Prayer IV

In the first article, I wrote on definitions on prayer, when prayer starts and some of the components of prayer. While in the second article I finished my brief exegesis on components of prayer. The third article is centered on those who should pray.

Some think prayer is a child’s play and they see no reason why people ought to be praying presumably because they have all they wanted at their disposal, but in this article I shall show us some of the reasons why talk (pray) to our heavenly father.

Though we may have all at our disposal, we may lack nothing as far as we life and living is concerned (which though I doubted) yet he wants us to talk to him as our father.

When your earthly father tells you something, if you do not want to lose out, you must follow that which he has spoken to you.

Take the instance of a father who told his children that whatever they need for their academics they should ask him that he is going to supply it to them. Those children all heard their father well and good, but one of them notices that his father is having difficulties with his business because instability in the market and stock, thus he did not tell his father what he wanted because to him, good children ought to pity their parents too.

In the meanwhile, his siblings were going to their father and he was settling them, but he desires to do manual labor to raise money for his academics, unfortunately for him the labor he was doing too, those people do not pay him up, and he was in a mess. Having toiled and labored to raise the money for his education and the window for the payment of the fees is getting close. He rants and rants before the person, and the person promised him heaven and earth that he should come the following day that he will settle him.

The following day when he went to the place, he did not see the man at all. Is not the person that one sees that one can harass?

He looks up and down and discovered that there is nothing else for him to do other than going to his father again. When he went to his father to ask him, then his father told him that he is the one who has punished himself, because for every one of them, he has set a certain amount for them in an account, special account for their education, whether or not the business plummets or the stock is not picking, that has no effect on their pursuits, and now that he has come, the father draws out from the account for him as he had did for others.

Some of us are like the child in the above illustration. We are pitying God, that there are many people who are talking to him, that there are lots and lots of demands on him, but his word to all says,

“Call unto me, and I will answer thee, and shew thee great and mighty things, which thou knowest not.” (Jer 33:3)

Through his word he says, we should call unto him. Because he has said that, we should endeavor to be calling unto him. Stop stressing yourself, call him today.

When I got to university, some of our senior colleagues in the university do tell us those days that, “no matter how sharp a newcomer is, something will sell him out”. No matter how sharp a person who has recently moved to an area is, there some things that the person would do that people would know that this person has “recently arrived town”.

A person who has recently moved to an area is a stranger by all standards, thus he would not know all it entails to live in that area, until he starts blending with the people there.

Stranger by Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary is defined as a person who is in a place that they have not been before.

This definition is very true for us all in the world. We all are strangers in the world, for none of us has come to the world prior now. Some ancient mythologies based reincarnation do say some (if not all) of us have passed through the world once, and we would be made to think about some things that have happened millennia or centuries back, thence from their draw their conclusion that we have at a time passed through the world before.

But this is unscriptural, the bible does not teach us that, the bible says, when we die, we await judgment, no reincarnation. (Heb 9:27)

A stranger in a place would need assistance of those who are living there lest he runs into troubles. I used to go to a place before, and I stopped going there for about a decade, and when I went there again without knowing that the rules of the place have changed, I went to a place to urinate, they never stopped me from urinating there, it was after I finished that the law enforcement agency walked up to me and gave me a bill to go and pay that I have transgressed the new law of the area.

I became a victim because I thought, I was familiar with that place, but which I was not familiar with.

Assuming I had asked my friend of the new rules there, I would not have become a victim there.

It is the same with us all in the world, we all are strangers in the world, and we need assistances of someone who has known the rules governing this earth to be able to pass through the world without troubles.

The person whose assistance we needed is God and if we can talk to him, then he shall see us through the world without troubles, but when we want to play too know, Mr. or Mrs. Know it all, then we shall have problem passing through the world.

“Hear my prayer, O LORD, and give ear unto my cry; hold not thy peace at my tears: for I am a stranger with thee, and a sojourner, as all my fathers were.” (Ps. 39:12)

The assurances we have in him, should propel us to talk to him. The assurance is that he promised to answer us when we talk to him.

“O thou that hearest prayer, unto thee shall all flesh come.” (Ps. 65:2)

“And whatsoever ye shall ask in my name, that will I do, that the Father may be glorified in the Son.

“If ye shall ask any thing in my name, I will do it.” (Jn 14:13-14),

Nothing could be more comforting than assurance like this.

One of the most stupid things that anyone could do is knowing someone who cares for him and leaving the person for someone who does not care for him based on some fallacies and lies. This is common with some ladies in this part of the world, when they met with orators, they would leave the person who is caring for the orator and when they are now married to the person, and troubles started brewing at home then their eyes would be clear that they have erred in their decision.

No one can care for us as our heavenly father does care for us, thence, we should not make the mistake that the first Adam and his wife, Eve, made in the garden and following the father of lies, but we should cleave to the Lord, embrace him because he genuinely cares for us.

“Cast thy burden upon the LORD, and he shall sustain thee: he shall never suffer the righteous to be moved.” (Ps. 55:22; I Pet. 5:7)

As a shepherd knows the voices of his sheep from one another so does God knows your voice from that of other people. Irrespective of the numbers of children a father has, the father would know the voices of each and every one of them. The blind people, what they used to know people talking with them is through their voices. No matter how close two people’s voices are, yet something would sell their voices out.

God also knows you voice, he wants to hear your voice, he wants to hear my voice, he has promised to hear our voices if we can call unto him.

“Evening, and morning, and at noon, will I pray, and cry aloud: and he shall hear my voice.” (Ps. 55:17)

A child who is in right standing with his father, a child who does whatever his father asks him to do, his request would not be denied by his father.

When we are also in the right standing with the Lord, when we are doing his will, doing what is pleasing unto him we need to know that whatever we ask of him he will do for us.

“…The effectual fervent prayer of a righteous man availeth much.” (Jam. 5:16b)

Having known that our righteousness is not of ourselves again, but it is dipped in the righteousness of Christ Jesus, we must be assured that his ears are always open unto our prayers.

“The eyes of the LORD are upon the righteous, and his ears are open unto their cry.” (Ps. 34:15)

Half measured joy is like having no joy at all. Fullness of joy is in the Lord and to have such fullness of joy we have been called upon by Jesus to pray unto our father in heaven.

“Hitherto have ye asked nothing in my name: ask, and ye shall receive, that your joy may be full.” (Jn. 16:24)

Having seen some reasons why it is good we pray and talk our hearts over with God, I hope we shall remove all restrictions from our paths to be communing with our father in heaven daily, for he wants to hear us speak to him.

In the next article, I shall be talking on venue of prayer.