By
Beverly Rainwater
We
should always have God on our minds. We should want to share with Him the
sorrow and the joy of our lives. Why is it that so many times the
children of God do not have a real prayer relationship with Him? Why
does it sometimes seem like a chore or an obligation rather than a privilege
and a blessing? Why do we tend to think that God is not hearing and is
not answering our prayers? Let's look at three things that can cause us
to not have an effective prayer relationship with God. They are:
1.
Lack of planning -- We put off prayer until we are so busy with other daily
chores that prayer is pushed to the back-seat where sometimes it stays until
we wearily fall into bed and try to talk to our Lord. Unfortunately,
then we find ourselves falling asleep before we finish.
2.
Not knowing how to pray -- You would think that as children of God, to pray
would be an easy thing to do, a thing that is second nature, but it is not if
we have not learned how to pray.
3.
Not being specific -- when we pray we sometimes are so pressed for time that
we just lump everything together. We generalize everything and everyone.
Not only that, but we figure that God knows all we want and need anyway so we
don't have to pray specifically. The key is to “want” to pray for
these specific things. We should “want” to ask the
Father to help. Besides, God wants us to ask specifically!
Prayer
changes things. We must have faith that this is true and we must believe in
the fact that God does hear and He does answer prayer. How do we know
this? We know because Matthew 7:7 states, "Ask
and it shall be given you; seek, and ye shall find;
