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This article will dig deep into God's Word and answer why prayer is essential. These seven reasons will show you and clarify the importance of prayer for believers. Have you ever wondered why you should pray? Or why is it vital to your walk with God? Prayer is an integral part of the Christian life and a way to pour your hearts into God as His children. When you pray, you communicate with God; you worship God and let Him know what you would like. Humanity is to pray all the time, not only when they need something from God. He is your Father, and your joy comes before Him in awe and tells Him how much you love and adore Him. The Importance Of Prayer Prayer is seen throughout Scripture. In the four gospels (Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John), Jesus often hides away to pray; He even taught His disciples about prayer. Jesus wanted them to learn how to pray the right way. He knew the importance and power of prayer and wanted His disciples to know this. God answers prayer (at times, it takes time), but that does not mean He has not responded. If people are patient, they will see the answers to their prayers. Wendy Veronica Lisare's The Other Side Of Fear implied the importance of praying with power and authority. Through prayer, the author has discovered courage, joy, hope, freedom, and fulfillment as she embraces her authentic identity as a daughter of the King of kings. Now, read more and look at the seven (7) reasons prayer is vital in a Christian's life. Why Is Prayer Vital? 1. Prayer Is Vital Because It Provides Solutions. You pray when in trouble because you want God to intervene on your behalf. You want Him to give you a solution to your problem. Also, being children of God does not exempt humanity from trials and challenges in life, but through prayer, they can invite God to help them deal with them. 2. Prayer Is Important Because It Helps You Overcome Temptation. You are to pray and watch so that you will not fall into temptation because your spirit is willing, but your flesh is weak. Sometimes people get disappointed in themselves because of giving in to the temptation and doing things they are not proud of. They probably only sometimes remember that they can pray for themselves beforehand so that when temptation comes knocking, they can overcome it and avoid sin. 3. Prayer Is Important Because It is Obedience to God. When you pray, you obey God's command to pray for everything and everyone you can think about in your surroundings and worldwide. Prayer is part of your walk with God, enabling you to go before God with your needs and those of others. Sometimes others cannot pray for themselves, and your prayers give them the necessary breakthroughs. 4. Prayer Is Important Because You Communicate With God. When you pray to God, you communicate with Him, which is how you build your relationship with Him. Just like your earthly relationship. Communication is vital for the growth and health of a relationship. 5. Prayer Is Important Because You Gain Wisdom. You need God's wisdom to navigate the issues you face, especially those beyond the comprehension of the human mind. With God's divine wisdom, you can acquire spiritual insight into situations and know how to deal with them effectively. God imparts His wisdom to you when you ask and pray for it. 6. Prayer Is Vital Because It Changes Your Perspective. You often enter prayer with certain feelings and emotions towards a situation or person. Prayer can bring you into God's presence and change your perspective on those situations and people. 7. Prayer Is Vital Because It Allows You to Hear His Voice. Prayer is about communication, and that communication brings you closer to Him. This is how prayer works. It brings you closer to Jesus so you can hear Him more clearly. This does not mean you do all the talking the entire time in prayer, but you give Him room to speak in His presence. People Need To Pray Prayer is essential, and the above seven (7) reasons highlight this truth. To know the right way of praying, learn the principles of worship from the Word of God. You can be sure that God will always answer your prayers, and if there are any hindrances, you can identify them when you read the Scripture. To have a vigorous walk with the Lord, prayer has to become an everyday practice for you so that you can always know His will for your life. When you pray, things change! edit.
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How does one move along the spiritual journey to the experience of the Father's loving presence? Common sense tells humanity that the precondition for experiencing the lovableness of others is the presence of love in their hearts. In so far as love is in your hearts, you can experience, you might say, touch, taste, hear, and see love in others. People can be surrounded by love, but if love is not in their hearts, they remain blind, deaf, and insensitive to its presence in others. Only love in your heart awakens you to the lovableness in your surroundings. And only perfect love can awaken humankind to the perfect love of God. God Is Love God is love: perfect, eternal, infinite, pure love. The face-to-face encounter with God involves the experience of perfect love. The primary internal change that Christ must effect in humanity, therefore, is that which makes people capable of experiencing pure love. To repeat, the love in one's heart allows him to recognize and experience – to hear, see, smell, touch, feel, and celebrate – the love he meets within others. Absent such love in your heart, you can be surrounded by wonderful, loving, and lovable persons, but you will remain deaf, blind, and insensitive to the presence of their love. What is true of the love you meet with in this world is equally valid of the experience of the company of God's love. If people cannot recognize and respond to the lovableness of those they can see, hear, and touch, how can they recognize and respond to the invisible presence of divine love? Jesus puts it that If He has told you earthly things, yet you do not believe, how can you possibly believe if He tells you heavenly things? If you do not respond to the love you see around you, how can you respond to the love of God that you cannot see? In Wendy Veronica Lisare's book on her Journey Into Perfect Love through spiritual growth, she shares the intimate details of her journals from an unhappy childhood, through a loveless marriage, a divorce, the loss of a granddaughter, and a battle with cancer to a rewarding nursing job and a second career as a minister of the truth of the gospel of Jesus Christ. The testimony of the author and the spiritual tools she learned along the journey will inspire all who read her book to move through their challenges to God's perfect love and the other side of fear. The Way Of Love: 7 Practices For Jesus-Centered Life Below are the seven (7) practices to achieve a Jesus-centered life. Read on. Turn (pause, listen and choose to heed Jesus). Jesus calls humanity to follow the Way of Love like the disciples. With God's help, you can turn from the powers of sin, fear, hatred, injustice, and oppression toward the way of love, truth, hope, justice, and freedom. In turn, you reorient your life to Jesus Christ, falling in love again and again. Learn (reflect on Scripture daily, especially Jesus' life and teachings). By reading and reflecting on the Scripture, especially the life and teachings of Jesus, you draw closer to God, and God's word dwells in you. When a person opens his mind and heart to Scripture, he learns to see God's story and activity in everyday life. Pray (dwell intentionally with God daily). Jesus teaches humanity to come before God with humble hearts, offering their concerns and thanksgivings to God. Whether in word, thought, or deed, individually or corporately, when a person prays, he invites and dwells in God's loving presence. Worship (gather in the community weekly to praise, thank, and dwell with God). When you worship, you gather with others before God. You hear the Good News of Jesus Christ, confess, give thanks, and offer the world's brokenness to God. As you break bread, your eyes are opened to the presence of Christ. Bless (share faith and unselfishly give and serve). Jesus called His disciples to give, forgive, teach, and heal in His name. The Spirit empowers people to bless everyone they meet, practicing generosity and compassion and proclaiming the Good News of God in Christ with hopeful words and selfless actions. You can share your stories of blessing and invite others to the Way of Love. Go (cross boundaries, listen deeply and live like Jesus). As Jesus went to the highways and byways, He sent people beyond their circles and comfort to witness God's love, justice, and truth with their lips and with their lives. You go to listen with humility and join God in healing a hurting world. You become a Beloved Community, a people reconciled in love with God and one another. Rest (receive the gift of God's grace, peace, and restoration). From the beginning of creation, God has established the sacred pattern of going and returning, labor and rest. Especially today, God invites people to dedicate time for restoration and wholeness - within their bodies, minds, souls, communities, and institutions. By resting, you trust God, the primary Actor who brings all things to their fullness. In Conclusion There is no specific order you need to follow. If you keep a Rule or spiritual discipline, you might reflect and discover how that path intersects with the above practices. By entering into reflection, discernment, and commitment around the practices of Turn - Learn - Pray - Worship - Bless - Go - Rest, humanity will grow as communities following the loving, liberating, life-giving way of Jesus. His path has the power to change each person's life and to change this world. Photo by Alem Sánchez Wendy V. Lisare’s The Other Side of Fear is the story of possibility when you receive freedom through a relationship with Jesus and the redemption that awaits everyone who repents. Fear clouds human life; sometimes, it seems that it is what drives society. The fear of this, the fear of that--everywhere, people are made to be afraid. Going through abuse and self-hatred while living in a world inundated and permeated by fear, W. Veronica Lisare found freedom through Christ. She recounts her life as a downcast youth and her divorce from a loveless marriage, losing a granddaughter and overcoming cancer to becoming a nurse and then as a minister spreading the word of Jesus Christ. By sharing her tribulations and ultimately coming to the embrace of the Lord, Lisare wishes to teach readers the spiritual tools she learned through her journey. She encourages everyone "to trust God and know that their past does not have to dictate the outcome of their future." Through Christ, everyone can walk through the other side, find God's loving perfection, and live freely under His will. "[H]e who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus." The Freedom of Christ Modern society regards freedom as a virtue. In the legal sense, freedom is tied to rights; of course, it would not feel good to be stripped of one's rights. But this gives a misattributed sense of where freedom ultimately comes from--God. A growing number of people in America are beginning to think that freedom is a secular concept and that it either pops out of the ether wholesale or it is something the government provides its citizens. Freedom, colloquially, is synonymous with personal independence--to act, speak, and think, however, whenever, and wherever they want. Yet, that is far from the freedom given by Christ when He revealed Himself as the Messiah. "If the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed" When Jesus asserted that "everyone who sins is a slave to sin" in John 8:34, there was an uproar among the Pharisees because they could not accept that it was the nature of man to sin and to be controlled by it. And how can people escape from the inevitability of sin? Through accepting Christ in your hearts and acknowledging His divinity. For Christians, freedom is not the unfettered permission to do as you please but the liberation from sin. Freedom is to be in a relationship with God and live in obedience to His will. Freedom is the alignment of personal goals to God's will. It is not the material dependence espoused by the secularists but the guarantee of divine salvation through Christ and the promise of eternal life. It is only through submission to Christ that true freedom is realized, and sin is cast off the spirit. Why Secular Freedom Is Not True The "freedom" espoused by secularists is merely the permission to act without consequence, not true freedom. Look at countries where human "freedom" is at its highest. You will find rampant drug use, sexual immorality, and the weakening of the family as a traditional unit, among many others. Anchoring freedom with material gain and prosperity leads to opportunities for vice, and vice is the quickest way to sin. "[B]ut each person is tempted when they are dragged away by their own evil desire and enticed." For true freedom to be available and accessible to everyone, the popular definition should be changed and returned to its rightful state, which is the freedom to live in faith, trust in God's glory and attain divine salvation. Gaining the Freedom of Christ Accepting grace is the key to finding true freedom. By confessing your weakness, acknowledging that you are fundamentally flawed and broken, and conceding that only the love of God allows you to live as you should, you are transformed, body and soul. Receive freedom through a relationship with Jesus and be transformed, be granted a better, more fulfilling life with God. "It is for freedom that Christ has set us free. Stand firm, then, and do not let yourselves be burdened again" |