Simply speaking – 1) prayer is important; 2) it draws us closer to God;

3) it is powerful; 4) it brings peace; and 5) it protects us. We will discuss the first three reasons today with scriptural references and numbers 4-5 next week.

     God’s word instructs believers to make prayer a high priority because He wants to hear from His children. (Continue in prayer, and watch in the same with thanksgiving; and . . .supplications, prayers, intercessions, and giving of thanks, be made for all men. Colossians 4:2 and 1 Timothy 2:1).

     We should not regard prayer as a duty but rather as a privilege to been joyed. When we pray we should worship God, confess our sins and bring our request to God and wait and listen for Him to speak. In short, we enter deeply and directly into a relationship with God. Through communion with God, our hearts and minds will be changed to be more like God and we will grow to know His perfect will for our lives. (And be not conformed to this world: but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind, that ye may prove what is that good, and acceptable, and perfect, will of God;  But we all, with open face beholding as in a glass the glory of the Lord, are changed into the same image from glory to glory, even as by the Spirit of the Lord. Romans 12:2 and 1 Corinthians 3:18).

      God not only hears our prayers but He acts on them to bring about changes in us and our circumstances as well as the people we pray for and our surrounding world. (Ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you; For every one that asketh receiveth – and he that seeketh findeth – and to him that knocketh it shall be opened; And all things, whatsoever ye shall ask in prayer, believing, ye shall receive; What things soever ye desire, when ye pray, believe that ye receive them, and ye shall have them;  If ye abide in me, and my words abide in you, ye shall ask what ye will, and it shall be done unto you; . . .whatsoever ye shall ask of the Father in my name, he may give it you; the prayer of faith shall save the sick, and the Lord shall raise him up; and if he have committed sins, they shall be forgiven him.  Confess your faults one to another, and pray one for another, that ye may be healed. The effectual fervent prayer of a righteous man availeth much; and  if our heart condemn us not, then have we confidence toward God. And whatsoever we ask, we receive of him, because we keep his commandments, and do those things that are pleasing in his sight.Matthew 7:7-8, Matthew 21:22, Mark 11:24, John 15:7, 16, James 5:15-16, 1 John 3:21-22).