of a strong belief in witchcraft and indigenous occultic practices — in a culture where people believe the challenges they are facing in life are either the handiwork of one witch or a wizard hiding somewhere in the extended family or the manifestation of a generational curse inherited from their forebears.
Since there is hardly anyone without a need or the other, prayer centers with large attendees and ministry leaders specializing in prayers have assumed prominence in public spaces across African countries.
It is enough to say that Jesus did not speak against believers praying together. He promised to be present among two or three gathered together in his name (Matt.18: 20). What is more, there are instances of believers praying together in the Acts of the Apostles (Acts 1:14, James 5:15. Ephesians 3:12). The apostle Paul in the course of his ministry urged believers to pray for him and his coworkers ( 2 Thessalonians 3).
So praying is always a welcome proposition attractive to Christians and non-Christians. The difference is what they pray about.
Why Pray?
The pertinent question for Christians especially in the West is why pray in a world where people find little cause for prayers given people’s easy access to their physical and material needs that people in Africa are praying to have.
The temptation is for many in this culture to see no reason for recourse to prayer as the basic needs of the people are made available by the collaborative effort of government and private ventures.
What happens when we pray?
Is it empty words, spoken into the air? Or is there someone listening? Someone who loves us and weighs each request with perfect wisdom? One who dearly wants us to draw near and to reach for what He alone can do?
Sometimes, after a tragedy, you hear some people say that they are sending “their thoughts and prayers.” And you may hear those impacted responding that “thoughts and prayers are not enough.”
By that, they mean that they need action to be taken — implying that prayer is not an action. This is because many wonder if prayer makes any difference. Ask me and I’ll tell you that prayer is an action. It is an action that is greater and deeper and more powerful than we could possibly realize.
Understandably, people in dire need often want us to back up our “thoughts and prayers” with palpable actions — actions they can see and feel immediately.
What is so important about prayer?
How do you pray when you don’t know what to say?
What does God really want us to ask for?
How do we pray when it seems no one is listening?
How do we listen to God when we pray?
What are the things that can hurt our prayers?
How do we live day by day, moment by moment with God through prayer?
Great questions!
We cannot answer all these questions in one sweep. We would attempt to answer just one question here: Why pray?
Three reasons:
The first and most important reason is that God wants us to pray. Better still, He invites us to pray. He invites us through His Word:
He says in Jeremiah 33: 3
“Call to me and I will answer you and tell you great and unsearchable things you do not know”
David writes in Psalm 27:8:
“My heart has heard you say, ‘Come and talk with me.’ And my heart responds, LORD, I am coming.” We can say with David, I am coming!
1 Chronicles 16:11 also encourages us, “Look to the LORD and His strength; seek His face always.”
The phrase “seek his face” describes what it means to really pray.
Jesus teaching on prayer told his disciples to ask and you shall receive; seek, and you shall find, knock, and it shall be open onto you. (Matthew 7: 7).
Jesus gave us the three steps to climb on the prayer ladder: Ask, Seek, and Knock. Each step emphasizes different facets of prayer. We will come back to that shortly.
First Chronicles 16:11 urges us to seek his face. We are not just seeking His hand — not seeking things He can do for us. We are to seek His face, and that means so much more.
Prayer is a privilege — It is the greatest privilege of our lives.
And it is not something that only super-spiritual people can do. Indeed, all believers in the Lord Jesus Christ have access to this privilege through Christ.
In Jesus, God’s Word tells us,
“Let us then approach God’s throne of Grace with confidence, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help us in our time of need.” (Hebrew 4:16). First reason.
The second reason: Jesus modeled it. He set the example for us.
The Bible tells us that “Jesus often withdrew to lonely places to pray and prayed multiple times. Luke 11:1 has this:
“One day Jesus was praying in a certain place. When he finished, one of his disciples said to him ``teach us to pray.”
Third reason: Jesus taught prayer!
He began with the words, “When you pray” — not if you pray. He expected prayer to be a regular and consistent part of our lives. “
Paul admonishes us to pray without ceasing linking praying with an expression of gratitude to the Lord. He says, “in everything give thanks for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus concerning you.” (1 These. 5: 17–19).
It is about unbroken communication with the Lord. You ask me, Is that possible? I say yes it is. I ask you, Is it possible to breathe without ceasing?
We sometimes make the mistake of thinking that prayer has something to do with a special anointing. You hear someone say, “I don’t have the gift of prayer.”
In my country, Nigeria, some people hire “Prayer warriors” to do their battles for them in prayers with financial remuneration. Friday nights are designated “Night vigils.” Night vigils have become a church tradition and a matter of routine.
But do you know that of all the spiritual gifts listed in Scripture, prayer is not one of them? There is a reason for that. It is because Prayer is meant for all believers — all of us.
Certainly, we have had those moments in our faith walk when we prayed and prayed about something and nothing seems to change.
Yet the Word of God encourages us to keep praying, be watchful and be thankful. Again Colossians 4:2. urges us to pray continually.
God is not asking us to devote ourselves to something that would amount to a waste of our time.
He has some things for us — mysteries he wants you to discover by yourself for a deeper relationship that results from spending time with Him. It is a discovery that will be revealed to you — on issues touching on you, your church, and your nation.
Moses stayed in God’s presence for forty days and forty nights to receive the codes that were to govern the relationship between God and the nation of Israel. Moses doubled as the Israelites’ representative to God and God’s spokesperson to the Israelites. One man, all because he spent time in His presence.
David prayed in Psalm 116:1
“I love the LORD because He heard my voice and my prayers for mercy. Because He bends down to listen, I will pray as long as I have breath!”
Think of God as a loving Father ready to bend down to listen to you. We can pour out our hearts to Him in prayer.
Hebrews 11:6 says “He rewards those who earnestly seek Him. What that means is that we miss out on genuine blessings that God has for us if we’ll fail to seek Him personally.
Imagine a surprise party where God has everything planned and He is simply waiting for you to show up and commune with Him in prayer.
But if we choose to run our lives in our own strength and go our own way, we miss the party. We miss the good he wants to do in us, through us, and for us.
Great rewards are waiting for those who earnestly seek the Lord.
In the book of Isaiah 36 and 37, we read about Hezekiah’s prayer and the circumstances that led him to pray.
King Hezekiah prayed when Sennacherib the Assyrian King mobilized his mighty army and was poised to invade Judah. Recall how President Putin mobilized the Russian forces against Ukraine.
Assyria was the superpower of the time. Listen to Hezekiah’s prayer:
And Hezekiah prayed to the Lord. LORD Almighty the God of Israel, enthroned between the cherubim, you alone are God over all the kingdoms of the earth. Give ear Lord and hear, open your eyes Lord and see. Listen to all the words Sennacherib has sent to ridicule the living God. It is true LORD that the Assyrian king has laid waste all these people and their lands. They have thrown their gods into the fire and destroyed them for they are not God but woods and stone, fashioned by human hands.Now LORD our God, deliver us from his hand, so that all the kingdoms of the earth may know that you, LORD, are the only God.”
That should be our prayer and message to our world today — that you LORD are the only God. It is our prayer to God against the Islamic terrorist group in my country, Nigeria.
Did God answer the prayer of Hezekiah?
We see the mighty intervention of God in fighting Hezekiah’s battle against the mighty Assyrian army.
God said to Hezekiah:
“Because you have prayed to me concerning Sennacherib, king of Assyria this is the word the Lord has spoken …” (Isaiah 37: 21.)
Because Hezekiah prayed, God sent His angel and put to death a hundred and eighty-five thousand in the Assyrian camp.
Coming back to Jesus’ blueprint for believers climbing the prayer ladder in Matthew 7:7. Jesus instructs:
“Ask and it shall be given to you, seek and you shall find, knock and it shall be opened to you”
The first step is to ask. Luke 11: 10 says “For every one that asks receives.” We would receive just for asking. Our God is a great provider. We get what we ask for at the asking level — the level of our needs. He provides for us like a loving Father.
“If a son shall ask bread of any of you that is a father, will he give him a stone? Or if he asks for a fish give him a serpent? Or if he shall ask an egg, will he offer him a scorpion? (v,11)
God will give you what you ask for at the level of your need.
There is a difference between needs and wants — your needs and your desire. The Psalmist admonishes: “Delight yourself in the Lord and He will grant you the desire of your heart.” (Psalm 37:4).
We are on the second step of the prayer ladder. Seek and you will find.
The third step is to knock: Jesus says there are closed doors that need to be opened. We will get to closed-door moments—physical door, spiritual door — visible and invisible.
Knocking is about persistence. Keep knocking until the door is open. Don’t give up.
We cannot escape any of these steps in our Christian journey. We are called to walk the walk in Prayer.
Where are you on the prayer ladder? Are you asking, seeking, or knocking?
